Archive for January, 2010

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A Bittersweet Moment

10.01.29

When I joined Thornley Fallis Communications in 2008, I quickly found myself paired-up with an account coordinator as we began to build-out our social media practice. Over the following months we worked closely together on pretty much every project I touched, and despite both being extremely stubborn we found we worked well together. I also watched (with a little pride) as she learned and grew, and in September last year I had the pleasure of promoting her to “consultant.”

Unfortunately for us, all good things come to an end. Yesterday was Kerri Birtch‘s last day at Thornley Fallis. She leaves behind her a hole that will be challenging to fill as she’s been a central part of our team over the last 18 months. I’m sad to see Kerri go, but proud of her for what she’s become and I wish her the best possible success in her new role (which I’ll let her announce in her own time).

On a related note, I’m pleased to announce (although she beat me to it… twice!) that Jessica Muhlbier will be joining our social media team as an account coordinator next week. While Kerri has left big shoes to fill, Jess has some great experience under her belt and her own distinct set of strengths. We think she’ll be a fantastic addition to the TFC/76design, and look forward to welcoming her to our team on Monday.

Posted in: Thornley Fallis Communications

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The World Won’t End Without Your Tweets

10.01.28

Social media can be a compulsive beast. It’s easy to feel a ‘need’ to keep putting out content through your various channels; no-where is this more true right now than on Twitter. I’ve written about that topic before, and I’ve also discovered the importance of unplugging occasionally.

So, what to do when a client feels like they can’t let their account lie dormant, even for a few days?

Todd Defren wrote a thought-provoking  post earlier this week, asking if people thought his company had done the right thing when a client asked them to take over his Twitter account and “tweet” on his behalf. Their reaction:

“Yes, we would tweet from his account, but with the following conditions:

— Prior to the event, he must tweet, “During the show some of my tweeting will be supplemented by our extended team.” We felt that the term “extended team” was appropriate, suggesting that that term covered both internal and 3rd party colleagues.

— A reminder to that effect would go out, regularly, throughout the conference, i.e., every 10th tweet would remind followers that someone besides the executive might be “at the controls” of his Twitter account.

—When character spaces permitted, we’d add a #team hashtag to denote that the tweet was not published by the exec — but honestly, this attribution fell away more often than not; we largely relied on the “every 10th tweet” approach to cover our ethical backsides.”

Todd asked us, “how would you have handled such a request?” My initial response, posted as a comment on Todd’s post, was that I might have considered disclosing more fully but that in general they seemed to have approached it the right way.

Then, once again, I had a conversation with a colleague that made me think differently.

In one of our social media team meetings, Kerri Birtch suggested that we should really be thinking about a different question: did the client really have to appear to be online all the time?

Why did they feel the need to be online – was it for ego-based reasons or a genuine business need? Could the CEO have simply tweeted that they’d be at a conference and would be paying less attention over the next few days? Could they have posted a heads-up on a company blog for people who missed their Twitter announcement? Why did they not feel it was ok to be less active for a few days?

I don’t know the answers to those questions as I don’t have the context, but Kerri’s thoughts really highlighted a question we all need to ask of ourselves and of clients more often:

Why?

Posted in: ethics, Twitter

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Win A Ticket To The Art Of Marketing Conference

10.01.27

We’re heading into conference season again soon, with a whole slew of events including Social Media Week (next week), PodCamp Toronto (Feb 20-21), SXSW Interactive (March 12-16) all coming up in the next six weeks or so.

One event that’s caught my attention several times is the upcoming Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto on March 2 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. With a great lineup of six bestselling authors, there’s something for anyone working in a communications role at this event:

The good folks at The Art of Productions, who are organizing this event, have offered me the chance to attend this event. What’s more, they’re also giving me one more ticket to offer to a lucky reader of this site.

I’ve seen a few other contests for tickets to this event, so I’ll change the format up a little and give some love to other blogs. For a chance to win the ticket, just leave a comment on this post and include a link to a recent blog post you recommend other people read, and say why you think it’s worth checking out. It doesn’t matter whose site it is; just make it a good one!

I’ll pick a winner on Feb 8, so make sure you enter before then (and make sure you include a real email address when you submit your comment or I won’t be able to contact you!).

Note: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Tamara Gruber on winning the ticket!

For those who’d rather be sure of getting their ticket, readers of this site can use promo code SK23 to get their ticket at $50 off, for just $349.

In the meantime, check out the video for the event:

Posted in: events, miscellaneous

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31 Books To Live Your 2010 By

10.01.26

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my 2010 reading challenge – reading 26 books over the next 52 weeks – and asked for your help in fleshing-out my reading list for the remainder of the year. I’ve now pulled together the suggestions of people who commented, to form my 2010 reading list.

On Monday I posted my review of Feeding Frenzy by John Harmon (in summary: read it!) – the first of those 26 books (I’ve almost finished the next book – The Whuffie Factor – too).

Here is my planned reading list for the rest of 2010. You’ll note that, with the two I already mentioned, there are way more than 26 here so I’ll either have to speed up or prioritise – there are just too many books I want to read!


Dave Fleet's to-read book recommendations, reviews, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists
  1. The Fall Of Advertising And The Rise Of PR – Al Ries and Laura Ries
  2. Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
  3. In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr
  4. Twitterville – Shel Israel
  5. Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell
  6. Beyond Bullet Points – Cliff Atkinson
  7. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures – Malcolm Gladwell
  8. Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
  9. Drive – Daniel H. Pink
  10. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage – Roger Martin
  11. Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation – Grant McCracken
  12. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – Nicholas Cristakis
  13. Baked In: The Power Of Aligning Marketing and Product Innovation – Alex Bogusky
  14. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide – Henry Jenkins
  15. The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It – Joshua Ramo
  16. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable about Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny – Robin Sharma
  17. The Butterfly Hunter: Adventures of People Who Found Their True Calling Way Off the Beaten Path – Chris Ballard
  18. What Would Google Do? – Jeff Jarvis
  19. Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends – Tim Sanders
  20. The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary – Joseph Michelli
  21. The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization – Tom Kelley
  22. Less Is More – Jason Jennings
  23. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
  24. The High Road – Terry Fallis (not yet available)
  25. Groundswell – Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li
  26. Putting the Public Back in Public Relations – Brian Solis and Deirdie Breakenridge
  27. Superfreakonomics – Stephen D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner
  28. Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
  29. 1984 – George Orwell

I’m sure this list will change, especially given the increasing number of books I’m being pitched to review, so I’m using Goodreads to organize my reading for the year. Feel free to connect with me over there (thanks to Amy Mengel, Tamara Gruber and Amanda Laird for the tip on Goodreads).

What do you think of the list?

Posted in: books

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Book Review: Feeding Frenzy

10.01.25

Feeding FrenzyA couple of months ago I read a compelling post from Gerald Baron – aka the guy behind Crisisblogger, one of my must-read sites. The post described a book named Feeding Frenzy by Jon Harmon as “one of the best crisis management books out there.” That’s high praise from a man with his own book on the subject, and I ordered a copy of the book on the spot.

The Ford-Firestone crisis

As the book cover puts it, “the Ford-Firestone tire crisis was the biggest business story of 2000-2001. Deadly and mysterious rollover accidents of Ford Explorers with failing Firestone tires took a toll of more than 270 lives in the U.S. and at least 100 more in Venezuela and other hot-climate countries.” As the head of public relations for Ford Truck team during this crisis, Harmon gives an insider’s perspective on the team’s efforts to understand what was happening and to manage the fallout from media, trial lawyers, safety advocates and the U.S. Congress.

Having now read Harmon’s book, I have to agree with Baron that it’s a fantastic read. I recommend it for anyone remotely interested in crisis communications, or communications in general for that matter.

Easy to read

Feeding Frenzy is a page-turner. From start to finish, you’ll find yourself hooked on the tale Harmon weaves as the crisis escalates and the tension between Ford and Firestone increases. While this is a book about crisis communications, it’s written as a narrative and a compelling one at that.

A side benefit of Harmon’s narrative style is that the book is very easy to read. You’ll find yourself flipping back and forth to remind yourself of the roles of key players who re-emerge throughout the book, but with that set aside, the book is written in remarkably plain language given the technical subject.

You WILL learn from this book

Throughout the book, Harmon pauses and offers useful tips for communicators operating in crisis situations based on key moments in the Ford/Firestone crisis – a useful addition which adds great value and makes Feeding Frenzy a useful read as well as interesting read. It would have been good to have those pulled-out in a separate section at the end in addition to their placement throughout, as while the big themes stick out, some of the more nuanced tips can be hard to recall or to find again down the road. I was pleased to see, for example, pointers along these lines:\

  • While analytical thoroughness is essential in a complex story, you still need something compelling to break through to viewers and readers
  • Understand the subtleties of your story, and don’t let others get away with compromising the truth in the name of simplicity
  • Do not delay in doing the right thing; act quickly and decisively. Customer safety is the priority.
  • If a story attacking your company is flat-out wrong, push back immediately, and not just with the offending news outlet – take the story more broadly
  • Reputation management is PR’s job. We need to earn a seat at the decision-making table by providing useful analysis and advice in order to avoid unnecessary crises.
  • (This one is my favourite) “How many times have you heard a PR person say ‘Hey, I never was good at numbers. That’s why I went into PR.’ That cop-out is an insult to those of us in the PR profession who expect to be taken seriously…”

Knowing the background of the author, it’s hardly surprising that the book is highly biased towards favouring Ford throughout. Harmon doesn’t always shy away from pointing out Ford’s mistakes, but he invariably comes back to Ford’s side of things in pretty much every case. That doesn’t necessarily hurt the book, but it’s important to remember that there’s another side to this story – one which would be useful to hear in order to get a clear picture of what really happened.

Feeding Frenzy really is a must-read for anyone with crisis communications in their job description. It’s a fantastic read, with a side helping of educational pointers, and was the first book I’ve read in a while which was genuinely hard to put down. Working at the centre of an issue such as this is (hopefully) a once-in-a-lifetime experience and viewing it from the perspective of someone who’s ‘been there’ is invaluable for those of us who have yet to go through the wringer in this fashion.

Read it.

Posted in: books, crisis communications

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eBook on 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions

10.01.21

Want to get some insights into what some of the smartest people in marketing are thinking 2010 holds in store?

Along with nearly 40 other smart folks including Radian6′s David Alston and Tipping Point Labs’ Andrew Davis I contributed my thoughts to this eBook of content marketing trends and predictions published by Marketo and ClickDocuments.

Check it out and let me know what you think! (my thoughts are on slide 36)

ClickPredictions 2010

Posted in: marketing

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Jeremy Wright Joins Thornley Fallis/76design

10.01.19

Yesterday was an exciting day for us at Thornley Fallis/76design.

Yesterday we welcomed Jeremy Wright onto our team.

Jeremy Wright - the walking hashtag

Apparently hashtags have a gang...

For those of you who don’t know Jeremy, he was until fairly recently the CEO and co-founder of b5media, the well-known blog network. Since then he’s plied his trade as “digital hitman” at netmobs.

Jeremy is also a personal friend so I’m doubly excited about this move.

This paragraph in Jeremy’s post announcing his move caught my eye:

“Basically I wanted a job where I could be great, be part of a team, have real work/life balance (cause I’d be more inspired that way) and make a difference in the company and for our clients.”

Sounds like a good set of criteria to me, and I’m thrilled he decided that we meet those criteria.

This is the latest in a series of new rockstars to join our team over the last few months. Andrea, Ingrid, Shawn and Mike are already rockin’ the house; we’re excited to add another to the list.

We’ve already noticed a big increase in the number of completely inappropriate hashtags around here…

Posted in: miscellaneous, Thornley Fallis Communications

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Strategies In The 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem

10.01.19

A few days ago I blogged my thoughts on the shape of the social media marketing ecosystem as we enter 2010. The key aspects of the system from my perspective were:

  • The lines have truly blurred. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between different forms of communications, especially when considering the online space.
  • Successful communications programs need to integrate owned, earned and paid media to achieve their goals.
  • Two-way communication is increasing. Wherever you look, previously one-way information flows are becoming two-way. Mainstream media feed off social media while also driving it. Advertising drives attention but also content strategies.

Social Media Marketing EcosystemThe line between public relations, advertising or social media is artificial – the overlap between the disciplines is becoming greater and greater. While I doubt the disciplines will ever completely merge, the ‘Venn diagram’ of communications disciplines is moving closer to being a single circle at a rapid pace.

When we talk about integration and lines blurring, it’s easy to head down the thought path that you need to excel at everything. I’d argue it’s not that simple.

Public relations agencies (for example) don’t need to shift to pitch pure-play advertising accounts. However, agencies of all disciplines do need to hire or train people who can think media-agnostically when developing communications strategies. I’d argue they also need to be able to execute the integrated tactics that sit in the grey areas between disciplines. PR firms won’t suddenly start producing TV ads, but they may start to roll online advertising campaigns into their service portfolio.

As always, it comes back to:

  • What are the objectives?
  • Who are the key audiences?
  • What are the key considerations?
  • How do we best reach those audiences to accomplish the objectives, and how do we measure against that?

Is this new thinking? No. Is the urgency for a shift to integration increasing? Yes. It’s a long road to travel to build those skills-sets, but the need is pressing.

Instead of differentiating by marketing vertical, we may need to approach our strategy from a different perspective – whether we’re marketing our clients or our own agencies. To fail to do so raises the risk of fragmented, ineffective communications and sub-par results.

The question is, what form do those strategies take?

This is a re-post of my first post for the Marketing Profs Daily Fix, where I will now be writing occasionally. To check out the original and, down the road, my other posts there, check out mpdailyfix.com.

Posted in: marketing, pr, public relations, social media, strategy

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A Simple Way To Win Your Customers’ Loyalty

10.01.18

The Roger Smith Hotel, New YorkI’m going to tell you a story about my weekend. Bear with me – it goes somewhere…

A tale of service

This weekend Caralin and I flew down to New York to see our favourite comedian Eddie Izzard at the Madison Square Gardens. I’d heard great things about the Roger Smith Hotel from people like Chris Brogan, Keith Burtis and Julien Smith, and after spotting their Bacon Package online, it was a natural choice for our place to stay.

When we arrived, we immediately noticed that the bacon truffles promised in the package we’d purchased (no, really!) weren’t in our room. No biggie, but as we’d looked forward to trying them I called down to the desk and mentioned it (I threw out a tweet too). The person manning the desk said they’d check into it, but that perhaps they were meant to arrive the next day. A few minutes later, we received a call from the front desk manager, who apologised and said he’d like to send us a bottle of wine for the mix-up – would we like champagne, red or white wine? I also got a response to my tweet (and subsequent “wow” tweet) from @RSHotel – their own Twitter account. Needless to say, we were very impressed, and my non-social media friend accompanying us was floored.

Fast forward a few hours (and a bottle of wine), and as we tried to sleep we discovered that our room’s heater apparently had a whole family of badgers in it – that, or the steam made it incredibly loud every few minutes or so. As a result, we slept very poorly and were exhausted in the morning.

After staggering downstairs bleary-eyed we mentioned it (sheepishly – I don’t like complaining) to the front desk staff the next morning. Without skipping a beat, the lady at the desk apologized and immediately offered us an upgrade to our room, to perhaps the nicest suite I’ve ever stayed in.

The point of the story

This isn’t a story about our weekend in New York; it’s a story about customer service winning-out over problems which could have become a focal point of our stay in New York.

Yes, the problems could have been avoided. The room might not have been possessed, and the truffles (which I now crave, as we never did receive them) could have been there as promised. Still, these things happen sometimes. However, the response of the staff at the Roger Smith Hotel to these problems was fabulous. From start to finish, they completely won me over with their friendliness and helpfulness, choosing long-term reputation and loyalty over short-term savings. No amount of marketing budget could build the impression I have of them now. Lots of companies could benefit from this approach.

As a result, despite the problems (in fact, perhaps it’s because of them) I’ll be staying at the Roger Smith Hotel whenever I travel to Manhattan.

The moral of the story: It’s not just the problems that matter; it’s how you respond to them.

What other companies have you had this kind of experience with?

(Image credit: Retro Housewife)

Posted in: customer service, marketing

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Avoiding Social Media’s Own “Ad Equivalency Value”

10.01.13

For years, the PR profession has struggled with effective measurement of its earned media activities.

The uncontrollable nature of earned media means that, for example, you can’t guarantee that your URL, your key messages or even the overall theme of your pitch will be included in a story. We balance that out with the increased credibility provided by editorial content, along with the relatively low cost of earned media compared to advertising (a full-page Globe and Mail ad can cost the equivalent of several months of public relations activity).

Using Search for Social Media Value

On Monday, Jason Falls wrote a thought-provoking piece on using search to prove social media’s value. In essence, his thought was that for your “owned media” properties, you could take the search terms for which your property ranks highly, determine what those keywords are worth per visitor and multiply that value  by the number of visitors using those keywords to determine the value of traffic coming to your site.

Now, a few points up-front:

  • I have a huge amount of respect for Jason. As far back as 2007, I wrote about how much I liked his site and that admiration has only grown since then.
  • Jason deserves kudos for pushing this conversation forward and searching for concrete ways to measure the value of social media. This kind of post is a good thing as it makes us think.
  • Jason’s post acknowledges that this method isn’t the end game – it’s a work in progress – and that it compares apples to oranges.

With that said, after numerous conversations with folks around our office yesterday, I have some concerns with this method of measurement.

Essentially, Jason suggests using advertising equivalency value for social media.

Advertising Equivalency Value and MRRP

For a long time, the public relations industry resorted to measuring ad equivalency value which, simply put, was an attempt to estimate how much your editorial coverage would cost if it were ads instead of earned media. However, it had many drawbacks, for example:

  • AEV compares apples to oranges – it takes one form of media and tries to equate it to another
  • AEV ignores the credibility that third-party coverage of a story provides
  • AEV ignores the tone of coverage – a smaller, highly positive story can be worth far more than a large negative story. In fact, it assumes value for stories which you may have actually been working to keep out of the media

Fortunately (for the Canadian industry, at least), the Canadian PR associations (CPRS, IABC, CCPRF) agreed that this was a problem and devised an alternative to AEV – the Media Relations Rating Points system.

MRRP is a tailored system in which coverage is rated on a variety of criteria, determined at the outset of the program according to the program’s objectives. It’s not perfect by any means (it still measures outputs rather than outcomes) but it does mean that the (literally) hated ad equivalency value is a thing of the past for many of us.

I think Jason’s suggested approach suffers from the same shortcomings as AEV does with mainstream media. While I give him great credit for pushing the discussion on this forward, I think to adopt this kind of approach would be to fail to learn from the lessons the PR industry experienced over the past few years.

I would hate to see social media fall into the same measurement trap as PR did in the past.

Posted in: measurement, social media

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