If e-mail’s dead, then what’s all this stuff in my inbox?

Sally Saville Hodge

I keep hearing rumblings, then reading blog posts by various and sundry social media prognosticators that e-mail is dead.

“Taken out by Twitter, Chat and Communities,” opines Gartner Group’s Michael Maoz, saying, “Customers want more immediacy, and e-mail never lived up to that standard.”

Social American, a firm that designs social media campaigns, is a dab less emphatic than Maoz in sounding a conditional death knell. Is it dead? one of its bloggers queries, citing a Nielsen Online study that indicates more people in digitized countries use social media networks and blogs to communicate with each other than e-mail.

Of course, if you look at the difference in reach, as per that Nielsen study, the member communities were ranked at 66.8 percent versus 65.1 percent for e-mail. A 1.7 percent differential represents a stake in the heart of the e-mail channel?

Source: Sacramento State

Look at the numbers. Do you think 25.2 billion Tweets or instant messages are being exchanged by office workers each day?

I’d like to see e-mail evolve (in other words – that people would get smarter in how they use it), but I don’t think it’s dead. And that’s because, for all their allure, the other contenders have distinct drawbacks.

Take Twitter. Nobody (outside of Twitter itself) quite knows how many people are using it now, with estimates ranging from millions to tens of millions. You can Twitter online. You can use it from your cell phone. You can get all sorts of applications to help you use it better. You can follow Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore and Oprah or someone random, like me.

And, yeah, savvy businesses are using it to improve the customer experience, which makes it a whole lot cooler – and, yes, more immediate – than plain old e-mail. I recently tweeted a complaint about Comcast screwing up our service before a recent move and within minutes was tweeted by ComcastBonnie: “How can I help?” Cool beans.

Of course, responding to her was problematic because the issue would have required maybe 50 Tweets to explain fully. That’s because there’s a limit of only 140 characters (including spaces) per post. That limit is why so many of the tweets that I scan are incomprehensible, and why it’s no substitute for anyone who truly wants to create meaningful dialog. Between hash marks and RTs (re-tweet = sharing someone’s post with your network) and abbreviations and other forms of shorthand, you often need an interpreter to make sense of it all.

But replacing e-mail? Think again and be aware of how slippery stats can be. Consider the other side of the Twitter growth coin: The percentage of Twitter users in a given month who return the following month has languished below 30 percent for most of the past year. Not likely that’s a trend you’re seeing with e-mail usage.

Then there are the social networking communities. To me, these versus e-mail represent an apples and oranges comparison. Social networking is another communications tool, an adjunct, perhaps, to e-mail – less individual, less private, and with an entirely different functionality.

And chat? Again, it’s more immediate, and from a customer service perspective, that’s not a bad thing. Comcast, again, is using it to help solve customer issues. I tried it out the other day for a whole different matter. But how dumb is this? Because of the confidentiality issue, the customer service rep broke off in the middle of the online chat to call me on the phone to get my permission to give me the information I needed via chat. Once granted, she hung up, typed in the relevant information…and then my computer froze and had to be rebooted. Faster than e-mail maybe. But not necessarily more efficient.

And, again, as a broader communication tool, it represents a huge time suck. I know people who have juggled five or six “conversations” at once. I never could figure out when they worked because they were always available on IM. And it just seems so intrusive:  Give me e-mail, where you can control the pace of the back and forth, and delete and ignore at will.

I’ll believe that e-mail is in its death throes when I can stop tracking an increase in the missives – a substantial amount of it junk – delivered daily to my inbox. It ain’t happening yet!

PR and the respect factor

Sally Saville Hodge

Public relations has always been like the Rodney Dangerfield of the communications field. You know: We just don’t get any respect.

Our collective inferiority complex has been self-created, to a significant extent. The tendency by many in the profession to use overstatement and hype as their stock in trade hasn’t helped the cause. And high profile ethical lapses haven’t added any to the practice’s luster. (Remember Ketchum PR’s payment of $240,000 to minority radio broadcaster Armstrong Williams to tout on air and with his peers the No Child Left Behind program?)

That’s on the public side. Generally speaking, PR is low on the totem pole among business professionals as well. Never mind some of the more unfortunate associations that play down PR’s value. The term “free publicity” is emblematic.

I’ve always thought much of it related to how much of a budget PR commands and controls, particularly vis a vis the far weightier purse carried by Marcom and advertising. After all, money equals power, and it’s not unusual to see ad budgets of the big players in the millions of dollars – hundreds of millions, even. On the other hand, a million-dollar PR campaign is considered exceedingly healthy.

The irony is that for all the disrespect, and for whatever reason, it’s PR that really has the power to build a brand. For all of traditional media’s failings (and recent flailings, for that matter), it’s the news coverage that PR helps bring about that carries credibility, not the “they’ll say anything to make you buy” advertising messaging that’s so transparent to the public. And that’s only part of the powerful overall PR package.

We’re hearing more stories these days of some recession-hit businesses cutting their marketing budgets, but diverting more funds into PR programs instead. I don’t know that I’m ready to call it a trend, unfortunately. We just haven’t managed to do the job of convincing our partners in marketing (and higher up the food chain) that we can be more than simply masters of spin.

Or have we, but marketing leadership just can’t bring itself to respond accordingly?

Michael Dunn, Chairman of Prophet (full disclosure: a client since 2001) has just authored a book called The Marketing Accountability Imperative. It’s a heavy read, but a must-read for senior management. But apropos to this conversation, here’s a pullout worth thinking about:

“Our 2007 senior marketer survey showed that B2B companies believe that public relations is the most effective activity for long-term brand building and the third most effective at driving short-term sales (after field sales activities and outbound marketing). No form of advertising came close to PR in its perceived long- or short-term effectiveness. Despite this, B2B marketers spend only about 1 percent of their budget on public relations and over 20 percent on advertising. The effectiveness of PR is also rated higher than advertising among B2C marketers and their contradictory spending relationships are even more pronounced.
…[M]arketers’ behaviors seem somewhat puzzling – they do not believe that the marketing activities that they are spending the most on are the most effective, yet they are unwilling or unable to take the steps necessary to quantify this performance.”

Puzzling, indeed.

The press release revived

Sally Saville Hodge

I’ve long since lost track of the number of people who have come to me over the years saying, “We want public relations. Do you do press releases?”

PR is not, in fact, an acronym for Press Releases, a misconception fostered by many so-called PR professionals who apparently aren’t creative enough to find other tactics to add to their toolkits. It’s also often perpetuated by marketers who don’t know any better to challenge such thinking.

Well, of course, we do press releases. But for a long time, because of the kind of public relations we practice, we actually only did a handful a year. I found them so useless compared to other, more targeted and customized approaches to media relations that I wrote an article titled “The Press Release is Dead (Will Somebody Please Tell the Clients?).”

It appeared on MarketingProfs.com (Google my name and it’s still first up, four years later!) and generated numerous e-mails and blog posts, some friendly, some scathing. (And curiously enough, it also generated calls from prospective clients wanting to talk to us about, believe it or not, helping them do more and better press releases!)

PR folks sure do take their press releases seriously. And the debate over their value continues. Just last week, I linked through to End Game PR’s blog to read a post on “10 Dead or Dying PR Tactics.” Sure enough, the press release received honorable mention – with the author acknowledging its rebirth even though many experts put it in the doornail category.

I, however, am no longer of that opinion. It’s not because I now think it’s a particularly effective tool to reach reporters. It’s because of the changing nature of the media, and the 24/7 demand for content. It’s created much higher pickup rates by news sites for optimized releases that are driven out through wire distribution services. That, in turn, drives traffic to clients’ Web sites. Used in tandem with targeted and customized media outreach, it creates sustainable gains in visitors. (From there, of course, the trick is to get them to take some sort of action – but that’s a whole different post.)

Here’s how we have seen this play out for one client, an egg donor and surrogate recruitment agency. In late November, we distributed a news release via PR Newswire that was picked up by 123 news sites, and caused a 441 percent jump in traffic. A few days later, our direct pitching resulted in the story being picked up by a Chicago Tribune health reporter’s blog, which sustained the traffic gains. A few days after that, the Wall Street Journal carried a separate article quoting the client, which was in turn picked up by the Huffington Post and the “Quote of the Day” feature on Time magazine’s Web site. Traffic surged another 162 percent on top of the earlier gains.

It’s best if releases are accompanied by direct reporter outreach, but even without, they can create a healthy flow of traffic. For this same client, for example, we distributed two releases in February, without broader media coverage, and its site experienced a 138 percent increase in traffic.

It’s tricky given the nature of this client’s business to draw a correlation between increased traffic and increased business, since not everyone who might take action once they are on the Web site is qualified to be either an egg donor or a surrogate. But the client can see a correlating increase in calls and submission of online forms with the traffic surge – and so is happy with the results.

Press releases have experienced a happy recovery. They still have to be written well – and smart – and will never be the only tactic in a strategic communications toolkit. But it’s well worth talking to clients about rethinking how they’re used in a comprehensive program.

Atwitter over Twitter? It could happen

Sally Saville Hodge

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last three months or so that I have more actively started Twittering:

• The name is silly, but so apropos. After all, when you’re communicating in short bursts of words (140 characters max) and following more than one or two people, it does create something of the same cacophony on your senses as a large flock of birds.
• It has a ton of fans, some of whom are rabidly judgmental. Don’t let them scare you off though, because…
• …despite the judgmental folks, there are no real rules for using it.
• You really have to use it to get it and its implications.
• It’s an incredibly exciting example of how users are shaping the experience – far beyond what the people who created it ever intended or expected.

To the last point, here’s an interesting presentation by one of Twitter’s founders explaining the original idea and how users have innovated around it. Next week, I’ll take a look at some of the reasons for climbing aboard – whether for fun or for profit.

(And by the way, if you sign up for a Twitter account – it’s free – look me up at @sallyshodge.)

Why online hits matter

By Sally Saville Hodge

We still hear all too often from clients and prospects who thank us very much for those online hits, “but we want to be in the paper!”

I suspect that the full implications of the “viral” benefits of online media coverage are difficult for them to grasp. Here’s a case in point I use time and again. We got mention of one of our client’s blogs (with the link) on Reuters.com last year. It was still driving traffic there two months later – long after a traditional placement would have done its duty as birdcage liner.

Here’s a good overview (below) of the media channels out there that makes the case for why online is where you want to be if it’s reach you’re looking for. Special thanks to The Bad Pitch Blog for driving this out.

On jargon and buzzwords and really tired phrases

Sally Saville Hodge

It’s needless to say that a lot of words and phrases are over-leveraged in today’s written and spoken dialog.

You see? I just did it with barely a thought.

I will be the first to admit that I occasionally – okay, often – fall into this “let’s show people how smart I am by the number of buzzwords I can weave into my writing” trap. I do try to stay away from really stupid phrases, but sometimes, well… okay. I just got through writing a proposal and used the word “leverage” four times. It would have been more, but I cut a few out. It’s not that I think the use of such verbiage makes me look smarter (really!) but it does show I can use the language that my audience of businessfolk uses – I can relate.

Language and its use and misuse is a favorite topic of those of us who love it – done right. One of my favorite bloggers is Dan Santow of Edelman PR, whose Word Wise blog is the ultimate in grammar and style and all things related. I also recently happened upon Lake Superior State University, which since 1975 has issued a “banished word” list – some evergreen, some having taken on new disfavor with political and cultural shifts.

Among my favorites from that particular list:

• Maverick. I can’t even think the word without a correlating vision of Sarah Palin as its chief utterer.
• Staycation. A made-up word that everyone glommed onto – the non- or anti-vacation.
• Not so much. The ultimate in overused snarkiness.

Among the evergreens:

• Paradigm shift. What a grandiose term for the simple matter of change.
• “I, personally.” Would it ever be impersonally?
• 24/7. This phrase must have caught on for its appeal to everyman’s inner geek.
• Fairly, almost, one of the most (etc.) unique. Either it is or it is not one of a kind.
• “At the end of the day.” Versus at its start. A single word will often do in place of pseudo descriptive phrases. Try “ultimately.”
• Make it sticky. This has been around for awhile and I still puzzle over what, exactly, it’s supposed to mean.
• Outside the box. We can also all try to be just plain old creative or innovative and leave the box out of it.

There are so many ways to make your writing sing without having to resort to tired and hackneyed language. Here’s to working on better melodies in 2009.

Why PR investments should grow in 2009

Sally Saville Hodge

I’d like to think it’s true, but the cynic in me just keeps muttering, “Yeah, right.”

Media prognosticator Jack Myers recently issued a report suggesting that the bright spot in the current advertising depression will be public relations. He projects investment in PR to grow by 3% in 2008 and by another 3% in 2009 to over $4.5 billion.

There are a lot of reasons why this should be true.

• In hard economic times, businesses need to grow their credibility with consumers. You get that with PR, particularly with an orientation that’s geared to inform, versus hammering away with heavy-handed sales messaging.
• They also need to grow awareness. And while an ad campaign does that, so does a PR program. The difference is that PR features the credibility component, while advertising doesn’t. Furthermore…
• …a PR program is a LOT cheaper than advertising or the majority of marketing communications programs to design and execute. That’s not to say clients ought to believe the “free publicity” misnomer of one aspect of PR, however. There’s still time and expertise involved, and that carries a price tag. But a $100,000 budget will easily be sufficient to create a robust PR program featuring traditional and social media aspects over the course of a year (providing you stay away from the larger, high-priced agencies). That kind of money will get you bupkis in advertising and not a lot more in some of the more traditional MarCom tactics.

So why am I cynical that the growth Myers projects may actually occur? Well, for one thing, the top dog for communications matters at most businesses is still a person who has a marketing title. As a rule, these folks are still pretty tied to tradition – the tried and true of advertising, direct mail, and the like.

Too many don’t have a great grasp of depth and breadth of traditional public relations approaches, much less how PR applies to the new media world. For example, in an article tellingly headlined, “Social Networks: Millions of Users, not so Many Marketers,” e-Marketer, an online newsletter, has projected a decline in U.S. social networking advertising, but pointedly observed, “Advertising is not the only way for marketers to participate in social networks.”

We’re heading into one of the toughest years for business that I can remember – and 2008 was hardly a cakewalk. PR investment may or may not grow by the projected 3%. But those challenged to do more with less in a difficult climate would be well-served to take another look at traditional and social media PR approaches and adjust their thinking accordingly.

Educating clients about the traditional/new media paradigm shifts

Sally Saville Hodge

For years and years, we folks in PR have been selling clients on the value of media relations…the cachet of coverage, its impact on a profile, the value of a “third party endorsement.” The sell has always been accompanied by “we have the relationships with the media to get it done.”

We’ve done our job well. Maybe too well. Prospects come to us wanting to be in the paper or on TV or radio. They want that cachet. They want the impact. They want the credibility. And they really want to know you have the relationships.

The thing is…that kind of thinking just doesn’t apply like it used to. All of us in the business know it, even though a lot of traditionalists may have trouble admitting it. But our clients don’t know it. They’re still enmeshed in the old paradigm. As a profession, we’ve written and spoken volumes about Word of Mouth, SEO, SMPRs, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and on and on. But I think we’re pretty much talking to ourselves and not educating the clients as to the seismic shifts in media that should be reshaping their expectations on what we should be delivering.

The traditional media world is shrinking. So far this year, according to a tally maintained by St. Louis Post dispatch designer Erica Smith, over 13,000 newspaper jobs have been lost as the industry continues to lose relevance, readers and ad revenues. Many publications have folded all together. How telling is it that one of our most venerable newspapers, the Christian Science Monitor, is morphing away from hard copy to embrace its healthier Web self?

And it’s not just traditional journalism jobs and outlets that are on the endangered list. Rumblings have it that layoffs are pending at Salon.com, with the suggestion that some of these tired old Web 1.0 vehicles aren’t feeling the love so much in a Web 2.0 or even 3.0 world.

So what are the implications that we need to communicate to our clients? Three that immediately come to mind:

1. As traditional media shrinks, it’s harder and harder to successfully pitch the writers and publications that are left. The competition for their attention is relentless – and they already have plenty of ideas of their own that are going unwritten. It demands that the client be differentiated (especially those in more commoditized businesses), and that takes really, really strong and on-point ideas to make them stand out.
2. Enhanced credibility remains a benefit of traditional media placements. But credibility with whom is the question we need to be thinking about as we develop our outreach strategies. If your market is the 20-somethings (and increasingly, those in their 30s and 40s!) they may well put more stock in an implied (or overt) endorsement by a friend on Facebook or a popular blogger than a feature in the local paper. There is no one credibility end all and be all in today’s media environment.
3. “Relationships” as clients tend to think of them are changing. The traditional media relationships that many practitioners may hang their hats on are disappearing along with the journalism jobs. We need to show how well we can also cultivate relationships in other media realms – with important bloggers and other influencers, for example. More importantly, we need to demonstrate why those relationships are equally important.

Too many businesses these days have a very limited view of what PR’s all about. For example, a Hodge Schindler study of 150 fast-growing business services firms found that for half of them, it begins and ends with press releases.

We need to stop talking to ourselves and start showing the folks who are footing our bills that PR isn’t an acronym for Press Release, that “media” is comprised of an amazingly vast range of possibilities with varying levels of cachet and credibility depending on the audience, and how their interests will be best served if we strive for balance between traditional and new media in helping to build their images.

Another Requiem for the News Biz

By Sally Saville Hodge

In another sign of the times, the venerable Christian Science Monitor announced today that it will cease its daily print publication by next April to focus on its online operations and a weekly print newspaper/magazine hybrid.

With the Monitor’s print circulation, 50,000, a fraction of the 230,000 it had in its heyday in 1970, it’s giving in to the inevitable: Its future – readers and profits – lies with the Web. With 5 million online readers a month, it’s pretty hard to ignore the math.

The question is how long is it going to take before others follow? This Internet-only concept may prove to be a workable model. But what’s long been clear, and the hemorrhaging underscores, is that the vast majority of dailies just haven’t been able to find the right balance between online and print.

Back in early September, The Bad Pitch Blog’s Richard Laermer wrote about traditional media’s demise, positing that any PR folks still aiming for print placements had better scurry. Soon, there’ll be no one left to pitch if they don’t get with the online program.

It’s unclear now how many will be laid off from the Monitor with this new move. But Laermer aptly makes his case with the following list (which I cite verbatim):

• Seventy people cut from the News-Observer in Raleigh.
• A while back over 100 gone from The New York Times including almost all the second-string critics and long-lost colleague Barnaby Feder, a science guy who has been there since, well, anyone was a reporter.
• The Los Angles Times, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, Newsday, Baltimore Sun hemorrhaging crucial staffers.
• The Dallas Morning News cutting 500 jobs in the next month.
• The Star-Ledger says if there are no takers of cuts, the parent will sell!
• Fortune Small Business drops its entire staff, The Wall Street Journal cuts a variety and Fortune kills off dozens. The Record in NJ closes down its (?) headquarters and makes everyone work at home.
• An Atlanta Journal-Constitution staffer tells us that they’re having daily meetings now… and that if we have any stories pending, to hurry up and get them written.

Meanwhile, today’s Wall Street Journal reported accelerated circulation declines at the largest U.S. newspapers, “owing to readers’ continuing defection to the Web…”

I don’t hold with Laermer’s view that it’s a waste of time to be pitching anything other than online venues in this environment. Certainly, the Monitor’s new hybrid print product, for example, may still have some reporters on staff who are open to smart pitches. And hits there (not to mention the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, et. al.) are still going to win points for credibility, if not for viral influence.

But the operative words are “smart pitches.” Shrinking pools of traditional journalists and outlets translate into limited time and patience for irrelevant, poorly researched, and flatly written pitches. That’s always been true. Only now, it’s more so.

Second Life and other Web 2.0 venues: Maybe you can, but should you?

Sally Saville Hodge

Here’s a situation sure to make every PR person cringe. You arrange for your author-client to participate in a book club discussion group with other would-be writers and fans only to have a series of embarrassing mishaps occur at the venue. She sits first on a stool (where the guests can’t see her), is prompted to move to a chair, but instead lands on a lap, and from there goes to the table before finally finding her chair.

Welcome to a new era in book promotion. The Second Life writer’s tour.

Second Life is the virtual world where you create a virtual you in the form of an avatar, and where you can meet up with other like-minded people, casually or formally, and buy and sell everything from virtual dollars to spectacles to real estate. I’m still not quite getting the appeal – my real life is busy enough without mucking it up more with virtual doings. Still, some of the PR and marketing aspects related to it are kind of intriguing.

Like many things under the Web 2.0 banner (haven’t we advanced to Web 3.0 yet?), Second Life, and the different ways to leverage it, remains a work in progress. Gartner has apparently predicted that by 2011, 80 percent of all Americans will have a “Second Life.” And big business, natch, is trying to get a jump on it. IBM, for example, has spent big bucks establishing a virtual island on Second Life. Nokia has hired greeters in Second Life to stand by its virtual kiosks. Dell has a virtual factory there making virtual computers.

The virtual book club guest spot opportunity was one I happened upon, and forwarded to a friend for her Sisters in Crime (SinC) client. The association’s president, Roberta Isleib, was tapped to participate, and she describes her experience more fully than my little recap in a very funny post on her blog.

The club’s organizer has been able to draw some respectable names to the group’s weekly sessions that typically attract 20 to 40 participants: marketer/author Don Peppers. Author Sarah Susanka. Pat Davis, CEO of Passion Parties and an author. Attendance doesn’t make it sound like there’s enough of a return to make it worth a client’s while at this stage, despite the promise of supporting marketing across Second Life’s “vast” social marketing community.

But whether for this sort of endeavor or many of the various opportunities and tactics that are springing up as a result of our Web 2.0 world, you still have to ask: Just because you can, does that mean you should?

Bad pitches, Richard Laermer and the Gumby factor

Sally Saville Hodge

I recently had a conversation with PR professional, author and blogger Richard Laermer, and my (failed) challenge was to write this resulting post fast because he talks fast, and I was worried over being able to recreate the sense of all the threads that were spun from the discussion if I waited.

Alas, other work got in the way of a speedy turnaround. But my ace in the hole is the fact that I’m no longer a journalist; accordingly, I offered, “Hey, want to look at it before I post?” He can always add his own quotes if he doesn’t he think he sounds smart enough.

Richard Laermer, however, isn’t that self-important to worry about sounding smart. (I’m pretty sure, though, that he’s smart enough to worry about sounding cogent.) In fact, self-importance is something he deflates with regularity, and one of his vehicles for this is The Bad Pitch Blog. Read his post debunking a journalist-turned-PR-pro’s pontifications on how PR should be done, and you get the picture.

What led me to his door was a recent post about a news release that was bad for so many reasons, starting with the unfortunate overuse of the ® symbol after the word “Bone” as in Milk Bone® Dog Biscuits. And, as these things happen, when the release was distributed over the wire, the little circle around the “R” was lost, and the first, ahem, boner of many was identified.

The ensuing discussion made me both laugh out loud and pray that we never are on the receiving end. And I decided I’d like to talk to him for a blog post of my own. Happily, he was agreeable – it didn’t hurt that his latest book, “2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade” recently hit the newsstands.

The whole notion of trends is integral to Laermer’s main business (RLM PR), which focuses on “placing clients ahead of trends.” And, indeed, his various blogs seize upon trends as a point of departure for many conversations.

The Bad Pitch Blog exposes mediocre-to-really-bad writing – and thinking – being put out by too many in public relations, going beyond the simple carelessness of the poorly placed ®. Indeed, the “boner” news release was a fine example of that, trying to cover so much ground in one piece that it left the poor reader dazed and confused as to the point. Laermer didn’t name the firm (“that’s easy enough to find”) because he really faulted Milk Bone for the problem.

Indeed, why would Milk Bone settle for that kind of “counsel” and output? And if the company – any company – really just wants its PR firm to serve as order-takers, then it needs to do a better job internally of monitoring and overseeing what’s being produced and distributed.

“Too many people in this business spend a lot of time at it, but there’s no rhyme or reason to what they’re doing,” Laermer suggests. “A lot of first drafting goes on, for example, because no one wants to take responsibility for words – they want to let someone else take care of it.”

Likewise, he thinks there’s an overabundance of folks entering into the field who don’t seem inclined to sit down and figure out what it takes to do the job well. “I have seen too many just sit there with the ‘just tell me what to do’ attitude. There just isn’t enough thinking going on.”

As Laermer puts it, “We (as PR practitioners) have an incredible amount of power. But as a profession, we have to wake up and get better at it.”

You might say we need more “Gumbitude” – and actually, that’s exactly what Laermer does say. Gumbitude is his word playing off the characteristics of the green Gumby character from the 50s and 60s children’s television show – and adopted by Laermer as the “Mascot of 2011” for the way he represents this trend: “People discover that flexibility is among the few basic qualities in which to excel.”

“Gumby’s power is more than flexibility,” Laermer writes in 2011. “Gumby is attitude… Gumby is confident, ambitious and willing to get the job done… Gumby is action… Gumby is results… Gumby learns… Those that have Gumby participate…Gumby isn’t about yes and no. It’s about how and why.”

We in the profession need to get Gumbetized. It’s all about doing our jobs better. And maybe avoiding getting skewered in Bad Pitch Blog.

Electronic communications (r)evolution

Helena Bouchez

Something weird has happened to e-mail. People have stopped answering it. Or it takes them a week to reply. And it’s not just one or two people anymore. I have to follow up on about half the e-mails I send now, when just six months ago I received responses from most within 24-36 hours.

Electronic communications methods are evolving quickly – and some say away from e-mail. In fact, e-mail bankruptcy, a desperate act in which the overwhelmed e-mail account owner highlights his or her entire inbox and presses the delete key, is becoming commonplace. People are increasingly protective of their e-mail addresses and many have figured out how to set up e-mail rules and filters to screen out unwanted – and unsolicited – messages. (Great video commentary on e-mail bankruptcy and what to do about it from French entrepreneur Loic LeMeur here.)

This e-mail tune-out is happening across realms: business and personal. In business, it’s across industries. Editors who used to respond to us almost immediately need to be nudged two and three times for the barest acknowledgment. For a current (annual) research project, I’ve even resorted to (gasp) phoning some of the sources to get some response to my time-sensitive requests. When I do get an e-mail reply, it tends to be extremely short. Like a text message. Or a tweet (Twitter communiqué – 140 character limit). I’ve also noticed a steady uptick in the number of actionable messages received via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Because things are changing so rapidly, we must stay on top of what messaging is relevant to our clients’ target markets and the best way to get it in their way. Every tactic has to be reassessed every time, especially if the last time we executed it was more than six months ago. We must be curious and experiment. How many of you Twitter? Use Skype or OoVoo? Belong to a forum? Are aware of the next generation of social networking sites? (I’ll help here: Brain gym and brain training site Headstrongbrain.com currently in beta, is one such site.)

As if keeping up is not enough, we also need to remember to inform clients as to the degree of flux the entire communications industry is in (and is likely to stay in) and educate them about the new communications channels and choices out there. It’s more work for us, of course, but will pay off big in the end – also known as Web 3.0.

Fed up with email? Customers are, too

Helena Bouchez

In Email Insider’s most recent blog entry, “Helping People Become Better Email Users,” Chad White describes his experience at the OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) Expo at the Email Experience Council’s booth where he suggested a visitor subscribe to their free weekly newsletter. The visitor’s reply? “Whoa, another email newsletter? I get too much email as it is.”

It’s something to think about the next time you help plan an email campaign or launch a newsletter for a client. Assuming their target market even reads email anymore. If they’re younger than 25, chances are they don’t. They’re communicating real time via IM, Facebook or Twitter. Heck, even executives Twitter now. But I digress.

In his post, White gave several suggestions to help assuage people’s frustrations with email. They’re good. I created @Action folders for both my work and personal email accounts and emptied my Inbox. My Inbox hasn’t been 100 percent empty since 1995. It looks and feels sort of weird, but I like it. I’m fairly confident, however, that most email recipients are somewhat less process oriented and organized than he or I. Which means my client’s e-newsletters are splashing down into a sea of communications numbering in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Lost among thousands of little email voices pleading with recipients to “Read me! Pay attention! Take action!” No small wonder so much email gets deleted or ignored. Who can take the guilt?

To preserve this communications outlet among those still engaged with it, we marketers have to use it wisely. Make sure the email you send to your target audience is relevant, engaging and if at all possible, personalized. The technology exists, and there are partners out there ready to help you. It’s not cheap. But consider the cost of a poorly targeted email campaign that causes the recipient to view your brand as irrelevant or annoying. Some things are better left unsent.

Technology on the edge: ooVoo

Helena Bouchez

Try as I might, I can’t seem to let go completely of my connection to the advertising business, where I worked for six years leading tech initiatives before crossing over to PR.

A search on my former employer landed me on George Parker’s AdScam blog, where I learned of a new (and free) video conferencing and video messaging site, ooVoo.com.

From the Web site: ooVoo is the next evolution in online communication — a remarkably easy way to have a face-to-face video conversation with friends, family or colleagues, no matter where they are in the world. OoVoo is remarkably easy to use, easy to download, easy to install, and best of all: it’s FREE!

OoVoo is promoting a series of “ooVoo days” during which bloggers host small video conversations with members of their online communities on various topics. Parker was hosting a few sessions, so I signed up for one. A complete technology meltdown (on my end) prevented me from doing more than listening to and seeing Parker and two other participants, but I experienced enough to see the potential benefits of this technology for all aspects of business (not just marketing).

Communicating this way is personal, immediate and powerful. That’s because it’s much more dynamic than straight chat or one-to-one video chat, as you can see people’s expressions and see them moving and talking.

It’s also pretty easy to use (my issues were Mac-based). To get started you need only to download the software and get a cheap webcam and a headset (or speakers and a microphone). Then you should be good to go (if you’re on a PC, that is). The biggest problem as I see it is going to be Internet bandwidth. As it was, the video was cutting in and out frequently and the voice was buffering so the participants sounded like they had a terrible stutter (we have a T-1 line).

But for those of us whose clients are always looking for ways to lower the cost of PR and marketing (and whose aren’t?) this technology (with a tad more maturity) is a powerful and low/no cost addition to the toolkit. We’re going to keep an eye on it. You should too.

When being trendy is not your style

Chris Scott

To get – and stay – ahead of the curve, 63 percent of businesses are bumping up marketing spend in 2008, according to a recent article in B2B Magazine.

What will they spend it on? Well, trends indicate that online everything is going to be big this year, along with neurological market research and continued outreach to younger targets. And because it’s a trend it must be true, right? Not necessarily. Businesses would do well to consider carefully whether (or not) the trendy action they want to take would really advance their business objectives.

A few “trends” I’ve run across lately that have thrown up a red flag:

• Social Marketing – Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and other buzzworthy concepts are spreading in popularity among marketers faster than the Bird Flu. Social marketing can be very effective when used appropriately. But some businesses lend themselves to this approach – and some don’t. Before implementing any tactic, it’s critical to know your audience and how best to reach them.
• “Recession-proofing” – When dark economic winds begin to blow, conventional wisdom says that marketing and promotion budgets should be the first thing to go. Actually, economic uncertainty should be a cue to spend more to promote your business. While your competitors are reeling it in, you have a golden opportunity to reach out to prospects and demonstrate that you innovate even during tough times.
• All Digital, All the Time – Cyberspace has changed the way many of us live, shop and communicate, but it also means we’re constantly inundated with electronic messages of all kinds. Don’t forget the power of the human touch; sometimes organizing an event that puts your business face-to-face with potential clients can be even more effective.

The moral of the story? All trends have one thing in common: None are very satisfying unless they really fit.