The difference between companies that communicate well and those that don't

We recently had the privilege of being a premiere sponsor of the NFTE Philadelphia Visionary Gala. The annual event is held by the Philadelphia chapter of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) to celebrate the area's youth entrepreneurs and role models in the business community.

The gala featured sponsors' advice on entrepreneurship, business growth, marketing, and communications. As part of it, we wrote an overview about the importance of effective communications in building value for your company. I thought it had a lot of wisdom in it, and I wanted to share it with our blog readers.

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Why is effective communication critical to the success of your business?

Businesses that communicate well enjoy a 30 percent higher value than those that fail to communicate effectively with their constituents and stakeholders. At the same time, a new era of corporate transparency means that businesses owe it to their customers, employers, partners, and investors to share key information in order to strengthen their brand and enhance their corporate reputation.

A new era of digital communications has opened an array of new channels that businesses can use to educate, enlighten, and engage audiences. Enterprises, both large and small, across the globe are embracing these news channels and using them to better communicate their narrative and control their storytelling in order to win visibility, cement alliances, build relationships, drive sales, and ultimately better connect and influence the decision makers who purchase their products or services.

In this new world order, where businesses are now publishers and many publishers are ironically out of business, those companies that understand the power of information and content, and can effectively deliver it to audiences worldwide are bound to win on the global battlefield, where perception is often just as important as performance.

What Anthony Weiner can teach us about online reputation management

If there is one thing that we have learned over the past couple of weeks, it’s that careless use of social media can damage your reputation within a matter of seconds. Whether you are a person or business, politician or average Joe, given the chance, social media can be an equal opportunity reputation destroyer. 

OK, so we didn’t just learn that over the past couple of weeks. We’ve learned it over and over again. So why do otherwise seemingly smart people seem to lose all traces of intelligence, or common sense for that matter, as soon as they log in to their favorite social media sites?

Could the false sense of security we get when we sit safely behind a computer make us fall victim to the “that only happens to someone else” syndrome?

Whether you’re a seven-term politician debating whether to send a college girl a shirtless picture of yourself in boxer briefs, or you are a business that understands the importance of proactively managing your reputation, there are a few things about online reputation management we can all learn from @RepWeiner.

The top 10 public relations trends of 2011

What a time to be in public relations! The world keeps evolving faster and faster for those of us who revel in the media, and love technology and all that it unlocks. So with the start of 2011, it's always a good time to look ahead at the trends that will change our industry in the year to come.

1. Integration will be everything. No longer will traditional public relations and social media exist on islands. The two will meld together as part of a bigger, broader whole simply defined as public relations. We call this transformation the great move from "public relations to public relationships." And it's encompassing every aspect of corporate communications, including media buying and advertising, to lift the impact of entire communications campaigns. Essentially, integrated PR becomes a force multiplier for the universe of marketing.

Media malpractice or more?

Was the Quran-burning story a result of media malfeasance or an example of a non-story made a story by the legitimacy of others? 

What started as a tweet in July gave way to one of the most unimportant and over-reported stories of the year. And only by analyzing the media's response to Pastor Terry Jones' threat to burn a copy of the Quran can we appreciate the more nuanced side of public opinion and reputation management.



How could an unknown, unimportant, fringe figure with only 30 followers come to dominate national headlines for nearly a week? And why, at a time of great national economic and political uncertainty, did the media invest so many resources in such a non-story, overlooking real news with true gravitas?

Certainly, it could have all been the lunacy of the situation, juxtaposed against the mosque-building controversy near Ground Zero. For those in the media who support the building of the mosque, the Quran burning provides further evidence of anti-Islam sentiment and ices an already slippery slope they believe America is headed down.

But dig deeper and you discover that the real fan of the flame had nothing to do with New York mosque-building or media bent left or right. Rather, the Quran story is a perfect example of how we as PR counsels have to advise our clients. Every day, we must remind our clients that every issue does not warrant a response, and commenting to or about lunatics is a surefire way of elevating a story best left untold.

I am reminded of a recent issue about an iron manufacturer that was facing allegations of hiring illegal immigrants. A distorted and heavily edited YouTube video suggested as much. But the issue itself was nothing more than a union trying to undermine an open-shop business. Enraged, the client wanted to go on the offensive and make public the union's dirty tricks.

The smarter tact, though, was to ignore a potentially inflammatory situation that if handled poorly, could have transformed the client into a central figure in a national debate over illegal workers. We urged them to relent. They listened. They went back to selling iron, no less the wear.

In the case of Pastor Terry Jones, the story became a story after Gen. David Petraeus, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and President Barack Obama either reached out or chimed in on the issue, thus elevating it to the status of news. Pastor Jones rode the coattails of other men's errors and gained weight and prominence. Once this standard was met, media were free to cover the issue with impunity as to their own wisdom. A non-news story became news because of another's mismanagement.

It's a common situation -- one we as PR practitioners increasingly face in a world where anyone can gain voice, no matter their legitimacy. The Internet provides the forum. But does it all require a response? The answer depends on:

1. Are you effectively monitoring? Averting self-triggered communication annihilation is often as easy as knowing what's being said about you, your company, and its brand. In the Quran case, media were monitoring the situation, and knew that Islamic media were covering it. But that wasn't enough to elevate the issue to a story domestically. Rather it required legitimate responses from legitimate sources -- Petraeus, Gates, and Obama -- to trigger coverage. If level heads had prevailed, they would have realized that Terry Jones did not warrant a response, and the risk of doing so was transforming it into a national media story.

2. Who is the source and is it legitimate? Terry Jones was only legitimized after national figures responded to him. Our military and political figures need to stay clear of the lunatic fringe, rather than invite them into the dialogue.

3. Who are the influencers? The hothouse of the Internet can incubate non-stories into stories. CNN's Rick Sanchez, who first covered this story stateside after seeing it on Twitter in July, did us all a disservice by not ignoring a tweeting moron.

4. Is there any way to respond short of a public forum? Political and military leaders have a full arsenal of tools to respond. Does it have to be public, in light of media scrutiny?

5. Who responds, if a response is required? The Terry Jones case is directly analogous to any number of comments that take place 24/7 online. Those that require a response can often be taken care of by service-level employees, not the CEO. By elevating the response to Terry Jones to the most powerful people in the world, a story was made, the die was cast, and the rest of the madness ensued.

How conspiracy theories affect reputation management

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.

Five notions about social media that must die

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.

Facebook privacy controversy does nothing to damage its reputation

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.

The hottest new job in public relations: chief content officer

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.

Tiger Woods' reputation craters after press conference

The great PR debate rages on whether Tiger Woods' strategy for reclaiming his reputation worked, and whether the mea culpa performance last Friday helped or harmed his future.

But hey, the proof is in the pudding. You can debate whether Tiger was wooden or sincere, and if his attempted manipulation hindered or helped. But an online analysis that we performed internal to Gregory FCA shows his strategy failed ... miserably.

By analyzing over 100 million blogs, forums, message boards, tweets, and traditional media over the weekend, we discovered that, as of today, Tiger's sentiment among the American public is lower than at any time since the controversy erupted last November. It has fallen further since his so-called press conference.

SUNK: Tiger's reputation is on the downswing (click to enlarge)