Content Fusion at its best: new U.S. Savings Bond timeline

The new year rang in a new way to purchase U.S. Savings Bonds – online. As of January 1, 2012, savings bonds have gone only electronic. No more paper savings bonds.

To mark the occasion and invite news media to help tell the story, Weber Shandwick worked with our client the U.S. Treasury to create this interactive timeline.

It celebrates the rich tradition of savings bonds through the years, and it features iconic images and video of political and cultural figures from FDR and JFK to Lassie, Superman and the gang from Cheers. To view the timeline, go to: www.treasurydirect.gov/timeline.htm.

The timeline was shared broadly with media outlets in a push that represented Content Fusion at its best. The media package was conceived as not just a news release, but a complete package of content vehicles shared over multiple channels. A news release, social media release and television alert provided not only a compelling story for media outlets, but included resources like embeddable images of the timeline, high-res historic photos and videos, audio public service announcements, b-roll packages and more. It also continues to be promoted via online ads on Facebook, Google AdWords and StumbleUpon.

While news stories continue to pour in, impressions already exceed 142 million. Coverage highlights include NBC Nightly News, FOX News Channel and CBS 60 Minutes, local broadcast pick-up in 48 of 50 states, original stories in top outlets such as AARP Bulletin, Reuters, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, and an article by nationally syndicated personal finance columnist Claudia Buck. Social media conversations already exceed 590 tweets, Facebook posts and comments to online articles – the vast majority of which are neutral to positive

This was an exciting project for us. The interactive timeline beautifully tells the story of U.S. Savings Bonds, and provides an interesting news hook for our media relations push. I invite you to spend a few minutes exploring the timeline. Be sure to click on the videos and such. It’s been a nostalgic tour for many.

Strategic shifts brighten the future of PR

Today’s “jump ball” environment has public relations firms, ad agencies, branding and digital shops, and more, seeing not only opportunities to compete, but also to collaborate and define their roles in new ways.

Overall, this trend represents good news for the public relations industry. In a recent column published by the Council of Public Relations Firms’ blog, Weber Shandwick President Andy Polansky cited one recent forecast that spending on marketing services will rise by almost five percent through 2015, with public relations and word-of-mouth marketing the fastest-growing disciplines.

“Public relations is fast becoming a more prominent component of integrated marketing campaigns,” he wrote. “Clients and prospects clearly seem less concerned about which discipline to work with; it’s all about who brings the best thinking and the most innovative ideas.”

These shifts are also spurring the Public Relations Society of America to launch a new effort to develop “a modern definition for the new era of public relations.” The effort began on November 21 and solicited suggestions from the public along with public relations professionals, academics and students through December 2.

“Finding a new definition for public relations is ‘a process we know is overdue,’” said Rosanna Fiske, the chairwoman and chief executive of the public relations society, in a November 20 piece in the New York Times.

From our perspective at Weber Shandwick, it is easy to understand how PR has earned a more pronounced role as part of an organization’s overall communications and marketing strategies.

The rise of social media has prompted more companies to focus on new ways to engage with their customers. More companies are focused on reputation and how it relates to valuation and to purchasing decisions. Also, preparing for crises and navigating how issues affect marketing decisions have taken on more importance in an increasingly complex world. Lest we not forget, public relations firms have always been good at storytelling and engaging multiple stakeholders to communicate about substantive issues. The web lends itself well to such engagement and PR firms are ideally positioned with the corporate strategic insight and technical know-how needed to build online communities and advocacy.

To meet these needs, Andy called for a continued focus on the following key priorities:

• Intellectual capital: While Weber Shandwick continues to hire people with specialized backgrounds in digital, advertising, and strategic planning, it isn’t uncommon to see our teams comprised of lawyers and public policy experts, financial communications professionals, and/or PhDs who understand and explain the science behind a new drug coming to market.
• Integration: Clients aren’t just looking to partner across disciplines; they want partners capable of understanding the whole marketing mix and who can collaborate, including globally, with others outside the traditional “PR” function.
• Innovation: The speed of communications and vast array of available communications platforms has created an ever-expanding media environment, and we need to adapt quickly. And we must continue to lead in social media. It’s our sweet spot given our storytelling heritage and our experience in driving conversation.

I believe these are good and healthy developments. While today’s dynamic and emerging market bodes well for PR, it is not about one discipline winning. Like Andy wrote, it is about how we can best integrate and work across disciplines to successfully tell the client’s story while delivering results in the strategic and innovative ways.

For whom the (fire) bell tolls

One of the questions we ask our clients is “What keeps you up at night?” These days, many things can keep financial services execs awake—worrying about security data breaches, the economy and other potential crises laying in wait. Adding to the pressure cooker is the explosive speed with which a crisis can be started or fueled through social media.

Many financial services companies have crisis communications plans in place (and if they don’t, they should). But some plans don’t yet factor social media into the equation. Social crises bring a new level of emotion and immediacy, and can require lightning fast management.

Is your company prepared for a social crisis? At the minimum, you need to:

- Identify issues that can lead to a crisis and have processes in place to regularly monitor for them.

- Have clearly defined steps to follow in the event a crisis arises, such as:

• Assess what public, social media and conventional media responses are necessary and disseminate them through appropriate channels.
• Alert your company’s advocates of the issue.
• Monitor the results.

- Establish a digital communications council involving all relevant internal stakeholders, including members of your legal, compliance, marketing, customer service, executive management, corporate communications, IT, web services, product PR and HR teams.

- Remember the human factor. The promise of social media is humanization. Organizations are expected to respond in the same way an individual responds.

Even with a detailed crisis plan on paper, your company may not be fully prepared to react in the face of a real crisis. Weber Shandwick’s FireBell social crisis simulator, featured this week in the Star Tribune, helps organizations prepare crisis response policies and puts key executives through an intense, “live action” and realistic crisis drill. FireBell allows clients to simulate real-time social media dialogue with fictitious stakeholders in a secure, offline forum. The simulator is intentionally stress-producing, so that participants feel like they are in a real crisis.

As Weber Shandwick’s social media crisis expert David Krejci told the Star Tribune, FireBell recreates the adrenaline rush of a crisis, so everyone can learn how to respond, "Social media creates a different environment. You can't sit around with 10 people and react five days later. It is now dialogue versus a press conference."

So, what keeps you up at night? How is your organization preparing for a potential crisis? Share your thoughts below.

Despite negative opinions, media remains a trusted source for information

Although negative opinions about the performance of news organizations now equal or surpass all-time highs, they are more trusted sources of information than many other institutions, including government and business, according to a recent report issued by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press.

A few key findings to consider:

• Despite the growth of internet news, television news outlets, specifically cable news outlets, remain the top source of people’s impressions about the news media.
• Nearly 69 percent say they have a lot or some trust in information they get from local news organizations, while 59 percent say they trust information from national news organizations.
• By comparison, about half say they have a lot or some trust in information provided by their state government (51 percent) and the Obama administration (50 percent). Smaller percentages trust information from federal agencies (44 percent), business corporations (41 percent), Congress (37 percent) or candidates running for office (29 percent).

Yet, financial institutions are seeing a slight rebound in public trust. In July, The Chicago Booth/Kellogg School of Financial Trust Index released research that found 25 percent of Americans trust America’s financial systems, an increase following a dip reported in March 2011 in which trust went to 20 percent in the days after Japan’s natural disasters and nuclear crisis, as well as a steep stock market drop. Trust in banks alone inched up to 39 percent – higher than mutual funds (30 percent), large corporations (16 percent), and the stock market (16 percent).

These studies carry significant implications for financial institutions. Not only do they provide light for organizations working to regain the public’s trust, but also further demonstrate the valuable role the press continues to play as a trusted source of information. As a result, financial institutions must proactively communicate with and engage stakeholders – from the media to their employees and the greater public – to have their stories told.

How is your organization establishing itself as a trusted source of information?

4 ways to grow your brand in 2012

I’ll be speaking at the 2011 Financial Marketing Leadership Summit in Boston in early October on the challenges and opportunities that marketers in the financial services industry face in marketing their companies and products, particularly in the post-financial crisis era. In preparation for this meeting, I decided to summarize my thoughts on paper. Here’s the question: what’s the #1 fresh approach that senior financial services marketers need to consider in 2012 and beyond?

To me, there are at least four:

1. Personalize your brand. Customers want their relationships with organizations and brands to mirror their personal relationships: to be personal, accessible, empathetic and responsible. Booz & Company reported in a recent study that Americans in 2011 have developed a different set of expectations from companies. Since 2006, consumers’ desire for “kindness and empathy” has gone up 391 percent; “friendly,” up 148 percent; and “socially responsible,” up 63 percent. This is especially important and true for financial services companies, given the erosion of trust that’s occurred during the past three years. Easy access to dialogue and social engagement on the web has created this expectation for brands; requiring them to ‘think outside the logo.’ For financial services brands, I recognize that this can be a challenge, given government and industry regulations. But it can be done, and it’s being done every day by the most innovative brands. Monday’s Wall Street Journal included a great story about what financial services companies can do with social media.

2. Surround your audience with consistent and tested messaging by trusted voices. Marketers must surround their audiences through every conceivable channel, not only through traditional channels like advertising. Consider how we’ve changed the behavior of more than 9 million recipients of Social Security and SSI payments through the Go Direct^® campaign. We didn’t do it by inserts alone, or by advertising alone, or by media relations alone. We did it by creating an infrastructure of trusted advocate organizations – more than 1,800 to be exact– and then equipping these partner organizations with messaging, materials and programming to regularly stay in front of their members and audiences. These organizations essentially serve as an extension of the U.S. Treasury and deliver the Treasury’s messages for the government agency. And we’ve surrounded our target audiences with these same messages, delivered through many different marketing channels.

3. Embrace new forms of communication. Marketers need to quickly embrace forms of communication that are not dependent on the written word. In “Words fail them: Companies adapt to the video age,” an article from its The World in 2011 issue, The Economist said: “In 2011 companies will begin to say goodbye to the written word. The basic unit of communication will no longer be typed out in e-mails. It will be shot in pictures and shown on video . . . The new corporate leaders will no longer be pen pushers and bean counters. The 20-year reign of faceless bosses will come to an end. Charisma will be back in: all successful business chiefs will have to be storytellers and performers. Just as political leaders have long had to be dynamite on TV to stand much hope of election or survival, so too will corporate leaders.”

4. Intersect marketing and operations. Marketers need to care deeply about how the operational aspects of their company are working. The best marketing plan in the world won’t be maximized if the operations functions of your company don’t reflect and humanize your brand, as well.

Do you agree with these four approaches? What would you add?

5 ways to protect your online reputation

My colleague – Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist for Weber Shandwick – constantly impresses with her thoughtful and practical public relations counsel.

Her work, "Five Essentials of Defending Your Digital Reputation," was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal, following her Harvard Business Review article on "Reputation Warfare." I encourage you to read both.

Below are the five essential steps that organizations must practice to defend their digital reputations:

1. Beware, the Clock Ticks: A 24-hour news cycle requires 24/7 monitoring and responses to potential issues.
2. Monitor Carefully: Nowadays, the most inconspicuous event must be taken seriously and evaluated for negative consequences.
3. Plug the Leaks: Violations of corporate confidentiality need not even be intentional. In a Weber Shandwick survey, 87 percent of global executives admitted to having erroneously sent or received at least one private email, text or tweet.
4. Don’t Always Turn the Other Cheek: Increasingly, leading companies and organizations are displaying corporate moxie by using many of the same social media tactics as their opponents. Depending on a brand’s personality, and only if done truthfully and ethically, fighting fire with fire with social media can be a very promising way to counter negativity.
5. Don’t Neglect to Socialize Your CEO: For most companies and organizations, the majority of their constituencies are now online, and CEOs should be where stakeholders are likely to be listening, watching and searching. To put it simply, CEOs should be camera- and media-ready for a crisis that might be around the corner.

As Leslie adeptly writes, “How well a company manages such events not only prevents against unwarranted damage to its reputation, but also adds value in its own right. A company that handles itself online says much about its ability to execute in this modern age and helps define how a company is perceived."

Is your company prepared to defend its online reputation?

Six ways B2B companies can go social

By now, social media has clearly proved its role in B2C marketing, but many B2B companies continue to question the rationale and practicality of participating in social media.

I recently co-authored an article in the September issue of O’Dwyers with my colleague, Steffen Ryan. It addresses this topic head-on and provides concrete, instructive insight for companies contemplating their first move into social media, or refining their existing social media strategy.

We outline six ways companies can become more social and increase advocacy for their brand:

1. Listen before you speak
2. Think of your website as a digital storytelling engine
3. Leverage video for storytelling, even if it’s not perfectly polished
4. Don’t get hung up on one format
5. Empower employees, then prepare them
6. Think about what you’d do in a crisis

For more detail, be sure to check out our article, “How social media has changed the B2B landscape.”