Show me Numbers

I read a really great post last night from Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen about the need for true innovation in the PR industry through great design. Innovation of the Henry Ford game changing variety, the car – not just the incremental change that we currently see i.e. a faster horse.

By coincidence I had been talking about a specific example of this earlier yesterday at the Social Media World Forum – my topic the Social Media News Release (SMNR).

In my presentation (below) I also highlighted the need for design* where PR content was concerned and that as of now the best attempt to date has been the Social Media News Release (hattip Mr Todd Defren). But like Tim I concluded that despite being one of the first to implement the template, it still only represents an incremental improvement over the press release – evolution not revolution.

The PR community (including us) needs to find even better ways to design our content and its packaging to suit a world that has many different audiences/communities, is increasingly accessing content across mobile platforms and is suffering from an overload of messages.

We, RealWire, also announced yesterday the results of research into the extent to which multimedia content is used to enhance press releases. The research found that of a sample of almost 3,000 press releases across six newswires only 13 per cent included any kind of “multimedia” (if you ignore company logos) and that in fact for the vast majority this was just a picture. Only 3 per cent included any other form of content e.g. audio/video etc and only 2 per cent included content that was hosted on social media platforms. You can hear me talking about these findings in more detail here. (For information RealWire’s comparative figures were 46 per cent, 11  per cent and 7 per cent respectively).

The research suggests that a substantial proportion of the PR community is not yet even making full use of the incremental innovations such as the SMNR, as well as the generic social media platforms. Given this lack of adoption of these new tools what do people think is the game changing solution that will get us to take our driving tests?

* favourite part of this video is Nick Leon between 1.45-2.15

Hattips for title of presentation to Greg Jarboe and Seth Godin

Social Media News Release – A Press Release for the Online World or a Meatball Sundae

We have launched a campaign today that aims to address the issue of irrelevant press release emails. To learn more watch the video below and then visit the An Inconvenient PR Truth website if you would like to get involved in the debate.

Update: We have posted answers to the main FAQs regarding the animation here. The debate has also moved onto PRWeek UK here.

I watched the film of Barack Obama’s nomination and subsequent presidential election campaign “By the People” on iPlayer over the last couple of days. Obviously we all know what a great communicator he is and the significance of his election, but getting to see up close what happened during the nomination and general election campaigns and how both he and the wider campaign team acted and responded was fascinating. As a huge West Wing fan it was like watching a real life version!

The three words that kept coming to my mind were authenticity, humanity and community. In the order of their occurrence in the film these were some bits that stuck out for me.

1. Open and honest with people – refers to his own background and life on a number of occasions including referring to himself as “still almost normal” and sharing the pain of the loss of his grandmother.
2. Generous when giving credit – when talking to his campaign manager for Senator it is she who he credits for success not himself.
3. Calm – in both positive and disappointing situations like losing the New Hampshire primary after winning Iowa and the knock backs in Ohio and Texas.
4. Empathises – even with a nine year old over the act of shaking hands.
5. Relaxed – his body movement is so natural it’s frightening and he’s not bad on a basketball court either!
6. Community organiser – always talking about a grassroots movement for change.
7. Clarity – Looks for simple, clear messages e.g. when talking about fuel and emissions standards when he highlights the simple win-win and of course “Change. Yes We Can.”
8. Inspires all ages – even a nine year old volunteers to make calls for him and an older voter is out on the street campaigning for the first time since Bobby Kennedy.
9. Personal – asks everyone their name when meeting people on the street, recognising that names are one of the most personal things to everyone.
10. Nothing is impossible – Hillary Clinton’s 30 point lead in the national polls doesn’t deflect him.
11. Treats his opponents with respect – congratulates Clinton on Ohio and Texas, though sometimes uses light hearted humour to have a dig e.g. the “likeable” comment in connection with Clinton in the New Hampshire debate.
12. Truth – when he speaks his mind about race at the National Constitution Center even though he doesn’t know if it’s a good idea for the campaign.

And above all the process it is not about him. He is seeking “an American victory” and when successful in primaries the vote wasn’t about him it was about the people “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”.

Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg these are the qualities I want in a leader and I suspect many other people might too.

I needed to contact Simply Health today having picked up a referral letter by hand from my GP because the first one I provided they wouldn’t accept (basically they require me to see a consultant before I can get the MRI scan both my physio and GP think I need which I suspect is an attempt to try and keep costs down). The fax number they gave me and the one on their website were both out of operation. So I rang them to be met by a recorded message.  The message informed me that

“due to adverse weather conditions we have decided that employee safety is paramount and we want our employees to get home safely so our offices are now closed.”

Whilst this is admirable and I *applaud* their concern for employee safety the fact that they hadn’t thought to put in place alternative arrangements to handle inbound communications amazes me in 2010. And this from an organisation whose strapline is “We CAN be bothered”. Well Simply Health apparently you can’t be bothered to make any arrangements to deal with members, some of whom could have urgent health matters. Couldn’t you have diverted your numbers to a mobile number? Couldn’t someone have rung in and got messages off voicemail and returned calls? Couldn’t you have manned an email address and then returned calls? Couldn’t a senior member of staff with appropriate transport have manned the phones? Ironic really when a recent press release stated:

“During difficult times such as these, companies need to be working harder than ever to attract and retain customers and it is disappointing that customers are finding this is not the case.”

“At Simplyhealth, we pride ourselves on always putting our customers first and doing the right thing, not the easy thing, which we believe is the way in which all customer facing companies should operate.”

I realise that the current weather conditions are adverse – I am in Newcastle which is pretty badily hit – but in this day and age of technology there is no excuse for not maintaining communications. If you are going to make a big thing out of your attitude being different you need to demonstrate it.

Update – I was contacted by Twitter shortly before finalising this post which was a good response and as I have said I don’t disagree with the sentiment about employee safety merely the lack of effort that would appear to have been made to “do the right thing not the easy thing”.

Update 6pm, 8/1/10 - Have received a call from the Corporate Sales and Marketing Director at Simply Health who was  in agreement that with hindsight more could have been done to maintain service levels. The “can be bothered” sentiment was expressed strongly with promises of actions to be taken and I will be updating this post as and when these occur. I hope to be able to report my trust being restored in the brand over the next few days.

Update 9.30am 9/1/10 – Received a call from their customer services manager who had been alerted to my issue by their PR Manager. He apologised for the frustration caused, accepted the constructive nature of the criticism and promised action to resolve my issues first thing on Monday morning. Mark sounded very concerned to ensure that his customers were looked after. The response so far has been excellent, it would be interesting to know though what other customer experiences have been like.

Update 3pm 12/1/10 – This should be my final entry. Have now been contacted by customer services they have processed my referral and an appointment is about to be made. An excellent service in the end. Would be good to know if Simply Health are going to put in place different procedures in the event of any similar situations, but I have definitely experienced evidence that they can indeed be bothered.

Case closed.

When considering making a purchase as a business there are arguably three forms of justification – need, fear or value. By need I mean an absolute requirement for something i.e. you cannot operate without it. By nature these aren’t the decisions that you spend very long thinking about. The other two are where the majority of consideration comes in.

Fear – To a certain extent this is the more irrational of the two. What if I don’t do this? What won’t I know? What will people think? What if my competitors do or perhaps they already are?

Value – This is the more rational. If I do this I will derive this much benefit.

In the recent Econsultancy Social Media and Online PR Report (well worth reading) amongst many interesting statistics a few that jumped out at me were in connection with organisations’ (Figure 17) and Agencies’ (Figure 19) views of the potential value of social media.

Two points jump out at me from these stats. Firstly that Agencies think organisations are more sceptical about value than Organisations apparently do themselves. Perhaps this is due to lack of follow through on spending decisions?

Secondly that in both cases these figures imply that value is seen as a much bigger challenge to the argument for engaging in social media activities than the challenges and risks.

This is borne about by the findings of Figures 48 and 50 where from both Agency and Organisation perspectives 60% of respondents considered they had achieved some benefit from their social media activities but nothing concrete.

So with the vast majority of respondents seeing no concrete value in what they are doing does this suggest that fear – fear of what is being said about you, fear of missing an opportunity – is playing more of a role in justifying investment in social media than value?

Oh and the picture is from the 1970s TV version of Salems Lot and this scene was quite simply the most scary experience of my life at the time and I have never forgotten it!