FIR Podcast Network

In a recent Weber Shandwick study, among executives who reported working in companies with world-class reputations, 63% favored companies taking a public stance on social or political issues. On Circle of Fellows’ February episode, four IABC Fellows explored how to coach leaders on when and how to take a stand on political/social issues, the pitfalls of CEO activism, and how to maintain a productive, inclusive tone that seeks consensus and solutions.

About the panel

Priya Bates is a senior communication executive who provides strategic internal communication counsel in order to ensure leaders, managers, and employees understand the strategy, believe in the vision, act in accordance with the values, and contribute to business results. She is president of Inner Strength Communications in Toronto and previously served as senior director of Internal Communications at Loblaw Companies Limited.

In 1996, while on the fast track to a partnership in a growing PR agency, John Deveney opted to strike out on his own and form Deveney, a process and a practice that embraces the soundest principles, the newest media, and the most innovative technologies. Based in New Orleans, Deveney is particularly strong in the areas of crisis, healthcare, tourism, and hospitality. (After hurricanes Katrina and Rita, John led the only on-site communication operation and media center for both the City of New Orleans and the Louisiana Office of Tourism.)

George McGrath is founder and managing principal of McGrath Business Communications, which helps clients build winning corporate reputations, promote their products and services, and advance their views on key issues. George brings more than 25 years in PR and public affairs to his firm. Over the course of his career, he has held senior management positions at leading strategic communications and integrated marketing agencies including Hill and Knowlton, Carl Byoir & Associates, and Brouillard Communications.

Leticia Narváez, ABC,  is CEO and Founding Partner of Narváez Group, a consulting firm focused on Strategic Communication, Employee Engagement, Corporate Reputation, Social Responsibility and Communication Training based in Mexico City. A 30 years experienced professional, she held management top level positions at Sanofi, Merck, American Express and Ford Motor Co. among others. She builds communication bridges with the utmost excellence standards. During her career path, she has been at the forefront of divestitures, mergers and acquisitions, diversity leadership, issues and crisis management, team and leadership development, strategic planning and senior executive consulting. She has been a speaker at international forums, is co-author of several books and manuals on business communications and has written a large number of articles on the subject. Leticia has a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and Public Relations from the Latinoamericana University, a Master Degree on Digital Communications from Cantabria University and a Postgraduate Diploma on Top Business Administration at the Panamerican Institute of Top Business Administration – IPADE.

In this fast-paced episode we offer five different news stories that bracket the B2B marketing world. First up is this piece about neural storytelling and how AI is attempting to create content with machine learning algorithms. This kind of technology has some important implications and not because it promises to replace humans. In the news recently is this story about the OpenAI text generator called GPT2. Its creators were afraid that its work could generate spam and fake news so effectively that they’ve chosen not to release the full-strength version to developers. That’s either a little unsettling or a great PR stunt.

Next is a story about how clicks are an “unreliable seismograph” for a news article’s value, combined with new research to back up that conclusion. We all seek out stories that amuse and entertain us, but a good news site contains a nice mix of the serious and the bizarre. As serious readers, we need to seek out stories of civic value, not just the latest celebrity clickbait. The article, which was prepared by Neiman Lab, also notes that the word “personalization” has become a big negative, because folks think this means “ads will follow your browsing forever” rather than customizing content for a reader’s taste and preferences. 

We move on to a piece that is almost blindingly obvious, but a great checklist to help marketers understand how to influence the B2B decision-making process. It proposes five simple questions to ask your prospective customers, such as where they start their search for content, what kinds of information they look for and what sites they employ. Answering these questions takes just a few minutes and can be give marketers a useful starting point for a lead-generation campaign. 

We also found this piece on Marketing Week that talks about a recent series of decisions by MasterCard to both eliminate text from their logo and use “sonic branding” to help with voice assistants and audio sound-enabled devices. This company is smart is getting ahead of the voice assistant phenomenon and figuring out branding in this new medium. 

Speaking of audio, our final piece is a study that suggests that podcast ads outperform TV ads. The study found that the two are equivalent in terms of being memorable and resonating with audiences. Podcast advertising can be particularly effective when the host lends legitimacy by giving a personal pitch for the product, which is becoming the norm in that medium.

The Queen of Measurement, Katie Paine, joins FIR host Shel Holtz to talk about PR and FOFO — Fear of Finding Out. (That is, finding out just how much, or how little, PR contributes to the company’s or client’s bottom line.) Also in this week’s episode:

* An update on employee activism at Google, which has ended mandatory arbitration.

* MOOCs as content.

* Nike’s prospects in the wake of a highly-viewed product failure.

* A study finds that people are more likely to share longer content.

* Most brands wouldn’t be missed if they vanished.

* The marketing funnel is too linear. Say hello to the marketing flywheel.

* AMP pages increase organic search traffic.

* Most ad buyers are shrugging off YouTube’s crisis as just part of the new normal.

* Dan York reports on WordPress 5.1, Augmented Reality news, a Pokemon Go lawsuit, detoxing from your smartphone, and the Internet Society’s global report on the forces shaping our digital future.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

About Katie Paine

Katie Delahaye Paine, aka The Measurement Queen (@queenofmetrics), has been a pioneer in the field of measurement for three decades. She has founded two measurement companies, KDPaine & Partners Inc., and The Delahaye Group. Her books, Measure What Matters (Wiley, March 2011) and Measuring Public Relationships (KDPaine & Partners, 2007) are considered must-reads for anyone tasked with measuring public relations and social media. Her latest book, written with Beth Kanter, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, is the 2013 winner of the Terry McAdam Book Award. Her latest company, Paine Publishing is the first educational publishing firm entirely dedicated to making more Measurement Mavens. Its newsletter, The Measurement Advisor, is the industry’s most comprehensive source of information about best practices in communications measurement. In her consulting practices, she designs measurement dashboards for some of today’s most admired companies. Katie was named one of “25 women who rock social media” by Lee Odden’s prestigious Online Marketing Blog. Katie is a Senior Fellow of The Conference Board’s Center for Marketing and Communication. She was also an initial founder of the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Commission.

Links from this week’s episode

* Google will end forced arbitration for employees in all disputes

* Why Does a Private Company Develop and Offer MOOCs?

* ‘They’re going to show it until we die’: How Zion Williamson’s shoe mishap hurts Nike

* Study shows shareability of content can be correlated with word count

* Consumers see 77% of brands as not meaningful, report says

* A Quarter Of Consumers Will Dump A Brand After Bad Personalization: Study

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Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz unite for the 1000th episode of “For Immediate Release.” (176 episodes of “For Immediate Release” + 824 episodes of “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report” = 1,000.) In addition to recollections of times past and comments from listeners from throughout FIR’s 14-plus-year history, Neville and Shel report on these stories:

* Is it no longer acceptable to call people “users”?

* Five revelations from Adobe’s survey of digital content consumers

* Employee use of messaging apps that HR probably doesn’t know about

* How some big companies are tapping into crowdfunding to assess the viability of new products

* Siemens’ CEO went off the rails in a Twitter rant

* MasterCard has launched a sonic logo

* Dan York’s Tech Report reports on the evolution of podcasting.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

About Neville Hobson

Neville Hobson co-founded the For Immediate Release podcast series with Shel Holtz in 2005. In 2017, he and Shel began co-presenting a monthly edition of The Hobson & Holtz Report. Neville also co-presents the monthly Small Data Forum Podcast that he started with Thomas Stoeckle and Sam Knowles in the summer of 2016, the goal of which is to help listeners make Big Data less intimidating, more actionable and thus more valuable. Neville is Director of Digital Marketing at the Internet Society, a global non-profit working for an open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet for everyone. He is responsible for the definition, development and implementation of the Internet Society’s digital communications strategy. Follow Neville on Twitter @jangles

Links from this episode

* I Was A Facebook Fact-Checker. It Was Like Playing A Doomed Game Of Whack-A-Mole.

* Calling people ‘users’ is unethical and outdated

* Consumer trends that are shaping digital content consumption

* Employees Are Using Messaging Apps, Whether HR Knows or Not

* Frontline Workers Frequently Turn to Unapproved Messaging Apps for Work-Related Communications Unbeknownst to HR

* How Coca-Cola, Lego, and Gillette tapped into the wisdom of crowds

* Siemens Boss Goes Off the Rails in Twitter Rant

* MasterCard just launched a sonic logo. Here’s what it sounds like

* MasterCard Has a New Sonic Logo

Links from Dan York’s Report

* Spotify Paid Nearly $340 Million to Buy Podcast Startups Gimlet and Anchor

Today we talk to Nora Ganim Barnes, Chancellor Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, about her latest survey of corporate social media usage. Barnes has been surveying two distinct populations for the past 12 years – the INC 500 and the Fortune 500 – to ascertain what social media platforms they use, how they use them and how they measure results. Her students visit the websites of all 1,000 companies measured and augment the research with telephone interviews.

For the first time in nine years, more F500 are using blogs than the INC 500, and the increase has been substantial in just the past three years (see chart below), jumping from 21% in 2015 to 53% in the most recent survey. Clearly, the largest companies have reclaimed blogging and are using their blogs to tell stories and better craft their marketing messages.

Barnes found that Twitter occupies an odd place in the social media pantheon: it is well used (with 369 out of 500 companies running active accounts), but not considered very effective. Still, companies don’t abandon Twitter, perhaps out of fear of missing out or the possibility that they might need it at some point.

What has also changed is that 56% of INC 500 execs are now doing a better job of listening on social media, tracking online conversations about their brands and products with various monitoring tools. That is a big increase from last year, when it was about half that number.

This year Barnes’ research  found a big concern about privacy, which is probably not surprising given the numerous breaches and missteps by Facebook and others in this area. Privacy was executives’ second biggest concern behind social ROI.

Finally, her survey saw double the firms who have formulated a social media plan from last year.  Although the overall percentage is still less than a quarter of the total, that’s progress.

You can download the UMass surveys at the link above, both the current ones and in year’s past. They are a rich resource that all corporate marketing departments should carefully examine.

This week, Chip and Gini explore how to handle clients who want around-the-clock social media management or other services that require major staff commitments — and would prove to be quite expensive to offer.

As is often the case, this question originated in the Spin Sucks Community, where an agency leader said he had stopped providing social media management services:

We used to offer it a few years ago but continued to run into expectations issues with clients. Mostly our clients wanted our team to be 24/7 on and often they would not approve our content fast enough … To give the clients what they needed / wanted, we would have had to charge more than they were willing to pay so we stopped offering it to avoid losing clients.

This is a challenge that many agencies face — especially in a 24/7 media environment.

Chip and Gini discuss strategies for handling these situations, and also explore other lessons that come from requests like these.

The co-hosts also give a shoutout to Shel Holtz who will be recording the 1000th episode of the For Immediate Release podcast next Monday.

[read the transcript]

This week on Inside PR, we talk about the creep factor in social media and the need for us to be aware of the use of our data and to demand control back from the social platforms.

Scott Monty joins FIR host Shel Holtz to discuss Spotify’s acquisition of Gimlet Media and Anchor.fm, as well as Periscope’s new audio call-in feature. Also in this episode:

* Tik Tok is a threat to Snapchat and Twitter; meanwhile, brands are figuring out how to make it fit in their social media toolkits

* Facebook Pages can now join Facebook Groups

* After 15 years, on balance, has Facebook been good or bad for the world?

* Instagram will inject IGTV video clips in your primary feed

* Twitter reveals its daily active users, and it isn’t pretty

* Artificial Intelligence for writing copy is getting common in newsrooms; can PR and marketing be far behind?

* An Alexa update means marketers will have to optimize email for voice

* Dan York’s report looks at the Spotify/Gimlet deal, more from Twitter’s earnings call, Spotify’s fight against ad blockers, Germany’s order to Facebook, and one reporter’s attempt to cut the big five from her life (it was hell)

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

About Scott Monty

Scott Monty is an internationally recognized Fortune 10 leader whose background in classics positioned him to see through the shiny objects and drill down to understand the common human needs from throughout history that still drive us all. Scott speaks to and advises executives on understanding trends while embracing the timeless wisdom of human nature through classical literature, philosophy, and history. Scott spent six years as an executive at Ford Motor Company, where he helped turn the company around with an uncanny ability to merge technology with humanity. He served as a strategic adviser across a variety of business functions, leading the company’s global social media strategy. He also has a another decade and a half of experience in communications and marketing agencies. Scott’s clients have included Walmart, IBM, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and Google, and The Economist ranked him as #1 atop the list of 25 Social Business Leaders. He is a past board member of the American Marketing Association, a trustee of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and an adviser for a number of Silicon Valley companies. He writes about the changing landscape of business, technology, communications, marketing and leadership at ScottMonty.com, and produces the widely acclaimed weekly newsletter and podcast The Full Monty.

Links from this episode:

* Google releases Chrome extension to check for leaked usernames and passwords

* How TikTok is climbing the download charts, taking on Snapchat and Twitter

* Facebook Finally Lets Brands And Publishers into Groups

* Has Facebook been good for the world?

* Instagram will put IGTV videos in your feed

* In a First,

We start a conversation with Edward Harris from Valley Forge Tourism about how to creatively promote a destination’s food tourism scene and then talk about encouraging creativity in general.

Edward Harris is the Chief Marketing Officer at the Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board, representing Montgomery County, PA.  Prior to joining the Tourism Board, Harris served in brand development leadership roles at a select group of iconic brands including Converse, Timberland, Under Armour, Destination Maternity Corporation, and eBay.  Mr. Harris also serves as Chairman of the Marketing Advisory Board at the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University, where he is an adjunct professor.  A native of Philadelphia, PA, Harris holds an MBA from Boston College and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Saint Joseph’s.

Hosts: Leif Pettersen of Leif Pettersen PR and Chris Christensen of BloggerBridge.com and AmateurTraveler.com.

The recent documentaries about the disaster that was the Fyre Festival raise an interesting question: are agencies responsible for their clients’ actions?

Chip and Gini tackle the topic in this week’s episode and explore the different ways that agency leaders can handle their concerns about prospects and clients.

The duo discuss what expectations of agencies are reasonable, how money influences decision-making, and some real-world examples where both have had to confront ethical dilemmas in the past.

[read the transcript]