COMMUNICATION THOUGHT LEADERS ON: SOCIAL MEDIA

At its recent international convening of more than 100 independent communications agencies, the PROI alliance recently gathered in Los Angeles, hosted by LA partner mPRm.  This is the third in my blog series of key topics that were discussed by communication leaders from every corner of the world during that meeting.  When so many great brains of our profession get together to debate and collaborate, I'm compelled to share publicly what was discussed.  The PROI think tank is an important pulse on communication trends internationally, and any marketer could benefit from getting an insider's glimpse into this exclusive conversation.

 

Social media -- or e-media, as our European partners seem to like to call it -- was a primary topic again at the 2010 meeting, as it has been for the past five years.  In a breakout session to capture key trends in social media, these communicators summarized their thoughts in six key areas:

   

Social media must be tied to a business strategy, yet most clients are so anxious to be a part of the online conversation about them, they start without the strategy.  They expect the strategy to catch up later.  While we advise strategy for business before strategy for social media, we are typically managing this point of entry first.  Case in point, a large North American consumer brand we recently presented to -- had started conversations around its traditional promotion and marketing activities by building some formidable followings in social communities.  Problem was:  as the agency sent in to consult on "taking them to the next level," we were in a tough position to critically assess the quality and strategy of what's been done so far, particularly when presenting to the internal team who started and was managing the conversation in the first place. Saddling the business strategy on the horse after it already left the gate is extremely tricky for many reasons (maybe a separate blog on this to come?).  Un-doing and re-routing of online activity has to be done in order to put realistic, long-term budgets, roles and responsibilities, and measurements in place.

 

Social media is not free.  I presented a few weeks ago at the University of Minnesota about online reputation management for the health care industry, just one day after the industry's most visible SM "guru" had presented, using a deck that highlighted the fact that much of what he had put in place for his client, a large hospital system, was free or less than $500.  In my opinion (and one that was shared by the bulk of my PROI colleagues), presentations like this do neither the consultant nor the client any good.  Social media is not free.  The discrepancy here exists because we aren't calculating social media the right way on the front or the back end.  Until we can educate clients on both the hard and soft costs of putting a strategic effort into social media and then sustaining an effort pointed to a particular outcome, they will continue to struggle with ways to budget for it -- and continue simply tacking it on or shoehorning it into existing public relations work, which will be compromise existing programs.  Here is a simple equation to get the conversation started and the discrepancy resolved:  this hospital should calculate the amount of time, and correlating hard cost of salary of this employee, and start adding real costs from there.   

 

For an agency to own an online engagement, it must already have anticipated the change in the "media relations" landscape and organized and tested its business model as one that is integrated -- designed to sell solutions and not individual services.  Clients care less about the multiple spokes on the wheel; they just need the opportunity to get rolling.  Luckily for the client, the best agencies have aligned services to deliver integrated answers -- and the others are talking about it (I'm writing this blog just as a major event in the Twin Cities about this new integration, is taking place).

 

Agencies will need to continue to acquire digital expertise, from the technology tools to the digital sensibilities our clients look to, as more and more they lack the time and patient to cut through the clutter.  An agency's job is to match cutting-edge digital developments to a tried-and-true objective: help the client sell more of his goods and services. 

 

Look to the public relations experts as the natural owners of social media strategy, as they have been the primary developers of communications strategy that is rooted in objectivity, education and authenticity.  Their background in audience segmentation, message development and deployment, voice and tone, and spokesperson selection and training are best suited to apply these skills to an online conversation on behalf of a brand.  They are the content generators and have always been the ones to start and direct relations with influencers.  Today, those influencers are not only media, but individuals -- who are buzzing online.

Focus on metrics.  Start your online conversation by working into it...backwards.  I can help you right here, right now with this: your goal is to sell more XXX.  Getting jazzed about social media is exciting, but in the end -- far beyond the analytics -- your cash registers will give you the answer to the question of whether or not your social media is working.  We'll just have to wait and see, for example, if the Old Spice Man actually gets Old Spice into the shower at your house.  After the awards have been given out for such buzz-inspiring new uses of the tools like this, I'm sure we'll all demand to see the real numbers.  Only this will tell us if our entire furor over social media will last.

Series of 7: Top Topics from the PROI Gathering of the World’s Leading Independent Agencies:Reputation Management After the Global Economic Meltdown

This is the first in a series of seven blogs highlighting the seven breakout session topics presented at the 2010 PROI annual meeting.  PROI is the largest, oldest and furthest-reaching alliance of independent communications agencies.  The PROI partner office for the Upper Midwest, LaBreche attended the 2010 international meeting in May, which was hosted by its L.A. partner office, mPRm.

 

All PROI agencies, representing the world’s most forward-thinking innovators in the communications industry, participated in a discussion on how reputation management is viewed and managed for companies, as they begin to emerge from the global economic crisis.  Below are the top-ranking insights from these leaders – from Delhi to Copenhagen, Bratislava and NYC.

 

• Research now reveals that the topic of reputation makes it on to the agendas of the meetings of the boards of the world’s largest public companies.  Today’s board members and executives are increasingly concerned about managing their reputations in a new media world, in which every stakeholder has a voice and many are using that voice, after 24 months of decreasing trust in companies, their brands, governments, and world and industry leaders.
• Social networks and the messages they move -- based in truths and untruths – because increasing consternation among leaders, many of which are not yet comfortable adopting, participating in and using networks to proactively engage their stakeholder communities.
• Reputation management processes are becoming more mature, advanced and accepted by companies and their executives.  The best reputation audits, maps and outcomes are measured in tangible values – in languages that can be understood by the CFO.
• As companies move into their next challenge – the fight for talent that is expected to be able to soon act on their desires to change jobs – they will pay more attention to their reputations as employers of choice, and take action to proactively position themselves to compete to retain and attract the human resources a knowledge economy demands.
• Reputation management – a term that first used in the 1980s and never really made it out of the agency’s lexicon – is finally understood by companies, at the highest levels of the organization.  Agencies have seen increases in proactive conversations with clients who want to understand how to manage the perceptions of their companies.  The role agencies now play is connecting what a company does to what it says to lead to what it’s known for.
• CEOs are interested in knowing what stakeholders think about their companies, its leaders, its products, and agencies skilled in reputation management are delivering research that leads to strategic discussions around the current-to-desired path of reputation building.
• Issues management is at the core of reputation work; intelligence mapping and risk management that identifies, monitors, interprets and prompts preventative crisis controls is a given at any well-managed organization.
• Rebuilding credibility will be the mantra for many companies and companies within industries that have taken a beating over the past 24 months. 

 

Next week’s topic:  digital marketing…who owns it?

International Views on Communications

Every May, I travel to the annual meeting of the world’s oldest and furthest-reaching alliance of independent communications agencies.  The alliance is called Public Relations Organisation International (PROI) – and, yes, Organisation is spelled with an S, not a Z – which signifies the origins of this international group, which can be traced back 40 years to eight innovative firms in Europe.

Those innovators, owners of independent public relations agencies, banded together to share information on trends affecting how to best represent clients and their brands as consultants and communicators.  Today, people from 78 agencies, 120 cities, 40 countries and 5 continents gather twice a year to do the same thing.  Sharing knowledge and resources across borders has always been inherent in the independent agency’s character.  Imagine the depth of thinking when the world’s leading independent agency owners gather to study such important topics as crisis management across global social networks and working with procurement and sourcing models to deliver results measured in today’s terms.

This year’s meeting was held in Los Angeles and hosted by our PROI partner office there, mPRm.  In the coming days, I’ll recap the priority topics we huddled on in L.A.   I think you’ll find that all of us – as agencies and clients – must address them in 2010, a year that is expected to usher in a new era of communications in a world that’s largely been in turmoil over the past 24 months.

The first blog in the series will cover reputation management trends in this brave new world.  Join me, and I welcome your comments on this global discussion.  Stay tuned.