Gregarious

Tablets will fundamentally change public relations

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:30:00 +0000

But most PR practitioners haven't even seen yet or used an iPad.

Apple is expected to sell 3.4 million iPads in Q3, while Barclays predicts that tablet PCs will sell 28 million units in 2011. All this spells tremendous opportunity for companies seeking to communicate with customers, investors, employees, and other audiences, as well as the public relations professionals responsible for building and relaying those messages.

The tipping point will occur at year-end, as an onslaught of manufacturers gear up to launch their own iPad-like devices, and marketers, such as Best Buy, make tablets the center point of their holiday retail strategy.

Yet, as the sands shift beneath our feet, I am reminded by Sam Whitmore of SWMS, one of the Gregory gang's favorite PR pundits, that few if any PR people have ever seen a tablet PC, let alone used one. Sam just completed a fact-finding mission with editors and agency heads, and discovered some pretty interesting trends.

Most poignantly is the media and how they are currently talking more about technology than stories and coverage. In an e-mail Sam sent to his subscribers, Sam made the point that to stay relevant, media are working hard to leverage technology to distribute content. He recently listened as one senior editor referred to his video content not as editorial, but as "product" he must distribute.

Which is exactly the same transition we at Gregory FCA have been planning and preparing for. I'll admit, I am a print guy from way back, having started my career as a magazine article writer, and think more in the editorial than the visual. (Thank God for my staff, who are more visually oriented and literate than me.)

Tablets will push us even further away from the written word and closer to the visual. As iPad users in my firm (including myself) have discovered, tablets are more about consumption than interaction. iPads lull us into passivity, allowing us to consume news and e-mails, absorb movies and YouTube, time- and place-shift TV programming, view slideshows, check apps, etc.

We don't interact with our tablets the way we do our desktops. Rather, we check them, use them for the mindless and mundane (they're great for checking your Fantasy Football team while watching your team live on your living room TV), gleefully engage in a game, or put our minds to rest as if anyone would possibly want or need us at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

This sea change means a lot for the practice of public relations. In order to manage the narrative of our clients, we now have to create stories that are cross platform, capable of being reported in words, or through a YouTube video, or a slideshow, or even an app.

As Mike Lizun here at Gregory FCA continually reminds our staff, you have to start by considering the ultimate placement of the story, be it in print, on a video, on the Web, or broadcast. Where will the story originate? Then populate and grow? And how can we ensure its mushrooming presence on everything from Flipboard to Mashable, Newser to blogs, and ultimately make an impact on Google against our clients' key search terms? More and more, those platform will include tablets.

In fact, app development, delivery, and penetration now represents the next great frontier of public relations. Apps take our audiences off the Web and into their own private viewing rooms where they can watch, read, and learn without the distractions of the Web.

At the same time, as more media become "appified" (that's an URL I just bought to articulate this phenomenon), we're left with the prospects of someday pitching app developers with news about our clients, because they might hold the most direct pipeline to the audience.

As a counterpoint to the tablet sea change argument, I recently had dinner with a Wharton professor who shared with me the school's apprehension about iPads. You can't easily print from them, the virtual keyboard makes entering numbers into Excel virtually impossible, and marked-up and annotated documents -- the kind MBAs prefer -- can't be easily shared on an iPad.

He suggested the iPad might be a 'tweener product -- 'tween a computer and a cell phone with no clearly delineated market. But I kind of didn't hear him. I was too busy checking my iPad.

Trend spotting in public relations

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:43:00 +0000

How to find hot new media topics to publicize your product, service, or company

You can flog a bad story idea for 1,000 hours with no results. Or you can identify a single strong story idea and move mountains in minutes. So much of media relations is based on the strength of the story. Is it timely? Is it relevant? Is it unique? Does it run with a trend or against a trend?

All these factors determine whether a story can sell, and how easily it can sell to the media. The ability to spot trends and connect your product or service to them is the heart of an effective public relations campaign. Here are some of the hot new trends we've identified here at Gregory FCA in support of our clients:

1. Show me the stimulus. With the mid-term elections only months away, the media will be keen to report on any stories that substantiate real economic impact of government stimulus spending. Companies that can show they have added employees, won new assignments, or grown revenue due to stimulus spending can make themselves the subject of boundless news coverage as media struggles to decipher the effects of massive government spending.

2. On death and dying. Sound moribund? Baby boomers -- their wants, needs, and emotional states -- have dominated everything American, especially the media, since the 1950s. Now that many of us are looking down the barrel of our own mortality, death will take on new meaning, and the media will cover the topic in new, unimaginable ways. Expect to see increased obituary coverage, as record numbers of famous people die. Drugs, solutions, and studies that uncover news ways to live longer and more vibrant lives will fuel news coverage for the next two decades.

3. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Bedbugs are a huge issue across the country, as pesticide bans and increased international travel have caused outbreaks in hotels, retail stores, and even movie theaters. Just Google the news coverage of bedbugs, and you'll find the scope of the problem. Any product or service that can solve the problem will gain attention, and any business that could be affected by it (hotels, clothing stores, airlines) needs to contend with potential negative news coverage if it becomes infected with the blood suckers.

4. The always-on backlash. Expect to see more news coverage about people and professionals who pull the plug on our always-on culture of e-mail, texting, and social media. As these technologies take over more of our lives, the media will search for the counter story -- technology Luddites who choose to go dark. Expect to see more stories about companies that ban cell phones during meetings, ask employees to turn off e-mail during vacations, and clamp down on more-is-better information sharing.

5. The Republican and Democrat TV networks. We've jumped the shark with regard to bias in media and "newsertainment," as Republicans and Democrats openly attack one another every evening on Fox News and MSNBC. Expect more of the same, as all sorts of media, desperate to find new audiences, take a lesson from these quasi-news organizations. How about a primetime Fox network of sitcoms that openly joke about the Democrats and revolve around rigid conservative family values? Or an MSNBC station of left-leaning gay and lesbian family sitcoms and morning talk shows advancing liberal agendas? There's money to be made in dividing and conquering. More media is bound to learn that lesson, and, for better or worse, adjust their programming.

How conspiracy theories affect reputation management

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:11:00 +0000

Why is it that some stories that don't make sense often get stuck in the public's consciousness and can never be dislodged?

Even if they're ridiculous. Unsubstantiated. Absurd. So the story of the Bush Administration's orchestration of 9/11 continues to resurface. And an increasing percentage of Americans believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Conspiracy theory affects the easily influenced and persuaded but it also infects bright minds and the level headed. Why?

Because we all share a basic human need to want to believe that our lives are far from haphazard. Our minds are constantly working to convert chaos to order. We believe that events are somehow driven by a hidden hand, a plan, or even a conspiracy. And so we look for meaning even where none exists.

For us, it's too painful to believe that a nondescript group of hijackers could commandeer commercial airliners, kill more than 3,000 innocent human beings, trigger wars, and inflame global hostility. Similarly, it's impossible to acknowledge that a troubled loner could, with a single shot, murder the most powerful leader in the world. The cosmos can't work in such ways. They are too fantastic of stories that demand back stories, so we fill them in to alleviate our own discomfort.

The human tendency to replace the unexplainable with an explanation has an inverse effect as well. When the evidence suggests that a conspiracy has led to a specific result, we often disbelieve our own eyes and instead replace the obvious truth with an imagined outcome.

Such is the case of my personal hero, Lance Armstrong. I first came to love Lance in 1999, when he won his first Tour de France after beating cancer. I read his books, fell in love with the story, and hung a framed poster of Lance in my office as a reminder of victory over adversity. And even though my own eyes were telling me something different, I believed it all.

Here was a guy who got off death's bed to lift himself over the Alps and Pyrenees, faster and higher than anyone else. His performances were super human. I wrote speeches about Armstrong's accomplishment for my clients to read at sales conferences. I told and retold the stories of how Lance cracked the field and beat the mountains seven times to win the most grueling of athletic endeavors.

And yet, there were signs everywhere that he, like most top-ranked cyclists of that era, had cheated. A number of his lieutenants, those that have ridden on his team, had intermittently come forward with allegations. An alleged positive drug test for EPO was made public by a French newspaper. A teammate testified in court that he overheard Lance tell doctors about his illicit drug use while being treated for cancer.

His retirement from the sport, while at the top of his game, and then his ill-timed return, suggested that he struggled with the risk of getting caught, only to return to the sport once it had cleaned itself up to prove he could win in a clean and fair race.

Then, there was the mushroom cloud effect of US Postal-Lance's old cycling team. Many of its members were Americans. Many became world-class cyclists quickly. Compared to US soccer, where America has worked for decades to achieve international success, cycling did it in a few short years. I should have wondered at that point, could there be more to the story? Could they have just been good at sharing the secrets of doping?

My denial of all things Lance Armstrong was nothing more than a reverse conspiracy theory. Lance was clean because of the back story that preceded his every performance. The dots had already been filled in for me. This was not random. It was the result of greatness with the proof being his conquering of cancer. It allowed me to blind myself to the apparent truth-one that is now the subject of a Federal investigation.

Brutally put, Lance Armstrong cheated. And not only did he cheat, but he probably did it in a revolutionary, systemic way, infecting others by sharing and educating them through his team to the wonders of performance enhancing drugs. Unfortunately, the very greatness of his accomplishments should have raised suspicion. It didn't. The backstory assured me.

So what does this all have to do with reputation management? Truth is often determined more by storytelling (of the lack thereof) rather than the facts of a circumstance. The more we can back fill a story, the greater the chance of we can preserve a legacy or reputation. Without the story, our hands are tied.

I once represented an institution that suffered the grave suicidal loss of a patient under their care. There was no other reason for the loss other than the patient was troubled. But nothing could be communicated about the events out of deference to patient privacy. The story was not there. The dots didn't connect. The Institution paid a terrific price.

On the other hand, there have been instances where clients have faced real threat. But the backstory was intact. The price paid was much lesser than when the story was absent. As public relations professionals, it is our charge to craft the story with truth and humanity to preserve the integrity of those we serve.

A call for crowdsourced media research for public relations

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:16:00 +0000

News arrived this week that ProfNet and HARO, two public relations media matching services that connect a reporter's need for sources and information with public relations professionals, has a new competitor.

NewsBasis seeks to connect reporters working on timely stories with the opinions and input of publicists, cleverly left as comments embedded in online stories.

It's an interesting idea, although I wonder what these comments might look like if the service catches on, and an onslaught of hyper-competitive publicists start hawking client messaging on as many stories as possible. Still, I like the concept, and think it plays well to skilled PR professionals who survive off their ability to construct a convincing argument, rather than just pitch a story to the media.

I also applaud any effort that seeks to use technology to wring costs of out of the PR process and allow us to do more for less for clients. In a blog post I wrote earlier in the year, I called out a number of public relations providers that showed no mercy during the recession. Instead of innovating their way to cost reductions, they simply increased fees while providing no greater value or service.

I took some heat for that criticism, with a number of our suppliers calling me offline to argue their cases. (Notice they didn't comment on the post for fear other agencies might realize the unwarranted cost increases.) NewBasis is taking a different approach all together, and deserves our support for it.

Which brings me to my latest idea: a crowdsourced media app that offers tighter user controls on how to appropriately contact the media. I have been noodling on this idea for the past few months with some of our people and clients, and call it "PRCrowdSource.com."

The concept is simple. For too long, the PR industry has been overly reliant on a handful of costly media list providers that make their software all too easy for publicists to spam media with story pitches by e-mail. This hurts everyone in the industry by polluting the channels of communications with incessant, off-topic story pitches that only make legitimate story topics more difficult to surface.

The PRCrowdSource app allows public relations agencies to share media information between one another, adding comments and intelligence about media contacts that can be edited by the group as a whole, and updated instantaneously as media contacts, beats, and areas of interest change.

Best of all, the app does not allow for group e-mail spamming of thousands of media with the tap of an Enter key. Rather, e-mails must be composed individually, and recipients chosen based on the beats they cover, past stories they have produced, and relevance to the topic.

To make this concept work, participating firms agree to contribute a set number of validated media contacts to the app, say 1,000. They also agree to correct and update contacts -- their own as well as those of others -- when errors become apparent.

Users can share comments and insights with the group as a whole, or they can choose to keep them private to themselves or within their firm. Returned e-mails trigger an alert to the entry's owner, suggesting that the reporter or producer has left or moved to a new media position and needs to be updated.

The wiki-like app is licensed at a nominal fee per seat license, say about $100, which is significantly less than what software providers currently charge for their spam-generating products. Now that's using innovation to reduce costs! Even better, PRCrowdSource would rely on the wisdom of the PR industry as a whole. Once it achieves critical mass, it would hold the most up-to-date media list on the planet.

Lastly, by restricting spamming, it overcomes the media's greatest beef with the public relations industry: mass e-mails that serve no purpose but to provide lazy account executives a way to justify their existence.

Let me know what you think about the concept. I realize it's disruptive -- not unlike NewsBasis. PR agencies are not used to working collaboratively, especially when it comes to sharing their prized media contacts.

But the reality is that agencies already share their media contacts by working from the same limited sources of media lists. Crowdsourcing these lists is one way to embrace of the power of social media to gain greater accuracy; improve efficiency; and eliminate old, tired ways of working without better serving clients.

So what becomes of the Old Spice Guy?

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:23:00 +0000

I guess our jobs just got a whole lot harder, and rightly so. The recent success of the Old Spice Guy's social media campaign illustrates just how much the world has changed, and how the integration of social media and advertising works to build impact and sales.

The numbers alone are awe-inspiring. Sales of Old Spice body wash products spiked 107 percent in the last month, and the customized video responses from our guy, actor Isaiah Mustafa, have now outreached traditional broadcast TV, becoming some of the fastest videos ever to go viral on the Internet.

Inspired was the campaign, which integrated advertising and social media, and sets the bar high indeed for future marketing efforts. Mustafa's bombast, coupled with personalized responses to tweets and YouTube comments, including one marriage proposal, gave the campaign just enough camp so as not to insult Internet sensibilities, while obviously reaching the product's target audience of young, college-age men.

Even before P&G announced its sales figures from the campaign, I still thought the campaign worked on many levels, and argued so here at Gregory FCA. Increased sales is always the objective. But even before the numbers were announced, the campaign was a winner as part of any effort to re-energize the brand, excite a stale sales effort, win more shelf space at retail, and excite buyers at major chains by demonstrating an ability to create awareness on a national basis.

But now comes the really tough part: extending the lifetime of the campaign so as not to be relegated to one-hit wonder status. No doubt the minds at P&G are already busy at work figuring out what to do with this gorilla who happily sits in their room.

Interestingly, there are already signs that the impact is waning, an all-too-real fact of life in the short-cycle world of social media. A quick study we conducted using the Nielsen BuzzMetrics brand monitoring and analytics platform shows that chattter about the campaign is falling faster than an anchor in choppy seas. Just take a look at the graphs below. (You can click to enlarge.)

Truth be told, there's value in transparent commenting

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:16:00 +0000

One of our clients, John Zoccola of Vantage Learning, e-mailed me this morning with his reaction to my post yesterday about anonymous vs. transparent commenting. I wanted to share his thoughts here:

Yes, absolutely commenters ought to identify themselves. For as much as it provides credibility perhaps to the folks they're commenting about, it can eliminate the false courage people have when posting anonymously and cut down on some of the nonsense that has to be monitored.

Thanks for the comment, John. I appreciate you taking time to read my blog. I think you are right. All too often, comments lose their value because anonymity emboldens ridiculousness. And that's fine. But comments can also be a valid part of the conversation.

That's why I suggested a hybrid system where the rabble can still rouse, while those of us who want to enter into more thoughtful discussions have an opportunity to do so in the bright light of transparency. In the end, I think this might serve everyone's needs and provide a way to further our clients' objectives, while responding to legitimate issues and concerns brought to light by real people seeking real answers.

The public relations industry should push for transparency in commenting

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:41:00 +0000

The more credible commenting becomes, the more valuable of a tool it becomes for clients and firms.

This morning, as with many mornings, I woke up to read The Philadelphia Inquirer sports section and keep abreast of DooDooFresh. DooDoo is a daily reader-commenter who is obsessed with former Eagle's quarterback Donovan McNabb and his habit of playing the air guitar while in uniform.

DooDoo's irreverence brings an air of lightness to the daily drama of Philadelphia sports. But would DooDoo do the voodoo that he do do if the Inquirer required him post under his real name? It's a question that underscores the ongoing debate within the media as to whether readers' comments should stop being anonymous and rather should be accompanied by the name of the writer.

The issue of anonymity has plagued the public relations industry ever since the advent of digital media. On one hand, anonymity allows for greater voice and opinion. As this theory goes, commentators, such as an employee at a company that is engaged in illegal activity, would not post to a media site if not for the protection of anonymity.

The same goes for consumers, who under anonymity feel more comfortable reviewing, chastising, and criticizing a company or product. Then, there's the counter argument, that anonymity coarsens public discourse, and provides a water cooler for ugly, offensive remarks.

It also erodes the value of comments themselves. Without transparency, anyone can say anything at any time without impunity. The media knows that continued lack of accountability will kill what has become a golden goose of online reporting -- comments, which can often attract more readership than the article itself and provide a scorecard for editors to determine what is most interesting to any given audience.

Some media are already moving to add a new level of transparency, and along with it, authenticity, to their reader comments. The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Mass., recently introduced a new system that requires commenters to register their names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers.

The Sun Chronicle charges a one-time fee of 99 cents to activate the account. Commenters' names then appear online along with their posts. The Wall Street Journal has required names to appear with reader comments since 2008.

From a public relations point of view, there is real value in transparency. Anonymity makes it nearly impossible to assess the validity of an allegation or defamatory remark made against a client online.

At the same time, as an industry, we are bound ethically to disclose our representation when commenting online in response to the media or on review sites. In that respect, transparency would level the playing field, requiring both sides to come clean as to who is behind a comment online.

Yet, complete transparency is unlikely to happen. Right now, the media place great value in online reader comments as an eyeball aggregator and a way to score reporters and stories. Required transparency would put a brake on the number and frequency of comments.

What's the answer? How about a hybrid system whereby commenters could chose to be anonymous or not? Those commenters who opt to give their names -- and validate them with e-mail and credit card verification -- would have their comments posted higher than those who remain anonymous.

Those who don't take off the mask would be relegated to the end of the list of comments, defusing their impact. To further encourage transparency, reporters would be encouraged to engage with those commenters who disclose their identity through a special two-way feature of the blog or site. Such attention would trigger even more comments.

No doubt, those of us who read the media would be more likely to give greater credibility to named commenters. After all, these commenters are assuming the real risk that flows from public comments, even if it's just a negative response from the crowd. And at the same time, this hybrid system of opt-in transparency would still allow the rabble to rouse and the media to score themselves against the visceral response of the masses.

So DooDoo would still be allowed to do the voodoo that he do do. But we would all have a better understanding of who is saying what, for what purposes, and for which intended results. At the same time, the public relations industry would gain an additional, more credible tool for correcting the record, responding to misstatement of fact, resetting agendas, and gaining legitimate visibility.

Gregory FCA e-book: The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Many of you attended our national media panel in April, "The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media." We've provided you several resources as an outgrowth to it, including the podcast, video, and transcript from the event.

Now the last piece has fallen in place. We've published the complete transcript of the event as an e-book that you can enjoy and learn from at your leisure. There are a few ways you can read it.

Scroll through it on Google Books.
Download the PDF.
Read it on your Kindle by right clicking this e-book link, and selecting "save link as." Connect your Kindle to your computer and drag and drop the file over to your Kindle.

We hope you enjoy the e-book and learn something from it. Feel free to share and print it as an educational resource.

Off the grid for seven days

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:25:00 +0000

I am a self-confessed news junkie. A guy whose favorite day in eighth-grade social studies was current events. Even earlier, at age 12, I wrote a letter to "60 Minutes." So incensed was I over some long-forgotten story. With the Internet, the access and obsession have grown that much stronger.

What was once a daily commitment to news is now an hourly compulsion to click on a news alert, check an RSS feed, see what's being tweeted, and otherwise refresh and renew my view of the world, even if it's just through e-mails and the constant flow of news links sent to me by clients and staff.

And so, with all that as a backdrop, last week I headed into the great backwoods of central Pennsylvania with the intention of going off the grid for as long as I could. Seven days, if all went as planned, with no cell coverage. The iPad at home. A backup laptop with a dead battery in reserve that could be fired up with a power supply in an emergency.

Day One: Friday, July 2

Travel and provision day. Time to hit the road, and purchase groceries and fishing tackle. The day before a holiday weekend is slow for news. I wouldn't be missing much. So I easily switched the satellite radio to music instead of the typical CNN, CNBC, NPR, and Fox hash and rehash.

Still, I caught myself repeatedly tapping the pocket of my cargo shorts, a nervous tick to assure a quick draw of the cell phone if fate required it. But alas, not there. So by noon, my mind was racing. Had the stock market continued to fall? Who advanced in the World Cup? How long would the heat wave persist? With no news, I was groundless. Without fact or opinion, I was stressed by the lack of context.

By evening, a slow-moving river and an even slower porch ceiling fan helped me to relax. But still, who was winning and losing? What about the unexpected? How was the world changing? I couldn't help but wonder.

Day Two: Saturday, July 3

The holiday brings no news, I rationalized, when I awoke early and began planning for the Fourth of July family get-together. I would be missing little, if anything for the next two days, making it easier to maintain radio silence. A busy afternoon of family and friends kept me outdoors, away from thoughts of my iPad and iPhone.

Our family's amateur fireworks show, some 50 500-gram shots reflecting over the water, distracted my thoughts. I forgot it was the first day of the Tour de France. After all, it was just the prologue. The world as it's constructed by news was becoming more and more distant.

Day Three: Sunday, the Fourth of July

A national holiday limits news, I figured. Then I recalled when I was away over Thanksgiving and the Dubai credit crisis hit. Wasn't that on a holiday? I thought to myself. It was such a big news story that morning. Ruined my day. Dubai was crashing. Could the rest of the world sustain? It never affected my life one way or the other. Still, I had to know. What might be happening similarly today? I was haunted by all that I might be missing.

Day Four: Monday, July 5

Still the national holiday. The markets were closed. The mania toggled off. I bathed early that morning in a cold mountain stream, fresh off a bike ride. Nothing on me had a lithium battery to drain or manage. My mind and pockets were free of the cell phone, text messaging, e-mail, and the media. No noise. The heat built throughout the day, but not my anxiety. By dinner, I felt no urge, no compulsion. No need to know what was happening in the world. Might the addiction be waning?

Day Five: Tuesday, July 6

An early breakfast at The Barnyard, where $5 gets you more pork, eggs, and potatoes than the old cardiologist recommends consuming in a year. With it came a side helping of realization. I awoke this morning feeling a little bit better about the world.

You see, typically, as part of my heavy media diet, evenings end with two opposing views of the world brought to life by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow from the left, and Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity from the right. As a PR person, I watch both MSNBC and Fox to understand how to craft an argument regardless of whether it's real or ridiculous.

And now being away from it, I realize that two hate-filled hours a night tends to taint your perspective come dawn. So this morning, I had no residual anger over what Barbara Boxer or Karl Rove said the day before. Instead, the day looked a little brighter. The sky a bit bluer. Four days off the grid had shown me the intrinsic negativity that goes with media. Ah screw it, I thought to myself. I still love the news. Cold turkey is tough.

Day Six: Wednesday, July 7

In the world I am now moving in, news isn't mediated. Rather it's immediate, delivered from friend or acquaintance. Curvin, a Mennonite woodworker, showed up early to fashion a gun cabinet out of antique yellow pine. He speaks slowly, against expectation. A hello brings a slow-drawn "Riiiiight." He eyeballed and measured the fitting. Then he appeared silently over my left shoulder as I sat on a porch rocker.

"So how's business with you?" he asked as a first-time reference to me about anything other than cabinetry.

"Good," I replied. "And with you?"

"Slow. Real slow," he said slowly.

And with that, his words triggered my fear. Business is slow even for a Mennonite cabinetmaker. It all had to be the result of the news, I thought to myself. Unknown to him, market forces had conspired, a housing collapse transpired, and 10-percent unemployment afflicted the nation.

The news would tell me more, give me an idea of how to navigate from here. Certainly, the talking heads of CNBC could give counsel. Maybe The Huffington Post could finger-point some capitalist culprit. Or The Wall Street Journal would place the blame at Obama's feet. I had to have it. Please, oh God, give me the news.

So with that, I pulled out the drained laptop and plugged it in, one day short of my goal of being off the grid for seven days. In seconds, it awoke to the WiFi and my life lit up again. Google stood at attention. The Dow was up. Lance fell down. Germany and Brazil stumbled. LeBron left town. The squawk was back in the box. All seemed right with the world again.

The media are not our friends

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:37:00 +0000

As PR practitioners, we often fall into the trap of believing that relationships trump all, and that by being open and transparent with the media, we stand the best chance of winning favorable coverage. But underneath it all, the media's agenda is vastly different than our own.

Reporters are rarely promoted or rewarded for writing a positive story about a business, person, or politician. Rather, their own success often depends on exposing the negative, uncovering the wrong, and seeing the opposite in what is projected by the world.

Good thing, too. Without that skepticism, the value of public relations would be forever diminished. It's only through the prism of objectivity that media coverage gains its power. This is precisely why the consuming public values media more than marketing. A reporter's scrutiny confers believability. Skepticism portrays the reality of the world, and plays more authentically to the audience.

That's often not easy for clients to understand. A few years ago, I worked with a financial services company that was profiled in The Wall Street Journal. The story was positive in every way, except for a quote from an outside analyst the reporter turned to for a counterpoint. The client went ballistic, claiming that the entire article had been impugned.

I took up the fight and explained that quite to the contrary, it was the counterpoint that gave the article its weight and legitimacy. By finding a negative, the reporter did us the favor of demonstrating objectivity, and conferred a degree of credibility we never could have achieved through simple advertising.

The client never agreed with me. We went our separate ways. Philosophically we never connected on the real power of PR as more than just a tool for exposure, but rather a vehicle for credibility in a world full of illegitimacy.

So in a world where the media are not our friends, we as PR professionals need to act accordingly, remembering:

A client's interest trumps a media relationship. A dirty little secret of PR is that many practitioners would rather error on the side of the client, rather than alienate a media contact. But the media are big boys and girls. They understand the dance we enter into, and have short memories when you enter the arena as a worthy adversary.

No comment is sometimes the best response. It's become a tired refrain in PR to never say "no comment." Too often, that counsel comes from PR people who simply don't want to alienate a media contact who they might need in the future. After decades of high-risk crisis work, I have come to realize that no comment often does more to protect the interests of a client than some half-baked empty response that nibbles at the corners of liability. No further comment.

The media love no one. This is why Gen. Stanley McChrystal got tattooed last week. He believed that if he could just bring the reporter into his world, and share with him the blood and guts (and finger-pointing) of war, the coverage would be favorable. The big egos often fall into this trap. You see it all the time in sports. Athletes believe they're beloved by the media, and then can't understand when the media turns on them. Tiger Woods fell victim when, during his press conference, he attacked the media for stalking him and his family. In reality, Tiger was devastated to realize that the media never loved him. He was just a story. When access was easy, the storytelling was favorable. When it became difficult, they did what they had to do to get the story. They didn't love him. Never did.

Manage the negativity, but don't discount it. I have used 101 techniques in my day to prevent the negative from being exposed by the media. Heck, I once holed up a Santa Clause in a hotel after he was accosted and the media wanted to report on crime in my client's mall. But important stories have two sides. It's the presentation of both sides that comforts the audience and opens them to a more worthy perspective.

Five fundamentals of public relations that still hold true

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Last week was an exciting one here at Gregory FCA. We deployed teams of professionals to media events throughout the country to handle a number of client programs. Friday's end-of-week debrief meeting was pretty intense with everyone sharing what worked and what didn't out in the field.

As teams presented, I realized that the more things change in public relations, the more things stay the same and some fundamentals always hold true. Certainly in the context of live events, social media tools and tactics can easily be leveraged with traditional strategies to amplify the PR effort. And at all our events, our teams were tweeting and posting photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube. But still, a few immutable fundamentals of PR held true, they being:

Media watching TV on Mitsubishi's new 3-D sets

1. Media events still work. In New York, we pulled off a major coup for our client, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, by managing their media day (actually two days) to showcase their new line-up of 2010 TVs. Even in this day of social media, when some PR practitioners contend that face-to-face is dead, the turnout was unbelievable. Some 60 media people stopped in to learn more about what's new in TVs. They attended because no matter how mediated communications has become, nothing replaces face time with the media to fully explain a product, technology, direction, or opinion.

2. Satellite media tours are effective for consumer products. We completed one last week for a client that produces a dental sterilization product, and used Hershey Park as the backdrop. The theme, summer travel tips for moms, was ideally timed to summer travel. And the resulting media coverage on TV and radio amounted to placements in well over 100 outlets nationwide, when you factor in the number of syndicated media points that took the feed.

3. Relationships still matter. There was a time when public relations was conducted over lunch between a reporter and a PR person. No one has time for lunch anymore. Yet relationships still matter. By leveraging our combined relationships drawn from everyone in the firm, we vastly increased our footprint. For instance, one senior AE leveraged a five-year-old relationship to entice "Entertainment Tonight" to attend a media event. Treat the media right over the years, and they will reciprocate.

4. Research and product knowledge are keys to telling bright-line stories. For every story, we squeezed as much fact as possible out of the topic to win coverage. For instance, for our New York event, our account team learned everything possible about 3-D TV in order to explain the technology to reporters from media as diverse as Broadcast Engineering to Rolling Stone magazine. By being able to talk the talk, the media realized that this was a can't-miss event that demanded their attendance.

5. Follow-up is key. One e-mail is not a PR campaign. A news release is often akin to a tree falling in the forest. What works best is constant follow-up to ensure that the news was received, that the event was explained, that attendance is required, and that subsequent stories appear.

So even as the sands of public relations shift under our feet, the fundamentals of our business remain the same. A week-long series of media events proved that point, and won media coverage around the country, all secured the old fashioned way -- earned.

Public affairs in the Gulf Coast

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:41:00 +0000

With today's post, we're going to take a break from our usual reporting on PR to share with you a note we received from Ann Marie Gordon, a junior member of the firm, who is also a communications specialist and reservist in the U.S. Coast Guard. Ann Marie is participating in the Coast Guard's response to the Gulf oil spill. Here are her thoughts from ground zero.

Hi everyone!

Thank you so much for the box of Hope's cookies! I got word that I received a package and when I went to go pick it up, there were a bunch of Coasties waiting for me to open it because they saw cookies on the box. They are delicious, as always, and still soft and fresh! I really appreciate the thought, I never realized how comforting it can be to get a package from home.

I still can't believe I'm part of this response. I feel like it's turning into a political mess. One problem just turns into another one. I have been doing public affairs for two parishes (Louisiana is divided into parishes, not counties). They are only 10 minutes apart but they are dealing with completely separate issues. I'm right on the Gulf of Mexico and both places were hit with oil. Grand Isle was hit the hardest. I think it really hit me what was going on when I walked to the state park to watch the sunset over the gulf and I could smell the oil and I saw a dolphin swimming in the sheen that was washing in with the tide.

In Port Fourchon they are dealing with the moratorium the President placed on offshore drilling. If I wasn't here, I wouldn't really understand the effects this moratorium is having on the economy. I'm pretty confident in saying just about every person on this island has a tie to the oil business. Now with this ban, so many people are being put out of work. This just adds to the fisherman and restaurant business that is being affected by this oil spill. The gulf fuels about 18% of America and somewhere around 90% of the oil from offshore drilling is unloaded in Port Fourchon.

As a member of the Coast Guard, I can't get involved with the moratorium, that is just something the local government is dealing with. But when I walk around the community in my uniform, locals flock to me and I can just hear the hurt in their voices.

My primary responsibility down here is getting a Coast Guard presence in the media. I have secured interviews with USA Today, NYT, CNN, AP, CBS News, ABC News, FOX News, PBS, BBC, local New Orleans and Baton Rouge affiliates and foreign media.

I am here to document too. I am working on my first feature story today since the weather has shut down operations for the morning. But I have been taking a lot of pictures. The pictures I release, and any photos released by the Coast Guard or any military branch, are the public's domain. My photos made the covers of some smaller papers, my biggest has been the cover, above the fold, of The Washington Post and CNN and AP slide shows. And I have one picture running with BP ads on commercials and newspapers. I'm not really sure how I feel about that.

I'm starting to shift gears with coverage. I'm realizing now that national news has agendas. In a situation like this, I feel like it's most important to position to those most affected, the people of Louisiana. I have been reaching out to the local affiliates more to invite them to the staging areas to show all the good things the Coast Guard and the local communities are doing. The oil is still leaking, and the relief wells are projected to be completed in August, so I think it's important to show the people of Louisiana the continuous efforts to clean this up.

I was sent to the staging areas -- the areas hit with the oil -- and I hit the ground running. My hard work has paid off though because I am the only PA (CG public affairs specialist) that has not been pulled out of a staging area. I still have supervision and I am learning a lot but I am also teaching. The CG focuses a lot on the documenting aspect of the job and I help people at my rank realize the importance to reaching out to the media and getting the story out. I got so much out of this experience I can't express it in an email.

You can check out some of the photos I released here, and just search my name in the top left box.

Again, thank you so much for the cookies, it really means a lot coming from the company I work for. When I tell people I am a reservist the the first thing they ask is how is my full-time job taking this. I tell them I have full support and a great supervisor that really welcomes the experience I am getting from this response.

I hope everyone is doing well and I am looking forward to coming back soon!

Best,

Ann Marie

Gregory FCA's Ann Marie Gordon in the Gulf Coast

On writing well in public relations

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:41:00 +0000

CNN.com ran an interesting story this morning that quotes language guru Paul J.J. Payack as suggesting that the reason President Obama’s Tuesday night’s speech about the oil spill failed is that it was written at a 9.8 grade level. It's the highest grade level of any of his speeches, which average a 7.4 grade level.

This analysis is based on the presumption that most written work, especially that done by the media, is written at a sixth-grade level. It’s an urban legend that I have also been guilty of repeating, at times suggesting that a news release or executive speech needs to be simplified “to a sixth-grade level.”

But the entire notion of grade level communications is a red herring that fails because it breaks down language into discrete parts and then analyzes it by length of sentence and number of letters in a word. So the shorter the sentence and smaller the word, the lower the grade level and the easier it is to understand. Or at least the theory goes.

The entire notion is flawed. If you performed the same analysis on the music of The Beatles, you would come to a similar conclusion. After all, Paul, John, Ringo, and George used only four chords -- the same chords that any beginner learns in early lessons. Their lyrics? No greater words than you would expect from four boys from Liverpool.

The reality is that like The Beatles, great PR writing doesn't need to rely on an endless palette of multi-syllabic words. Rather, it's the specificity of the words chosen and how they are arranged that give us our power as communicators.

The best lessons of all were shared with me by my book and magazine editors when I was a freelance writer early in my career. Their advice was to get out of the way. Become invisible to the reader. They urged me to take command of readers’ thoughts by not tipping them off that I was controlling and manipulating their consciousness. That meant subordinating my own early tendencies to want to sound smart to the higher calling of imparting the most possible information in the tightest, quickest manner.

This week I met with our firm’s incoming class of interns, 10 young people pulled from the best colleges in America. I asked them, “How much would you pay if I could give you a ray gun that could control other people’s thoughts?” They all laughed and told me it was impossible.

I corrected them, and explained that when you write well, you are taking control of the reader’s thoughts. In essence, a well-written news story, blog post, or news release takes over another person’s consciousness, hijacks their awareness in favor of the ideas, concepts, and thoughts you prefer them to consider at a given time. Pretty powerful stuff. And certainly not the stuff of sixth-grade English class.

Contrary to Paul J.J. Payack’s research, the value of good writing cannot be calculated by simple word and letter counts. Here’s the real way a skilled writer controls the thoughts of a reader:

1. Disguises bias. Great PR writing is opaque in that you can’t see through to the writer’s agenda, opinions, or biases. It reads objectively and news-like in its presentation, when in reality, it quickly instills in the reader’s mind the importance of the facts, news, or story.

2. Appears in a style close to how a journalist might write it. Consider the typical news release with the obligatory corporate descriptors and disclaimers. Would it ever appear in the media in a similar format or style? Never. Whoever wrote the rule that news releases have to start with the company or product name, followed immediately by a tagline or description of the product or company, was a bad writer. Find him. Shoot him. Such notions have failed us in PR, who always champion the easy conveyance of a client’s sentiment or worldview.

3. Succeeds despite optimization. We now have a new restraint of good writing. The need to optimize news releases and blog posts for almighty Google. It’s a necessary evil. But it shouldn’t disrupt the normal flow of language.

4. Uses verbs and facts. Not adjectives. An editor of mine used to demand four facts in every sentence and a fine pruning of all adjectives. He demanded that writing be salted with power verbs (not unlike the word salted). Verbs, not adjectives, propel language. Two sentences can often be reduced to one by combining the facts of each into a single thought.

5. Plays well lyrically. Writing is lyrical. Bad writing is horsey, clunky, and plays poorly to the ear. Good writing is effortless, seemingly dispensable in the moment while lasting a lifetime in intention and meaning. It hits the right notes, clearly articulating all messages.

6. Speaks to the reader. The #1 rule of writing has always been, and will always be, know your audience. Perhaps more than any other principle, this one strikes at the heart of the grade level writing test. A good PR writer knows when to assume the voice of the CEO and speak to an audience of investors or regulators in exacting terms. But that same writer needs to understand when to assume a chatty, more personal style to score meaning with customers and employees. It might not be The Beatles, but it’s certainly not for a sixth-grader.

So I would hasten CNN not to give gurus like Paul Payack and his company, Global Language Monitor, much credence. Speeches don’t succeed or fail because they were written on a 10th-grade level. They rise or fall by the six points laid bare in this post.

Five notions about social media that must die

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:18:00 +0000

This Tuesday, we brought together a number of clients to share an evening of discussion about the issues their companies are facing with regard to social media. It was an interesting mix of people and businesses. Different industries, different problems, and a singular goal to learn from one another.

Some common themes emerged. What surprised me is that these themes are the same ones we have heard since we started taking social media seriously in 2004. While internally at our firm we feel we have come a long way in understanding the practice and implementation of social media for B2C and B2B communications, the fact is that most businesses can still be considered early adopters, even pioneers -- despite the noise level and cheerleading around social media for PR, marketing, and branding.

Here are the five themes that were common to most, if not all of our friends around the table Tuesday night.

Theme #1: Management is concerned that we can't control social media. We want control of our messages.

The Resolution: If you can't control your social media communications, then you must not be controlling any of your other communications. Your people are talking to your customers, suppliers, and partners on the phone and in e-mail. They are already representing your company. They are already the public face of the company. And they are probably already using social media to communicate, regardless of your internal policies.

Social media is nothing more than another way, a new way, for your people to communicate. Companies need to train employees on how to use it, just as companies train employees on how to present in person, on the phone, and in e-mail. This is a policy and training problem, not a technology or control problem.

Theme #2: Social media puts us at risk. The legal department will not approve our use of it. It creates a digital trail that could get us in legal trouble.

The Resolution: Social media communications are no different than e-mail or the telephone. Anyone could take any e-mail from your staff and post it on a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed (and they do). They could record a phone call and post it as a podcast (and they have). And I don't have to tell you that the first thing the lawyers subpoena in any case is the corporate e-mail database.

The discovery trail already exists, and you are already mitigating that risk with training and policies. Social media is exactly like e-mail in this regard. As with control, the legal question is answered with training and policy, not banning.

Theme #3: We're afraid people will say bad things about us.

The Resolution: First, if you are considering starting a blog, here's a surprise: You control what people post on it. If you're considering engaging more broadly in social networks and forums (ideally monitoring the Web for mentions of your brand, and reacting to those mentions), then your involvement is a plus, not a minus. Because if you're not managing your brand's mentions online, someone else is -- perhaps an angry customer.

This is no different than how you are monitoring the press for mentions of your brand, and responding when there is a negative or otherwise less than flattering review or coverage.

Why limit your reputation management only to card-carrying members of the press? You must recognize that your customers and industry pundits (who themselves are often consumers or business leaders) can impact your reputation just as effectively as the mainstream media. Monitor the press. Monitor the public. Ignore either at your peril.

Theme #4: Nobody has time for blogging or social networking.

The Resolution: You are already blogging and socially networking. You're just doing it inefficiently. You call it e-mail. You call it a phone call. You call it lunch with a client. You call it relaxing with your netbook and reading the industry trades. If you can write an e-mail to a colleague or a customer about a problem, solution, or idea, you can write a blog post.

In fact, you can take those awesome e-mails that you sit back and marvel at before hitting "Send," and learn to recognize them for what they also are: great commentary that just might be appreciated by a larger audience -- an audience of prospects and existing customers who you could, and would, attract to your company website if only you were sharing your mind with more than one person at a time.

Likewise, if you can mull over problems and solutions on the drive in or the drive home, you can digitally or tape record those thoughts and turn them into a post. And when you're surfing the Web and you read something that you think is interesting and valuable, is it too much to ask for you to click one button and share it on Twitter or Facebook or your blog? Why limit those shared links to your e-mail pals?

Ditto the topics you discuss at lunch. Sorry, but the "time hole" argument is a red herring that is, in truth, an excuse for not investing a little time to learn how to use the new media. Oh, and for the high-powered, time-pressed, hair-on-fire executives out there, it's time to ask your PR guy or gal to help you leverage your e-mails, interests, appearances, and links. That's what you're paying them for today. And in most organizations, there's nobody better suited to help.

Theme #5: We don't have the budget for social media right now.

The Resolution: You can't afford not to invest in social media. One participant at our dinner conversation generated $30 million in business, which he attributes entirely to his social media work. He doesn't have a massive Twitter network or overflowing Facebook fan page, or even a company blog.

But by using social media to identify, attract, and network with the right prospects, he transformed his company's marketing effectiveness. Imagine if his company had two, three, four people like him, doing what he does.

Another dinner guest saved $1 million in recruiting costs by attracting candidates through social networking, instead of buying ads on job sites. It took them over a year to get the corporate buy-in to go this route (even with their CEO as an advocate). But they didn't give up. And now the savings are adding up.

Another guest cut his CPL from $150 to $120 by shifting the company's marketing emphasis to social media. And the CPL is continuing to drop. Still another guest's company is investing close to a $1 million annually in dead-trees media. He just completed an ROI analysis. His comment: "We might as well light a match to that money."

He's working with his CEO, also a believer in social media, to overcome internal concerns about the risks of going social. And I'm convinced he will, with the help of the peers he networked with here, in the real world, at Gregory FCA this week.

The nutshell: The emergence of social media as a business, customer service, marketing, and communications imperative is raising questions we have already wrestled with and answered. We raised these questions about websites in the 1990s. We raised them about e-mail in the 1980s. Is there any organization that doesn't accept the fact that e-mail and websites are essential tools today?

In a few years, the same will be said about social media. You can wait and be late, and cede the early strike advantage to your competitors and upstarts. Or you can start exploiting your opportunities now by staking a claim, forming the government policies and procedures, and training your people.

A public relations game plan for BP

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:35:00 +0000

So finally this weekend, we received some good news from the Gulf Coast. BP's containment dome appears to be capturing significant amounts of the oil spill, and BP CEO Tony Hayward told the BBC he expects this latest development could lead to the vast majority of the leak being captured at, or near, the well head.

Even with this news, BP is left in a disastrous PR position, forever tattooed as the perpetrator of the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Can they ever rebound? Exxon did from the Valdez oil spill, even though a recent forensic study revealed open pools of oil still scar the shoals of Prudhoe Bay, 20 years after the catastrophe.

With more than $6 billion in first quarter earnings, BP certainly has the financial wherewithal to weather the storm. But the company has to change its approach to the public, and take real and lasting steps to systemically transform itself into a company that understands the public trust it holds in its hands every time it undertakes the risky endeavor to sink a well. Here's what I would be telling BP:

1. Put up or shut up. Now that progress is being made to capture the leaking oil, it's time for BP to put up a $1 billion remediation fund for the people of Gulf Coast. Use the money to ramp up restoration. Pay off claims. Bail out busted businesses. And clean the shores and wetlands. It's a monumental challenge that takes money. BP has the money and needs to spend it now to reclaim any hope of salvaging its global reputation. It's also in the best interest of BP shareholders. Without strong and quick action, the company faces tremendous risk that can be mitigated through sincere and immediate action.

2. Put up another $200 million to fund oil industry remediation research, centered at Louisiana State University. Since Edwin Drake, the oil industry's technological breakthroughs have focused on getting oil out of the ground. Horizontal drilling. CO2 injection. Tethered platforms. Deep water drilling needs technology to keep oil in the ground or from ever hitting the ground, beaches, and oceans. The unintended consequence of Prudhoe Bay is that the world actually believes steam and paper towels can clean up an oil spill. (They can't and they don't.) Oil industry technology has to go beyond simply drilling deeper and cleaning up the mess after the fact. The industry needs to develop new technologies to contend with the risk of today's deep water drilling, whether here, in the North Sea, or off Norway.

3. Get Tony Hayward off American TV. A recent study conducted by Gregory FCA shows that Hayward's reputation has cratered since BP started airing TV commercials with him serving as spokesperson. The American ideal of a leader isn't someone who looks like Liz Lemon's fall-back love on "30 Rock," Welsey Snipes. (No, not that Wesley Snipes.)

Separated at birth: Tony Hayward ...

Wesley Snipes (not that Wesley Snipes)
<p>YouTube Video</p>

Rather, we need to see and hear from a fellow American who has a vested interest in our country, not the whiny Hayward, who recently lamented that he can't wait for the crisis to be over so he can get his life back.

<p>YouTube Video</p>

4. Establish a bi-partisan commission to monitor and report on clean up efforts. Valdez shows us that once the crisis is over and the cameras go home, the clean up is ignored. Tap someone like George Mitchell for oversight. Task him to release monthly and quarterly reports showing how the clean up is progressing and whether there's any hope of returning the Gulf to what it had been.

5. Invest in New Orleans. Make a statement in the very heart of the Gulf. Pay to rebuild its levies (more than the federal government has done). Restore its estuaries. Work with environmental groups to restore the wetlands that once filtered Mississippi water before dumping run off into the Gulf.

6. Stop working in the messaging points. If we hear BP taking credit one more time for how well it's beach protection program is going, the federal government should pull its leases in the Gulf. Throughout the crisis, BP's PR people have been trying to plant positive stories on its website and in comments made by its executives. It's callous and failing. Stop it.

7. Develop a new level of ethics in government relations. Obviously, our federal government is incapable of regulating the businesses under its charge. The administration's early belief that BP would take care of everything was naive. As James Carville said, the "political stupidity is unbelievable." Stained as it is, BP needs to now clean house of its government relations people and replace the palm greasers with real, live enforcers.

8. Can the greenwashing. BP changed its name to drop the petroleum. It invoked a new green logo. It loves to show off its modest alternative energy projects. The truth is, there are not alternatives to oil right now. And BP isn't committed to alternatives, when you consider Deepwater Horizon cost $1 million a day to operate before it blew up and sank to the bottom of the Gulf. So stop it, and focus your attention on the mess you have made, instead of trying to convince the world you are something you are not.

Take these steps, and BP will survive. Walk away from the mess, and wrongly protect short-term shareholder dividends instead of resurrecting the company's long-term reputation, and BP could lose its North American operations, or worse, serve as the next global conglomerate to fail under its own weight.

It's now that BP's PR people, whose missteps are the fodder for tomorrow's PR text books, need to earn their keep. The world will judge BP on its response, starting today, as the containment dome starts working, and a global reputation hangs in the balance.

Can public relations free us from the tyranny of recommendation software?

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:18:00 +0000

In an interesting article in last week's Time magazine, writer Lev Grossman gives readers an inside look at how recommendation software is used by online giants such as Pandora, Netflix, and Match.com to suggest relevant topics and products.

It's a good read, and full of little-considered issues as to how this software is created and what factors go into associating one song, movie, or lover with another. Once the purview of critics and reviewers, our tastes have been commandeered by software that constantly makes associations for us.

So if you listen to Pandora, your exposure to music is being controlled by an algorithm developed according to specific characteristics shared by the songs that Pandora is serving up at any given moment.

I started to shy away from the music recommendation software of iTunes and Amazon, and stopped listening to Pandora after realizing just how limiting my own taste in music had become. A year-long fetish for Death Cab for Cutie led me down an increasingly long, melancholy diet of Radiohead, Coldplay, and My Morning Jacket that ended when my personal trainer banished "slit-your-wrist" music during workouts.

As software becomes more important to consumer choice, we run the risk of narrowing our own field of vision, making it increasingly difficult for new products and services to break through our own air defenses. While convenient, recommendation software keeps us in a safety zone of music, products, and people who we already have some familiarity with.

It relegates us to our own tribe, and doesn't allow for that rare find of something new, outside the tried-and-true that might excite, educate, or expose us to a new thought, a new belief, or at least some new music that doesn't drown itself in self-sorrow (at least the way it did for me).

And perhaps that's good news for public relations practitioners. In a world of the expected, we have the skills and know-how to introduce audiences to the unexpected. Granted, it's not without bias. But it does run against the grain of mass recommendations made by the automated brain of the common wisdom. By playing against trends and bringing new ideas forward, we have the ability to break the lockstep that comes from recommendations based on past experience.

In the old days, that would be called news -- something other than convention. And news was -- and still is -- the very lifeblood of public relations. By countering trends, inverting the expected, we PR folks, perhaps better than any other player in the information markets, can help overcome the homogenization of taste and bring forth that which is outside what we have purchased, viewed, listened to, and dated in the past.

After reading the Time article, I am left wondering whether The Beatles, The Clash, Nirvana, and other game-changing bands would have been discovered by the masses and if they would have accounted for such great shifts in pop culture. None were based on the past.

All shattered expectation, rather than played to it, which is an important basic tenant of public relations and one that might explain why Lady Gaga is such a simple incarnate of Grace Jones and Madonna, and why, if recommendation software had existed in 1961, we still might be listening to Pat Boone.

Facebook privacy controversy does nothing to damage its reputation

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Google "Facebook privacy" today and you would think that recent allegations about Facebook's privacy breaches could potentially threaten its very existence. "Could privacy be Facebook's Waterloo," asks BusinessWeek. "Has Facebook Gone Rogue?" is the title of a NPR segment on All Things Considered.

It harkens me back to 1996 when I sat in on a focus group for PhotoNet, a former client and pioneer of online photography. The group members claimed they would never post their personal photos online because of privacy issues.

Skip ahead nearly 15 years, and it's a requirement for every overly engaged parent to post photos of their six-year-old's weekend soccer game on Facebook.

Against that backdrop, Mike Lizun, here at Gregory FCA, was interested to learn how the current privacy controversy might be threatening the image and reputation of the world's largest social network, with some 400 million users.

He asked Brian McDermott, our director of media research, to fire up Nielsen's BuzzMetrics to identify Facebook's online sentiment by analyzing over 100 million blogs, forums, message boards, tweets, and traditional media.

After following the media, we expected to see big damage to Facebook's image as it deals with criticisms from everyone from Sen. Chuck Shumer to a group called Quit Facebook Day, which claims to have 15,000 members ready to quit Facebook on May 31, 2010.

Well, guess what? Just like the online focus group that wrongly predicted the failure of online photo sharing, the current media and political backlash against Facebook has had no impact at all on the brand or consumer sentiment toward it. In fact, Facebook continues to enjoy a positive 4.6 sentiment rating, with five being the highest and negative five being the lowest.

LIKE: Facebook's sentiment stays positive (click to enlarge)

What accounts for the disparity between the media reports and the consumer reality? First, as the focus group showed, consumers always seem to be more concerned about privacy in the abstract than they are in reality.

How else can you reconcile our willingness to share personal details online, but then object if an entity gathers and uses this information for marketing? Or how about the credit card anomaly?

We gladly hand over a credit card to a tattooed waiter who looks they haven't slept in three days. But entering those numbers into a secure online retailer's website? Well, that makes us squeamish.

We all seem to guard our privacy heroically at times only to misuse it by telling anyone and everyone all we can about ourselves. And that's the very nature of Facebook. For many, it provides a place to tell our stories and share the very intimacy many of us seem to be missing in real-world relationships.

That's a powerful attractant that seems to easily overcome any concern we might have about our personal information ever being used against us. After all, you would think that so much negative reporting and buzz would impact the brand called Facebook. But for now, I have to run and update my status.

UPDATE: Media continues to follow this story, and I left additional thoughts on CNET's coverage and The Wall Street Journal's coverage.

Mommy, why don't companies talk like human beings?

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:54:00 +0000

Part of the public's disappointment over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico centers on our inability to gain any real information about the catastrophe. Five-thousand feet of water presents ample opportunity to conceal the truth, and BP has done little to nothing to inform the world as to the extent of the spill.

In an industry that prides itself on numbers (I should know, because my first job was working in public relations for an energy company compiling its annual fact book), it's remarkable that BP can't calculate the rate of flow from a well that cost $1 million a day to operate.

BP's unwillingness to share these numbers suggests that the spill is much larger than being estimated. Even more troubling is why our government refuses to force BP to divulge numbers, or even send our own research vessels and scientists to gain insight.

So then you turn to BP's website. Its homepage now opens in big bold letters that read, "Gulf of Mexico Response." There are a lot of links present, some of which are way too self-serving at this point in the crisis. I do give BP credit for linking to actual press interviews, many of which challenge BP managers for answers.

Click on the "TODAY Show" interview where Matt Lauer confronts BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles. Suttles is quick to note BP's success in inserting a four-inch tube into the collapsed underwater pipeline. But Suttles gives no idea how much of an impact the procedure will make, even after Lauer analogizes the process to inserting a straw into a swimming pool.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now turn to BP's own press releases, and you understand why BP's public response is failing. In written communications, the company turns to engineering jargon to give little real information about the incident. It makes you wonder, why don't companies talk like human beings? In times like these, why wouldn't BP want to impart meaning, instead of confusion?

Take the opening headline of one release. It reads, "Subsea Source Control and Containment." I assume the company is trying to update us on its progress in stemming the flow of crude oil. But that's left to our best guess, when the company refuses to even speak in plain English.

You can debate whether subsea is a word or just a term of art in the oil and gas industry. After all, the sea is water, not the air above it. So the subsea must be something underneath the sea -- maybe mud, maybe bedrock, maybe oil reserves. Who knows? Wouldn't it be nice if BP had just said, "Here's an update on our efforts to contain the spill on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico?" See, I would have understood that. But then the release gets even better:

"Subsea efforts continue to focus on progressing options to stop the flow of oil from the well through interventions via the blow out preventer (BOP), and to collect the flow of oil from the leak points."

"Focus on progressing options?" What is BP trying to say? I presume it wants to say that it is simultaneously pursuing a number of options to stop the underwater oil spill by working on the blow out preventer and collecting leaking oil. But the sentence is so poorly constructed, you don't know what it is saying.

I am sure the language was all twisted and edited by round after round of legal review, as well as the industry's own prescribed methods of responding to problems.

See in da earl bidnis, there is no such thing as a spill. Note that BP calls the spill a flow and a leak point. I can just imagine the powers that be debating the difference between spills, leaks, and flows. "A leak is a drip. A spill is a calamity," they might be saying to one another over a secure teleconference between New Orleans and London.

It's an energy company trick I learned early in my career, when a vice president of public relations explained to me that coal is not black, dark, dusty, or chalky. Rather, it's rich and luminous, and should be characterized as such in all press materials.

All this answers the question, "Why can't companies talk like human beings?" Some of the smartest people in the world work in the energy business, which is precisely why they refuse to talk like human beings. Using clear and compelling language would require BP to answer the prime question, "How much oil is being spilled?" Right now, that's the last thing BP intends to tell us, and it is doing a good job of it.

Reply round up: My responses to the latest comments

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:22:00 +0000

We've been receiving a steady stream of great comments lately on our blog. I love hearing your insights, feedback, and contributions to the conversations we have here. I wanted to respond to some the most recent comments you've shared with us.

RE: Each person who commented on The hottest new job in public relations: chief content officer

You're not the only one who found value in the post about chief content officers. We received loads of e-mails and six comments on the topic. It seems to have hit a real chord.

My colleague here at Gregory FCA forwarded me a post from David Meerman Scott who used the term "brand journalism" to communicate the same notion I expressed in the post. I am not comfortable about the use of journalism in this context.

Rather, I think content is a little more transparent. Journalism connotes objectivity. A chief content officer will always have to have the corporation's best interests at heart. But more and more, that interest has to include a degree of transparency, less the audience simply stops listening because of the bias.

Thanks for your note.

Greg

RE: Frank Freudberg on When good social media goes bad

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Frank. In communications, the future is hitting us like a giant wave. We shared an important mentor years ago. Sid might put it a bit more bluntly. Get up every morning and run like hell! I'm eagerly awaiting your next book.

Greg

RE: Anonymous on When good social media goes bad

Thanks for your kind comments. With the blog, we're just trying to tell it like it is from inside the world of Gregory FCA. It sounds like you share our interest and inquisitiveness about the changing face of public relations. Perhaps we should talk?

Greg

RE: Anthony Graziano on Gregory FCA is 20 years old today

Thank you for the compliment. We love working with you guys at Integra. It's been a very good ride. We are fortunate at Gregory FCA to have attracted the quality of talent that you reference in your comment. Kathryn, Kathleen, and Leigh have set some pretty high standards, and I appreciate you singling them out for the credit! Now, if only this real estate recession would end!

Greg

RE: Elaine Hughes on 48 hours of bliss with my new iPad

You're right. The iPad can't run Flash, a real bumper when you go to Hulu and learn that you can't watch any of the videos. Let's hope Mr. Jobs makes friends with Adobe.

I do think the iPad has the ability to replace my desktop. I have found lots of apps to help me get there. One allows me to see my network files. Another allows your iPad to emulate a Windows 7 computer. I think we'll get there. But right now, an inability to print to my network and the challenge of typing directly on the screen has divided my time between the iPad and my Windows-based laptop.

Greg

When good social media goes bad

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Five rules to remember when structuring a social media campaign

Fifty blogs, thousands of posts, and millions of tweets later, I realize that great social media campaigns have the power to build and enhance reputation and awareness, while bad campaigns can damage and distract even great companies.

In the froth of the creative process, all too often, the brakes come off. What would be considered offensive or high risk in the real world is thought of as cutting-edge and acceptable in the digital domain. After all, it is the Wild West, right? To gain attention, don't you have to scream and insult?

Not at all, and nor should you. Instead, it would always behoove the creatives in the room to work alongside the suits and gray hairs in order to understand the risks associated with social media -- and mitigate them. So here are five golden rules to always remember when structuring a social media campaign:

1. Look at the campaign from every angle and audience. The campaign might work for teens. Then again, it might offend employees, shareholders, and other consumer segments. The first rule of communications is to know your audience, and that audience should include anyone affected by the message.

2. Have a real business objective. At the outset, the objective needs to be defined and documented. After 25 years of working in public relations, I have come to realize that social media offers PR firms the Holy Grail of being able to demonstrate results. Set performance metrics at the outset and build the program accordingly.

3. Forget about viral. Oh so many brand marketers create videos hoping they go viral, but so few contrived videos ever do. Those videos that do break through and generate millions of views are often accidental, with no marketing message whatsoever, like David After Dentist.

The other kind of viral video -- the kind that some marketers point clients to and suggest that they are cheaper and easier to do than good old-fashioned marketing -- requires millions of dollars to make. After all, compelling has a price tag. Check out Saatachi & Saatachi's T-Mobile Dance.

Even here, there's a degree of authenticity in that T-Mobile went the extra yard, spent real money, undertook a creative execution, and complied with the rules of the Internet (short, high-impact, and seemingly real life). Bystanders in the T-Mobile video appear to be real, so the viewer believes it's an authentic stunt. Authenticity is the key factor with viral video. If viewers sniff out a fraud, it's game over -- a tree falling in the forest.

4. Digital communications live on forever. Make a fool of yourself once, and the act could be forever memorialized, showing up every time someone Googles the company or brand.

5. Be transparent. Don't believe you can make a campaign succeed by faking posts or fan club membership; writing phony reviews; or conscripting employees, friends, or family to take part. What's more, it could be illegal. Grassroots marketing must be transparent and the sponsor must be disclosed. A company that thinks it can hide on the Internet and use anonymity to sell or persuade simply doesn't understand digital communications, and in the end, can easily be outted by purists who lay in wait to embarrass the insincere.

48 hours of bliss with my new iPad

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:43:00 +0000

I'd rather be on my iPad ...

So it came. Friday, just as promised. The very day the new 3G iPad became available, it appeared at my office, ready to be loved and adored. A couple of staff members gathered around, grunting and groaning in excitement as it lit up ... like Neanderthals first viewing fire.

Sure, it's elegant. And yes, for any iPhone user, it's inherently familiar. I had 48 hours while watching a daughter's track meet and then relaxing at a fishing cabin to play with it and review it. Some conclusions:

Will the iPad revolutionize the world? Not everyone's. Its limited computing power (can't run simultaneous apps at once) will confound linear thinkers. But for those of us who love media, and love to read to stay current, it will be as revolutionary at Google.

The iPad's New York Times app sets the bar high -- like the West Point high jumper I watched all day Saturday -- and unfolds like rich digital parchment. It dares you to engage, and hastens you to flick through stories and tap to read more.

Sunday morning I awoke, 40 miles from nowhere to enjoy the Times. Just me, the silence, and a hatch of March Browns that I ignored in favor of a too-strong cup of mountain-brewed coffee in the pre-dawn glow of a new day.

Will the iPad liberate me from my desktop? My desk sits as a wall between myself and office visitors. A flat screen and laptop set the divide. Will the iPad rid me of such barbed-wire clutter? Perhaps not at work. I fear I will still need my Windows-based box, and its 10-minute boot up time and ganglia of wires.

But at home? On the road? I see a new friend to comfort me while sitting on the sofa watching Hulu and YouTube. Or in bed, checking mail or watching movies.

Will the iPad spur my personal productivity? Fortunately, I am in the creative arts and the world of possibility opens dramatically with the iPad in hand. I have already played stupid iPad tricks on friends and family, downloading an electronic banner application to send evening messages across Penns Creek to a friend's fishing cottage.

But it's much more. Unlike the single functionality of the Kindle, the iPad is part productivity tool, part gaming device, part movie theater, part mp3 player and newsstand -- in short, it's like my son says about his college. "It's like someone built a place just for me!" Thanks, Steve Jobs, for building a place just for me.

Is it flawless? No. Not at all. Typing is way hard on the digital keyboard, and I find myself using the same thumb-pounding strategy I do on the iPhone. It's impossible to type quickly or accurately, which is why I plan to buy the optional keyboard.

And yes, I am experiencing some pretty frustrating WiFi issues. It seems incapable of remembering WiFi passwords when you reconnect to a secure network. And AT&T saw fit to accept my purchase of a cellular plan and bill me, but not give me 3G access.

I am dreading today's call to AT&T's customer service. (Hit one if you want to speak with a poorly trained service rep who will have to talk to other techs to resolve your issue, and hit two if you haven't found a 3G zone in the past two weeks.)

But overall, the iPad is my chosen device for the moment, and I fear it could become my existentialist computing experience in that "I am because iPad."

The Philadelphia Inquirer: winning by losing

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:35:00 +0000

The loss of The Philadelphia Inquirer to its investors could set the stage for an entirely new way of news gathering and storytelling in the digital age. A call to wipe away all expectations and start anew ...

I tend not to talk local when blogging because so much of our business is national in scope. But I am obliged to reference yesterday's news about the purchase of the bankrupt Philadelphia Inquirer by its creditors. The move marks the end of a long-fought battle by its current ownership and management to keep the paper in local hands, headed by former PR guy and publisher Brian Tierney.

How the Inquirer fell into bankruptcy underscores the plight of traditional media. Pages are falling (8 percent in the past quarter), ad revenue is drying up, and subscribers are turning to free online news services -- everything from Newser to Twitter -- to stay abreast of the day's events.

Personally, I was pulling hard for Brian Tierney, to whom I owe much in my own career for cultivating a local PR market and then moving on. That opened a lot of opportunity for my firm to emerge as the largest public relations company in our region. But alas, the Inquirer is now in the hands of investors, destined to be stripped down and resold to a media conglomerate or private equity play.

It's unfortunate, because so much could have been done to save the paper. To no one's fault, the Inquirer was too deeply in debt and too deeply steeped in legacy thinking and business practices.

That's a hard juxtaposition against what The New York Times or USA Today is doing to be in front of their audiences, "regardless of where they are," as Jennifer Preston, social media editor at The New York Times, told us only two weeks ago at a national media panel we sponsored here in Philadelphia.

Laden with debt, struggling with labor issues, the Inquirer simply couldn't turn fast enough in the water. But all is not lost. As they say, for every door closed ...

If I were Brian Tierney (which, confidentially I have sometimes wished I were), I would go back to my cadre of local partners and present an alternative. The Inquirer sold for $139 million, many more millions than what was expected for this aging brand. While current ownership didn't win the auction, it does have some valuable assets.

First and foremost, it knows the legacy issues that prevented the paper from changing fast enough to save its own skin. At the same time, the new owners have suggested that they will fire most employees and rehire them under new terms, overcoming any non-compete issues in luring the best of the best to a new media property.

So why not take another run at the Inky? Raise a fraction of the $650 million to $700 million that has been invested by the last two owners of the Inquirer, and start a fresh online property focused on Philadelphia news.

Start over from scratch, unencumbered by printing presses, employment contracts, home delivery, and oh so much other 1990s thinking. Cherry pick the best reporters. Assign them extremely focused beats that appeal to upscale, wired consumers. Get them blogging and conversing with audiences. Increase their output from daily to real time. Celebritize them. Brand them. Think of big, box-busting ideas.

How about an online forum about the Philly mob, fueled by anonymous comments from South Philly readers? A gossip blog about Eagles and Sixers cheerleaders? A discount shoppers blog where readers can download time-sensitive coupons, along with real reporting about great deals readers uncover?

Instead of bemoaning Craigslist and how it ravaged classified sales, ape it. Create a free local flea market online to build traffic and win back readers from eBay, C-list, and others. Or how about this: Conduct regular online real estate auctions to help the city move its backlog of foreclosed and vacant condos and apartments? How many of us would be interested in that?

Then, set your reporters loose to report the news through every possible channel, including blogs, websites, smartphone apps, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Do smart deals to build distribution. At the airport, make your site the landing page for free WiFi. Pound anyone landing in Philadelphia with stories, news, offers, and ads from local hotels and restaurants, real estate brokers, and car dealers.

Win over local G4 providers, like Clear, and subsidize their offering in exchange for content. Go to Comcast. Urge it to junk its feeble online news service, and replace it with the best reporters and best reporting. Give it content under a private label.

In short, engage, engage, engage. At every gas station, have your reporters giving video updates, centered on breaking news, traffic, sports, weather, and the market. Reach deep into the psychology of readers and transform them into citizen journalists, covering everything from fantasy football, to spring gardening, to the best burger joints in the Delaware Valley. Light up the city and its audiences. Make them part of the renaissance from the beginning.

And then use this new platform to build revenue and out-flank any new owner of the Inky as they try to do something similar. With a clean slate, you can move quicker and win the most attractive segment of the audience, leaving the aging and shrinking legacy audience to the new owners.

Let them print it, truck it, consign it, and collect nickels and dimes for their effort, while you own the audience most coveted by marketers. Give these marketers a way to connect directly with your readers. Monetize the experience and provide real ROI based on real response.

Sure, a door closed yesterday. But the rest of the world is moving on. We need some creative thinking to help legacy media bridge the digital divide. If not here, then where? If not now, then when?

The hottest new job in public relations: chief content officer

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:14:00 +0000

I'm going to make a call. In three to five years, a new member of the C-suite will emerge. He or she will work shoulder to shoulder with CMOs and CEOs. The job description will look nothing like we have ever seen. They will be called chief content officer.

Their purpose will be to originate and share a constant stream of information flowing from inside the four walls of the corporation directly through new digital channels to partners, customers, clients, employees, prospects, and investors. Their skill set will be part journalist, part brand manager, and part public relations professional.

They will be charged with capturing and articulating the character and voice of the company, and they will be responsible for ushering in a new era of corporate transparency -- a world where outsiders can gain a true and authentic view of the company. Filters will be fewer. Responses quicker. Information will flow more freely.

If the evolving nature of public relations is teaching us anything, it's that content is now the single most important asset at our disposal for conditioning and positioning companies for increased revenue and value. As traditional media struggles to find relevancy, more and more corporations will turn to social and digital media to communicate directly with online audiences.

Entire new corporate domains will appear, peopled by writers, editors, videographers, podcasters, and technologists, who will work in unison to identify relevant information from inside the corporation, publish it, and then manage the pathways through which it is distributed.

The chief content officer will stand in the shoes of a traditional publisher, delicately balancing the need for quality content to find and keep audiences against the corporation's drive to sell and promote. The created content will attain a new level of truth and authenticity.

If a company messes up, the CCO will be charged with the clean up, addressing issues directly online. If a company struggles, that same CCO will be responsible for publishing rapid response investor information to shorten the cycle of pain, not unlike how 24/7 news channels have cut attention spans and focal points.

And if a company wants to engage, the CCO will be tasked with finding and crystallizing information and content that can catalyze clients and customers, aggregating and engaging them through micro-topics that speak directly to narrow-band niches.

Some companies like Ford are already starting to break this ground. Scott Monty, the firm's Head of Social Media, has direct access to CEO Alan Mulally, and works closely with him and other executives to develop social media programs and content, and share information on social networks.

The CCO job description will read something like this:

If you can write like a journalist, think like a marketer, and understand the vast and shifting seas of digital communications, Mega Global Corporation needs you to express our world view and communicate our value to financial and consumer markets, partners, and governments.

You must be able to manage a worldwide editorial staff, producing both written and visual communications, and must be able to deliver daily, even hourly, content that is fully optimized to gain visibility over digital pathways.

This individual will report directly to the CEO, but will have the strength of character to beat back corporate encroachment in favor of honest, accurate content that provides real value to worldwide audiences.

Most important, this individual must understand how to monetize this content throughout the enterprise, converting incoming interest into business opportunities for the organization as a whole. Compensation: Name your price if you can deliver on the seemingly impossible yet urgent responsibilities described here.

Some CMOs are taking on many of these duties now. But as our communications channels continue to expand into the digital market, companies need to disseminate content to an increasing array of online audiences. It's becoming a job unto itself. One-way communication is not enough. Companies need to inform, connect, and engage with their customers and partners in meaningful ways, wherever they live.

Video from Gregory FCA's national media panel

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:24:00 +0000

We've been rolling out coverage from our recent national media panel, "The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media." I've shared with you my feedback and reactions to the conversations and insights, the podcast of the entire discussion, and today, we bring you the video capturing the event. You can watch it unfold by hitting play below. Please feel free to share it with colleagues and friends.

When you watch the video, the panelists from left to right are:

Laurie Burkitt -- Writer, Forbes
Riva Richmond -- Freelance Writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal
Ted Anthony -- Assistant Managing Editor, Associated Press
Jennifer Preston - Social Media Editor, The New York Times
Sara Clemence -- Co-Founder and Editor, RecessionWire.com
Brian Dresher -- Manager of Social Media and Digital Partnerships, USA Today
Sree Sreenivasan -- Associate Professor and Dean of Student Affairs, Journalism, Columbia Journalism School

After you watch the discussion, feel free to share what you learned in the comments.

Podcast from Gregory FCA's national media panel

greg@gregoryfca.com (Greg Matusky) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:49:00 +0000

As promised, here is the podcast from Gregory FCA's national media panel round table, The Art of News and Storytelling in the Age of Social and Digital Media. This is the complete audio from the panel discussion, which brought together top reporters, writers, editors, and managers from around the country to talk about how social and digital media is changing news and storytelling.

Panelists that you'll hear from on the podcast include:

Ted Anthony -- Assistant Managing Editor, Associated Press
Laurie Burkitt -- Writer, Forbes
Sara Clemence -- Co-Founder and Editor, RecessionWire.com
Jennifer Preston - Social Media Editor, The New York Times
Sree Sreenivasan -- Associate Professor and Dean of Student Affairs, Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
Riva Richmond -- Freelance Writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal
Brian Dresher -- Manager of Social Media and Digital Partnerships, USA Today

Their insights and perspectives are from right where the rubber meets the road. There was a lot to be learned from the discussion, and I wrote about my short list of take aways the other day.

If you attended the event, give the podcast a listen for something you might have missed or want to hear again. If you didn't make it, lend your ear to find out how the media is using new communications pathways to tell more compelling stories, connect with readers, and build brands online.

If you'd like to listen to the podcast on the go in your mp3 player, you can download it to your computer by right-clicking the podcast link, and hitting "Save Link As." From there, you can upload it to your mp3 player and listen to it in the car, while jogging, etc. Or, you can also read through the transcript if you'd prefer.

We welcome everyone to leave a comment and share their thoughts on the event and what they learned. We'll have the video of the panel discussion on the blog next, so check back to watch it in full.