August 2008

The power of (semi)personal connection - PBS does well

Like millions of Americans, my wife and I are watching the Democratic National Convention this week. We have settled on C-SPAN as our network of choice, for we want to hear the words and see all the speeches, and not be told by commentators what to think.

I always seem to end up at C-SPAN (it's where I watch State of the Union). But we always give the networks a try.

While I was washing dishes, my wife was listening to a speech by Lilly Ledbetter. She had settled on PBS - for her opinion was their commentators would be the most intelligent and the least intrusive. I suddenly heard her screaming at the TV (words I can not write here and calling PBS anchors a bunch of self-deluding X). This is not a common occurrence.

Basically, they were commenting on the speech as if wage inequality was something of the distant past that still does not occur today. They said  - You know, it really did happen. I remember my first newsroom job 30 years ago...

My wife was upset for she knows it is still an issue.

But now for the fun part. I made a semi innocuous post on Twitter "Watching the convention on C-Span. Let me make up my own mind and hear the speakers please. Wife almost strangled PBS commentators last night."

The next morning, PBS' DC office responded: pbsengage @mcClennan sorry for the delay in replying, but what was your wife unhappy about?   

I live in the social media world. But I was still floored that PBS took the time to respond. It has given me an even better impression of the network, and I am telling everyone I know about PBS' outstanding response.

There is a lesson here. Finding my post and responding cost them practically nothing (Free RSS search from Summize/Twitter) But the positive goodwill they received will last for quite a while.

If you aren't monitoring Twitter and other social media channels- you need to be. PBS is doing it and doing it right, and I am sure their budget is extremely tight. If they can do a good job, so can your company.

Posted by Mark McClennan on August 28, 2008 at 11:48 AM
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Texting: What did the Obama Camp Really Get?

The news came down at 3am. Three million people signed up to be the first to find out Barak Obama's VP pick, they were going to get the news at the same time as ABC, NBC, The New York Times, the Associated Press and hundreds of other major news outlets. They were going to be "in the know" right when it happened.

But they were asleep. Worse, they were scooped.

A few hours before the text message went out I happened to be awake and reading some online news. The AP broke the story that Joe Biden had the slot at about 1am, based on an anonymous source. Pretty typical reporting.

What's more, the 3am timing, even as planned, meant that the Obama camp had a very traditional advantage: they were on the morning news, in the morning papers and controlled the "news cycle." Which begs the question: why do it?

The obvious first answer is that it makes the candidate look tech-savvy, something that is pretty important when trying to woo young voters against a Republican candidate who admits that he doesn't go online.

But I think that misses the point. The biggest thing the Democrats got out of this was a list of cell phone numbers and email addresses.The exact number isn't known, but it's as many as 3 million, sorted by zip code. The company that handled the process isn't giving out many specifics.

Considering that those elusive younger voters often don't get landlines, choosing instead to stick with a cell phone, means that the Democrats have contact with people who don't turn up in public directories. These are people not polled when the calls go out, asking "who are you likely to vote for in November?"

It means that these phone numbers can be called with fund raising requests and, more importantly, get-out-the-vote requests.

In 2004 I spent election night in a Newton living room using my own cell phone to call people in battleground states reminding them to get out and vote. Of course, those were public numbers. Now the Democrats have their own list to use. One that will reach a very young crowd.

As a side note, our own Ross Levanto is attending the Democratic National Convention and will be both blogging and tweeting from the event. I don't think he's planning to send out any text messages.

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on August 25, 2008 at 9:15 PM
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Bring out Your Dead!

MORTICIAN:  Bring out your dead!
      [clang]
      Bring out your dead!

CUSTOMER:  Here's one -- nine pence.
DEAD PERSON:  I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN:  What?
CUSTOMER:  Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON:  I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN:  Here -- he says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER:  Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON:  I'm not!
MORTICIAN:  He isn't.
CUSTOMER:  Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEAD PERSON:  I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER:  No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.

Every time I hear the argument that PR is dead, which seems to happen all the time, I come back to one of the early scenes of Monty Phython and the Holy Grail.

We're not dead, and frankly, we're feeling better.

Admittedly, public relations needs to change if it wants to stay relevant. We know that and we're working very hard to do it. Our business is no longer about taking our clients message and sending pitches out to reporters. We are taking a much more active role in the conversations externally, but also in the internal conversations. When I work with my clients I don't just take what I'm told and move along, I advise and help them find their voice. As much as I'm a translator for the media I'm a guide for them, helping companies navigate a world that they don't know as well as they know their own industry. I also learn from them aspects of technology and their business that I could never learn on my own.

A lot of bloggers and reporters are saying that PR is dead because they want to find things on their own. That's great, and today's networked society makes finding information much easier than ever. But if bloggers think they discovered a technology on their own, they may be fooling themselves. Quite often people find those technologies because good PR people (and internal marketers) put out the information for them to find. It's not as overt as calling people on the phone and asking them to take a briefing, but it's just as much PR as anything else.

I represent a company called Investment Instruments, which has a great tool for renters called the Rentometer. We work very hard to keep the buzz high about the product, but often when I read a blog post about it, the blogger begins "I discovered this great tool ...." They discovered it because the PR is working.

It's also important to remember that Web 2.0 provides tools for communications, but it doesn't mean that everyone knows how to use those tools. I can buy all the lumber, hammers, nails and saws I want at Home Depot, but the only thing I manage to make with all that stuff is a mess. If I keep from cutting something off my body I consider myself pretty lucky. Making the tools available doesn't eliminate the need for a good carpenter. Frankly, it may increase the need for a good emergency room.

So, which would you prefer, the carpenter or the ER?

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on August 14, 2008 at 10:19 AM
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Tongue-in-cheek marketing from the neighborhood realtors

Blogs are a delightful creation, but so many bloggers are a tad big prickly ... evidently looking for ways to skewer someone just a little more effectively than the blogger they just read. We all know this. Maybe it's the next Olympic sport--lobbing insults via blogs. Feel the burn.

It makes me look for multiple meanings in otherwise mundane stuff that I read. Do I "get" what the writer's trying to say? Do I want to?

Into this larger context drops a postcard from our local Coldwell Banker realtor, sent to "postal patrons." There's a nice photo of a meadow on the front. [My town has an abundance of trees. Deer like the woods and ticks like the deer. It's a problem because much of the town seems to get Lyme disease each year.]

The realtors write, "Through the years, we have become aware of the tick population which has led to the discovery of a tool which removes them. This handy gizmo is called 'Ticked-off.' If you would like one, call either of us. The supply is limited, so call soon for your free tick remover. Happy Summer!"

First I rolled my eyes (bad habit), and then I thought ... well, we do have a tick problem. Then I thought a second longer and figured that this is actually a brilliant attempt to turn people off to the town and list their houses with this realtor. Now I don't really care what motivated this post card campaign, but am mystified by my own inability to take at face value what I read and to stop questioning the agenda of the writers.

For this, I don't thank graduate education, living in a "liberal" state or any of the traditional guilty parties. For this, I thank too much time spent with blogs.

Posted by Laura Kempke on August 13, 2008 at 9:20 PM
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Does the MBTA Need a Lesson in 21st Century PR?

Boston’s old world attitude may attract tourism dollars, but it isn’t likely to win it fans when it comes to IT security or public relations strategy. The MBTA’s decision to file a lawsuit to halt three MIT students from presenting CharlieCard security flaws was a giant misstep given this is the Internet age and not the Middle Ages.

For the MBTA, this was a case of winning the battle but losing the war. Within hours of the restraining order being filed, tech journalists and bloggers alike hit their keyboards. The result: the presentation, which had been distributed to attendees days before the restraining order was issued, was all over the web. A quick Google search today found more than 300 news articles and nearly 400 blog posts on the subject, many of which contained links to the presentation.

While it’s absolutely reasonable for the MBTA to want to protect its data as well as the data of its riders, it’s the method that I question. Having many security clients here at the agency, we are in the business of helping those clients publicize research, much of which is newly discovered vulnerabilities. Most clients follow a loose industry guideline for disclosing vulnerabilities. It can be argued that the MIT students did not follow protocol, but the CharlieCard security issue is not really new. Back in March Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe, as well as a slew of reporters nationwide, wrote about a different, but similar flaw.

The problem with the MBTA’s gag method is that it just doesn’t work. Companies today must have an aggressive and proactive strategy for dealing with negative information since not only are print and broadcast journalists likely to run with negative news, but the army of citizen journalists are too.

In addition to assembling a better strategy, that strategy needs to be communicated to and understood by all departments within an organization because most business decisions ultimately have some level of public impact. In the case of the MBTA, previous stories indicated security flaws existed with the CharlieCard and similar wireless cards used by transit agencies around the globe. But the MBTA most likely arrived a similar cost/risk analysis conclusion that researchers did: the low probability of profit from a hack made this a low risk. And when the MBTA’s legal team decided to file for an injunction, it too made a decision that has PR repercussions. In this case, the choice to file suit made the very documents they were trying to conceal public record.

Posted by Kristin Amico on August 12, 2008 at 3:38 PM
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A humbling experience

Today, PRSourceCode released the results of its 2008 "Top Tech Communicators" survey. The organization surveyed 800 tech journalists to determine who they thought were the best PR agencies when it came to "the value they deliver on the editorial process in terms of responsiveness, reliability, and overall recognition of editorial needs."

Schwartz Communications was ranked #1 in the "Large Agency" category (agencies with more than 60 people). I was very happy, to say the least, when I read the news. But then it really started to sink in and I was humbled. This wasn't an award like the Silver Anvils or Bell Ringers, where we showcase the best of the best.

This award, voted on by journalists, is a direct result of the day-to-day interactions of every one of our 230 employees. It isn't one team going above and beyond, it is everyone from the VPs (yes, we still pitch) to the account executives we train, coach and practice with daily. It isn't just for work on behalf of one client, but all our clients. Every day. Every call. Every email. Every blog post.

We coach our employees -- be topical, think beyond the pitch, be responsive, open and transparent. Everyone matters. Everyone. Take the big swing.

This is the best proof that our staff lives our beliefs and puts them into practice every day. I did the math one time, and we interact with reporters, bloggers and analysts more than 600,000 times every year.

We are deeply honored by this award. It reflects not just good work, but good processes and a commitment to excellence. On behalf of the Schwartz team -- thanks to the journalists, our clients and our staff.

Posted by Mark McClennan on at 2:08 PM
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Finding the Fractured Audience: Steps to take in the new media reality

Last night, I didn't turn on my TV, but I did watch a few episodes of Mad Men. I had conversations with a number of people, but only picked up my home phone a handful of times. This morning I found out the Jets have Brett Favre as their new quarterback, but I never turned on my computer, TV or picked

up the morning paper.

In today's media environment, information transcends the channel in that no two people get their information in quite the same way. It used to be that a PR plan had some definite rules: you reach out to the publications that reach your target audience and the right people receive your message. Need to reach enterprise IT buyers? eWeek is a great venue for that. Going after a more business-level audience? InformationWeek is your target. Consumers? The New York Times and USA Today come to mind.

Our main issue today is that no one truly knows how people get information. The problem runs

deep--even NBC doesn't know and is using the Olympics just to figure it out. That's more than $1 billion spent so they can better understand where the shrinking TV audiences have gone.

I watched Mad Men by streaming the video from an online source, which created a delicious irony of watching a show about advertising without seeing any ads. I talked with a few people by my home phone, but many more through IM, Twitter, Facebook and on my cell phone.

As for the Jets, I heard about the Favre trade by reading my BlackBerry and seeing the email from the Jets, followed quickly by an email offering to sell me a Brett Favre jersey. I'll probably end up getting one for my 9-year-old, who is a long-time Favre fan and can now combine the best of both worlds.

Even as I got my Favre news from one source, my wife heard it on the local TV news, which she usually watches for the weather. So two people, one house, one piece of news, two sources.

What is a company to do in this environment?

1. Think about influencers: Rather than thinking in terms of "reporters" and "bloggers," think in terms of influencers. Reporters at the New York Times are influencers, as are Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble. The fact that they attack the media world from different vantage points is irrelevant.
2. Focus on your true audience: Examine the people who will bring you revenue and learn what communities they participate in. Many of my clients have found that small mentions on targeted sites like Fierce Wireless or Curbed.com often drive more traffic and users than similar mentions in InformationWeek or in the New York Sun. On paper the publications come out looking like they have more readers, but the other sites have the right readers.
3. Don't Dismiss the Small Stuff: CEOs sometimes get told by their VCs that doing interviews with smaller publications is a waste of time. It's not--it all helps feed the larger media beast. There is a balance here, however, and it's up to a good PR firm to help find that balance. You can't chase everything, but today you have to chase quite a bit just to make a good impression.
4. Experiment: This is an exciting time for marketers because it opens us up to all sorts of new things. Create a podcast or a video, just to see what's possible. Try new things. Some will work, some won't, but in this market you don't know until you try.

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on August 7, 2008 at 6:08 PM
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Predictions: What's Hot at MWC 2009

While open source and sustainability are the official themes of Mobile World Congress 2009, the real buzz will be generated on the show floor and at the many after hours parties that surround the event.

In 2008 the official conference centred on "ubiquitous networks, services that aren't reliant on mobile operators, mobile's social and economic value and the mobile digital content revolution". But word on the street before the show was all about Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platform. In the end both were conspicuous by their absence: Apple's non-appearance and Google's miniscule car park meeting room the best that the pair could muster. Although their influence still stretched far, with the real buzzwords on the show floor - and the phrase most popular in exhibitors' straplines - being "user experience". So what will MWC 2009 bring?

What's Hot...

• Widgets - these small handset based applications enable users to easily and quickly access their favourite mobile content. Normally a widget will do one thing well, such as deliver the latest sports scores or weather information, but the real fun comes when they're 'mashed' to create something new. Content providers like widgets because they're a fast track to building consumer loyalty, handset OEMs are keen because it allows them to transition to a 'services' model and operators are pushing widgets because of the data pull through. Consequently a mini ecosystem has already been built around widgets, with platforms being provided by players such as the Nokia service Widsets, Qualcomm's Plaza and Yahoo! Go, alongside independent offerings from Opera, Bluepulse, Bling and others. A  surefire hot topic at MWC!
   
• Location Based Services - LBS has been front of mind at MWC for years but only now has the tipping point been reached, particularly in Europe, with operators having deployed a-GPS services at the infrastructure level and mass market handsets like the Nokia N95 and iPhone 3G making connected LBS services a central part of the device. Yahoo! Fireeagle has been creating the underground buzz in recent weeks but the question still remains: aside from data throughput, how is the industry going to monetise non-mapping applications? Check out the Navteq Global LBS Challenge for some interesting answers. The global winners will be announced at MWC 2009.
   
• Mobile Advertising & Ad Funded Content - this is the year that mobile advertising is going to take off, we were told in 2005! It may have taken a bit longer than that, but the reality now is that network and technology players in the mobile advertising space such as Ad Infuse and Admob are delivering hundreds of millions of impressions every month, with some impressive case studies of how offline brands can use mobile advertising to drive revenue. The really hot debate in 2009 will be about the balance between ad-funded and ad-supported content and how we can make ads relevant and contextual, without compromising privacy and user experience. Innovative players like Greystripe and Smaato, who can deliver ads into applications and those aforementioned widgets, should have a lot to say at the show.
   
• LTE v Mobile WiMAX - the battle for fourth generation mobile technology has been underway for a while now. The mobile WiMAX standard has been ratified as IEEE802.16 and the 3GPP roadmap has included 4G for years... now it gets dirty. While questions still remain about the cost of building out infrastructure and buying the required spectrum, mobile WiMAX will happen with the US operator Sprint committed to a $4bn WiMAX deployment. How will the 3G operators react? Expect trench warfare on the show floor.
   
• Femtocells & In Building Coverage - just don't utter the c-word. Yes, convergence has been spoken about until the cows come home, but enterprise, SME and (soon) home femtocell coverage is happening and with it brings the promise of ubiquitous 3G coverage, superfast mobile broadband and lots of sexy converged services. As mobile geeks seeking that "always on presence" we like it, but we just don't admit it!
   
• Mobile Social Networks - think Nimbuzz, Wadja, Flirtomatic, Peperoni, itsMy, Buzz City, Loopt, Twitter, QIK, JuiceCaster, Kyte, Flixwagon and the rest... not to mention m. versions of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. It's hot but can anybody make money from it?
   
• Mobile Banking & Payments - talking of money, paying for your goods and services via your mobile phone is a reality. From independents like M-Pay, to giants such as Visa's payWave, which promises to integrate contactless, cashless systems into the phone, mobile micro-payments has been on the industry's lips in 2008. Mobile payments are at a nascent stage but expect some big announcements at MWC 2009.

 What's not...

• Mobile TV - MediaFLO is cool, DVB-H not so much, IP-DAB just dreadful but when will we see mass market take up of a service that for so long was considered the 'promised land'? The Beijing Olympics this summer were seen by many - not least the European Commissioner on the matter, Viviane Reding - as a target for rolling out mobile TV services, yet they're still to appear on a global scale. Expect the industry to continue its lobbying of European regulators, begging for the spectrum harmonisation needed to launch scalable services and see mass consumer uptake.
   
• Linux Mobile - a marketplace that consists of Android + Symbian + Windows Mobile = LiMo's impending death. There may be 20-something handsets in the pipeline, and mobile geeks may love it but the promise of FOSS Linux on mobile for the mass market is over. Discuss!
   
• UMTS @ 900 - it will happen because the economics of 3G in the 900Mhz spectrum band just make sense. Get going already!
 

• (3G) iPhone - for a handset that represents about one per cent of the total device market there's an awful lot of media coverage. Even if, as rumoured, the nano iPhone is launched this year Apple is some way off the 120m devices that Nokia ship each quarter. Are you bored yet?

So that's our round-up. Why not join the Schwartz team at Mobile World Congress 2009 over a glass of sangria to discuss?

Posted by Ed Barker on August 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM
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The Future of Mobile: Going Open, Going Green?

The Call for Papers for 2009's Mobile World Congress – the wireless industry's largest annual gathering, taking place in February in Barcelona – opened recently, with the organisers, the GSM Association, announcing two key themes for the show – openness and sustainability.

The themes are highly topical for industry at large, with two recent reports suggesting that, in the UK at least, a growing number of businesses are considering the adoption of both open source and green technologies in order to cut costs in these frosty economic climes. But how will these trends play out in the buoyant and often inward-looking wireless sector?

Openness is an easy one. Speak to the majority of mobile developers and they'll tell you that the one thing holding back the adoption of next generation mobile applications, content and Internet services is fragmentation. Multiple operating systems, diverse handset characteristics and competing carriers have made it all but impossible to affordably launch services on a mass scale – or at least on a scale to match the desktop PC world.

However, industry wide initiatives such as Google's Android platform and the recent creation of the Symbian Foundation point to a groundswell of support behind open standards for mobile. So perhaps the key question in Barcelona will be not when open standards begin to proliferate, but which one will win out.

The issue of sustainability is not quite so clear cut for the industry. While countless analyst reports emerge each week lionising new mobile music, TV or Web services, it's difficult to find any data points on the environmental impact of mobile or guidelines on how the sector could become more sustainable.

To date, much of the green focus has been on the handset itself. For instance, Green Mobile – a UK-based virtual network operator – is attempting to highlight the forced obsolescence that's endemic in the industry. It only offers subscribers refurbished handsets, with the hope of increasing the 15% recycle rate that currently exists amongst the 100 million handsets discarded in Europe each year.

Meanwhile, handset OEMs are increasingly looking at ways to reduce the environmental impact of their shiny new devices – improving energy efficiency by refining battery and charger performance, making their bill of materials recyclable with more bio-plastics and fewer heavy metals, and taking steps to streamline and localise their supply chain.

However, the real environmental concerns lie at the heart of the mobile network itself – China Mobile, the world's largest carrier, states that its base stations account for more than 70% of its total energy use, while estimates suggest that 30 million litres of diesel are used each year to power network infrastructure in Africa alone.

Some solace can be found in the fact that network technologies are becoming increasingly efficient –  the GSMA itself indicates that current 3G technologies produce about a quarter of the CO2 per subscriber per year than their first generation predecessors – yet it's still clear that alternative energy sources will need to come to the fore, with emerging markets that lack national grid infrastructure likely to lead the way.

So what does this mean for the agenda at Barcelona? Well, it's great to see the GSMA starting a dialogue on sustainability. Whether or not the industry will take note immediately at this, its most triumphant meet of the year, is a different matter. Our bet is that sexier topics such as long term evolution, widgets and ad-funded content stay atop most delegates' agendas for the 2009 event at least.

Posted by Luke Nava on August 1, 2008 at 6:20 AM
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