Wednesday, September 30, 2009

HAVE A SAFE TRIP

“Have a safe trip,” my daughter said.

We had been talking on the phone for about fifteen minutes. I had mentioned to my daughter, a senior at the University of Florida, that I was leaving in the morning on a business trip to Texas. And, as we ended the conversation, she said, “Have a safe trip.”

And I realized that it was about the twentieth time I had heard that phrase in the previous few days…basically, whenever I had mentioned to a client or an associate or a friend that I had to go to Texas on business. It’s not like I’m not familiar with the inside of an airplane. I was just in North Carolina a few weeks prior to this trip. I have to go to New York next week. And then, a few weeks later, back to Texas.

But, for some reason, this time, whenever anyone said, “Have a safe trip,” it really hit me. Of course, we never said that to each other prior to 9/11. My Dad spent the better part of his life on planes – he was a member of the million-mile club way back in the sixties, when that really meant something. But I don’t remember ever telling him, “Have a safe trip.” I think we probably just assumed he would.

Last week, every time I e-mailed someone that I’d be out of the office for a few days, a short reply would come back: “Have a safe trip.” One guy even responded, “Have a safe trip. After all, you know those Texans…”

Of course, there are other ways to die on a plane without being hijacked by terrorists. A few years ago, a co-pilot for a Middle Eastern airline decided to commit suicide by crashing the plane – and its few hundred passengers - into the Atlantic Ocean. And right after 9/11 – if the speculation is correct – the crash of another airliner was caused by a rocket fired by our own jittery military.

At heart, I appreciated the good wishes, of course. But – every time they said those four words - they made me think about something I really didn’t want to think about. And what did that guy mean, anyway, when he referred to “those Texans?”

For those of us in this profession, our “trip,” recently, has often been somewhat turbulent. The “vehicles” that take us on these trips seem to be changing right before our eyes, and at warp-speed. Sometimes things even seem somewhat out of control. And I believe that this has become a permanent feature of our (and many others’) profession. Nothing will ever be the same. And nothing will ever stay the same.

All we can do, I suppose, is just hope for a safe trip.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

THE UNDYING ART OF STORY-TELLING

Traditional mediums of communication are dying – or, at the very least, on the critical list - all around us. But there’s one form of communication that must be preserved at all costs – the art of telling a story. After all, isn’t that, in a very real sense, what we do for our clients, or for our companies? We’re communicators…and the essence of good communication is knowing how to tell a good story.

The best communicators know that this is still essential to the practice of public relations. And they’re constantly honing their ability to tell stories. Compelling stories. Provocative stories. Stories that move us emotionally. Stories that spark a need (or a want). And stories that can make us act on this need or want.

The media platforms upon which we tell our stories may be morphing even as we speak. But stories - well-told, engaging stories - are still the best means of generating action (or satisfaction) by our publics, or by our customers. And companies that are unsuccessful at telling their stories eventually end up in that proverbial “dusts-bin of history.”

People will always want to hear about other people, and what makes them act the ways in which they do. It stands to reason, then, that the best way to sell products or services - or ideas - is to tell stories, often about people. It may be about how people can benefit from a certain product. How they can join a certain cause. How they can find out more about a certain idea. Or, simply, how they overcame an obstacle in life (and, truth be told, it wouldn’t hurt if they overcame this obstacle with the aid of your company’s or your client’s product or service!). But, whatever the goal, if you use good stories, you've got a better chance to achieve it.

Marketers and PR people (all the emerging technologies notwithstanding) should take note. Stories - stories with which the target audience can identify and benefit from - are the best way to generate trust on the part of that audience. And trust is the best way to generate action. Period!!

And we ignore that fact at our peril.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com

Saturday, September 19, 2009

HOW TO SEND SPAM

If you haven’t yet read “The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott, you should. One of his chapter-headings is “Non-Targeted, Broadcast Pitches are Spam.”

A pretty wide definition. But I couldn’t agree more. Very few things about this industry make me as mad as these so-called “pitches.” They show absolutely no respect for the writers/editors at which they’re aimed. Think about it: In how many other industries can you expect to “make the sale” after blatantly disrespecting the person to whom you’re selling? This practice is the biggest reason why so many journalists don’t respect us (to put it mildly!).

I started out as a journalist. I grew up in a newsroom. I was a newspaper reporter. And then a magazine editor. And I can’t even begin to estimate the thousands of releases I’ve tossed or deleted because I could see instantly that they had been sent to a thousand other journalists, as well. I could see without even opening them that they were not targeted specifically to my demographics or my beat or my magazines. They were just tossed blindly against as many walls as the tosser could think of, in the hope that maybe a few of them might – just possibly – stick.

I can tell you, though, that, with most journalists who receive these blind pitches, the only thing that sticks is a lifelong distain for public relations people.

I'm forever trying to educate clients that their "great" story is great only if it offers the readers (who are, after all, the end-users) actionable advice that can help make their lives or their businesses better. If there's not a real "news" value to what I'm asked to pitch...I won't pitch it. It's cost me a client here or there - but it's damned worth it.

More than ever, coverage in the appropriate niche is worth much more than coverage in scattered media that are of no value to your clients' businesses. Ideally, clients would be more open to understanding this. But it's not their fault.

The real fault, actually, lies with the agencies and the corporate PR practitioners who have a golden opportunity to educate their clients (or senior management), and don't do it. As long as PR people are willing to practice this approach, some clients will think it's best.

I'm still waiting for the day when the quantity of pitches matters less than the quality of the resulting media coverage.

In other words...when output matters less than results.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

VIRAL PR: EXHIBIT A

If you don’t think one person can make a difference, you should see what’s going on at City Place.

City Place is an upscale, downtown retail/dining/housing complex in the city of West Palm Beach, FL. It’s a great place to spend a day (even if you can’t afford to buy anything). You can wander around the finest names in clothing, kitchenware, home-design, furnishings, etc. You can be mesmerized by the street performers. You can eat at imaginative sidewalk cafes, graze at one of the trendy watering holes, or enjoy gelato or fine chocolates on the plaza. It’s all in a fashionable urban setting that really helped revitalize the city a decade or so ago.

City Place has made the news lately, though, for all the wrong reasons. They forgot two central lessons of the Digital Age.

It seems that the complex recently told its employees – who had been parking in a lot near their stores – that their parking area was being moved a few blocks away, to make more room for customers. In addition, rather than the $10 a year they had been paying for parking, they would now be charged $50 a month for the privilege of being moved a few blocks away – for spots that City Place would only have to pay the City of West Palm Beach $20 a month for. Apparently, the shopping complex had discovered a potential new revenue stream – its own employees.

Well, the employees didn’t take it sitting down. Except for one. He sat down at his computer, and posted the news on several blogs. Within a day or two, the Palm Beach Post and local TV and radio stations picked up the story.

Soon, employees began picketing in front of the complex, and West Palm Beach’s smart-set was faced with the prospect of crossing picket lines to get inside. And the employees appeared before a meeting of the City Commission.

Don’t get me wrong. I love City Place. I love going there with my wife and daughter to wander around the beautiful old urban buildings and the fancy new shops and bistros and fountains and tables with umbrellas. To tell you the truth, I love it even though I rarely buy anything there (other than lunch and some ice cream).

But, from a public relations viewpoint, I think City Place has probably learned two good lessons for the Digital Age.

The First: Your employees are your lifeblood – even more so, in some ways, than your customers. Because if your employees are unhappy…your customers will know about it very soon.

And, Second: In this New Age, bad news doesn’t just travel fast. It travels at the speed of light.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com

Friday, September 11, 2009

HIGH NOON FOR GM?

As Yogi Berra once said, "It's déjà vu all over again."

So GM is now coming out with a new marketing campaign – again. This time, under certain conditions, they’ll take your car back within sixty days if you’re not satisfied. And it’s actually not a bad idea.

But I’m not sure it’s enough, by itself, to get enough people into the showrooms…enough people to save GM, anyway. It has to be part of a larger thrust. People have to want GM cars first.

Several years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with top executives of a major-league sports team that had been losing for a long time, and had been having trouble drawing decent crowds. I watched with a sense of bemusement as they animatedly debated - and kept asking my opinion about - which "marketing" approach would fill their seats, which "promotions" would work, which "message" would work, etc.

After watching for a few minutes, I finally said, "Guys, this is all ##!**&&*!!! It's not marketing or promotions or giveaways that put fannies in the seats. It's a winning team! Instead of wasting all this money on marketing schemes, go out and get yourself some good players! And you'll be amazed at how quickly the seats fill up!"

Moral of the story? The "New GM" marketing "strategies" will no doubt be slick, and somewhat emotional. But they will fail again, unless the "New GM" executives teach themselves this mantra: IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PROMOTIONS. IT'S ABOUT THE PRODUCT!

When I was a young guy, in the seventies, my pride and joy was the Chevy Camaro convertible in which I drove around town…green, with the black that I had painted on top of the hood and on the rear end. Man, that was one cool car! (Didn’t hurt with the teenaged girls, either!)

Now GM has brought back the Camaro. I’ve seen a couple. And they’re gorgeous! Sleek and mean, like the seventies models, with a big front hood and grill that scream “Don’t mess with me, sucker!”

There’s only one problem that I can see. In an era when gas has been over $4 a gallon, and when increasing numbers of people are going “hybrid,” this is a muscle car. Let’s face it – If you’re going to bring back the Camaro, it should be as a muscle car. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have an engine available for those of us who want the looks of a muscle car, without the gas bills. All Camaro models – even the six-cylinder – get 16-17 mpg around town. To be fair, the highway mpg figures are in the mid-twenties; most of us, however, spend more time tooling around town than we do on the highway.

Note to the "New GM:" Ads and promotions are not going to buy you a hell of a lot of time, especially considering the cynicism of the American public when it comes to your cars and your management. Instead, realize that, for most of us, the real showroom is on the road, not in your dealerships. Realize that your best marketing tools are the cars you build…not the promotions you build around them. Build more cars that make us turn our heads as they pass by (as the Camaro does). Build cars – even “muscle cars” – that get better mileage. And build cars that will last as long – and as reliably - as Toyotas and Hondas.

Then we'll buy them.

And then you'll have "fannies in the seats!"

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com

Friday, September 4, 2009

CAN PR SAVE THE MEETINGS INDUSTRY?

CAN PR SAVE THE MEETINGS INDUSTRY?

Perhaps nowhere has the “AIG Effect” been as pronounced – or as toxic – as in the corporate-meetings industry.

Consider, for a moment, the devastation caused by the cancellations of thousands of meetings across the country, by companies afraid their meetings would be perceived as “excessive,” even if all they were doing was…meeting. The effects on the travel, tourism, convention, hotel, rental car, airline, attractions, advertising, and restaurant industries have been crushing.

The drip-down effect is more immense than we can even imagine. It’s affected part-time dishwashers as well as airline pilots, convention-center janitorial staff as well as presidents of convention & visitors bureaus, rental-car ticket agents as well as busboys, taxi drivers as well as catering companies. It has caused hundreds of thousands – perhaps even millions – of people to lose their jobs. It has resulted in extraordinary strains on state budgets, because of unemployment claims. It has resulted in crises for city and local budgets, because of the diminished “bed” and “hotel” taxes.

For companies and organizations, bringing your people together to discuss ideas, network, address company-wide issues, or just reward good work, is essential – especially if they want to encourage information-exchange and best-practices. As a person who spent most of his life in the corporate world, I can tell you that I always emerged from those events with a new sense of energy and purpose, with new connections (and advocates) throughout the company, with a new understanding of what other people in the company did, and with a sense that I was not “alone”…that I was part of a real team.

So what can we do to help? We specialize in shaping – and changing – perceptions of value. Is there anything we can do to help the meetings industry? (And, in the process, our own business?)

Ben Stein, for one, says yes. You know Ben Stein. He’s played the middle-aged, personality-challenged professor or insurance agent or psychologist in a number of movies, with his thick glasses and his droning monotone. He’s also, however, a respected economist, speaker, and author.

“Are the meetings of Congress a waste?” he writes in his blog in “The American Spectator.” “They are business meetings. Are the meetings of the Supreme Court wasteful? They are business meetings.”

Addressing the misperceptions about meetings in “resorts” such as Las Vegas, he writes, “As to meetings in resorts, the reason to have them is that there are a lot of rooms close to each other with good ways to get together. Often, as in Las Vegas, rooms are inexpensive. Traffic jams and people getting lost do not happen because everyone is under the same roof."

I’ve spoken with a couple of “expert witnesses” over the past few days. And they both agree that this is one area in which public relations can really show off its ability to use facts to change harmful misperceptions.

Jaki Baskow is Owner/CEO of Baskow &Associates, a well-known destination management company in Las Vegas (destination management companies help meeting planners with arrangements for every aspect of their meetings). And because of where she’s located, she’s had a front-row seat on the meltdown of the corporate meeting.

“PR can definitely help save the meetings industry,” Baskow says. “In fact, we need it to help save the meetings industry. There’s just so much at stake. PR can help spearhead the positive message to America. It can keep reminding corporate America that cancelling meetings can cost them profits in the long run. And it can keep reminding the rest of America that meetings help make people more motivated and more productive.”

In actuality, the meetings infrastructure has begun taking some steps to prove its value. On websites such as www.keepamericameeting.com and www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com, people can read about how important meetings are to the American economy. In addition, many cities (and many resorts) now have their own websites dedicated to meetings, with practical information countering the popular misperceptions.

Roberta Guise, President of Guise Marketing & Public Relations, is also located in a popular meeting destination – San Francisco. She’s seen first-hand the devastation caused by innuendo and misperception. And she agrees that PR should be an active agent of change in addressing those misperceptions.

“There are some very practical steps that PR professionals can take,” Guise says. “You can try to get meetings-related stories in your local media, with information about how such meetings help the local economy. You can write letters to the Editors – or Op-Eds – about how meetings are vital to the local economy. You can sign the petition at www.keepamericameeting.com or at www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com. to send the same message to legislators.

“And we can always keep in mind, ourselves, the new rules - that our emphasis on the meetings we publicize should be on value and learning, rather than on flash and hype.”

In my own experience with clients in this industry, I’ve come to see that the “value” meetings bring to a local community is often more than economic. Many companies, for example, donate unused food to local food banks and homeless shelters. Many donate floral arrangements to local senior centers. And I know of one company that always joins Habitat For Humanity to build houses in the cities where it meets.

Jaki Baskow says that companies are finally starting to be more proactive themselves abut their meetings.

“They’re starting to use PR to let the world know they’re still doing business as usual. I’ve spoken to many companies around the country that are still booking great venues, still holding their meetings. And they’re still doing incentive meetings to reward productivity…but they’re doing them in a smaller way.”

Think locally for a moment. Think about a corporate meeting of, say, five-hundred or a thousand people in your community. Translate the economic benefits of that one meeting. And then multiply that figure by a hundred…or, if you’re in a big meetings-destination city, by a thousand. The figures are staggering, aren’t they?

“We can play an active part in getting a vital segment of the American economy back on its feet again,” Roberta Guise says.

And, in so doing, I might add, helping to address misperceptions about our own value.

CAN PR SAVE THE MEETINGS INDUSTRY?

CAN PR SAVE THE MEETINGS INDUSTRY?

Perhaps nowhere has the “AIG Effect” been as pronounced – or as toxic – as in the corporate-meetings industry.

Consider, for a moment, the devastation caused by the cancellations of thousands of meetings across the country, by companies afraid their meetings would be perceived as “excessive,” even if all they were doing was…meeting. The effects on the travel, tourism, convention, hotel, rental car, airline, attractions, advertising, and restaurant industries have been crushing.

The drip-down effect is more immense than we can even imagine. It’s affected part-time dishwashers as well as airline pilots, convention-center janitorial staff as well as presidents of convention & visitors bureaus, rental-car ticket agents as well as busboys, taxi drivers as well as catering companies. It has caused hundreds of thousands – perhaps even millions – of people to lose their jobs. It has resulted in extraordinary strains on state budgets, because of unemployment claims. It has resulted in crises for city and local budgets, because of the diminished “bed” and “hotel” taxes.

For companies and organizations, bringing your people together to discuss ideas, network, address company-wide issues, or just reward good work, is essential – especially if they want to encourage information-exchange and best-practices. As a person who spent most of his life in the corporate world, I can tell you that I always emerged from those events with a new sense of energy and purpose, with new connections (and advocates) throughout the company, with a new understanding of what other people in the company did, and with a sense that I was not “alone”…that I was part of a real team.

So what can we do to help? We specialize in shaping – and changing – perceptions of value. Is there anything we can do to help the meetings industry? (And, in the process, our own business?)

Ben Stein, for one, says yes. You know Ben Stein. He’s played the middle-aged, personality-challenged professor or insurance agent or psychologist in a number of movies, with his thick glasses and his droning monotone. He’s also, however, a respected economist, speaker, and author.

“Are the meetings of Congress a waste?” he writes in his blog in “The American Spectator.” “They are business meetings. Are the meetings of the Supreme Court wasteful? They are business meetings.”

Addressing the misperceptions about meetings in “resorts” such as Las Vegas, he writes, “As to meetings in resorts, the reason to have them is that there are a lot of rooms close to each other with good ways to get together. Often, as in Las Vegas, rooms are inexpensive. Traffic jams and people getting lost do not happen because everyone is under the same roof."

I’ve spoken with a couple of “expert witnesses” over the past few days. And they both agree that this is one area in which public relations can really show off its ability to use facts to change harmful misperceptions.

Jaki Baskow is Owner/CEO of Baskow &Associates, a well-known destination management company in Las Vegas (destination management companies help meeting planners with arrangements for every aspect of their meetings). And because of where she’s located, she’s had a front-row seat on the meltdown of the corporate meeting.

“PR can definitely help save the meetings industry,” Baskow says. “In fact, we need it to help save the meetings industry. There’s just so much at stake. PR can help spearhead the positive message to America. It can keep reminding corporate America that cancelling meetings can cost them profits in the long run. And it can keep reminding the rest of America that meetings help make people more motivated and more productive.”

In actuality, the meetings infrastructure has begun taking some steps to prove its value. On websites such as www.keepamericameeting.com and www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com, people can read about how important meetings are to the American economy. In addition, many cities (and many resorts) now have their own websites dedicated to meetings, with practical information countering the popular misperceptions.

Roberta Guise, President of Guide Marketing & Public Relations, is also located in a popular meeting destination – San Francisco. She’s seen first-hand the devastation caused by innuendo and misperception. And she agrees that PR should be an active agent of change in addressing those misperceptions.

“There are some very practical steps that PR professionals can take,” Guise says. “You can try to get meetings-related stories in your local media, with information about how such meetings help the local economy. You can write letters to the Editors – or Op-Eds – about how meetings are vital to the local economy. You can sign the petition at www.keepamericameeting.com or at www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com. to send the same message to legislators.

“And we can always keep in mind, ourselves, the new rules - that our emphasis on the meetings we publicize should be on value and learning, rather than on flash and hype.”

In my own experience with clients in this industry, I’ve come to see that the “value” meetings bring to a local community is often more than economic. Many companies, for example, donate unused food to local food banks and homeless shelters. Many donate floral arrangements to local senior centers. And I know of one company that always joins Habitat For Humanity to build houses in the cities where it meets.

Jaki Baskow says that companies are finally starting to be more proactive themselves abut their meetings.

“They’re starting to use PR to let the world know they’re still doing business as usual. I’ve spoken to many companies around the country that are still booking great venues, still holding their meetings. And they’re still doing incentive meetings to reward productivity…but they’re doing them in a smaller way.”

Think locally for a moment. Think about a corporate meeting of, say, five-hundred or a thousand people in your community. Translate the economic benefits of that one meeting. And then multiply that figure by a hundred…or, if you’re in a big meetings-destination city, by a thousand. The figures are staggering, aren’t they?

“We can play an active part in getting a vital segment of the American economy back on its feet again,” Roberta Guise says.

And, in so doing, I might add, helping to address misperceptions about our own value.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I'M MAD AS HELL!

I’m mad as hell…and I’m not going to take it anymore!

If you can remember who said those words, you’re not a kid anymore. (It was Peter Finch, in the classic seventies movie, “Network.”) As I recall, Finch’s character was fed up with humanity, fed up with network news, fed up with plastic people (and “entertainment” news approaches), etc., etc. So – if I recall correctly – he went over to a window in the high-rise where his station was headquartered, and bellowed out that famous cry at the top of his lungs.

It’s thirty years later. But I have to admit that sometimes I’m so fed up with some of the practices in my own profession that I feel like doing the same thing Peter Finch did. (Except that today, we’re assaulted by such a constant cacophony of noise that probably no one would hear me yelling.)

I, obviously, meet a lot of PR people, from new graduates to old veterans. The new graduates can be forgiven their ignorance about what constitutes effective PR; they’ve never had the chance to see for themselves. But I have a hard-time dealing with veteran PR people who still cling to the old, outdated ways…basically, old-time release-mongers. And, unfortunately, these dinosaurs are often the ones lecturing the new graduates on the “real world.”

I have a lot of Public Relations “Principles” (too many, say some of the people whom I constantly bombard with them!) And, even though the technology, the marketing environment, etc, have changed, these ten constants, I believe, haven’t:

1) Target your pitches! No shotgun approaches!
2) If you want to piss off a journalist (who, these days, is probably doing the job of three people), send him a proposal totally unrelated to his beat.
3) LEARN HOW TO WRITE! LEARN HOW TO WRITE! LEARN HOW TO WRITE!
4) Next step: Learn how to write effective business communications...which is a lot different than just learning how to write.
5) Learn the concept of a pitch (strategy, tactic, campaign, etc.) that benefits the person to whom you're pitching as well as your client (internal or external).
6) Effective public "relations" is all about establishing relationships. And nurturing them.
7) Read...everything!
8) Become a resource for the media...not only a pitchman.
9) Realize that your client's (or company's) story may seem "great" to them...but that it might not seem that way to the media. And - this is a huge challenge, I know - try to get them to understand that.
10) Try to get your client (or company) to understand that effective public relations takes a long-term approach, not a short-term, shotgun, toss-mud-against-the-wall-and-see-how-much-of-it-sticks approach.

I could go on and on...but (no cheers, folks!) I'll stop here. But I'll add one thing...and this last “constant” is liable to piss off some of the old-school folks: TELL THE TRUTH!!! One story that results from telling the truth is better than ten that result from a lie. Because, sooner or later, the lie will catch up with the company or the client on whose behalf you’re telling the story. And then it will catch up to you.

And, when that happens, it’s the equivalent of going to the window and throwing it open. With one difference - professionally, you may as well jump.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com