FIR Podcast Network

ONTRACK LIVE is a unique video presentation created by Intact Insurance to share with its employees its third-quarter financial results and priorities in its five geographic regions.  Host, Sherrilynne Starkie and Karin Basaraba and Jim Jackson from Intact Insurance discuss how they turned ONTRACK LIVE into a Gold Quill award-winning internal communication management.

Kim Basaraba and Jim Jackson share with Sherrilynne Starkie their filming strategy, comedic breaks to staff inclusion and their experience winning a Gold Quill award.

Join the conversation!

Connect with Sherrilynne Starkie and IABC Ottawa

Leave a comment or question below, and please rate the show on iTunes!

Connect with Karin Basaraba and Jim Jackson on Linked In.

This episode was produced by Amanda Speroni of Thornley Fallis Communications.

Jim Hawker, co-founder and owner of Threepipe, a London-based PR and digital marketing agency, and experience architect Andrea Vascellari weighed in on the following topics:

* The reputations of the S&P 500 are worth nearly 44 trillion of shareholder value, more than $1 out of every $5

* Speaking of reputation, Sony has filed a patent for a process to assess the reputation of journalists and their articles

* British grocery upstart Lidl has gotten a lot of positive buzz for its “Social Price Drop” campaign

* In a recent post, Brian Solis urged companies to go mobile-first

* How should communicators react to the disruption social platforms are causing established media?

* Dan York reports on data breaches, the imminent release of WordPress 4.7, the upcoming WordPress USA event, and an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible dealing with acoustics

* Facebook blocked Admiral Insurance from accessing Facebook user data to make decisions about how much to charge for premiums

* Diageo created an immersive VR video to experience a drunk-driving car crash from the first-person perspective

* Brands and agencies are jumping on the Snapchat Spectacles bandwagon; is there something to it or are they just chasing the newest shiny object?

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @JimJimHawker and @vascellari.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

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

About today’s panel:

Jim Hawker is Co-Founder and Business Development Director of Threepipe, a PR and digital marketing agency of 70 people based in London. The agency runs campaigns across PR, SEO and paid media for clients across business, consumer, sports and entertainment sectors. Jim has 20 years’ experience working both in house and agency side in both the UK and US. In his spare time he is a big sports fan as well as an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes (hence the connection to the Threepipe name).

Andrea Vascellari is an Experience Architect. He works at the intersection of digital transformation and experience design to help organizations develop their communications strategies. Andrea is an award-winning communications professional with over 15 years of professional experience and a deep understanding of marketing and communications, including public and media relations. He worked as Director of Digital and Content at WPP, world leader in advertising and marketing services, as Digital Planner at the leading global communications marketing firm Edelman, and as CEO of Itive an international digital strategy agency he founded with offices in Finland and New York.

One of the benefits of working in the industry of public relations, communications and marketing is the ability to be creative. We work in a unique world where our job is to find creative ways to tell a story.

In this episode, our hosts share their secrets on what they do to cultivate their creativity. What is our creative process?

We start with sharing the coolest projects we worked on and the project that brought out the best in our creativity.

* Ross used Pinterest to connect with foodie bloggers to promote a new candy in Canada.

* Julia built a video-greeting card with a short marketing pitch from the company’s CEO.

* Clare, being too humble, decided to share a cool project she was privy to at a previous job – it involves a recipe book.

* Kristine built a mobile game to teach young drivers about the dangers of distracted driving.

Then we talk about the tools we use in our creative process. Here are some of our favourite tools:

* Reddit, find out what communities are saying about the topic of your project or story

* Buzzsumo

* Bullet Journaling, the new way to journal. Some professionals claim they are more productive with the Bullet Journal.

* Conferences, trade shows or professional development events

* Taking notes, jotting down ideas outside your work day. Ideas and creativity don’t always come in a formal brainstorming meeting or between 9 to 5.

* Tumblr

* Hashtags

* Evernote

* Bookmarking articles

Finally, we talk about our favourite campaigns. Campaign we look back on with awe, campaigns that inspire us to be creative.

* Ross loves the Old Spice guy campaign

* Julia is a sucker for Apple

* Clare thought the podcast The Message was brilliant

* Kristine goes back to Apple’s 1984 commercial – innovation beyond its time

Our final top tips for being creative:

* Research what your audience is saying about your topic/product.

* Focus groups are an important tool to help make sure your creative idea resonates with your audience.

* There are no stupid ideas. There are bad ideas, but not stupid ideas. When it comes to creativity you can’t fail, you just need to think through things a little better.

* Ask yourself what hasn’t been done. The best ideas are new and revolutionizes an industry.

This episode was brought to you by The Voice, IABC Ottawa’s premium podcast. Join Sherrilynne Starkie and her cohosts, Tina Barton and Angela Prokopiak, as they provide expert insight and practical tips with the help of some of North America’s leading marketing and communication professionals. Tune in to their 2017 season where they will cover topics such as content marketing, employee engagement, reputation management and more.

Thanks Sharon Cheung for the shout out. Sharon is a long-time listener who has used Young PR Pros to get industry insights and tips on transitioning...

This week we try “speed podcasting.” Martin, Gini and Joe triple booked ourselves. So, we only had twelve minutes to record the show. Could we make it in that time? Well we could if we focused on the #IPRMustKnows.

#IPRMustKnow

Vine faces its existential threat

Say goodbye to Will Sasso and disappearing oranges. Say goodbye to Vine as Twitter focuses their business and decides that Vine is not part of its future. Could there be a white knight out there who will take Vine off Twitter’s hands and keep it alive?

Facebook launches digital masks

It may be only in Ireland right now, but Facebook’s emulation of Snapchat’s most popular features marches on. Facebook’s strategy: Never stay still. Look for what’s hot. Copy. Profit.

Trump’s digital campaign machine

We recorded this just prior to the election. And even though we couldn’t see the outcome, Gini pays reluctant tribute to Donald Trump’s digital team. A remarkable story.

We did it!

Inside PR in under twelve minutes. We had a great time recording this. It’s like speed podcasting.

Welcome to the episode 1 of the Digital China Podcast! I’m your host Simon Young from syENGAGE.

Digital China is for western marketers with a Chinese audience. China presents unique challenges to marketers because of these 3 barriers:

* Language – there is zero similarity between Chinese and English

* Culture – in 5000 years of history, there’s very little crossover between China and other countries

* Technology – our familiar channels like Facebook and Twitter are all blocked in China. In their place is an array of unfamiliar channels.

Episode 1: What is a Daigou

For our first episode I talked with Justin Zhang about the emerging trend of direct consumer selling, known in mandarin as 代购 (dàigòu). Justin is founder of New Zealand’s largest Chinese website SkyKiwi,

In July 2016, SkyKiwi held a conference for Daigou in Auckland, New Zealand, attracting over 900 attendees.

New Zealand and Australian marketers are finding a larger and larger proportion of sales is coming from daigou. Daigou are individuals who are sometimes making a full time living out of buying local and selling back to China via social media platforms.

First seen as a threat by brands, daigou are increasingly seen as an opportunity. But how should brands best engage?

In this interview, Justin explains exactly what a daigou is, and how brands should look at this new opportunity.

Got feedback? Please comment below or email [email protected].

We use the failure of last week’s general election’s exit polling as a starting point to discuss the lack of quality in survey research, particularly in the B2B tech marketing space. Both of us have been the recipients of lousy survey “results,” or more accurately, wishful thinking on the part of marketing and PR people. So save everyone’s energies: don’t produce these 200-person SurveyMonkey polls that have no real meaning. Better yet, when a reporter wants to see the survey instrument and the underlying methodology, send it. You’ll gain plenty of street cred and may even get some ink too.

Whether the presidential polling was the result of ignoring sampling errors or not understanding that the extreme negative response of voters to both candidates is hard to say. Grant Gross’ excellent story in CIO.com goes into more detail about why you can’t pin these failures on big data in general, and quotes several sources that say we have to do a better job of understanding the dynamics of the traditional exit polls themselves.

Our recommendations are to pay careful attention to survey size, understand the sampling methodology, make use of a professional pollster or research analyst or statistician and learn from the experts.

For this last suggestion: we are both big fans of Nora Barnes and the Univ. of Mass/Dartmouth team she heads that have looked at social media usage among the top corporations. They are pros at conducting both observational research and doing terrific polls over many years. Much of their core research doesn’t involve surveys at all. They analyze data that’s already out there.

 

Long time tech editor Bill Machrone (left) succumbed to brain cancer on Sunday. He was 69. We remember him and point out some of his accomplishments. You can also review an obituary by Michael Miller, who worked with Machrone for decades at PC Magazine. 

Al Jazeera posted an excellent article on Medium about How to pitch them. It’s well-written and pragmatic, filled with suggestions for both freelance writers and PR pros. These guidelines apply to all media. Why don’t more outlets do this? 

Paul interviews David about his 21 years of writing a weekly Web Informant email newsletter. Last year David summarized his efforts in this piece with lots of links back to the early days.  

PR pro Lisette Paras (right) sent us a couple of  great questions. We previously mentioned that PR pros rarely send images for stories. We talk about the importance of images and offer some suggestions for what makes sense for our needs. Lisette also asks about C-suite demands that PR pros support the brand’s lead generation efforts, and wonders if that’s appropriate for the profession. We think it is. The more you can quantify the ROI of your work, the more secure your job will be. 

We talk today with Andy Hoar, the Vice President and Principal Analyst for Forrester Research for many years. Andy wrote a seminal work 18 months ago called The Death Of A (B2B) Salesman. In that piece, he stated that one million US B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce websites by the year 2020. That is a big chunk, given that according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy employed 4.5 million B2B salespeople in 2012. 

Certainly, the times are a changin’ and B2B professionals must radically transform their historical sales models to accommodate a real-time and global buying environment that we all live in today. Companies need to recognize the amount of shopping and research that is happening online in the consumer space and start examining their B2B sales strategies. 

It isn’t the end of all B2B salespeople, but the end of the typical salesperson and the way they interact with their buyers. Buyers want more self-service at all parts of the sales cycle and like the convenience of online purchasing as consumers, so they have the same expectations when it comes to B2B purchasing too.

“If I know what I want, I should be able to buy it immediately,” Hoar says. “When it comes to cross selling and qualifying buyers, all of this can be done better in a digital environment. There are a lot of impatientB2B buyers these days.”

B2B buyers will still tap salespeople when the sale is complex, when they want to negotiate price, or if an item is expensive or requires installation and servicing. Hoar spoke about how to become more effective at B2B online sales and how companies can start moving towards a more self-service model.

In this episode, we talk to Shelley Harrison, owner of LaunchPad. She has helped start more than 200 tech companies over the years, including cc:Mail (acquired by Lotus), Socialtext (acquired by PeopleFluent), Postini (acquired by Google), Vermeer (acquired by Microsoft) and others. She often follows a serial entrepreneur from startup and startup, and spoke to us about what makes for great partnership between founder and director of marketing. She offers plenty of advice on how startups can pivot properly, take effective action to market their products and services, and how she has gotten along — or not — with the founders and product managers over the decades she has been in the tech business. Chemistry counts for a lot: if you don’t have it, chances are the marketer is going to have issues down the road getting her ideas and programs approved.

Shelley also mentions what attributes the serial entrepreneurs she has worked for over the year have in common that make for compelling marketing of their businesses: she presents a very long list, which happens only a fifth of the companies that she has worked for. And she talks about what happens when a marketer’s advice conflicts with the founder’s vision, and the people whom she has been able to persuade, or at least listen to her point of view. 

Follow Shelley on Twitter at @launchpadmkg.

Frank Cutitta has been around the tech industry for decades and both one of his plum assignments was managing the international expansion of IDG properties during the company’s glory days. The assignment took him to more than 100 countries and some truly awful travel experiences, one of which he shares with us. Today, Frank is building the Center for Content Analytics for HIMSS Media, the healthcare IT association. He’s also a snowboard instructor, and his story about how that came to pass is pure Frank. We appended a pre-show recording to the end of the podcast that tells how a 64-year-old guy continues to mix it up with the teen punks on the slopes.

We spoke to Frank about what marketers need to know to work with non-American audiences and product teams, and how they should become more sensitive to local customs and ways of doing business. It has become a lot easier in the days of LinkedIn and Internet searches: you can quickly do some basic research on your connection and find out where they were educated and what their backgrounds are. You need this research if you are going to avoid some common mistakes when you go abroad and try to understand how to enter a new market. Frank spends some time talking to us about why it is important to combine a global body with local options, just as the major car companies do when they globalize their brands.

His post on how understanding finger gestures for tablets and how they differ across the globe is worth ready: one person’s gesture for “okay” could signify a variety of other things in other cultures, such as a particular body part or the number zero. It gives new meaning to the Internet of Things, for sure. Another post on how B2B can marketers avoid FOMO in their jobs and not attach to the newest shiny object is also worth reading.

Follow Frank on Twitter at @fcutitta.