What's Wrong with the Internet?

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Pg. 10 Pg. 12 Pg. 32 Monitoring Follows Special Report: Blogs Why Conservatives Social Media’s Rise in the Middle East still rule the airwaves Profiles of Social Media Firms Pg. 20

Communications & new media April 2010 I Vol. 24 No. 4

What’s wrong with the Internet?

Data overload. False information. Trolling, smear campaigns and a narcissistic culture of cyber-bullies who expect 100% of their content for free.

Is this really where you want to position your brand messages?

April 2010 | www.odwyerpr.com

Vol. 24, No. 4 APRIL 2010 CONTENTS

EDITORIAL WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE On-screen product placement has 6 18 INTERNET? reached its saturation point. Social media’s new standards for 12 community resemble little of the Internet we envisioned a decade ago. FCC LAUNCHES NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN 8 The FCC has unveiled an ambitious 20 PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA plan to give cheap, fast Internet service to FIRMS every U.S. household. CONSERVATIVE RADIO STILL STUDY: TIME IS RUNNING OUT 32 DOMINATES AIRWAVES FOR U.S. NEWSPAPERS 8 Reports show that conservative talk An annual PEW survey shows the shows still lead the U.S airwaves. 18 newspaper business has lost $1.6B in reporting and editing capacity since 2000. SATELLITE MEDIA TOURS ARE 34SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS MIT PROF: SOCIAL MEDIA www.odwyerpr.com If done properly, a satellite tour can Daily, up-to-the minute PR news CAN HURT PRODUCTS 9 become a successful Internet media tour. A study reports adding network connections in some instances may hinder adoption of products or technologies. MAKING THE DREAM GUEST 35FOR TALK RADIO MONITORIING CHASES One pro offers several key tactics SOCIAL MEDIA’S RISE 10 regarding the industry art of landing successful Monitoring tools may hold the key on-air interviews. to taming the wild west landscape of social media. PROFILES OF VIDEO & 36 BROADCAST FIRMS BLOGGERS REVEAL MIDDLE EAST’S MANY VOICES 12 EDITORIAL CALENDAR 2010 Facebook and other social media 44 WASHINGTON REPORT platforms show a middle ground and January: Crisis Comms. / Buyer’s Guide vast differences between the Middle February: Environmental & P.A. East’s virtual world and our own. COLUMNS March: Food & Beverage SOCIAL TOOLS NOT A CURE April: Broadcast & Social Media FOR UNEARNED MEDIA 14 40 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Fraser Seitel O’Dwyer’s sat down with Lloyd May: PR Firm Rankings Trufelman of Trylon SMR to discuss the hype 42 FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT June: Global & Multicultural surrounding social media. Richard Goldstein July: Travel & Tourism PAGE SEEKS SUCCESSOR 43 OPINION August: Financial/I.R. Jack O’Dwyer FOR NICHOLSON 16 September: Beauty & Fashion Nearly 200 resumes have been sent to the Arthur W. Page 46 PR BUYER’S GUIDE October: Healthcare & Medical Society after Thomas Nicholson resigned 47 November: High-Tech as Executive Director. PR MARKETPLACE December: Entertainment & Sports

ADVERTISERS Cision...... BACK COVER Omega World Travel...... 41 Fleishman Hillard...... 23 Plus Media...... 5 Kaplow...... 9 Ruder Finn...... 27 KEF...... 3 Spot On PR...... 15 Log-On...... 33 TV Access...... 32 MS&L...... 7 VMS...... 11 NAPS...... INSIDE COVER Wieck Media...... 17

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( ) *+, +-.* !#/0!0/1"% 2+*' *+, EDITORIAL On-screen product placement has gone too far t’s a sight I’m sadly getting used to. During a recent episode of “No Reservations,” Anthony Bourdain offers to pay for dinner at an Istanbul restaurant. “Let me get this,” he EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Isays emphatically, as the camera cuts to a close-up of his Chase Sapphire Card. Jack O’Dwyer In Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut “Whip It,” character Maggie Mayhem preps a [email protected] rollerblading teammate by advising her to try Cover Girl mascara Lash Blast. Off screen, Barrymore is a Cover Girl spokesperson. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER This is the world of product placement — or “embedded advertising,” as some in the indus- Kevin McCauley try call it — and it’s reached such inconspicuously absurd heights that a program’s brands have [email protected] practically become as identifiable as its stars. A PR firm recently bragged that Apple and EDITOR Pontiac each received more than $250,000 in media value from their appearances in 20 sequences during the “24” season premier. Isn’t that what commercials are for? Jon Gingerich [email protected] It should come as no surprise that reality TV, the lowest of the low in terms of mind-numb- ing, knuckle-dragger entertainment, is a cesspool for blatant product peddling. A project man- SENIOR EDITOR ager on “Project Runway” touts the features of his Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart computer Greg Hazley with the nonchalance of an Amway salesman. Coke received an estimated $12 million in [email protected] media value for its gratuitous placement throughout the “American Idol” season premiere. According to recent data from Nielsen Media Research, all save two of the top 10 shows CONTRIBUTING EDITORS with the biggest occurrences of product placement are reality TV programs. The worst offend- Fraser Seitel ers? “The Biggest Loser,” “American Idol,” “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “America’s Richard Goldstein Toughest Jobs” and “Deal or No Deal.” Christine O’Dwyer Product placement is moving into other forms of entertainment as well. There are agencies that now specialize in imbedding marketing campaigns into popular artists’ lyrics and videos. ADVERTISING SALES This is a practice that pales the jingles of yore: albums are now being altered (and sometimes written entirely by marketers) for the sole purpose of accommodating brand messages. John O’Dwyer Most agree that with the advent of new, increasingly interactive media like the Internet, TiVo Advertising Sales Manager and mobile applications, product placement won’t be a cottage industry for long. The Screen [email protected] Actor’s Guild estimated that product placement in films went up 44% in 2009 from the year Joshua Fierman before. PQMedia, a consulting firm that tracks the product placement market, expects the National Advertising Representative industry to make $10 billion by the end of 2010. [email protected] One such company, which recently celebrated its 5,000th film placement, summed it up best in a February press release: “Having characters use real products lends an air of believability Jack Fogarty to a story. For the studios, the use of brand names can carve anywhere from $100,000 to well National Advertising Representative into the millions of dollars off a project’s budget.” [email protected] Journalism joins the fray It’s a different sort of pay-for-play, but the Society of Professional Journalists has con- O’Dwyer’s is published monthly for $60.00 demned a recent trend among major broadcast networks that pay for interviews or exclusive a year ($7.00 for a single issue) by the access to feature content, a practice the organization refers to as “checkbook journalism.” J.R. O’Dwyer Co., Inc., ABC in 2008 paid $200,000 for exclusive rights to a family’s photo albums and home video 271 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016. collection after a family member allegedly murdered her two-year-old daughter. (212) 679-2471 The popular December story of David Goldman, a New Jersey man who flew to Brazil to Fax (212) 683-2750. retrieve his estranged son after a years-long custody battle, resulted in a January interview © Copyright 2010 exclusive with “Dateline NBC.” It was later revealed that NBC had supplied and paid for the J.R. O’Dwyer Co., Inc. chartered jet that took Goldman to South America. The same month, CNN paid $10,000 for an exclusive interview with Dutch citizen Jasper OTHER PUBLICATIONS & Schuringa, who famously overpowered Umar Abdulmutallab, the man who attempted to blow SERVICES: up a Christmas day plane headed from Amsterdam to Detroit. While product placement in TV or a Hollywood film is a different beast than news networks www.odwyerpr.com breaking news, paying for interviews, its psychic effect is the same: an unsuspecting audience is subjected to commentary, useful databases and more. a narrative that has been written not to entertain or inform, but to accommodate a financial Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter An eight- transaction. It has to stop. page weekly with general PR news, media I know what you’re thinking: “The marketing landscape has changed. We have to engage appointments and placement opportunities. consumers on a new level if we want our clients’ messages to stick.” I don’t care. The FTC should begin regulating the back-alley transactions that occur between marketers and produc- O’Dwyer’s Directory of PR Firms has ers; they should crack down on the practice of turning entertainment and news into one giant listings of more than 1,850 PR firms through- brand trough just like they did last year when they mandated more disclosure for ad endorse- out the U.S. and abroad. ments and testimonials. I don’t care how much money it makes the studios; I don’t care how much money it makes the marketers. Yes, I’m saying it: enact tougher disclosure laws for paid O’Dwyer’s PR Buyer’s Guide lists 1,000+ product placements, or shut the practice down altogether. products and services for the PR industry in 54 categories. Writing TV and movie copy for the sole purpose of accommodating brands disrupts the forth wall that exists between audience and narrative. It insults our intelligence — it makes jobs.odwyerpr.com O’Dwyer’s online us feel ripped off — to know we paid for a movie and got an infomercial instead. job center has help wanted ads and hosts — Jon Gingerich resume postings.

6 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM Q][[c\WbgOQbWdWaba `SRS¿\SR

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@S_cSabOQ][^ZW[S\bO`gQ]^g]TbVS>@ESSY;A:A]QWOZ;SRWOAbcRgO\ROeVWbS^O^S` OP]cb]c`c\W_cSO^^`]OQVb]a]QWOZ[SRWOOb[aZe]`ZReWRSQ][a]QWOZ[SRWOac`dSg MEDIA NOTES FCC launches plan to wire the nation By Jon Gingerich their connections, as well as report broad- “There’s a specific push to create a broadband dead zones. band public safety network for first-respon- he Federal Communications The U.S. currently lags in international ders who can communicate faster with fire Commission has unveiled a compre- connection speeds. Americans surf the and police departments,” said FCC Thensive national initiative to give Internet at an average of 3.9 Mbps, some- Spokesman Mark Wigfield. “The public cheaper, faster Internet service to all U.S. where between the 16th and the 18th place safety community is united behind the idea households. when compared to other industrial coun- that better communications can save lives.” Delivered to Congress on March 16, the tries. Japan has an average measured con- Funding uncertain plan details a strategy to give all U.S. citi- nection rate of 7.9 Mbps, and South Korea The FCC’s broadband rehaul is the zens reliable access to broadband Internet surfs at an astounding 14.6 Mbps. Sweden, response to a legislative requirement in the service by 2020. The plan also requires Ireland, Poland, Netherlands and Romania American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, faster, more reliable broadband service for all connect at average speeds faster than the which mandated the FCC to study recom- national safety and health institutions. U.S. mended changes to current domestic broad- It is expected to cost $20 billion. New York-based web solutions firm band access. The Commission’s goal is to connect Akamai announced in January that U.S. Total funding sources for the ambitious approximately 110 million American average broadband speeds declined 2.4% initiative remain uncertain, and in some households to affordable service within the between 2009’s third quarter and the same cases could spark a lobbying battle between next decade, with connection speeds of at time a year before, a dip some blame on telecom companies and lawmakers. least 4-megabits-per-second. Some living canceled connections during the recession. The FCC has proposed using spectrum in U.S. cities could see their connections Connection speeds in most other industrial- auctions to pay for part of the plan, an reach 100 Mbps, about 25 times faster than ized countries meanwhile, have continued announcement that raised ire in the U.S. current average speeds. to increase. broadcast industry, which acquired large As outlined in the FCC’s report, while Safety first swaths of empty wavelengths after U.S. TV data and storage requirements have gone up Besides increasing the nation’s broad- signals switched from analogue to digital for Internet users, average connection band connectivity, the FCC’s National formats last year. speeds have not grown at a rate commensu- Broadband Plan also calls for connections Other funds would come from existing rate. About 100 million in the U.S. (or with especially fast speeds (1-gigabit-per- Universal Services Fund support, which about 35% of the population) surf the second) to be installed at area hospitals and would require an undetermined amount of Internet with connections below broad- military installations, and for bolstering the legalese, considering the fund is currently band. Nearly 14 million live in areas where FCC’s current E-Rate program, which pro- written to partition money solely for voice there is still no access to broadband connec- vides broadband connections to schools and support services. tions at all. classrooms. The FCC has recommended subsidies for Some Americans are also surfing with A portion of the plan (about $6 billion of telecom companies that agree to wire rural broadband speeds below what has been its projected operations support) includes areas without broadband. The Commission promised to them by their service improving broadband access for emergency has also requested $9 billion in funding providers. The FCC has created a site, services, including rural clinics and national from Congress to speed up implementation www.broadband.gov, where users can test first-responder units. of the plan. Study: sand is running out of the newspaper hourglass By Kevin McCauley play, but Pew notes that a little more than Pew notes recent “talk of alternative $140M of non-profit money has gone into approaches to advertising” that arose last new media ventures. That’s less than one- year. Entrepreneur Steve Brill launched he newspaper business has lost tenth of the losses in newspaper resources. JournalismOnline.com to offer sites a plat- $1.6B in reporting/editing capacity Pew believes the countdown has long form for charging for content. News Corp’s Tsince 2000, according to the annual ago begun for newspapers to develop busi- Rupert Murdoch held discussions with State of the News Media survey published ness models to recast themselves. It uses Microsoft about higher payments for web by the Pew Project for Excellence in the metaphor of sand in an hourglass to searches and has vowed to erect pay walls. Journalism. Working with the Poynter describe the state of the newspaper sector. The New York Times promised to figure Institute, Pew projects there is $4.4B in “Unless some system of financing the pro- out a way for charge for content to “get it editorial capacity left. duction of content is developed, it is diffi- really, really right.” Newspapers shed 5,900 staffers in 2010. cult to see how reportorial journalism will It is unclear which model will make it. A third of newsroom jobs that existed in not continue to shrink, regardless of the Pew warns that only 35% of Americans 2001 have been wiped out. Specialty beats potential tools offered by technology,” the have a news destination they call a such as science, arts, and statehouse gov- study said. “favorite,” and 19% of that group say they ernments have been the hardest hit. Currently, Pew sees little evidence that would pay for a visit. Journalism losses in the newspaper busi- journalism online has found a sustaining One definite movement in journalism: ness are especially tough, since that sector revenue model. Regarding web advertis- “Most news organizations — new or old accounts for 90% of editorial budgets in ing, Pew notes that 79% of online news — are becoming niche operations, more the U.S. media. consumers say they rarely if ever have specific in focus, brand and appeal and nar- Citizen journalism has received much clicked on an online ad. rower, necessarily, in ambition.”

8 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM Networks,” also found that technology MIT prof: social media can hurt product can become “stuck” and that an exter- By Greg Hazley nal “stimulus” can be required to reach be beneficial, adding connections can a tipping point. decrease adoption if experiences are The professor gave the example of a dding network connections can not sufficiently positive. temporary government rebate for home actually hinder adoption of a The research, to be published in the insulation or a manufacturer offering a Aproduct or technology in some B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics discount or free sample on a product instances, according to research by in a paper, “Social Learning in Social such as a stimulus. MIT Visiting Assistant Professor P.J. Lamberson. “In some cases, even though on aver- Sports, fluff rule L.A. news scene age people would be better off using the technology or product, adding more By Kevin McCauley airtime (3:36 minutes), followed by connections can decrease how much it crime at 2:50 minutes and “soft news” spreads,” said Lamberson, who said he (human interest, oddball stories and was surprised by the finding. “We ports, weather, crime and fluff various fluff) at 2:26 minutes. would have thought that adding con- dominate Los Angeles television Advertising weighed in at 8:25 min- nections would always help something Snews, according to a study utes. good spread.” released last month by the Norman Lear George Kieffer of the Los Angeles While Lamberson’s mathematical Center at the USC Annenberg School Civic Alliance, which sponsored the model found that poor technology or for Communication and Journalism. study, expressed “serious concern” with products suffered when spread over The study analyzed 14 days of local the results. Noting that most people get connections, and technology that news programming and more than their news from TV, he said if TV “isn’t passed an initial threshold benefited 11,000 news stories. doing its job, we can hardly expect our from more connections, it also found The study found that in a typical hour citizens to be aware of what is going on that problems occurred when expecta- L.A. stations devoted 22 seconds to with our governments.” tions are high. local government news (budget, law He expects community organizations In such a situation where a high bar is enforcement, healthcare, immigration, to “begin to weigh in on license set (like the iPad), Lamberson found personnel changes and transportation). renewals based on the degree of local that even though the technology might Sports and weather grabbed the most hard news coverage.”

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 9 REPORT Monitoring chases social media’s rise

The Wild West was once a popular metaphor for social media all media platforms as it develops is con- communications, but the space has reached critical mass in the ceptual search, a practice VMS is past year. In a frontier where brands can be beaten bloody while a deploying with its U.K-based software corporate communications staff is sleeping overnight, many see developer partner Autonomy. Conceptual search is a proactive form monitoring tools as the sheriff that can tame the landscape. of monitoring that parses terms, keywords and trends in a kind of digital By Greg Hazley second, and a more strategic approach, is crystal ball for marketers and brands. when brands start with monitoring. “It’s what scares the CEO more than “A lot of brands, if they don’t have a anything else — that there’s something hile communicating and shar- crisis, lay the groundwork for listening out there that they’re not aware of. ing information via platforms and investigating in a discovery about Clients want to be able to anticipate what Wlike Twitter, YouTube and what’s happening when they have the the emerging trends are before they’re Facebook has had a sustained and rapid luxury of time,” he said. “Once you jump front page news so they can either capi- rise, the race to track, measure and quan- into engagement, you can’t stop.” talize on something that’s positive or tify it all has been just as frantic. But once a company bends an ear to tap protect their brands or minimize the The result, so far, has been a range of into the white noise of social media, the damage from something negative,” said tools in the basic space of searching and feedback can be overwhelming. That’s Wengryn. “Conceptual search helps tracking mentions online, but deeper where monitoring vendors step in, as they clients discover what they don’t know.” down the tunnel social media is being have for years in tracking newspaper and While most tracking software uses a used to conduct advanced monitoring that television coverage. But what makes the process known as a Boolean search, con- is helping clients and companies get social media space unique, are the men- ceptual search indexes results against ahead of potential crises before trouble tions and passing comments of a brand or other keywords and concepts to identify can even spark, and reformulate the way topic that constitute a kind of false posi- patterns and narratives that are emerging. traditional media is tracked, as well. tive for PR pros. “Social media is a great early warning “All of these conversations are basical- Microsoft, for example, is one of the system,” said Wengryn. “It’s also a focus ly a big universe of unstructured data and most-mentioned brands online on a daily group and that’s how we’re approaching brand mentions. It’s like white noise,” basis. “Do you think they really care about it.” said Blake Cahill, Senior VP of every time the word Microsoft or their tick- “It’s one of the most important things Marketing for Visible Technologies, a er symbol MSFT is mentioned on Twitter? developing in social media analysis this social media monitoring company which There’s no way to process all that data. year.” works with Microsoft. “For a brand or They care about who is talking about the company … as you dive into that pool of Windows 7 launch and who is talking Media Briefs data, you ask, ‘What does this all mean about the technical installation of Windows and how do I find meaning from all the 7. It’s about processing the data so the Times to erect pay wall noise?’ client can see it and use it. Companies like U.K.’s daily newspaper the Times said it Social media, because of the volume of Visible use sentiment engines and other would begin charging users for access to its information, is seen as a fast gauge of tools to sort mentions into clusters and online content. The move would also affect messages about a company or brand — a pools of information that are useful to mar- its sister publication, the Sunday Times. kind of spontaneous focus group. keters.” Users would pay £1 (about $1.50) for one Corporate communications executives The scramble to adapt and develop tools day’s access and £2 (about $3) for a week’s and PR firms can find issues quickly by for sifting through the voluminous data is subscription. tracking frequency of terms and phrases, also bolstering capabilities for tracking tra- The pay wall is expected to begin in June. and then decide whether to act or use that ditional media. The Times and the Sunday Times newspa- information for marketing purposes. “Things we can do now with social pers are published by Times Newspapers Ltd, Monitoring is the act of sifting and media, we’re now applying to traditional a subsidiary of News International, which is sorting that white noise and making it media,” said Wengryn. “Simple things like owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. “actionable,” in the parlance of mar- putting search results into clusters to see Murdoch has publicly blasted search sites keters. quickly and visually what the messaging is, like Google for poaching content from his “Social media is starting a lot of con- and idea clouds where terms stand out sites, and has even hinted at blocking Google versations these days but it’s in the con- among other mentions are being applied to searches from indexing his publications’ context of “help me understanding how I can print and broadcast media as well.” tent. manage this,” said Peter Wengryn, CEO Once data is organized in that fashion, It is unclear if Murdoch plans to put his of VMS, the New York-based monitoring PR and marketer pros can do a “deeper other news sites (Fox News, The New York company. “They know it’s important but dive” to track things like sentiment and Post) behind a pay wall. The Wall Street they’re not quite sure what to make of it.” trends over time. Journal (a News Corp. publication) is current- Cahill said there are two basic trends in Crystal ball for marketers ly the only national U.S. newspaper to have a social media monitoring. First, a crisis One of the more cutting-edge aspects pay wall. throws a company or PR firm into moni- that has developed from monitoring toring by necessity, a rapid adoption. And social media and is being applied across

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The Integrated, All-In-One Marketing Performance Command Center FEATURE Bloggers reveal the Middle East’s many voices Until very recently, social media wasn’t a common phenomenon in the Middle East and North Africa. Now that’s changed. By Carrington Malin

challenge. Most Arab newspapers now of Internet users in Saudi and Egypt purred on by increasing broadband have an online news site, but the major- preferred Arabic language content. penetration, Facebook and other ity are rudimentary with limited fea- Despite differences across the region, Ssocial media platforms have now tures and content. consumption of online news is growing reached significant levels for marketers, Qatar-based international television fast, supported by increased link shar- with a reach that has begun to rival main- news group Al Jazeera has built a sig- ing via social media. stream media. As with other parts of the nificant new media team and offers Absence of corporate blogging world however, social media means dif- content across websites, mobile media, One of the first questions these days ferent things to different people. a range of social media and was the from U.S. companies looking at new In the Arab world, where societies first news organisation globally to Middle East communications programs remain conservative, authoritarian release broadcast quality footage under is “what blogs do people read?” The states predominate and many topics are the ‘Creative Commons 3.0 answer depends on what the business off-limits for traditional media, social Attribution’ license allowing Internet focus is, but typically there are few media is opening up social interactions users to legally share and reuse its business blogs in the Arab world and on a scale never seen before. Social footage. The United Arab Emirates news- fewer still that focus on particular media enables much greater freedom of papers have been among the first press in industry sectors. Corporate blogs are content, freedom of communication the region to recognize that online has also few and far between, even among and freedom of association than many different content needs to printed broad- the region’s most high profile brands. countries have been used to, and this sheets. This doesn’t mean there’s an absence of challenges traditional norms as signifi- blogging, nor that the blogosphere cantly as the mobile phone and satellite can’t be of value to communications. television have done in the past, per- Blogging has simply grown haps even more so. For communicators strongest in areas least cov- this means that, while the Middle East ered by mainstream media in and North Africa’s social media land- the Arab world and have been scape shares much common virtual most vocal about interests ground with the U.S. and other more unable to find a voice via tra- developing markets, the dynamics of ditional means. the region’s social web remain distinct. Although popular Arab social So also is its future growth potential, media site Jeeran claims with some 50% of the Arab world’s 320 160,000 blogs running on its million population under the age of 15 platform and Blogger and years old, there’s plenty more potential WordPress are both very pop- for growth. ular in the region, its probably Online news consumption more realistic to count ‘active’ blogs in Telecom infrastructure across most of The Middle East & North Africa’s Twitter the tens of thousands. The Internet and the Middle East lagged behind consid- community now approaches 40,000 users. Democracy Project of Berkman Center erably until privatisation of the sector, for Internet and Society identified a which began in the late nineties. As a Source: Spot On Public Relations base network of approximately 35,000 result, Internet adoption has taken active Arab blogs across the region for longer to gain momentum (current esti- their 2009 survey and then analysed mates put the Arab world’s Internet Actual consumption of news online 4,000. Popular blog topics include reli- population at 56 million), the cost of varies a great deal from country to gion, politics, media, culture and inter- access has remained relatively high and country. Statistics from The Nielsen national affairs. However, despite a broadband adoption is also behind the Company quoted in this year’s Dubai common language and much shared cul- curve. Although some Arabian Gulf Press Club annual Arab Media Outlook ture, the Center found the Arab blogos- states have Internet penetration rates of report found that 33% of people in phere is organized primarily around well over 50%, average Internet pene- Egypt (and as many as 75% in Saudi countries and, with some exceptions tration across the Arab world is below Arabia) consumed news online. (for example, the Palestinian issue), 20%. So, perhaps it’s understandable Nielsen’s research also found that the bloggers were very focused on national that news media in the region has been content language preference for news and national issues. The profusion slow to take the Internet seriously. Internet users varied greatly from coun- of political and religious blogs across The Internet is now firmly on the try to country, with 64% of Internet the region means that much of the blo- agenda of Arab news organizations, and users in the cosmopolitan UAE prefer- they are beginning to take up the online ing English online content, while 97% Continued on next page

12 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM gosphere is off-limits to brands, while the national focus of bloggers makes the blogosphere a fragmented one for multinational brands considering Pan-Arab campaigns. Unsurprisingly, blogger relations has not become common- place for PR practi- tioners in the Middle East and, in fact, the Ford Motor Company deliberately chose not to include Arab bloggers in its 2009 Ford Fiesta blogger market- Cent. Amer. / Carribbean ing campaign, because Africa it felt blogger market- Oceania ing in the region lagged too far behind M. East / N. Africa other marketing tools. South America Social growth Asia In common with Europe many other parts of North America the world, 2009 was a big year for social media platforms in the Top: Active Facebook Users in the Middle East and North Africa. Market Penetration: (Active Facebook Middle East. users)/(Total Population). Bottom: Active Facebook users by region (Dec. ‘09 - Feb. ‘10). Market Penetration: Facebook’s Middle (Active Facebook users)/(Total Population), where total population is limited to countries where Facebook has East and North Africa a presence. user base registered in Source: O’Reilly Research the tens of thousands in 2008, soared into the millions by the tiatives taking place at all levels that being able to watch and learn from new end of 2009, and now stands at more don’t always make the news. In the communications and marketing trends than 10 million users, as of February. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Reem that take hold of US and European mar- Twitter saw increased popularity too, as Asaad, a finance lecturer at a women’s kets long before they make waves in bloggers and web entrepreneurs across college, led a campaign aimed at per- the MENA region, and this has been the Arab world found the medium ideal suading the government to implement true of social media. Due to a lag in to connect and converse with their legislation requiring that lingerie stores both technology adoption and market- counterparts in other countries. employ female shop assistants, a cam- ing practices, the Arab world could Estimates now put MENA’s Twitter paign that arguably would not have almost be considered a virgin social community at 35-40,000, up from just a made it into mainstream media without media market. The opportunity is two- few hundred one year ago. Meanwhile, first gaining support via Facebook. fold: firstly, due to the low volume of Yahoo! extended its reach to millions of February this year saw the launch of the social media marketing campaigns, Internet users in the region via its Young Leaders Social Media Cafe in expectations are often relatively low acquisition of Maktoob, a leading Arab Lebanon, which plans to organize regu- compared with more developed mar- Internet portal with over 15 million lar events in 12 Arab countries to bring kets where social media users have unique visitors per month. And for together young creative, tech and entre- already been targeted by many cam- those still needing to see evidence that preneurs who want to use social media paigns. Secondly, social media users in more online dollars are on the way, for social change. Meanwhile, MENA’s the MENA region seem to be very open Facebook appointed its first Pan-Arab social media users are also becoming to smart social media marketing. In a advertising sales partner this year. more social, organizing Tweetups, survey conducted by Spot On PR in Social media has made its presence blogger meetings and other social February, 95% of MENA Twitter users felt across the Arab world on political, media events all over the region. welcomed brand engagement on the social and community levels. News Volunteers are organizing GeekFests in platform. coverage of political demonstrations Lebanon, Jordan and the UAE, while Carrington Malin is Co-Founder and organized via social media and the Twestival Global was marked on March Managing Director of Dubai-based arrests of bloggers and activists in 25th with hundreds of people attending Spot On Public Relations, a Brodeur Middle East countries are now well Twestivals in Beirut and Dubai. Partner and a Founder Member of the known. However, there is a Eastern promise Middle East Public Relations groundswell of community-focused ini- Marketers often enjoy the luxury of Association (MEPRA).

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 13 INTERVIEW Social tools offer no cure for unearned media Lloyd Trufelman runs New York City-based Trylon SMR, which focuses on traditional PR and new technology for the media and telecommunications industries. Prior to starting Trylon in 1990, Trufelman held executive PR posts at MTV Networks, the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, WNYC, Howard J. Rubenstein Associates and CBS Masterworks. His writing has been featured in national newspapers and journals. By John O’Dwyer from us directly in our own words.” Recently, we were So a university-controlled blog offer- able to get enough of How do you define social media? ing officially approved content will have a buzz on Twitter for Trufelman: The common understand- the same credibility and impact with key a client that they were ing of it defaults to channels and plat- publics as a carefully vetted newspaper the number one topic forms such as Twitter and Facebook. story, independent blog post or thoughtful for a short period one Social media has its origins in the emer- radio/podcast interview? night. gence of blogs around 2002. I pick that Those who think because their compa- What’s the differ- date because a former staff member and I ny has a Twitter handle or Facebook ence between this and wrote a piece for PRSA’s Tactics publica- page, all other existing PR vehicles are getting a front page tion that year where we talked about the now obsolete, brings to mind those who placement on a news- Lloyd Trufelman PR opportunities blogs could offer. To earlier this decade found out the hard way paper? the best of my knowledge it was the first that setting up a blog was not the single Good results are good results, whether published piece of its kind on the new magic PR bullet they thought it would be. in print or online. phenomenon. Social media can be a powerful PR tool, When will we hit the saturation point Social media represents the transition but only when used as part of an integrat- with social media? from the traditional one-to-many dynam- ed approach that builds on the foundation Trufelman: The thing about all these ic to peer-to-peer. A new platform taking of earned media coverage. platforms is that you can turn them off if hold is foursquare, which combines geo- Kind of like a golfer getting a new hi- you want. You don’t have to be notified graphical location with messaging. By tech putter but then throwing out the rest every time someone posts to your “checking-in” to the service, you can tell of his clubs thinking he has all that he Facebook page or a friend Tweets. friends where you are, get recommenda- needs to play well. Sorry, but you need There’s just as much technology to keep tions for things to do, and leave your own all the clubs! you from getting info you don’t want as reviews, such as a tip of what to order at How is social media used to help there is for getting info you do want. a restaurant. Social media can be clients? New technology makes legitimate con- described as the creation of new channels Trufelman: The thing you have to do tent even more important. of communication. is extend the reach of earned media by What’s your take on the struggle Is all the hype surrounding social media using social media platforms. For exam- traditional media like newspapers and justified? ple, let’s say a cable network client pro- magazines are facing? Trufelman: In some cases PR firms duces a new show and receives beneficial Trufelman: Their biggest challenge is are overemphasizing social media, not coverage in a newspaper. What you have to stop trying to keep alive out-of-date based on considered analysis of effective- to do now is take that secured coverage business models. It reminds me of record ness, but out of fear of being seen as not and spread it around using Twitter, companies in the late ’90s insisting on sufficiently “out of the box” enough by Facebook, blog postings, etc. selling CDs when clearly the file-shar- clients. It’s key to point out that you are associ- ing/downloading model of sites like Our position is that though social ated with the cable network and you don’t Napster was what consumers wanted. media is a useful new tool for PR, it want readers to take your word that the needs to be put in perspective. New com- show is great. Let them read for them- Media Briefs munications technologies do not replace selves. Starbucks adds USA Today previous ones; they augment them and Companies who insist they can conduct become catalysts for adjusting the media their own media outreach through social Starbucks said in March that it has start- mix. media are fooling themselves. Twitter ing selling copies of USA Today in its 6,500 I don’t understand why PR firms have accounts can be set up for clients and you company-operated U.S. stores, ending its separate social media and digital media can help them manage them, but it’s not run of selling only the New York Times and practices. With rare exceptions, every- nearly as effective as getting third party local papers to customers. one’s media habits are a big mash-up of endorsement in the Twittersphere. People The paper has a circulation of about 1.9M print, online, video clips, podcasts, mes- who are constantly blowing their own compared to the Times’ 928K daily and saging and e-mail. There isn’t a situation horn on Twitter are not doing the right 1.4M on Sunday. where the walls are distinct. thing. The company cited data showing con- I was at a media conference at a major How do you measure the effectiveness sumers prefer to get their news from university several months ago. In the of social media? national newspapers as well as “more opening keynote address, the President of Trufelman: You have to look at sources.”Starbucks president Cliff Burrows the university said, “Now that we have a increases in website traffic as measure by said the move is part of the company’s blog and Twitter, we don’t need PR any- unique visitors, volume of transactions, effort to let customers “personalize” their more. People don’t need to find out about or downloads. Also can track blog post- “Starbucks experience.” us from the news media, they can hear ings and responses.

14 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM

FEATURE Page Society seeks successor for Nicholson By Jack O’Dwyer

Nicholson was making $180,000 plus caused partly by the recession and partly he Arthur W. Page Society is still $17,000 in benefits. by criticism of corporate meetings at looking for a successor to Thomas Some reports say the salary for the expensive resorts. TNicholson, who had been new post will not go above $200,000 AIG had come under a torrent of criti- Executive Director since April of 2007. although another school says $250,000 cism in 2008 for meeting at such resorts The search for his successor, who will will be needed to attract the right per- after receiving billions in federal bailout have the title of President, is being han- son. funds. dled by Richard Marshall of Korn/Ferry Nicholson, in a departing statement to Annual dues of Page are $1,095. More International. Page members, noted that the group has than $150,000 is pro- Nearly 200 resumes were sent to Page a record high membership and that it vided in the form of when word of the opening was had its second straight year of positive tax-deductible grants announced recently. cash flow after five years of negative to Page which is a Many of those applying are members cash flow. 501/c/3 non-profit. of Page or PR Seminar or both. About Formerly VP-PR and communica- Most organizations 40 members of Page and Seminar are tions, HSBC North America, and direc- in this category are said to be in the job market. tor of PR, all retail formats of Sears, charities such as the Roebuck & Co., he intends to return to Red Cross or United corporate PR. Way or educational Survey: firms see no Page’s IRS Form 990 for 2008 or cultural institu- Thomas hiring change in Q2 showed cash/investment totaling tions such as ballet Nicholson $581,000. The total was $841,277 at the companies or sym- end of 2003. phonies. ost marketing and advertis- Page/Seminar costs are issue The IRS description of a c/3 non-profit ing agencies do not plan on Some members of Page and PR says it is for “religious, educational, char- Madding staff during the sec- Seminar said the employers of the PR itable, scientific, literary, testing for pub- ond quarter, according to a survey by executives are uneasy with them lic safety, or prevention of cruelty to chil- Menlo Park, Calif., staffing firm The attending high-cost meetings in both dren or animals organizations.” Creative Group. April and May. c/6’s are for “business leagues, cham- Seventy-four percent of the more The April 8-9 meeting of Page in bers of commerce, real estate boards.” than 500 executives surveyed by New York (at the Waldorf-Astoria) Tax law sources further say that mem- phone said they expect no change in costs $1,195 plus hotel and meals for at bership in a c/3 should be “available to staffing levels heading into Q2. least two days. The theme of this year’s the general public” and that “benefits to Of the 13 percent who expect to meeting, ironically say some Page members are negligible.” add staff — up a single point from Q1 members, is “Becoming Indispensable Contributions sought are supposed to — 11% said they will hire in the PR to Your Organization.” It is the 25th be for benefits to the general public. sector. annual spring seminar of Page. Page got its c/3 status in 1983 by posi- Of the 13 percent who expect to PR Seminar’s four-day meeting will tioning itself as an educational institu- add staff — up a single point from Q1 be held in early June in Tuscon. tion. — 11% said they will hire in the PR Registration per couple last year was Members of the public cannot join the sector. Web design/production topped $3,350. Almost all attendees bring 350-member Page which has highly the list of disciplines at 15%. spouses or companions. restrictive membership policies even for Notably, 12 percent said they will Cost for a couple including hotel, PR pros. Most of the members are from cut staff. meals and transportation can easily top corporations. Donna Darrugia, Executive $7,500. 2009 contributors listed Director of TCG, said lingering Page/Seminar veterans said that in Companies making 2009 tax- uncertainty in the economy has com- recent years executives have been deductible contributions to Page includ- panies using freelancers or consult- attending one or the other meeting but ed the following that gave more than ants to fill staffing needs until confi- not both. $10,000 each: Abbott, FedEx, Johnson dence is restored. That could turn Sixty-two of the 127 PR executives at & Johnson, Kraft Foods, Prudential around this year as TCG found that the 2009 Seminar at the Ritz-Carlton, Financial, State Farm Insurance and 86% said they are confident in their Laguna Niguel, Calif., including 2009 Weber Shandwick. firms’ prospective growth for 2Q. Page president Maril MacDonald, are Giving more than $5,000 each were Nearly half of respondents (45%) also members of Page. Seminar’s 30- Royal Dutch Shell, Staples, Edelman, said that despite high unemployment member executive committee includes Coca-Cola Enterprises, IBM, Manning it has still been a challenge to find 21 Page members. Selvage & Lee and Western Union. skilled pros. Seminar had record low attendance Nineteen others made contributions The 127 attendance was a record low, of more than $1,000.

16 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM

COVER STORY

interrupting purposeful missions used to cultivate social relationships,” said Euro’s What’s wrong with Director of Strategic Planning Karina By Jon Gingerich Meckel. the Internet? The problems of digital culture Polaroid, the magenta-soaked Super 8 Regardless of all the marketing hoopla, ultures are fragile things. Consider film, the rewinding whirl of the videocas- generated content and general user activi- the Yir-Yoront, a tribe that once sette. Media’s landscape not only changes ty on social media sites, right now the Coccupied the northern regions how we work or interact with each other, negative effects of 2.0 culture far out- of Queensland, Australia, which dis- it changes the way we think about the weigh the good. solved quite suddenly over the introduc- world; it alters the ways in which we For one, there’s simply too much infor- tion of a steel axe. behave. mation. According to recent findings by The Yir-Yoront existed for hundreds of While it’s far too early to enumerate all Cisco, it’s estimated that by 2013 the years in relative isolation until they were the psychic features our new digital land- amount of information floating around on befriended by Christian missionaries in scape will bring, what is certain is that, the Internet alone will reach nearly 670 the early 1900’s. The missionaries noticed like all forms of media before it, the exabytes. The amount of digital informa- a central feature of the tribe was the high Internet is terraforming a new tribalism tion in existence doubles every other year. value it placed on crude, stone axes. onto the collective conscience of its sub- However, because information begets These rare instruments were used for jects, melding a new community with a more information — because data causes practically everything, yet were wielded new set of rules, uprooting our very social everything to go fast, to exponentially exclusively by elder male members. order and deposing our elders of media increase — these figures are expected to Quick to make a good deed, the mission- with it. double themselves in several decades. aries decided they could improve the It’s a common misconception that sen- Our culture is steeped in data; our new tribe’s quality of life by giving every iors and members of the Baby Boomer industry feeds on the collection of endless member mass-produced steel replace- generation don’t adapt to social media amounts of it. This isn’t going to change. ments. applications just as readily as younger Instead, we need to reconcile that all this The once-revered stone axes immedi- audiences. Amy Beamer, COO of Varsity, information is going to have an effect on ately lost their value, and axe-wielding an ad agency the works in the 55-and-over both what types of information we choose women and children began performing market, said it’s the use of these applica- to ingest and how we view our own place duties previously reserved for the tribe’s tions that differ. Seniors see social net- in it. At the very least, as metadata collects elders. The elders, who had refused to works primarily as a means for maintain- more data about more data, humans slow- depart from their traditions, were humili- ing existing friendships. In other words, ly lose centrality in the equation. This is ated to find themselves dependant on they use these new tools to maintain their where the digital world and all other younger members for the goods and serv- contacts in their preexisting tribe. forms of media truly differ: we are slowly ices easily rendered by the superior instru- “They grew up in a generation where being squeezed out of relevance. In the ments. Everyone was now more inde- you knew your neighbors,” said Beamer. social media sphere, there’s a real, loom- pendent, and because the elders’ advice “They see community as a church pot- ing fear that digital culture could change was no longer central to their develop- luck dinner or going to the movies on a faster than most of us can adapt to it. ment, younger members began skipping Saturday night. They see the utility in Then there’s the lack of privacy. out on annual religious ceremonies. The social media but will never see it as a Facebook, Amazon and eBay all track and tribe’s power structure collapsed, and replacement for real friendship.” store user browsing habits. Google goes a within decades it disappeared. The lesson: Teens raised under the sallow-hued step further and mines the contents of new technology has a way of permanent- umbrella of the Internet, on the other your personal emails. Younger users ly altering cultures in a very short amount hand, view social networks as a commu- accustomed to this peephole culture will of time. nity unto itself. They may sooner befriend often post their most private details Marshall McLuhan was right when he someone who lives in rural China than (sometimes literally) in the public forum famously stated “the medium is the mes- another teen living on their own block, a of social networks without batting an eye. sage.” Information has always had value, concept that baffles anyone who was We are unwittingly searched against. but the means by which we ingest content raised in a time before the Internet shrunk Employers routinely comb cyberspace has had a profound psychic impact on our the world. looking for incriminating evidence. Drop identities, our histories, and our collective A recent white paper report analyzing a regrettable phrase on a message board, development. The printing press ampli- the behavior of teenage girls by PR firm make a drunken error in the presence of a fied a diverse spread of preexisting ideas, Euro RSCG Worldwide found that while digital camera or, God forbid, make the resulting in every philosophical break- girls spend far less time online than adults wrong enemy, and expect it to be through from the Reformation to the (11 hours a month, compared to adults’ inscribed on your permanent record, Enlightenment. The radio and the tele- average of 27 hours) they spend a higher scorned in the court of public opinion for phone furthered the tentacles of the indus- percentage of that connected time on all to see. trial age. The television was the theatre of social networks, and make a majority of There’s also a funny effect technology mass production. those connections through mobile devices has on our immediate social behaviors. To those raised in the later half of the (girls send an average of 96 text messages When given access to anonymity and an 20th century, our memories are intrinsi- a day). audience, the Internet has caused seem- cally linked to the casual features of each “This shows that marketers have to be ingly regular people to metamorphose delivery medium: the granule-dotted really specific and careful, because we’re Continued on next page

18 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM into indignant, trolling bullies. Acts of we’re artists, don’t we?) yet we have the ately poor to placement that one has to drive-by hostility and childish name-call- gall to expect our favorite artists to give us wonder if advertisers have simply fooled ing are so common an entirely new social their works for free. Any opposition to themselves into believing the old cost- order has evolved on the Internet that this skewed economic model is assailed per-mile model still applies, that at least doesn’t apply in the analogue world. by the herd; expect to field the tedium of by having a banner ad they’re “getting A quick visit to YouTube aptly displays jabs from bloggers and Web 2.0 devotees their name out there,” as if it were a bill- the solipsistic narcissism that character- calling you a “Luddite” because you board on a well-traveled highway. It isn’t. izes today’s generation, as even world- dared question the tenets of the technocra- Some publishers (like U.K.’s the Times, renowned artists’ works are upbraided by cy. The blogs, meanwhile, quick to deride and the New York Times) have resorted to an army of semi-literate obstructionists the death of print journalism, survive by placing pay walls around content because and their barrage of misspelled expletives. circulating news stories already broken by they know advertising alone can’t con- Hypocritically enough, the more vested print Luddites like the New York Times. ceivably buttress the burden of their oper- one becomes in their online profile, the This brings me to my final point: we ations, at least not at present. lower the shroud of anonymity, the higher still don’t know how to make money from “The money spent on Internet advertis- the chances these e-warriors will recoil Web 2.0. Until very recently, any mone- ing isn’t insignificant, but what a lot of into abject conformity and readily reiter- tary success made on the Internet was publishers are figuring out is that a lot of ate the approved opinion of the crowd for barely above anecdotal. Even the biggest people expect their content to be free, and fear they’ll become the next victims of a sites in the world (like Amazon) have ads aren’t enough to offset the losses,” message board pig-pile. only recently begun to turn a profit, and said Chiagouris. “Advertising can’t sup- There is another irony in all this: the they have yet to recompense for all their port all of it, and unfortunately, sites with more digital we become, the more we col- years in the red. the unreliable content will be the ones get- lectively thirst for the analogue authentic- Facebook, like Google, is finally begin- ting the ad dollars.” ity we have willingly replaced. In the ning to show it can make money. These Uproot bad information same way that the early printing press are good signs, but it could be argued that It’s no wonder our forays into Web 2.0 usurped the content of the oral tradition, the only reason they make money is have been wrought with such financial history seemed to stop in its tracks the because they deal in large numbers. There heartache, given its future was peppered second digital culture came along to ana- isn’t a scaled-down model to show how with freshman idealist catch phrases such lyze it to death. an online strategy that works for Procter as “information wants to be free.” Many of the most popular sites out & Gamble could work for a Main Street Information doesn’t “want” anything. We there, when not regurgitating ad infinitum pharmacy. do. Information has a value determined an endless montage of home video bloop- “To be clear, the hype exceeds the real- by its relative quality and scarcity. The ers and silly pranks, seem largely devoted ity with social media,” said Larry reason we don’t pay for content now is to unearthing pop culture trivia from Chiagouris, a professor of marketing at because, like air, it remains free in most decades past and adding a twee, ironic Pace University’s Lubin School of instances. We are motivated by unmet spin. The result is a bridge troll’s amateur Business. “Social media is not yet proven needs. Hence, scarce content that has hour filled with self-congratulatory nods, to provide any meaningful return on value to users is worth a monetary sum if lacking in originality, quick to scrutinize investment to companies in general. Most it is balanced by the appropriate scales of yet seldom offering anything new. companies don’t even spend enough on supply and demand. I don’t need to illustrate how easy this social media to warrant an effective When the lords of Web 2.0 mill over is: Take a former pillar of pop culture approach to measure its impact yet. The their envisioned egalitarian utopia, they (Burt Reynolds), juxtapose it with an service providers, the people that produce pontificate on a world in which all infor- incongruous and ubiquitous other (kit- social media programs are making mation is available at the same frequency. tens) and you have an instant blog hit. The money, but the companies themselves What they don’t realize is that good infor- further we move into Web 2.0 culture, the aren’t making anything.” mation is becoming increasingly harder to more homogenized our collective content Of course, every PR firm, ad agency find because, by design, it is growing seems to become. Social networks are, for and marketing company in the world scarcer in relation to the bad information the most part, a Sargasso of mindless pat- wants to pretend they’re on the cutting that surrounds it. ter in the form of ego-massaging status edge of social media, and no one wants to The Internet rewards lowest-common- updates and insignificant observations. believe our emperors of propaganda denominator information because the Web 2.0 is like watching a movie for the aren’t wearing any clothes. Internet is designed to favor what’s most first time with the director’s commentary The fact is, the current model of online popular as opposed to what’s best. It’s for on. It reinforces the idea that culture died advertising attempts to use old-tribe tech- this reason the Web always prefers the with the dawn of social media and all that niques to rally an entirely new communi- advice of crowds over experts. A search survives are millions of armchair nerds ty. While online video ads are growing, in Google will yield results that are the left to infinitely analyze the pieces. the clumsiest forms of Internet advertis- most clicked, not the best researched, not All this has made an indelible impact ing (click-throughs, banner ads, pay-per- the most informed nor those which con- on the economy, arts and information that click) are still the ones driving the glut of tain the most information. exist in the offline world. Current music today’s Internet advertising revenues. Similarly, data is dumb. It is designed is, for the most part, simply a re-hash of These models haven’t caught up with to aggregate for an ends other than its music created decades prior. Of course, behavioral realities. Millions of clicks do own; it can’t comprehend its own impor- we haven’t exactly made it easy for new not result in millions of sales, or even tance or lack thereof. It’s for this reason artists to make a living. We love the arts hundreds of sales. Sales through digital just as much as before (and we all think display ads have been so disproportion- Continued on page 45

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 19 Profiles

O’Dwyer’s Guide to: SOCIAL MEDIA

4.10

ists from a customized list of websites, blogs and active CAPLAN communities. In addition, we feature your COMMUNICATIONS story on our Online 1700 Rockville Pike, Suite 400 Greenroom site SPRUCE TV Rockville, MD 20852 (www.sprucetv.com), the 301/998-6592 resource for online journalists. Fax: 301/983-2126 We track the reach of our www.caplancommunications.com [email protected] Online Media Campaigns in our reports, which provide Aric Caplan, President you with a clear snapshot of the online coverage garnered for your story. In 2006, O’Dwyer’s hon- ACG is a full-service TV, ored Caplan Communications radio and Internet video pro- with “O’Dwyer’s Award for duction company specializing Public Communications in strategic electronic and dig- Excellence.” ital publicity and marketing. Specialties: Designs radio media tours with all nation- The Big Voice team. Top: Mark Burk, Partner; Lisa Spychala; Victoria BIG VOICE al, local and public radio Lang, Partner; Justine Santaniello; Pier Paolo Piccoli, Partner. outlets; Implements rapid- Bottom: Mariah MacCarthy; Chris Bryant, Partner; Donna Emanuele. UNLIMITED response radio and major national TV coverage; 20 West 23rd Street, 3rd flr. consistent counsel, ongoing New York, NY 10010 Satellite Media Tours reach ALLISON & education and creative ideas 212/675-5740 x13 your targeted audiences that help brands break Fax: 212/206-8168 from anywhere in the USA; PARTNERS through the clutter. Our serv- www.BigVoiceUnlimited.com [email protected] Canvasses key states; Reach 505 Sansome Street ices include digital media target audiences. San Francisco, CA 94111 audits, social media strategy Victoria Lang, Partner Caplan designs targeted www.allisonpr.com and implementation, blogger and rapid-response broad- outreach, content creation, Born to champion brands cast coverage. We help Scott Allison, President and video strategy and more. CEO with small voices. What kind clients to win key legislative Jonathan Heit, SVP, Technology of brands have small voices? battles for nonprofit organi- & Digital Media AURITT Brands in low interest cate- zations and others. COMMUNICATIONS gories; brands with smaller Clients: Advanced As the agency that has marketing budgets than their Deforestation Partners, Alaska helped some of social media’s GROUP competitors; brands who are Wilderness League, American not top of mind in their cate- biggest names catch fire 555 8th Avenue, Suite 709 Rivers, Congressional Black (including MySpace, New York, NY 10018 gory. Big Voice = dynamic Caucus Foundation, YouTube and Ning), Allison 212/302-6230 social media, marketing and Defenders of Wildlife, & Partners has an insider’s Fax: 212/302-2969 advertising made especially Earthjustice, Environment www.auritt.com insight into effectively for brands with small voices. America, Environmental using digital platforms to Joan Auritt, President We help small voiced brands Defense, Friends of the Earth, grow business and manage get noticed, considered and GreenpeaceUSA, Lambi Fund reputation. Today, we’re help- Auritt’s Online Media talked about. of Haiti, League of ing brands ranging from the Campaigns (OMCs) take your Our services include: Conservation Voters, National Hard Rock Hotel and Casino story directly to the online Digital Marketing Strategy, Parks Conservation Las Vegas to journalists, bloggers and edi- Web & Mobile Applications, Association, National Wildlife Philosophy create an authen- tors who cover the topics that Facebook & Twitter Federation, Natural Resources tic social media pres- match your content to reach Applications, Widgets & Defense Council, Pew ence, building a powerful your targeted audience. Digital Distribution, and Charitable Trusts, Physicians bond with customers. We For each OMC, our dedicat- Online Social Games. for Social Responsibility, ensure our clients stay ahead ed team of online media spe- Let us create a bigger voice Union of Concerned of the curve by providing cialists connects with journal- for your client. Scientists.

20 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

COOPERKATZ & Coyne PR is one of the most sought-after independent public COMPANY relations agencies and an industry leader in social media. To 205 Lexington Avenue, 5th Floor New York, NY 10016 stay on top of emerging trends, www.cooperkatz.com rapidly evolving technologies, as well as the issues and ethics Andy Cooper, Principal associated with the self- Ralph Katz, Principal Anne Green, President and COO empowering technologies and open forums of the social media world, Coyne PR created CooperKatz & Company — sPRocket, which has set the an independent, full-service course for the agency, providing marketing/public relations the strategy and expertise firm — was an industry leader required to be the pacesetters in in establishing a practice, today’s social media environ- Cogence®, devoted to under- ment. The agency follows a standing and leveraging social social media code of ethics and media channels. Cogence Designed to reach moms online, the Walt Disney World Moms Panel employs a unique strategy to helps clients: Find their online was launched with help from Coyne PR in 2008 to answer the demand find, analyze and evaluate made by families using the Internet to research vacation planning evangelists/critics; Listen to appropriate blogs and bloggers options. What started out as a 12-member panel has grown each year, them actively and transparent- for each individual campaign. currently boasts 43 moms and dads who have mastered the art of ly; Engage influencers in an From building blogger net- planning a vacation for their own families and are excited to share online dialogue; Empower works to hosting Twitter parties their wisdom with others. evangelists to shepherd the to writing social media policies organization’s message. for clients, our teams are well- Optimization with iPR, a propri- ing varied communications We factor Cogence into every versed and up-to-speed on the etary SEO Syndication Tool; needs. client engagement, with expert- latest new media applications Social Media Marketing and DKC Connect, the firm’s ise that includes: Developing and their potential for amplify- Monitoring; Blogger Relations digital division, brings the effective strategies; Monitoring ing your brand and its assets. & Blog Creation; Podcasts & same strategic foundation to social media channels; Our internal design team sup- Vidcasts. Check out Digital social media campaigns that Conducting blogger rela- ports our client’s digital needs Park’s blog at DKC brings to media relations. tions/seeding campaigns; as well, including creating www.rbbdigitalpark.com. The firm’s work in the digital Staging virtual press confer- SMPRs, producing content and rbb, headquartered in Miami, arena is rooted in creating two- ences; Establishing/maintaining developing applications. is a marketing public relations way engagement that nurtures corporate blogs, Twitter feeds, firm specializing in bilingual connections, facilitates conver- Facebook pages, etc.; DIGITAL PARK media relations, corporate com- sations and builds community. Producing videos for the Web; munications, marketing com- Led by James Gregson, who Designing interactive contests a division of rbb Public Relations munication, product introduc- serves as the firm’s chief digi- and promotions; and Leading 355 Alhambra Circle, Suite 800 tions, event promotion and crisis tal strategist, DKC Connect online crisis preparedness Miami, FL 33134 management. Clients share that offers a complete range of dig- planning. 305/448-7450 www.rbbpr.com rbb’s counsel and results are on ital offerings, including web- CooperKatz has won numer- par with the largest national site and social networking ous industry awards like the Christine Barney, CEO & firms, yet come with the indi- strategy and execution, online SABRE, and has been honored Managing Partner Christine de la Huerta, VP, vidual attention of a boutique video production, application as ‘Best Agency of the Year’ in Digital Park agency. and widget creation, and its size category and ‘One of the online reputation manage- Best Agencies to Work For’ by Digital Park is the new media DKC ment. The Holmes Report. division of rbb Public Relations, Among DKC Connect’s named “2009 Boutique Agency 386 Park Ave. South, 10th Flr. recent successes was the cre- New York, NY 10016 COYNE PR of the Year” by the Holmes 212/685-4300 ation of a multi-channel cam- Report and “Agency of the www.dkcnews.com paign for Atari’s Star Trek 14 Walsh Drive Parsippany, NJ 07054 Year” by PRWeek in 2008. Online game that engaged fans Dan Klores, Chairman/CEO through Facebook, Twitter, 973/316-1665 Employing best practices, Sean Cassidy, President Fax: 973/316-6568 Digital Park delivers measure- James Gregson, Director, DKC YouTube, blogs, fan sites and www.coynepr.com able results for strategic social Connect forums, building substantial Thomas F. Coyne, CEO and interactive programs to con- buzz for the title. In the past Rich Lukis, President sumer, corporate and B2B Established in 1991, DKC is year, DKC Connect has also John Gogarty, Tim Schramm, clients. Services include: Online among the largest independent- built thriving online commu- Dave Carter, Kelly Dencker, SVPs ly owned public relations firms nities for brands such as New Chris Brienza, Wayne Catan, Lisa Reputation Management; Web Farynyk, Kevin Lamb, Deborah Site Assessment & in the country. The firm works Balance, Paul Frank, and Sierchio, Joe Gargiulo, VPs Development; Search Engine across diverse industries, meet- King Features.

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 21 PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

David Wickenden, Managing agency activities, journalist out- Director, Digital Integration reach and client counsel. With an active Twitter account, Fleishman-Hillard’s global Facebook page and trend-savvy network of digital groups and blog postings daily, Hawkins experts has been creating inte- International shares timely grated campaigns and manag- information and engages in con- ing forward-looking online versations with media and con- communications, Web sites, sumers. In addition, Hawkins microsites and applications for actively provides clients with more than a decade. Behind background information and each of our strategies is innova- advice on social media plat- tive and emerging technology forms, best practices, and tools that powers the effectiveness of to help create Facebook pages, these campaigns. We blend new Flickr accounts and YouTube and traditional media into a sin- channels, while coaching clients On behalf of client Kraft Foods, Hunter Public Relations sparked a gle, open ecosystem, shaping social media dialogue around Grey Poupon following President in the importance of joining in Obama’s “executive order” of a burger with Dijon Mustard in May and honing a voice for brands, the online conversation. Follow 2009. Hunter PR posted an open letter to President Obama, urging organizations and issues. Hawkins International on him to pardon all Americans whose choice of condiments “didn’t cut We’re world-class, worldwide Twitter: @HIPR. the mustard.” Hunter PR created an interactive micro site that show- and have an unparalleled histo- cased the open letter and linked to vintage “Pardon Me” Grey ry of delivering integrated com- Poupon commercials on YouTube. Results included hundreds of munications programs that HUNTER PUBLIC tweets, dozens of influential blog placements and 7,000 additional combine strategy and creativity RELATIONS YouTube views. to deliver lasting results. That’s what we’ve always done and 41 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor geted approach to promoting a New York, NY 10010-2202 will always do — with the tech- 212/679-6600 D S SIMON campaign or initiative to the nologies, channels and plat- www.hunterpr.com online world. IMTs are grow- PRODUCTIONS, forms that work best. [email protected] ing in popularity as a commu- Clients include: Smithsonian INC. nications tool among both Grace Leong, Managing Partner Institution, Microsoft, AT&T, Jason Winocour, Agency marketers and the media web U.S. Army, Novartis Oncology, Partner, Social Media Practice New York Headquarters sites and bloggers that crave Leader 229 West 36th Street, 12th Floor PepsiCo, Allstate, Papa John’s, New York, NY 10018 online content, specifically Nokia, iRobot, the Better Sleep 212/736-2727 video. Increasingly, IMTs are Council, Kroll, RMB Private Social media offers a rich, Fax: 212/736-7040 being used in conjunction Bank, Air Transport Action continually expanding platform www.dssimon.com with a satellite media tour, to www.YourUpdate.tv Group and King Abdullah to build stronger and more www.vlogviews.com turn a press conference into a University of Science and meaningful relationships among [email protected] video press junket, with B- Technology. consumers, products and [email protected] Roll or as a standalone serv- [email protected] brands. Hunter Public Relations ice. In addition to significant- HAWKINS — an independently-owned, Los Angeles Office ly improving your search mid-sized marketing communi- 213/346-9927 ranking, we are typically see- INTERNATIONAL Fax: 424/247-9875 cations firm — harnesses the ing pick-up of the IMT on PR enormous power of Twitter, more than 20 viral video sites, Chicago Office Facebook, the blogophere, 237 East Ontario Street 100 social media news 119 West 23rd Street, Suite 401 social communities, online Chicago, IL 60811 sites, and 500-1,000+ plus New York, NY 10011 312/255-0240 212/255-6541 video and an ever-evolving ros- websites. The service is sur- www.hawkpr.com ter of other social media chan- prisingly affordable and can Douglas Simon, President & CEO nels to revitalize mature brands, Eric Wright, Sr. Vice President, be an effective way to jump Jennifer Hawkins, President create buzz around new prod- Marketing & Business Dev. start your online initiative or ucts and build awareness among Christine Deerin, Divisional VP, provide additional support to A renowned boutique public Los Angeles Office key influencer groups. The current campaigns. We are relations agency specializing in award-winning firm’s When it comes to social headquartered in New York global luxury travel, Hawkins unmatched acumen and insights media, it’s important to have with offices in Los Angeles International recognizes the into social media — coupled an all-inclusive program in and Chicago. importance of social media in a with thoughtfully tailored pro- place for creating and distrib- successful integrated multi-plat- gramming and precise tactical uting content as well as FLEISHMAN- form PR campaign along with execution — benefit some of the engaging with your publics. HILLARD traditional media outreach. most respected companies in One tool that can help facili- Hawkins International stays up America, including Hasbro, tate that is the D S Simon 200 N. Broadway to date with the latest social Diageo, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Internet Media Tour (IMT), St. Louis, MO 63102 media trends and tools, integrat- Campbell’s Soup Company, 314/982-1700 ing them into both day-to-day which is a comprehensive, tar- www.fleishman.com E&J Gallo Winery and 3M.

22 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM She votes with her thumbs, and her social network follows her lead. Where does she stand on your issues?

We can get you there.

be there.

www.fleishman.com PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

pushed the two-year-old and attention to detail of a ZeroWater to overtake all boutique PR agency with the competition — we have com- unmatched experience level bined what we do best with of a global PR firm to deliv- what we are: social media er the best possible results users and enthusiasts! for our clients. In addition to Your target audience is visit- traditional media and analyst ing and buying via the virtual relations, LEWIS specializes marketplace community in social media PR, SEO, everyday now. You want to be digital marketing and cre- there, and we can take you ative services. It works with there. companies to implement integrated communications KAPLOW programs on an international scale. LEWIS works with 19 West 44th Street, Suite 601 leading and emerging brands New York, NY 10036 212/221-1713 across multiple sectors, www.kaplowpr.com including automotive, con- [email protected] sumer, government, healthcare, insurance, legal, non- Liz Kaplow, CEO profit, technology and tele- Kaplow is an award-winning com. public relations firm dedicated LEWIS has always taken to cultivating brand identities the approach that PR must be and reputations that nurture visual, fast and global. happy, loyal consumers. Today that is more true Kaplow exists for a singular than ever. Content is created, reason: To emotionally connect consumed, commented on, our client’s brand story with collaborated over and circu- consumers who matter. Kaplow lated at an ever-accelerating helps consumers fall in love pace through social media, with your brand. We create pro- search engines and digital grams that put consumers first content. Companies must be by identifying the media, events quick to identify, learn from and people that influence them and engage in conversations and ensuring the brand is front that are happening about and center in those places. their brand. They must com- Kaplow’s creative digital municate using channels pre- strategy division, K:drive, is a ferred by an increasingly vital part of our innovative selective audience. And they approach. K:drive promotes our must ensure their message The LEWIS news 360 app is an intuitive news aggregator that provides clients beyond the realm of tra- can be understood around the a tailored selection of the best breaking stories direct to your iPhone. world in seconds. This saves you the time and effort involved trawling the web to find the ditional media, building word of mouth about brands and fuel- LEWIS takes a highly inte- stories that matter the most. You can access stories from around the grated approach to social globe in their local languages. ing conversations where they occur, such as online and in media PR. It develops practi- PR we don’t just dip in a toe social media. K:drive expertise cal digital PR programs that support business goals, are JB CUMBERLAND but we dive head-first into the includes viral and social media action — just as we did years campaigns, brand audits, blog- based on compelling content, PUBLIC ago, breaking into the brave ging and blogger relations, pro- and use only the most rele- RELATIONS new world of social media. duced and casual video, plus vant tools and technologies. From taking the stylish digital-media training and 135 W. 27th St., 10th Flr. measurement services. The May issue of O’Dwyer’s will rank the New York, NY 10001 Reisenthel carrybags from 646/230-6940 fashion to the online green largest independent PR firms in the U.S. Fax: 646/230-6935 world (and 60+ US stores!) to LEWIS Accompanying this issue there will be a www.jbcumberlandpr.com gathering a highly interactive profiles section where the top-100 [email protected] 575 Market Street, Ste. #2550 community of coffee-addicted San Francisco, CA 94105 ranked firms can discuss their practice in Joanna Cumberland, President Facebookers for BODUM; www.lewispr.com their own words. If your firm has been Marie Cacciato, VP Cristina Villa, Digital Strategist from launching the Curious ranked by O’Dwyer’s and would like to Chef line to parents by creat- LEWIS is a global commu- be listed, contact Editor Jon Gingerich at When we find a tool that is ing a grassroots movement, to nications agency. LEWIS 646/843-2080 or [email protected] valuable for our clients, at JBC leading online WOM that has combines the personal service

24 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

urable social media strategies MARINA MAHER that fit into their overall communications program. In the COMMUNICATIONS last year, Mark Haefeli INC. Productions distributed U2’s World Tour Opening EPK to Member of the Worldcom Public Relations Group various blogs/websites includ- 830 Third Avenue ing rollingstone.com and New York, NY 10022 launched a viral campaign for 212/485-6800 Fax: 212/355-6318 Nick Jonas’ Simple Wins www.mahercomm.com ContestBayer through Bayer Paula McMartin Hahn, Managing Healthcare which was posted Director, Media Connections on thousands of sites/blogs. Robert J. Ricci, Group Senior We’ve launched Twitter Vice President, Social Media Samara Finn, Vice President, accounts and Facebook fan Social Media pages for MHP clients that have now become integral Marina Maher Comms.’ parts of the companies’ com- Actor Morgan Freeman (right) receives a Lifetime Achievement (MMC) Social Media Group munications programs. award from TV Celebrity Anchor Janeen Mansour at the first Annual links brands with thought lead- Follow MHP on Twitter at Noble Awards event in Beverly Hills, CA. MAYO Communications ers and target consumers www.twitter.com/markhaefeli handled the Social Media campaign for client All4Media.TV, Los where they live — online and prod. Angeles, CA. The successful event was sold out and will likely be on cell phones. We combine televised this year. The client is shopping for a network. key insights with key strokes MAYO Photo by George McQuade to inspire conversations COMMUNICATIONS among top social media influ- McKnight and Annalynne Webvision hosting and data encers in communities where 7248 Bernadine Ave., 2nd Floor McCord. MAYO created a center; PowWeb hosting, Los consumer engagement with West Hills (Los Angeles), CA huge social buzz at online Angeles; C.I. Host, Dallas and brands resonates. 91307 news websites, entertainment SafeMedia Corporation, Boca Led by a social engagement 818/340-5300 Fax: 818/340-2550 blogs and social media mem- Raton, FL. pioneer and WOMMA Ethics www.MayoCommunications.com bership networks. “The technology industry is Sub-Committee member, the [email protected] This year PERI Software on the rebound,” said team’s social media relation- Company, based in Newark, President Aida Mayo, MAYO ships and strategic ability to Aida Mayo, President George McQuade, Vice NJ with with offshore facili- Communications. “There are identify “what’s next” in com- President ties in Chennai, India and so many new products and munity activation has pro- offices in San Jose and Los services that are coming so duced acclaimed results for a MAYO Communications, Angeles California retained fast, that positioning and broad range of clients. From founded in 1995, based in LA MAYO for social media branding are top priorities for e-vents like stylist Twitter par- with offices in New York, San branding and TV broadcast high-tech companies. The ties for COVERGIRL to high- Diego and Bern, Switzerland, services, media training and technology industry is always ly interactive experiences like has been offering high-tech, media relations. PERI is a looking for the next new thing Arnold Breads’ virtual kitchen corporate, government and global consulting and technol- and PERI software as a global challenge, the MMC Social nonprofit clients social media ogy services company special- leader recognizes this critical Media Group gets consumers and broadcast services for izing in industry-specific solu- moment.” talking, typing, texting and more than a decade. Last year tions, strategic outsourcing Tweeting their connection to All4Media.TV teamed with and integration services. The MS&L GROUP our brands. MAYO Communications to company was founded in launch The First Annual 1999, and has grown to more 1675 Broadway MARK HAEFELI New York, NY 10019 Noble Awards event in than 700 employees world- 212/468-3893 PRODUCTIONS Beverly Hills, where a dozen wide. MAYO will be handling Fax: 212/468-3007 charities honored Hollywood new media, social media, www.mslgroup.com 11 Beach Street, Suite 408 celebrities who made noble company blogs and other [email protected] New York, NY 10013 social media outreach includ- 212/334-2164 contributions to the communi- Michael Morsman, Managing www.mhp3.com ty. Morgan Freeman received ing the grand opening of Director, MS&L Digital a Lifetime Achievement PERI’s new Los Angeles Mark Haefeli, Joe DeAngelus award. A dozen other celebs office. MS&L Group is the participating included: Teri MAYO Communications has Publicis Groupe’s flagship Mark Haefeli Productions’ Hatcher, Joel Madden, launched several successful public relations, public affairs, social media expertise spans a Norman Lear, Lionel Richie, high tech company campaigns financial communications, range of industries from music Laila Ali, Nancy O’Dell, Brett over the last decade in the U.S., social media, branding and to corporate. We work closely Ratner, Kenny Babyface including Linux 6.0 operating with clients to develop meas- Edmonds, Emily Bear, Brian software; IcChina.com; Continued on page 26

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 25 PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

audiences with key message ness-to-business sectors, points and ultimately drive including food and beverage, business. financial services, consumer We were the U.S. PR firm products and education. We behind the blockbuster The work closely with clients to Best Job in the World develop measurable social (Queensland, Australia), media strategies that fit into which won HSMAI Best of their overall communications Show. We crafted a Blowout program. In the last year, Sale at Hudson Hill RF|Binder has hosted two vir- Condominium, NYC, the cen- tual wine tastings enabling the terpiece of which was an e- country’s top wine bloggers to video campaign with weekly interact directly with wine- chats with the developer. This makers, generated business “first” in NYC residential leads for a medical device development helped spike company via YouTube and sales 25%; each video e-blast blog coverage, led online cri- sent Web site traffic jumping sis communications strategy Carla Caccavale Reynolds, partner at Quinn & Co.; Florence Quinn, pres- 50%. sessions and managed multi- ident, Q&C; Shana Pereira, regional director of the Americas, Tourism The agency offers a Digital ple Tweet chats for consumers Queensland; and John Frazier, executive VP, Q&C celebrate the HSMAI Audit focused on social to learn about everything from Adrian Best of Show win for Tourism Queensland's The Best Job in the media, SEO, blogs and Web nutrition and dieting to cook- World PR campaign. Best Job turned into a social media phenomenon site. It identifies opportunities ing with chocolate. We’ve for more than a year. and challenges, and generates launched Twitter accounts and recommendations to stay Facebook fan pages for both base of fans. We help clients ahead of the competition, B2B and B2C clients that MS&L GROUP unleash their brands’ potential manage reputation and have now become integral Continued from page 25 by marketing with people not engage. parts of the companies’ com- to them. We have conducted Digital munications programs. MS&L Group employs Audits and social media cam- RF|Binder assists social events network. more than 2,500 people oper- paigns for numerous clients, media initiatives of Boston In today’s world, clients ating in 50 countries and including Hilton, AKA, University, the government of need more holistic and more offers best-in-class public Marriott hotels, Westin hotels, Chile, Dunkin’ Brands, effective communication with relations, corporate and finan- residential and commercial Johnson & Johnson, McGraw- global reach and access to dig- cial communications, reputa- real estate firms, restaurants, Hill, Scharffen Berger ital and social media capabili- tion management, public The Grand Dalles Vineyard Chocolate, and Wines of ties. Clients value a greater affairs, social media, digital and the Finger Lakes. Chile, among others. Follow consistency and integration of and live events management. We have led clients in RF|Binder on Twitter at all forms of communications YouTube contests, SEO pro- www.twitter.com/RFBinder. to enhance their brands’ QUINN & CO. grams, Facebook campaigns, awareness and attractiveness. online press rooms, Twitter ROGERS & COWAN MS&L Group is designed to PUBLIC RELATIONS engagement and blog posts. meet these expectations Pacific Design Center 520 Eighth Ave. Our entire staff is immersed 8687 Melrose Ave., 7th Floor MS&L Group combines the New York, NY 10018 in digital media on a daily Los Angeles, CA 90069 212/868-1900 collective scale and expertise basis. An internal Digital 310/854-8117 Fax: 212/465-0849 of MS&L Worldwide, Fax: 310/854-8106 www.quinnandco.com Media Team keeps us abreast [email protected] Publicis Consultants The Purple Lounge Blog: of all things digital. www.rogersandcowan.com Worldwide, JKL, Winner & www.quinnandco.com/wordpress [email protected] Associates, TMG Strategies, Tom Tardio, CEO Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter: RF | BINDER PBJS, Relay, Capital MS&L, @Quinnandco Hanmer MS&L, Carré Noir, 905 Third Avenue, 7th Floor Rogers & Cowan is the lead- SAS, Masius, and Publicis Florence Quinn, President New York, NY 10022 ing entertainment marketing 212/994-7600 Events. www.rfbinder.com and PR agency with offices in Influencer Activist Quinn & Co. combines our Los Angeles, New York and Marketing (I AM) is MS&L’s signature creative approach to Amy Binder, CEO London. Our highly experi- unique approach to social traditional media with strate- Brian Belardi, Director, Interactive Solutions enced team of professionals is media and digital marketing. gic digital media initiatives to Kate Farber, Director, Interactive at the forefront of social media, We use our deep under- develop dynamic and highly Solutions implementing social media standing of influencers, com- effective integrated PR pro- communications, designing and bined with powerful analytics, grams. We help clients in our RF|Binder’s social media executing comprehensive, inte- content and experience, to core areas of Food, Wine + expertise spans a range of grated social media campaigns move beyond making online Spirits, Real Estate and Travel industries in both the busi- connections and building a achieve goals, reach target ness-to-consumer and busi- Continued on page 28

26 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM socialactivation

socialstorytelling

socialnetworking

rfrelate@ruderﬁ nn.com

The Americas • Europe • Asia Pacific • Middle East www.ruderfinn.com PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

relations agencies need to behavior. We offer our global understand this trend and devel- clients a range of op expertise in using New social media marketing capa- Media methods to effectively bilities, including: online reach ever-widening audiences. landscape analy- Rosica PR adeptly integrates ses, social media monitoring, traditional and online PR and blogger relations, content cre- marketing. Our agency’s servic- ation, and application devel- es comprise blogging, search opment. Our award-winning engine optimization, and online digital agency, RFI Studios, reputation management as well creates and implements inte- as competitor and reputation grated, comprehensive digital monitoring. Along with our sis- communications platforms ter company, Interact Marketing and programs across chan- (www.interactmarketing.com), nels. our PR efforts incorporate all Clients include: Novartis, aspects of social media, includ- Johnson & Johnson, Beringer, (left to right) Schneider Associates’ Julie Hall, EVP/Partner, Consumer ing blogs, Facebook, JVC, TiVo, and the Liz Group; Joan Schneider, President and Creative Director; and Phil YouTube,Twitter and others. Claiborne Foundation. Pennellatore, EVP/Partner, Corporate and Public Affairs Group. Clients include: Exergen, Tristar Products, La-Z-Boy, Savvier SCHNEIDER tion that is relevant to them and and Telebrands. ASSOCIATES ROGERS & COWAN their target audience, and build Interact’s targeted blogger Continued from page 26 relationships that benefit the programs, such as Member of the Worldcom Public consumer and the brand MommyOutreachSM, utilize Relations Group online PR to generate positive 2 Oliver Street, Ste. 901 and creating custom applica- Some clients/projects have Boston, MA 02109 tions for a diverse roster of included 52nd GRAMMY word-of-mouth and leverage 617/536-3300 clients. Awards social media campaign, the buying power of influential Fax: 617/536-3180 As innovators in navigating the Scion Reinvent the Wheels web demographic groups. At Rosica www.schneiderpr.com [email protected] world of social media, we offer series and web/mobile widget and Interact, we excel at identi- clients our knowledge, insight, fying emerging online trends to development project, 19 Joan Schneider, President & relationships and a deep under- Entertainment’s If You Can keep our clients ahead of the Creative Director standing of the quickly evolv- Dream web series, competition. Julie Hall, Executive Vice ing social media space to assist GlaxoSmithKline alli mommy President/Partner, Consumer Group them in developing and execut- blogger campaign, Wrinkle RUDER FINN Phil Pennellatore, Executive ing communications strategies Free Eyes Twitter and Vice President/Partner, that put them in the mix of the Facebook campaigns, EQAL’s 301 East 57th Street Corporate/Public Affairs Group New York, NY 10022 online conversation with con- Harper’s Globe web series, 212-593-6463 sumers about their brands. Our Fanta’s Search for the 4th Fanta Fax: 212/715-1556 Schneider Associates team creates and implements blogger campaign, NTRA’s Joe www.ruderfinn.com launched a social media prac- customized campaigns for start- Talamo 30 Til Derby Twitter [email protected]. tice five years ago and has up social network companies campaign, KeyVive, Scott Schneider, EVP-Managing integrated social media seeking to build awareness Openfilm.com, SodaHead, Director, RFI Studios, New York strategies into campaigns for through traditional media out- MySpace and RockYou. a wide variety of consumer, reach as well as established As traditional demograph- corporate and public affairs brands seeking to utilize social ROSICA PUBLIC ics lose relevance in a web- clients. Our proprietary Five- media solutions to engage with connected world, understand- Step Social Media consumers on a deeper level. RELATIONS ing the intent of a target audi- Methodology includes Whether we are targeting 95 Rt. 17 South ence — or what motivates processes for education, lis- influencers via the power of the Paramus, NJ 07652 people at each and every tening, engagement, meas- blogosphere, driving a brand’s 201/843-5600 moment of their digital day — urement and evaluation. message home or engaging www.rosica.com becomes the key to successful Schneider Associates’ social consumers on social network- Chris Rosica, CEO engagement. media practice is constantly ing sites, or building a mobile RF’s Social Media Practice, seeking new ways to help application, Rogers & Cowan Internet-enabled tools have RF Relate, uses intent-driven clients innovate in a digital will help influence the way our transformed the media land- social media programs to age. Whether we’re manag- clients audiences think about scape, and conventional media extend the reach of a message ing iPhone apps, social con- their brand while respecting and outlets have had to adapt to an through the social Web. Our tests, social gaming, blogger building dialogue with key era of two-way conversations. strategy is continually outreach and Twitter manage- online communities. When it Online social media networks informed by our ongoing ment, or social media mes- comes to the digital community, have become the dominant way research study, RF Intent sage guide development and we find the influencers who to create and share content and Index, which identifies online strategy planning, we matter, get them the informa- opinions. Therefore, public emerging trends in online know how to integrate com-

28 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS munity management into campaigns. TEXT 100 In our 30th year, Schneider Associates is a full-service 352 Park Avenue South, 7th Floor public relations and integrat- New York, NY 10010 212/529-4600 ed marketing firm specializ- www.text100.com ing in Launch Public SM Relations — a proprietary At Text 100 we recognize method of launching prod- that the rise of social media has ucts, services, companies and forever changed the way organ- communities. Other types of izations communicate. Our PR include: consumer, food award-winning Social Media & beverage, retail, public services help clients to identify, affairs, corporate, real estate, prioritize and engage in the and financial and profession- online discussions that impact al services. Learn more at their businesses the most. www.schneiderpr.com Social networks are no longer on the fringe — they are SPOT ON very real factors that can influ- PUBLIC RELATIONS ence the perception of compa- Alexander McNabb, Director, Spot On Public Relations nies large and small. Dubai, United Arab Emirates Customers, partners and com- +9714 3491686 firm’s game-board approach, it ing monitoring across all www.spotonpr.com petitors are openly and frankly [email protected] engaged in these channels, and offers clients a one-stop shop of media — internet, social Twitter: @spotonpr these discussions are occurring services, including social media media, blogs, broadcast, completely outside the control programming, mobile applica- radio, print, and outdoor. Carrington Malin, Managing tions, web-tainment, online VMS recently launched the Director of the companies that are being Alexander McNabb, Director written about and scrutinized. community development, SEO, first-ever integrated platform, We believe in helping clients web and microsite interactive Vantage, which enables com- Focusing on the Middle East embrace new communication and design. Representing B2C municators to see the affects and North Africa, Spot On platforms because the right and B2B companies, of PR on advertising, and Public Relations has been help- strategy can build bridges with Trevelino/Keller begins a client vice versa, for their organiza- ing multinational firms com- key audiences and between engagement by benchmarking tions and competitors, communicate with audiences across communities with common the brand’s social media voice plete with correlations to the region for the past 15 years. interests in ways that traditional against its competition. For business outcomes. A longstanding Brodeur public relations cannot. companies with multiple brands VMS provides public rela- Partner, Spot On is an inde- That’s why we are constantly or offices, corporate or fran- tions firms, advertising agen- pendent communications seeking new ways to integrate chise, Trevelino/Keller delivers cies and marketers world- agency that helps build brands traditional consultancy with a social media webinar series to wide with the most compre- online and offline, integrating new media tools. introduce and engage compa- hensive, cutting-edge editori- traditional PR and marketing nies in social media. Its client al and ad retrieval, manage- with online programs and management portal, built on a ment and analysis solutions, social media campaigns. The TREVELINO/KELLER Ning platform, helps compa- including a broad spectrum agency is also one of the most nies rally a decentralized sys- of industry-leading advertis- 949 W. Marietta St., Suite X-106 active Middle East companies Atlanta, GA 30318 tem around a dynamic PR and ing and public relations in the social media space and 404/214-0722 Social Media strategy in an measurement and tracking services include social media Fax: 404/214-0729 effort to compete more aggres- tools. www.trevelinokeller.com training, workshops and www.pr-speak.com (Agency Blog) sively without the traditional VMS has the most power- research for companies taking www.prstarbase.com (Agency marketing spend. ful web-based media tracking their brands onto the social Ning PR Network) and management platform. web. [email protected] VMS Through its InSight platform, Spot On PR has a long track Dean Trevelino, Genna Keller, users can quickly and easily record of helping to bring new Principals 1500 Broadway search, compile and analyze market entries, market launch- New York, NY 10036 media coverage across all 212/329-5651 es and new initiatives to the Two years after the launch of www.vmsinfo.com media as well as allow users region. Current agency clients its social media approach, to perform all their day-to- include IBM, Lenovo, Social Social Status, Trevelino/Keller Michael Giovia, Chief Marketing day PR activities. InSight Eyez and Virgin Megastore steps into the future again with Officer provides essential measure- Middle East. the launch of WheelHouse, an ment data including audience Spot On PR is a founder “agency-in-an-agency” focused VMS is the world leader totals, demographics, tonality member of the Middle East on helping brands reach their for integrated media intelli- and media values. Public Relations Association audiences where they live, gence solutions that bring (MEPRA). work and play. Leveraging the together news and advertis- Continued on page 30

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 29 PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

relations technology partner Weber Shandwick builds of household names that campaigns based on how peo- include Ford Motor ple are influenced. And, since Company, Southwest different people are influenced Airlines, Baylor Healthcare, in myriad ways, each Weber Big Bear Resort, Mercedes Shandwick campaign is opti- Benz USA, Pinehurst mized for the combination of Resort, General Motors, channels that carry the most Allstate Insurance, and influence, whether those chan- American Honda Motors. It nels are online or offline. We also provides robust data- call this approach “Inline.” base and Web distribution Inline means we don’t create a platforms for numerous standalone traditional commu- media companies world- nications campaign and bolt on wide, including the a few online tactics. It means Australian AP, Haymarket Washington Independent Productions produced People Are Talking we deliver an integrated strate- Publications in the U.K. and for the Society of Interventional Radiology. The eleven minute video gic plan that reflects the audi- several of The New York was inexpensively repurposed to ten minutes for YouTube and five ence a client is trying to reach Times’ companies. minutes for social media distribution. as well as the nature of the communications objective. ZENO GROUP videos that make people talk. The Inline approach enables VMS That’s what makes us differ- us to identify which combina- a Daniel J Edelman company 501 Colorado Blvd., Suite 305 Continued from page 29 ent. tion of channels will be most Santa Monica, CA 90401 Our strategy: To impact effective in driving advocacy 310/566-2290 VMS provides access to your audience with powerful for a specific brand, issue or www.zenogroup.com company. We have digital Twitter: @NickMendoza @zen- the largest continually updat- video that gets your message odigital @zenogroup ed advertising database in the across. Raw and unedited or experts embedded into each Facebook.com/zenogroup world with over six million award winning and broadcast office in the Weber Shandwick ads and commercials through ready. network and our Inline Nick Mendoza, Director of Digital Communications the market leading AdSight Our videos raise money, approach informs strategy and platform. The competitive explain a cause, teach or pro- execution across our practices. The world is round and advertising intelligence VMS mote. And we help you get people float across conversa- provides includes U.S. and the most for your money by WIECK MEDIA tions in real-time. Flat, linear international creative content repurposing your video. A 12 public relations campaigns as well as domestic spending minute video becomes ten 12700 Park Central Drive, Ste. 510 Dallas, TX 75251 are muted in this 360-degree and occurrence data from minutes for YouTube and 5 972/392-0888 communications environ- Nielsen for the top 100 U.S. minutes for viral sites and www.wieck.com ment. television markets. then it is repurposed again [email protected] Zeno Group’s Digital VMS recently entered into into an 8 minute b-roll feed [email protected] Lifestyle practice develops a strategic partnership with for broadcast reporters. Tim Roberts, President/CEO digital and social media pro- world-class software Our html emails contain grams to help brands and provider Autonomy to take “click here” video links and Jacob Sloan, Social Media Strategist companies engage their advantage of state-of-the-art feature a multimedia news always-on audiences, build meaning-based computing to release placed on more than relationships and produce enhance their search capabil- 40 viral sites and more than For more than 19 years, desired business outcomes. ities. 1,000 websites with easy links Wieck has been pioneering Our social media initiatives to Twitter and Facebook. technology advancements in are created through the lens Whether pitching bloggers the media relations industry of public engagement and WASHINGTON or consumer TV reporters, at by creating solutions for two-way discussion versus WIP we make complicated organizations large and INDEPENDENT public noise and one-way issues simple. small. We’re now bringing PRODUCTIONS that trusted experience to disruptions. Companies need 1819 L Street, NW, Suite 100 the Social Media practice. to value the limited time and Washington, DC 20036 WEBER Our services include Social attention of on-the-go con- 202/638-3400 Media strategic direction sumers who’ve fully WashingtonIndependentProductions.com SHANDWICK SusanStolov@WashingtonIndependent and planning, Social Media immersed themselves in Productions.com 919 Third Ave. newsrooms, one-touch social media. Zeno advises New York, NY 10022 multi-channel content syn- clients to think about four C’s Susan Stolov, President www.webershandwick.com dication and user generated when implementing a social Share. Post. Tweet. Tell a media program: Chris Perry, Executive Vice content (UGC) database friend.Washington Independent President, Digital processing and distribution. Content: The content Productions produces web Communications & Social Media Wieck is the trusted media should be relevant, informa-

30 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PROFILES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS

odwyerpr.com is unrivaled for its hard- hitting coverage of all areas of marketing, communications, PR and media news. With PR and media in a state of upheaval, it’s more important than ever to keep on top of the buzz in the industry.

The social media team at Zeppos & Associates includes John Gardner, Senior Account Executive; Mikaela Balfany, Assistant Account Executive; and Kris Naidl, Executive Vice President. tive or entertaining and spur a measurable action from the ZEPPOS & target audience. Pure self- promotion is spurned, while ASSOCIATES, INC. selfless participation is cele- 400 East Mason Street, Suite 200 brated and shared. Milwaukee, WI 53202 Conversation: Social net- 414/276-6237 works were built for commu- Fax: 414/276-2322 nications among personal www.zeppos.com connections. Brands should Evan N. Zeppos, President think about the two-way Kristine Naidl, Executive VP opportunities to interact with consumers, not interrupt their More and more businesses, conversations. media and consumers are using Community: Embracing social media, making it a critical customers is evident through component of today’s commu- the development of a com- nication efforts. Zeppos & munity that’s centered on Associates is an independent their needs and wants. firm with demonstrated success Brands that strive to fulfill in incorporating cutting-edge the wishes of its community, social media strategies into fans and followers are well-rounded, comprehensive strengthening relationships, public relations plans. Our pro- building loyalty and creating fessional team helps produce ambassadors. appropriate, attention-grabbing Commitment: Companies content; monitors online chat- that dedicate themselves to ter; and advises companies listening, learning from and and organizations on how best responding to their customers to talk with rather than at key understand the power of audiences through various social media. A long-term social media platforms. Our view with a real-time com- focus is on developing a bal- mitment is essential to gener- anced, value-added communi- ating results that move the cations strategy that makes needle and positively impact sense for our clients and helps the other “C” pillars in social them reach and engage impor- media. tant audiences and customers.

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 31 REPORT Conservative radio still dominates U.S. airwaves By Martha Sharan and Curt Gill progressive. cost effective and equitable for large, • In terms of broadcast hours in a week non-local owners to air syndicated proof talk radio programming, ten times as gramming on a wide scale. Syndicated ational radio ratings company much conservative talk as progressive programs tend to be dominated by con- Arbitron found that among radio talk was aired, that’s more than 2,000 servative talk. Nformats, the combined news/talk hours of conservative talk heard com- Here is the bottom line for media repre- format, which includes personality-driv- pared to 254 hours of progressive talk. sentatives. If you have a controversial en talk shows, is estimated to reach more • And, in that same time period, the topic with a bent to the left, you may than 50 million listeners each week. The spring of 2007, looking at the top-10 struggle to get air time for your format is second only to country music in radio markets, 76% of the programming spokesperson and you will definitely terms of national audience share. was conservative versus 24% for progres- need to have a very strong pitch to get the So what is being broadcast on sive talk; the only exceptions were New interview booked on conservative talk. news/talk radio stations to attract such a York and Chicago, where they had more You should also prepare your spokesper- large audience? The Center for American balance in their programming. son for a spirited interview. Progress asked that same question. Two Some of the reasons researchers point Is progressive talk dead? years ago, it joined forces with the Free to for the gap between conservative and With the recent bankruptcy filing by Air Press and completed an extensive study progressive talk: America, it would appear on the surface on the subject. The conclusion, as stated • The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. that experiments with progressive talk radio in its report “The Structural Imbalance of This has allowed station owners to broad- have met their maker. The thinking goes Political Talk Radio”: “conservative talk cast more opinionated, ideological, and like this: It was too difficult to get traction radio undeniably dominates the format.” one-sided radio hosts — whether conser- against the juggernaut that is conservative The data in the report shows the fol- vative or progressive — without having talk radio and its dominance of the air- lowing: to balance them with competing views. waves. Liberal talk radio simply could not • In the spring of 2007, of the 257 • Consumer demand. Research by Pew compete. news/talk stations owned by the top five indicates that 43% of talk radio listeners While it would be easy to think this way, commercial station owners (CBS, Clear are conservative, 23% liberal, and 30% it would be incorrect to do so. Yes, the most Channel, Citadel, Cumulus, and Salem), moderate. visible manifestation of left-wing radio has 91% of the total weekday talk radio pro- • Consolidation or group ownership vs. been silenced, but that does not mean programming was conservative, and 9% was local ownership. It appears to be most gressive talkers are not still out there plying their trade to large audiences hungry for a left-leaning take on the news of the day. National Public Radio is the most obvious place to start. While the debate about which side of the aisle NPR tends to favor might linger among partisans, there is no doubt that the perception about NPR is that it leans heavily toward the left. There is also no doubt that the latest Arbitron figures have NPR reaching out to more than hundreds of affiliates nationwide, and to a listening audience of millions of people. Other nationally syndicated progressive talk shows like Democracy Now!, and shows hosted by Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, Bill Press, Thom Hartmann, Diane Rehm, occupy places on the dial at stations such as KTLK-AM, the second largest talk station in Los Angeles, and WAMU-FM, the second largest news-talk station in Washington, D.C. There is also an entire station dedicated to liberal talk on Sirius/XM. So to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of progressive talk radio have been greatly exaggerated. It still thrives, and it is still looking for good content to fill its segments and speak to its listeners. Martha Sharan and Curt Gill are Operations Managers at News Generation, Inc.

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By Douglas Simon about his new Liz Claiborne collection, Viral Social Media: Promote the video his became especially clear for me have FoxSports.com interview Evan through your Facebook page, Twitter out- lately when reviewing the categories Longoria about the video game he’s pro- reach and by placing the content on sites Tfor an industry award submission. I moting or have about.com’s pregnancy like Digg and Delicious. noticed they were very specific — Satellite blog cover the March of Dimes first ever MultiMedia News Release: Share the Tour, B-Roll, Video News Release, Web report card on premature births. content through an MMNR that includes Campaign, etc. The one thing I knew Our survey found that 57% of TV sta- video and links back to your site. This can immediately about any submission that tions air video content on their web sites generate additional coverage but be wary of could fit neatly into one of these categories that does not air during programming. the “site traffic” reports you get as the high is that it didn’t deserve to win. That’s Stories that were once passed over due to numbers are not an accurate indication of because the fragmentation of how we con- lack of time on news programs have a sec- the number of people who saw or interact- sume media crosses mediums. The grow- ond chance to air online. ed with your content. ing power of online video and the need for Paid Options: These include Google ROI requires us to leverage all content for AdWords and placement of links to the maximum value. One result of these trends content on TV station web sites. is the transformation of the Satellite Media B to B and B to F Marketing: Share the Tour into an effective social media tool. content with your business partners, sup- Where do you start? The two key places pliers, customers and with “B to F” are earning media with online journalists (Business to Friends and Family) share it and creating content that can be distributed with you employees and yes, even your online and through social media channels. family and friends. The wall has broken Frequently, the results are increased traffic down between internal and external audi- to your site and dramatic improvement in D S Simon’s annual Web Influencers Survey ences. Make sure you are sharing your search engine optimization. shows all media are using more outside video on best content with employees. First, look to earn media coverage with their sites. The ability to measure the ROI of online reporters who are aligned with rele- At the SMT you have an attractive, Internet Media Tours has improved dra- vant web outlets for your intended audi- knowledgeable talent and high quality matically. Through Google Analytics ence. While most publicists worth their salt broadcast equipment. Use it to create an we’re able to determine the number of have established relationships with print exciting, well-produced webisode that can web sites that have featured the content and broadcast journalists, the age old rela- be featured on your own microsite. for your campaign. Video hits can be tionship building between PR and the press Additionally, these videos must be at the measured for your web syndication has now expanded to include the bloggers center of an additional PR effort for the efforts. Clicks on your MMNR can also and reporters who are writing or producing campaign that generates more placement, be counted. Reports can be run counting content solely for the web. These outlets builds traffic — and, because of the search Twitter mentions. But what is most need material to report. engine bias to video content — dramatical- important is to calculate results specifi- In a recent survey, we found that two- ly improves search. cally tied to business goals. The IMT thirds of media web sites use video, and There are six elements to the PR Plan to campaigns that we do are dramatically 81% of those use outside video. This is an promote the content you have created for improving search results for client sites increase of 33% compared to one year ago. online distribution and effectively turn your — frequently putting them on the front This increase demonstrates a clear opportu- SMT into an IMT. page of Google searches. We’re able to nity for PR people to broaden the reach of Earn Media Online: Share the content exploit the search engine bias that exists the content we create. with online media who can link to it or toward online video content to move the Five years ago, I would never have embed the video on their sites. needle. And by the way, you also get thought we would be pitching the web sites Web Syndication: It’s more than just more than 30 television and radio earned of magazines, major metropolitan newspa- YouTube. Place the video on more than 20 media hits in the process. pers, and TV network and radio station sites viral video sites with each placement Douglas Simon is President & CEO at along with web media including bloggers including a link back to your microsite. Put D S Simon Productions and the author of and other influencers as part of an SMT. the video on your (and affiliated) sites using the industry leading video blog Now it’s common sense to invite Glamour a custom video player that is social media www.vlogviews.com. His firm created the to the studio to interview Isaac Mizrahi ready. Internet Media Tour in 2008.

34 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM Making the dream guest for talk radio your depth of knowledge and your ability you can drive radio listeners to your site The most difficult to help answer key questions about some in a non-commercial way that doesn’t part about being a aspect of your topic that may have been lead them to believe you are selling any- in the news recently. For instance, a real- thing. All it does is make you look public relations pro tor can talk about escaping foreclosures. smart. The host, tired of people using is correcting the A stockbroker can talk about how to man- their shows to promote themselves, age your own portfolio. Experts on just appreciates you not sounding like an client’s perceptions about any topic can look to the newspaper infomercial and even urges his loyal and find stories related to their expertise. audience to visit your site. If you’re real- about the field of Find that news story and shape your inter- ly good, the host may even ask you back PR itself. view pitch around it, and include the fact another time. that you have expertise in the field. And you achieved all this simply by Make the host your friend. Talk can- resisting the instinct to “sell,” and instead R people are depicted in the movies didly and openly about your topic in rela- re-focusing your efforts toward helping as “spin doctors,” stretching the tionship to the current events surround- the radio host offer listeners a good show! Ptruth or lying outright to present ing it, and engage the host. In a recent Marsha Friedman is the CEO and their clients in the best possible light. interview, Lee Habeeb, co-creator of The Founder of EMSI Public Relations, a That characterization couldn’t be fur- Laura Ingraham Show and media coach national firm that provides PR strategy ther from the truth, and not because the to many of today’s top talk radio hosts, and publicity services to corporations, portrayals are exaggerated and phony, but said, “The most important audience is entertainers, authors and professional rather, because they proceed from the the host. If you can engage the host, you firms. She also hosts a national weekly false assumption will have engaged his audience. For radio talk show, ‘The Family Round that a PR agent’s example, the only reason most people Table,’ and is author of the book, work is just about gather around ‘The Savage Nation’ is Celebritize Yourself. “selling” his client. because they’re interested in what The truth is, public Michael Savage has to say and what he is Media Briefs relations is a mar- interested in. So by proxy, you don’t China, Saudi Arabia declared keting tool that is have to worry about entertaining most effective when Michael’s audience; you simply have to ‘enemies of the Internet’ it isn’t trying to sell engage and entertain Michael.” Reporters Without Borders published its anything. At the Don’t sell. Stay on topic during the “Enemies of the Internet” list, highlighting heart and soul of interview, and when appropriate, men- countries that clamp down on online freedom Marsha Friedman any good PR effort tion the free material on your web site of expression. is the desire to pro- that could benefit the host’s listeners. If The non-profit group cites China, Saudi vide the news you engage the host, give a great inter- Arabia, Burma, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, media with a story worth telling, plain view and offer helpful information, you Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and simple. don’t have to worry about selling any- and Vietnam as the worst offenders. The hard truth that a PR agency has to thing. The host will do it for you. He’ll Burma, North Korea, Cuba and help clients understand is that journalists make sure his audience knows you’re an Turkmenistan employ harsh crackdowns and and hosts don’t care about selling your expert, he’ll give out your web site, he’ll set up technical obstacles to prevent their book, your product, your story or your mention the name of your book or he’ll people from having access to the `Net, messages. talk about the value of your product. according to RWB. Saudi Arabia and What they do care about is serving He’ll do the promotion for you. Uzbekistan opt for massive filtering that their viewers, listeners and readers with Have a web site that does more than results in a system of self-censorship. information and entertainment that keep sell your product. If you are an author, China, Egypt, Tunisia and Vietnam have them tuned in and paying attention. The provide free “tips articles” that explain “wagered on an infrastructure development more eyes and ears that are focused on your topic or your viewpoint in an infor- strategy while keeping a tight control on the their shows and publications means more mational manner. If you’re selling a web’s political and social content,” says advertising dollars for those organiza- product, create free reports or articles for RWB. China also demonstrates a “deep intol- tions. And that is the “bottom line” in your site that lay out the problem your erance for critical opinions.” those industries. product solves, again, in an educational RWB has added Russia and Turkey to its Keeping that reality in mind, the best tone. “under surveillance” list. The Kremlin, which way to have successful interviews is to How does this help you promote your has cracked down on media outlets, has been forget you’re selling something and work book or your products? arresting bloggers and blocking what it your marketing efforts around the goal of Simple: one of the primary points of believes are “extremist” sites. being the perfect radio guest. The key sale for almost every industry today is Turkey has blocked thousands of sites that tactics to this strategy are: the Internet. Your web site is your virtu- criticize Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of Don’t position yourself as an author al storefront or sales team, and compa- the Turkish republic and its first president, the or executive. Instead, position yourself nies pay big money for search engine military and governmental policy concerning as an expert in your topic or your indus- marketing ads that are designed to drive minority groups like Kurds and Armenians. try. Don’t try to sell anything other than traffic to your site. With your free report,

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 35 Profiles

O’Dwyer’s Guide to: VIDEO & BROADCAST

4.10

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36 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PROFILES OF VIDEO & BROADCAST FIRMS media tours and radio spot pro- based monitoring to accommo- ing and syndicating content duction. date any range of special across multiple platforms such GOURVITZ Big Shoulders will help to requests. If you’re a new cus- as the Internet, Broadcast strategize and effectively pro- tomer, mention that you saw us News Media and to captive COMMUNICATIONS duce all broadcast PR tactics. in O’Dwyer’s and get your first audiences through a variety of INC. Including: B-roll packages, digital clip for free. distribution channels. With an 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1708 media fulfillment, viral videos, award-winning production New York, NY 10001 SMT productions, RMT pro- CRITICAL team, state-of-the-art editing 212/730-4807 (New York) ductions, highlight reels, PSA facilities and an in-house 310/569-5602 (Los Angeles) productions, internal communi- MENTION broadcast and web media rela- www.gourvitzcommunications.com cations, interactive webcasts, 1776 Broadway, 24th Floor tions team, D S Simon and multi-camera events. Our New York, NY 10019 Productions strategically Gourvitz took its produc- clients include Fortune 500 877/262-5477 delivers your key messaging tion and post-production companies, PR agencies, asso- www.criticalmention.com to both internal and external expertise into a whole new ciations, broadcast TV net- audiences. We service our dimension in March, 2010, Critical Mention provides works and reality TV shows. diverse client base through the when they helped Samsung, real-time searching, viewing, use of PR and corporate video, the Black Eyed Peas, and alerting and reporting on video blogging, web video James Cameron launch CISION global broadcast coverage. and audio content. Our staff Samsung’s new line of 3D Our comprehensive and 332 S. Michigan Ave. consists of newsroom veterans LED televisions. In addition industry leading CriticalTV Chicago, IL 60604 and journalists; award-win- to adding 3D production and 888/422-2667 platform lets you monitor ning producers and broadcast- post-production to its menu www.cision.com your organization, client, ers; innovative editors and of services, Gourvitz has also competitors, industry news Steve Bainnson, VP, Broadcast technical directors; seasoned expanded into commercial Sales and more. Edit and download public relations professionals; production and post, produc- broadcast quality files min- web marketers and polished ing a series of broadcast Cision (formerly Bacon’s | utes after your segments air. corporate communicators. As spots for The Islands of the multivision) is recognized as Our account management an official newsroom resource Bahamas and the National the innovative leader in provid- team is always ready to help of the Radio-Television News Pasta Association. ing premium broadcast man- you succeed. Directors Association Gourvitz also now offers agement applications. The com- (RTNDA), we provide the turnkey production for pany offers easy-to-use prod- D S SIMON expertise to help you navigate Ustream events, recently pro- ucts that allow customers to the ever-changing media envi- ducing a Ustream broadcast monitor their brand, watch PRODUCTIONS, ronment. We are headquar- for Pepsi that featured Demi media coverage, analyze the INC. tered in New York with offices Moore and Kevin Bacon. results and present insights to New York Headquarters in Los Angeles and Chicago. Broadcast PR remains central selective audiences. Cision pro- 229 West 36th Street, 12th Floor to Gourvitz’ business, and vides the largest broadcast New York, NY 10018 GORDON they continue to produce library in the industry with con- 212/736-2727 high-quality satellite press tinuous, comprehensive moni- Fax: 212/736-7040 www.dssimon.com PRODUCTIONS tours, Internet media tours, toring of national, cable and all www.YourUpdate.tv b-rolls, and highlight/sizzle 210 local markets, online view- www.vlogviews.com 1730 Pacheco Street reels for some of the biggest ing of video, broadcast-specific [email protected] San Francisco, CA 94116 [email protected] 415/776-7484 clients around. analytics, unprecedented shar- [email protected] www.gpvideo.com ing capabilities and convenient [email protected] preview video functionality. Los Angeles Office KEF MEDIA Companies can now optimize 213/346-9927 Fax: 424/247-9875 John Gordon, President 512 Means Street their monitoring through the Atlanta, GA 30318 use of our award-winning plat- Gordon Productions pro- 404/605-0009 Chicago Office www.kefmedia.com form CisionPoint which allows 237 East Ontario Street duces TV PSAs and B-roll, users to monitor their televi- Chicago, IL 60811 along with corporate video, Kevin E. Foley, Founder sion, radio, newspaper, internet 312/255-0240 with an emphasis on healthcare Yvonne Goforth-Hanak, Co- and social media coverage in a and technology. GP has its President single application. In Douglas Simon, President & CEO own network of skilled video Linda Buckley, Co-President Eric Wright, Sr. Vice President, Amy Burton, VP, Business CisionPoint, users can watch a Marketing & Business Dev. crews around the country. Development video preview of their broad- Christine Deerin, Divisional VP, The company creates award- Julie Longino, Dir., Digital Media cast hits, run press reports, Los Angeles Office winning video for corporate share video, analyze results and presentations that include: The most trusted name in present findings to stakehold- D S Simon Productions, employee orientation, physi- broadcast and digital media ers. Cision also offers DVDs Inc., is a leading video com- cian and nurse training, prod- services, KEF Media partners and professionally edited digital munications firm that blends uct demos, patient education, with a wide range of agency clips, transcription services, old school discipline with new trade show presentations, Web compilation reels and project- school knowledge in produc- video, and investor relations. Continued on page 38

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 37 PROFILES OF VIDEO & BROADCAST FIRMS

placement, in-studio media Angeles and London, MHP tours, radio media tours and works in High Definition and print interview bookings. Standard Definition formats, Recent projects include: The offering edit facilities and Healthy Home with GreenNest graphic capabilities in either creator Lisa Beres, Smart domain. Our notification and Shopping with mom- distribution capabilities cover mysavers.com founder Kim domestic and international sta- Danger, Spring Style with tions, both local and network. author Jackie Silver and Hi- Founder Mark Haefeli has Tech Holidays with Mr. Gadget. directed over 100 concerts and The Kotchen Group also pro- previously was a national duced media tours for new book Emmy Award winning producer releases such as: “The Must- for CBS News, CNN and Have Mom Manual” and “Will CNBC. Work from Home.” Clients include PR agencies, publishers, MEDIATRACKS Fortune 500 companies, non- profit organizations and trade COMMUNICATIONS associations. 2250 E. Devon Ave., Suite 150 Des Plaines, IL 60018 847/299-9500 MARK HAEFELI www.mediatracks.com [email protected] Travel expert Peter Greenberg conducts a satellite media tour from PRODUCTIONS Santo Domingo, which KEF Media booked on behalf of bvk Public Shel Lustig, President Relations and its client, the Dominican Republic Ministry of Tourism 11 Beach Street, Suite 408 Reed Pence, VP in March. Credit: Bob Buckley New York, NY 10013 212/334-2164 www.mhp3.com Now in its 21st year, KEF MEDIA Chicago-based MediaTracks THE KOTCHEN Mark Haefeli, Joe DeAngelus Communications provides spe- Continued from page 37 cialized radio, audio and inter- GROUP A Primetime EMMY Award net services to PR professionals, and corporate clients to pro- 270 Farmington Ave., Suite 322 winning production company, including guaranteed placement duce results that matter. We Farmington, CT 06032 MHP specializes in radio news releases, on-air and value long-term relationships 860/676-2266 Commercials, Broadcast TV, online, custom feed radio news built on credibility and honest www.kotchengroup.com Primetime Network releases, radio media tours, pod- counsel. Programming, Strategic casts and radio PSAs. Elizabeth Cowles, President With more than 30 years Barbara Carpenter, Paula Electronic Marketing, DVDs, MediaTracks maintains con- experience, KEF Media offers Fischer, Senior Associates New Media, Podcasts, tacts at thousands of major sta- customized electronic commu- Image/marketing reels, Media tions and networks throughout nications services including The Kotchen Group is a full- Training, Live Event the U.S. Whether clients need SMTs, B-roll, PSAs, RMTs, service PR firm with an estab- Production, Satellite Media national reach, targeted market ANRs, secured media, in-mar- lished niche in broadcast media Tours, and Content Distribution. placement, or distribution ket media tours, multi-media services. In addition to produc- Primetime networking pro- through the internet, releases, webcasts, podcasts, ing in-market and satellite tele- gramming has appeared on MediaTracks can provide the micro-sites, corporate video vision and radio media tours, the CBS, ABC, ABC Family, CMT, appropriate services for the productions, commercials, agency represents a variety of A&E, PBS, BBC, SAT 1, and message. Every project includes special events, and much celebrities, authors, editors, TV the NFL Network and has fea- writing, production, tracking, more. hosts and lifestyle experts. The tured such artists as Paul verification and reporting, along Our expertise includes Kotchen Group brings together McCartney, Faith Hill, Janet with oversight by highly skilled healthcare and pharma, sports, each expert with synergistic Jackson, U2, The Rolling staffers who know radio. entertainment, food and bever- consumer products, retailers and Stones, The Newport Jazz MediaTracks has experience age, travel and hospitality, associations to editorial news Festival & Keith Urban. Some in a wide range of practices, fashion and beauty, and segments. of our corporate clients include including healthcare, consumer, numerous other categories. The firm also produces in- Manning, Selvage & Lee, Bayer business/financial, high tech KEF Media is the only firm market author media tours and Healthcare, Victoria’s Secret, and not-for-profit. Its digital with an exclusive agreement to publicizes signings, speaking L’Oreal, Columbia Records, production facilities provide produce and place our clients’ engagements and in-store Epic Records, Walt Disney clients with multiple methods of content with the Independent events. Additional services Company, Penguin Books, distribution, including mp3, News Network, whose prime- include: exclusive and co-op AOL, Live Nation and The wav file, html links, CD, and time news program reaches sponsored media campaigns, World Economic Forum. ISDN. more than 35 million house- spokesperson procurement, Based in New York with MediaTracks has produced holds nationwide. media training, national TV facilitations and staff in Los and distributed the 40-segment

38 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PROFILES OF VIDEO & BROADCAST FIRMS

Merck “Milestones in different format categories. All skills with journalistic savvy to world with over six million ads Medicine” national radio series, services are available in English deliver a high-value, low-cost and commercials through the and distributed “A Healthier and Spanish. concept to showcase your market leading AdSight plat- World,” a weekly national radio client’s custom message for form. The competitive advertis- series for Pfizer, Inc. Radio PLANNED a great return on investment. ing intelligence VMS provides media tours with consumer TELEVISION ARTS Services include: In-City includes U.S. and international product messages have included Media Tours; TV Satellite creative content as well as the George Foreman Grills 1110 Second Avenue Media Tours; Radio Media domestic spending and occur- “Knock Out the Fat” campaign, New York, NY 10022 Tours; Single & Co-Op. Over rence data from Nielsen for the “Child Safety” for Ross 212/583-2718 30 years in Broadcast PR. top 100 U.S. television markets. www.plannedtvarts.com Products/Wal-Mart. Our client [email protected] Content PLUS Commitment VMS recently entered into a roster includes AstraZeneca, PLUS Relationships. strategic partnership with Bayer, Takeda, Eli Lilly, Brian Feinblum, Chief Mktng Officer world-class software provider LifeScan, Novartis, Aetna, VMS Autonomy to take advantage of Ortho-McNeil, Arm & Planned Television Arts, a state-of-the-art meaning-based Hammer, Clorox, Kraft, Hormel division of Ruder Finn, has been 1500 Broadway computing to enhance their serving clients since 1962. The New York, NY 10036 and McDonald’s, as well as 212/329-5651 search capabilities. many of the nation’s top 25 firm is known for delivering www.vmsinfo.com agencies including Burson- broadcast service to the enter- WIECK MEDIA Marsteller, Cohn & Wolfe, tainment, book publishing, Michael Giovia, Chief Mktng Officer Edelman, Fleishman-Hillard, healthcare, association, and cor- 12700 Park Central Dr., Suite 510 porate worlds. VMS is the world leader for Dallas, TX 75251 GCI, Ketchum, Ogilvy, Porter 972/392-0888 Novelli and Weber Shandwick. Specialty services include the integrated media intelligence www.wieck.com Satellite TV Tour (15-18 local solutions that bring together [email protected] TV interviews from one loca- news and advertising monitor- NEWS President & CEO tion in a single morning), a ing across all media – internet, Tim Roberts, GENERATION, INC. trade-marked service; national social media, blogs, broadcast, For more than 19 years, and local television and radio radio, print, and outdoor. VMS 7508 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 300 Wieck has been pioneering Bethesda, MD 20814 services and the trademarked recently launched the first-ever technology advancements in 301/664-6448 Morning Drive Radio Tour integrated platform, Vantage, the media relations industry by www.newsgeneration.com (guarantee of 20-22 interviews which enables communicators creating solutions for organiza- twitter.com/newsgeneration tuninginradio.blogspot.com with local and national radio to see the affects of PR on tions large and small. We’ve Content website: shows in one morning). Our tar- advertising, and vice versa, for been bringing that trusted expe- www.radionewssource.com geted online media campaign their organizations and competi- rience to the Broadcast Media generates coverage with influ- tors, complete with correlations Susan Matthews Apgood, services for more than ten years. President ential blogs and top Web sites. to business outcomes. We developed the first online Sample media clients include VMS provides public rela- broadcast quality video delivery News Generation’s services Jeff Foxworthy, Price-Chopper, tions firms, advertising agencies system for the public relations include: radio media tours, Suzanne Somers, Judge Judy, and marketers worldwide with industry. Our services include audio news releases, audio bite Consumer Reports, People, 1- the most comprehensive, cut- Online newsrooms with broad- lines, public service announce- 800-FLOWERS, Motion ting-edge editorial and ad cast quality video distribution, ments, radio broadcast alerts, Picture Association, American retrieval, management and Social Media newsrooms, one- and podcasts. Heart Association, AAA, analysis solutions, including a touch multi-channel content We see you on the radio. Our Orbitz, Lonely Planet, Hilton broad spectrum of industry- syndication and user generated number one goal is to pitch Hotels, Lance Armstrong, leading advertising and public content (UGC) database pro- credible, newsworthy informa- President Jimmy Carter, relations measurement and cessing and distribution. 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APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 39 OPINION Professional Development Controlling damage by blasting an adversary By Fraser Seitel bus.” As to the Times, Paterson said it The company held a press briefing to was he, himself, who revealed the discredit the ABC report, which it said isten up, all you Toyota bashers. phone call in question. showed a surging tachometer in the Sure, the Japanese auto maker was Although the Times, in a huffy online dashboard of a Toyota sedan while the Lslow off the mark to fix its prob- post, immediately disputed the gover- car was stopped. It further accused ABC lems, too tentative in communicating nor’s claim, both the paper and the of corroborating its test by citing an its concern, and has silent Sen. Gillibrand were both obvi- “expert” professor, who was quietly lost beaucoup busi- ously bruised by Gov. Paterson’s pas- being paid by a consultant to plaintiff’s ness as a result but sionate counter punches. attorneys suing the automaker. ... It has officially The mistress strikes back Two weeks ago, Toyota went after turned the corner in the same for-hire professor, who also terms of damage Whether you consider John Edwards’ former mistress Rielle Hunter a poor, claimed before a Congressional com- control. It has done mittee that Toyota’s electronic throt- so by “going on love-struck striver, smitten by what she describes as a “force field” of tle-control system malfunctioned. defense,” which, in Toyota officials politely attacked this case, constitut- Edwardsian magnetism, or just a plain, old-fashioned home wrecker, you’ve got Southern Illinois Professor David Fraser P. Seitel has ed its best “offense.” Gilbert on his science, staging its own been a communications to admire her — and not just for the Toyota, like two test that indicated the good professor’s consultant, author and other current photo spread in GQ. teacher for 30 years. He While Hunter’s heart still melts for her claim couldn’t be replicated outside of is the author of the offenders in the cri- a carefully-controlled laboratory. sis management beloved “Johnny,” she expressed no such Prentice-Hall text, The After the Toyota demonstration, Practice of Public box, New York’s similar attachment for her and Edwards’ Prof. Gilbert wasn’t heard from again. Relations. embattled Gov. primary accuser, former aide Andrew Last month, Toyota respectfully David Paterson and Young. It was Young, of course, who went after a San Diego man, James John Edwards’ baby momma Rielle lowered the boom on his former employ- Sikes, who complained to the national Hunter, have resorted to the fool proof er by pointing out in his memoir that it media that his Prius wouldn’t stop at 21st century damage control technique was Edwards and not himself, as he orig- 94 mph because the accelerator pedal of “publicly attacking the credibility of inally claimed, who fathered Hunter’s stuck. your opponent.” baby. The company immediately seized Consider the following: In effect, according to Hunter’s inter- the car and reported that the accelera- The Governor strikes back view with GQ, Young was little more than a sniveling toady, who “loved tor pedal was tested and found to be For months, rumors circulated that Johnny more than he loved (his wife) working normally. The company fur- The New York Times was researching Cheri.” ther reported that that the Sikes’ car’s an exposé — drugs and women were Ouch. front brakes showed severe wear and mentioned — that would blow New damage from overheating. Hunter also accused the Young family York’s governor out of the water. And while Toyota, itself, carefully When the story finally did appear — of profiting from the Edwards’ situation, and she sued him for the return of an avoided commenting directly on Mr. prominently on page one — it accused Sikes’ potential motives, it was reported Paterson of interceding by making a alleged sex tape that included her and Johnny-on-the-spot. that the aggrieved San Diego driver and phone call in a domestic violence his wife had recently declared bankrupt- charge against an aide. Although the If nothing else, Hunter’s push-back put cy and owed money on numerous mate- accusations against the governor all the other actors in this soap opera on rial goods, including their Prius. record that a mistress scorned is not to be weren’t trivial, they certainly weren’t And then, yet another Prius driver trifled with. “page one worthy” and looked, suspi- from upstate New York was found want- ciously, like an old-fashioned hatchet Apologetic car company strikes back ing in her claims that a faulty accelera- job. Finally, there was Toyota, subject of tor pedal caused her car to crash. Nonetheless, the story was enough to great condemnation for its ill-acting On the contrary, reported federal safe- torpedo Paterson’s reelection hopes autos, slow-to-respond fix-it program, ty regulators investigating the claim, the and send fair-weather friends — most and late-arriving mea culpa campaign. car’s computer showed no evidence of notably New York’s fraidy-scared Sen. In its most recent crisis management braking by the driver at the time of the Kirsten Gillibrand — running for the response, Toyota has begun to fight back crash. hills. with a vengeance. The net impact of all this is that the So last week, Gov. Paterson, still in And not a moment too soon to rescue full-scale attack on Toyota has dissipat- office and still feisty, struck back at his its tottering franchise. ed. And the company is finally back on accusers. Toyota lit into ABC News for using the road to recovery (barring any future Paterson said Gillibrand, whom he several seconds of staged video while negative revelations or crashes) — appointed and who called for his resig- seemingly showing how Toyotas could thanks, principally, to its decision to nation, simply threw him “under the speed out of control. attack its attackers.

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For example, assume utility amounts, you may be able to identify benefit of a cost cutting policy and expense was $79,000, $77,000, and which month(s) appear to be abnormal Lthe requirements to implement such $88,000 for the past three years. and warrant further investigation. It a program. This month I will discuss the Assuming $79,000 was the base year may be easier and more efficient to con- process of a cost cutting program. expense, the percentage index for each centrate on these months first and then Identifying expens- year would be 100%, 97%, and 111%. proceed to the full year, if needed. es to tackle Thus, this method gives a better picture Major Areas. Using subsidiary Owners and con- of how a specific item has changed over ledgers, the expense is segregated into trollers will occasion- time and how the percentage change specific areas for analysis. For example, ally know instinctive- compares to other line items in each repairs and maintenance is broken down ly which expense year. by building, equipment, vehicles, and areas have the great- Before using this method, it is impor- other. The segregation provides the est cost cutting poten- tant to adjust line item expenses in the information to focus on a specific area tial. If, for example, base period to compensate for unusual of the bigger picture. 50 percent of your activity, if any. Major Vendors. Knowing which ven- Richard Goldstein clients have cut their You may decide to use just one of the dors supply the majority of the services is a partner at budgets, it may seem above techniques. While performing the or products is essential to performing Buchbinder Tunick & Company LLP, New obvious that staff analysis, financial management may more detailed analysis. This step allows York, Certified Public reductions are in also wish to exclude from the analysis you to focus on major vendors for cost Accountants. order. However, for any significant expense categories, such reduction. the most part a as rent or salary that are not being con- Specific Service or Product. The final detailed process is needed to find the sidered for cost reduction. analysis is to schedule detailed invoices expenses with the greatest cost cutting Diagnostic analysis from the major vendors to identify the potential. After completing the overall analysis, nature of the expense and whether it Your controller, CPA, or other financial the PR firm should have a general idea appears reasonable. manager is often the best person to turn to of which expenses offer the greatest Prioritize expense reduction tips for performing identifying costs with the opportunity for reduction. The firm can After auditing and categorizing dis- greatest cost cutting potential. then look at each type of expense for bursements by type or activity, you There are generally three trend analysis specific cost savings opportunities. should prioritize expense reduction tips techniques used to identify potential Ideas can be obtained from personal identified. This prioritization should con- expenses to cut: two variations of vertical experience, input from other employees, sider factors such as any required capital analysis and horizontal analysis. or by analyzing each area. (Note, part outlay or other direct expenditures, the Vertical (percentage of sales) analy- III will give some ideas on how to go cost of labor and other indirect costs to sis. This is the most common type of ana- about doing this.) implement the idea, the initial savings lytical technique. It presents expenses for Implementing strategies expected, and the savings expected in a three-to-five year period both in dollar Before implementing cost reduction future periods. amounts and as a percentage of revenues. strategies for selected expenses, firms It is important to assign responsibility While this approach is common, it does should fully understand the specific for completing each cost savings idea to have shortcomings since many expenses activities making up the various specific individuals. The responsible do not increase or decrease in proportion expense types. For example, before individual either personally researches to revenue changes. Therefore, it pro- implementing strategies to reduce legal and implements each tip, or assigns oth- vides a starting point for expense analy- expenses, you must know the activities ers to help. The responsible person is sis, but care must be taken not to draw that are generating legal fees, such as typically given two key dates: feasibility erroneous conclusions. workers’ compensation, malpractice and completion. On the feasibility date, a Vertical (percentage of total expens- issues, or corporate (LLC) legal compli- decision should be made about whether es) analysis. This technique compen- ance. Once the expenses are categorized to proceed with the idea, end it, or modi- sates for the drawback with the above by type, you will be in a much better fy it. On the completion date, the project approach. Instead of looking at each position to decide which cost cutting should have been completed along with expense as a percentage of revenue, this savings idea will achieve the greatest providing a more refined estimate of approach presents each expense line payback. Since the agency’s general expected savings by year. item as a percentage of total expenses. ledger typically aggregates these Briefly, the final two steps are “Monitor Thus, fixed expenses and others that do expense activities into a single account, Results,” and “Keep the Program not fluctuate with revenue are better it is usually necessary to examine the Ongoing.” There should be meetings with analyzed. supporting invoices. top management at least quarterly to Horizontal (base year) analysis. When working on a cost cutting con- review results. Once the cost cutting proj- This analytical approach looks at sulting engagement, I usually prepare ect is completed, at least once a quarter, expenses from a slightly different angle. work papers using the following ideas: new ideas from employees should be It establishes a base year and shows General Summary. The expense is elicited and discussed.

42 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM • NANA (PRSA national), $4,632,985. • NANA/NY (PRSA/NY chapter), PR needs a library $102,073. By Jack O’Dwyer or two exceptions), all those at h.q. should • Int'l Assn. of Bus. Comms., be association professionals. His very first $1,440,488. action in January 1980 was ousting XPV • National Investor Rels. Inst., ublic libraries are “beloved institu- Rea Smith from h.q., where she was $4,715,854. tions” and “more essential than ever ordered never to return. Association pro • Black PR Society of America, Pbefore,” found a study by Public Betsy Kovacs joined in January as Smith’s $16,324. Agenda, 30-year-old public service group replacement. • Publicity Club of New York, $23,681. headed by famed researcher Daniel The OOT-dominated Assembly (which • Overseas Press Club, $64,794. Yankelovich. added scores of chapters with as few as ten • Entertainment Publicists Professional Libraries are important for those with members but one full vote in the Society, $89,676. few resources of their own both for seek- Assembly) voted twice in 1986-87 to The Arthur Page Society, headed by ing knowledge and move h.q. from New York. Bill Margaritis, corporate VP of Global as a place to meet, Board members and staff successfully Communications and IR of FedEx, sticks the study found. fought the move, punishing the Assembly out like a sore thumb because it is a A March poll on the by permanently canceling the spring 501/c/3 charity, a status usually given to odwyerpr.com Web Assembly on the ground of lack of money. organizations like the Red Cross, United site found that the The library was closed in the 1990s, Fund, ballet companies and symphonies. majority of those shortly after it was discovered that NANA Only two others in the 13 are c/3’s — polled are in favor of was selling tens of thousands of authors’ the Institute for PR which does not have a PR library. And articles without their permission. individual members, and BPRS. why wouldn’t they Instead of a library, NANA started The other ten are c/6 trade groups with Jack O’Dwyer be? Who could be offering a wide range of seminars, individual memberships just like Page but against a library? Webinars and workshops as “professional which cannot get gifts from corporations The PR Establishment, that’s who. development” with fees attached to each. that are deductible by the corporations. They can’t stand the thought of the Libraries need philanthropy Corporations such as FedEx, Johnson lower echelons of PR having access to a Public Agenda says libraries need “a & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Kraft, IBM and lot of information and having a regular high level of private philanthropic fund- Staples give Page a total of more than place where they can meet and actually ing,” and we agree. It’s about time the rich $150,000 each year that can be written engage in face-to-face conversations. in PR helped the poor. off. None of the other ten groups can have Next thing you know, people will be We have accessed the IRS Form 990s of such benefactors. criticizing The Establishment. That’s their 13 PR groups to show just how rich the Page tells us that it got c/3 status when fear. rich are. it was founded in 1983 and it’s never been Some PR groups will ask what’s in it for Prior to the Web, where such forms are changed. We think the c/3 status is inde- their members. That’s the wrong question. now accessible, this was a task that would fensible and is unfair to the other groups. As tax-free entities, they’re supposed to have taken months because many of the NY groups need meeting place serve their industries and not just their groups bitterly resent our poring over their New York PR groups including members. returns. NANA/NY are especially in need of a Companies like FedEx, IBM, Johnson We often had to threaten some of the neutral place to meet. Chapter events are & Johnson, Prudential Financial and UPS groups with turning them over to the IRS. often held at PR firms including are making tax-deductible donations to the NANA, for instance, would let us go to Ketchum, Fleishman-Hillard, Ruder Finn Arthur Page Society of $10,000+ and/or h.q. and examine its 990 as required by and Gibbs & Soell. Some PR firm CEOs buying $14,245 sponsorships at the PR law. We would take notes since they tell us they would never send one of their Week/U.S. banquet but have little or no refused to provide us copies. One year we people to a competing firm for a work- money for groups like the Black PR bought a hand-copying device and drew it shop. Society. across needed sections of the 990 to make We understand that because we would PR once had a library our own copies. never send an O’Dwyer’s reporter to PR The New York PR community once at a Groups have $13.7M in cash/savings Week or PR News for a session on report- free public library at the NANA (née It’s no wonder the groups don’t want ing techniques. PRSA) h.q. at 51st St. and Third Ave. these forms examined. Cash/savings of the Groups are poor financial reporters. We used it many times when starting 13 groups total $13.7 million as of their Proper reporting includes making avail- this company in 1968. Librarian Mary latest 990 filings. able via the web the latest Form 990 and Smith was most helpful to us and anyone. Below are the cash/savings of the audit to members and non-members. NANA got over-run in 1980 by mem- groups as taken from their latest Form 990 A logical contender as the place for a bers from the north, south and west who filings. New York PR library is none other than ousted all New York PR pros from h.q. • Council of PR Firms, $822,000. the 23rd floor of 317 Madison Ave. where Patrick Jackson of N.H. led the charge, • Arthur Page Society, $581,000. Page and the Council of PR Firms share becoming president in 1980. His attitude • New York Women in 1,700 square feet of space. Currently towards the press was direct: “Duck ’em Comms., $451,000. vacant on that floor is 7,000 square feet. and screw ’em” (said on videotape to • Institute for PR, $305,071. The building has 21 other vacant offices. Morley Safer of 60 Minutes). • New York Financial Writers, With office vacancy rates high, now is a Jackson’s philosophy was that (with one $539,000. good time to sign a deal.

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 43 WASHINGTON REPORT U.S. PR chief outlines changes

he U.S. must follow a more aggressive and strategic approach to public affairs to get its message to the world Tand counter opponents and enemies with sophisticated media strategies, said the U.S. PR chief, Judith McHale, in tes- timony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. McHale, who has traveled to Europe, the Middle East and Asia in her first year as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, spoke as the State Department completed an eight-month review of its public diplomacy efforts and outlined changes at stake for the nation’s PR plans, including the addition of new positions oversee- ing foreign media and regional public affairs. McHale noted 40 new democracies have emerged over the past 25 years with citizens shaping governments unlike any other period in history. “Public opinion is influencing foreign governments and shaping world affairs to an unprecedented degree,” she said. Expanded media outreach is a key part of that effort. She also outlined the challenges of the global stage as enemies “It has been an uphill battle but, as our voice gets more frequent and opponents use sophisticated media strategies to spread disinfor- play, the impact on the discourse in Pakistan’s media has been mation and rumors that spur hatred and violence. noticeable,” she said. “We must be ever vigilant and respond rapidly to their attacks She said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Pakistan last against us,” she said, noting plans to use new and traditional media October was planned in accordance with the communications out- to get U.S. perspectives out and counter misinformation following line. Clinton touched on topics identified as central to the concerns terrorist and extremist messages and acts. of Pakistanis, like education, jobs and reliable power. McHale said she directed public affairs officers worldwide in McHale said very few countries will require a PR plan on the December to be more aggressive and strategic in their communica- level of Pakistan, but used the example for the country’s public tions efforts. She credits that stance with changing the global narra- diplomacy to follow on each “mission.” tive about the U.S. relief efforts in Haiti following the devastating earthquake there. Sea World fishes for D.C. support McHale also said a new position — Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Media Support — is being created within eaWorld Parks and Entertainment has hired OB-C Group, the the State Dept.’s bureau of public affairs to pay “high level atten- former O’Brien Calio shop, for public policy support in the tion” to foreign media. Deputy assistant secretaries for public diplo- Saftermath of the February 24 killing of an Orlando trainer by macy are also being established in each of the State Department’s a killer whale. The well-connected Democrat Lawrence O’Brien regional bureaus to put a PR perspective in senior policy talks and leads the account. coordinate initiatives in those regions, McHale said. He is assisted by Robert Stevenson, communications director for Social media has become a key part of U.S. public diplomacy ex-Republican Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist; Michael Johnson, with tools like Skype, Facebook and YouTube playing a role in out- chief of staff to former Republican Minority Leader Rep. Bob reach across the globe. Michel; Robert Marsh, special assistant for legislative affairs for McHale also presented the Senate committee with the draft President George W. Bush; Nathan Miller, legislative assistant to ex- “Pakistan Communications Plan,” essentially a PR framework for Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee; Patricia Nelson, former majori- winning the public in that country. ty staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee, and Tim Keating, former Sergeant at Arms at the House of Representatives. Washington Briefs OB-C is dealing with issues such as the Travel Promotion Act, Dyke taps Madden to open D.C. office the Fair and Cost Effective Travel Policy Act and the National Amusement Park Ride Safety Act. Kevin Madden, Managing Director for Glover Park Group and Press A staffer could not be reached for questions about whether the Secretary for Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, is joining Jim Dyke & firm is dealing with fallout surrounding the killing of trainer Dawn Associates to open and direct a D.C. office for the South Carolina- Brancheau, who was thrashed underwater and drowned by a 22- based firm. foot, 12,000-pound orca called Tilikum Madden was National Press Secretary and SeaWorld has not yet decided if Tilikum is going to perform in Senior Communications Aide to Romney’s 2008 bid shows again. The whale remains on public display at the Florida after holding to key PR posts for the Republican park and the marine park operator, which owns 26 orcas, has ruled Congressional leadership. He was Press Secretary out euthanasia. to then-House Majority Leader John Boehner (R- Since the death, trainers have been banned from getting into the Ohio) and Communications Director to Boehner’s pools with whales but they will eventually get back into the water, predecessor, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Chuck Tompkins, SeaWorld’s chief trainer told the Wall Street He takes the title of Executive VP of Public Kevin Madden Journal on March 9. Affairs at JD&A, the five-year-old firm of Jim Jim Atchinson, SeaWorld’s CEO, admits his company is still Dyke, Comms. Director of the Republican “trying to get our arms around the incident.” National Committee during President Bush’s re-elect and Press SeaWorld, which used to be part of Anheuser-Busch, was sold to Secretary for the Commerce Dept. Blackstone Group for $2.7B last year.

44 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE INTERNET? The science of online behavior puters are dumb compared to humans. They In order to properly mine and sort the don’t have the level of judgment to say Continued from page 19 information that is stored online, we need to ‘here’s what being talked about’ from a understand that online information occurs knowledge perspective. But taking the tools the sum collective library of our total infor- around behaviors, not demographics. of what patterns computers can recognize mation is becoming laughably uneven. Demographics are the flavors of crowds. and putting it in the hands of smart mar- Walmart constantly feeds a database of Behaviors are reactions to information with- keters is the next big underlying technology about 2.5 petabytes of data, nearly 170 in the constraints of any particular environ- that will change marketing.” times the size of all the books in our ment. Already, a targeted-data revolution is Library of Congress. By contrast, the entire You’ll see different behaviors on occurring in the ad and marketing indus- record of some thinkers in Ancient Greece Facebook than on Twitter, for example. tries. A recent Network Advertising who were fundamental in shaping modern Facebook is closed, it is relationship-driven Initiative survey of 12 advertising networks democracy is limited to only a few para- but allows more diverse content. Twitter is found that targeted ads revealed conversion graphs. more open, but it is content-driven and its rates of 6.8% compared with non-targeted You don’t need to be a mathematician to messages are vastly limited by size and ads, which yielded 2.8%. In other words, understand the simple logic that if most character constraints. This accounts for why consumers were more than twice as likely to content is bad, and if more content is added different content is posted differently in dif- buy something from ads they clicked on that to the pile each day, then an increasing ratio ferent places. It also accounts for why peo- were targeted for them versus ones that of bad content is quickly outnumbering the ple say and do things online they would oth- were not. good on the Internet. erwise not in the real world. The mathematics behind ad targeting, This paradox is central to understanding Knowing this, we can use our proclivity however, reveal a double-edged sword: As the Internet’s single biggest flaw, as it high- for all this data chomping to mine for certain ads metrics improve (and they do each lights the predicate kink upon which all the behaviors, those nuances that only humans year), online advertisers may be shocked to problems listed herein originate: computers recognize. We should understand that data is realize that sales resulted from a campaign don’t understand human concepts like qual- confessional: it can tell us things we didn’t are celestially disproportionate to the num- ity. know before. We can use data to see causal bers of views, clicks, or passersby who The business and economic structures relationships we never noticed. We can use never register with the brand’s message or that surrounded the print, TV and film data to yield better understanding, better even notice the ad to begin with. Marketers industries and the extremely high internal responses, better content. It can tell us who love to show how improved targeting can costs their medium outputs incurred were a is likely to say what content where. It can get the right message to the right audience, natural vetting process that performed a also tell us where proper content should go. but with more precise tools they’ll find great deal of quality control on behalf of the One such company that is current doing themselves under increasing pressure to information disseminated. That many his- this is Irvine, CA-based WiseWindow. yield consistently higher returns. toric mistakes were made along the way in Founded in 2007, WiseWindow uses patent- Hope for Web 3.0 each industry is not a point of discussion ed software to predict behavioral outcomes Cultures do not truly come into their own here (they made a lot). The bottom line is based on consumer opinions. until they stop transcribing the histories of the egalitarian beauty of the Internet is also Titled Mass Opinion Business past cultures and begin assimilating content the cause of its downfall. Intelligence, the software first searches the with the fruits of their own labor. So far YouTube allows leagues of racist com- Web for all instances in which a conversa- we’re not there yet. ments on its site, as if this patently bad tion is taking place about a person, product One positive recent step is the develop- information somehow improves its services or service. It determines context and sentiment of the Semantic Web, which seeks to or otherwise carries the egalitarian torch of ment by analyzing each statement’s syntax index the Internet around topics in such a the Internet. Similarly, posting comments structure and comparing it to massive way that the meanings of words (or as much on a message board contributes less to a amounts of competing statements. It then as it can muster) are effectively “under- meaningful conversation than it runs the sorts these sentiments and assigns them a stood” by both computers and humans. The risk of stoking the tempers of a mob. rating from 0 to 5. The company can then Semantic Web attempts to understand the Computers, like books and radios, don’t give clients statistics showing what share of relationships between things as well the understand causality. While they can be fed positive and negative comments are being properties of things, so as to supply content millions of if-x-then-y scenarios, they don’t stated about them, where perception is weak that is better and more pertinent. understand context, they can’t comprehend and where it is strong. It’s a good first step toward the possibili- the nuances of human behavior. They can’t Consider it like facial recognition soft- ty that the Web could someday give us what gauge what’s true and what’s not. They ware, only for behavior. Marketers don’t we truly need: a body of content sorted on a don’t know what’s good. As such, they need to know who the talking individuals hierarchy of quality that fits the contextual need us to steer the information they amass, are; they can use it to discover how people contours of its user’s needs, one that accu- lest they be worthless machines spinning feel about something en masse, and what rately mirrors our diverse range of attitudes empty data. they are likely to do based on those feelings. and beliefs but one that continues the mon- The only way for this to happen is if Technology like this won’t tell you what’s umental library of human knowledge. humans regain centrality, if we remain in true or right — it still doesn’t know why we “I’m very excited about social media and control of data, and if we begin to heavily choose the things we choose — but it can its potential,” said Chiagouris. “You’re monitor the content we put into the infor- give us the ability to see patterns beneath the going to see in five to seven years that peo- mational compost. information. ple will be comfortable with many of the We need tools to mine the good informa- “This is a complete revolution in learning recommendations we’re getting now. We tion from the bad. about what’s on peoples’ minds,” said should get our toes in the water and try We need a system that rewards content Marshall Toplansky, President of things small scale. Right now there’s more that is beneficial to us. WiseWindow. “At the end of the day, com- buzz than anything.”

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 45 To be featured in the monthly Buyer’s Guide, PR Buyer’s Guide Contact John O’Dwyer, [email protected]

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46 APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM PR JOBS - http://jobs.odwyerpr.com

PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER Tap into the benefits of Participate as an active member of the Corporate PR/ Communication O'Dwyer's job board! team. Support the development and implementation of a company-wide communications strategy plan. Adhere to standards developed to promote http://jobs.odwyerpr.com and protect the image, reputation and brand of First Niagara. Financial Group. Attend functions and events outside the traditional work day. JOB SEEKERS: Key Responsibilities: •Assist with public relations-related functions including supporting --Access the newest and freshest jobs. strategies designed to optimize the visibility and positive community --Post an anonymous resume. partner role of the company. --Create job alerts and never let a matching job opportunity •Assist in developing and implementing strategies for communication pass you by. New jobs that match your search criteria will be that build consensus among all employees and increase employee e-mailed directly to you. alignment with our mission and business strategy with specific and --Create a job seeker account which will allow you to find measurable results. jobs, manage your resume, and set up job alerts. •Serve as counselor to First Niagara managers on communication issues. •Act as community liaison for First Niagara by participating in check presentations, on-site visits, branch openings, volunteer events and additional public appearances. Requirements: •Bachelor’s degree in public relations, communication, journalism, corporate communication or marketing •7 years experience in corporate communications or marketing communications •Demonstrated experience with online and traditional communication tools •Demonstrated project management experience •Demonstrated strong writing and editing skills Apply URL: http://www.fnfg.com/careers

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACCOUNT COORDINATOR

The Account Coordinator will support a large mass consumer products company’s various beauty brands on all aspects of work -- in a fun and dymanic agency,

OVERVIEW OF RESPONSIBILITIES •Coordination and distribution of all product mailings EMPLOYERS/RECRUITERS: •Product fulfillment for all media requests; update media send-out charts --Check out our resumes and only pay for the ones that •Manage media monitoring •Compile and track media placements interest you. •Update team on tracking / status of placements and achievements of --Post a job and reach the most qualified candidates. metric goals --Create an employer account and quickly post job •Evaluate the competitive landscape openings and manage your online recruiting efforts. •Assist with development of quarterly reports •Engage with the media on a regular basis pitching appropriate products for story needs •Drafting product facts sheets and media pitches •Conducting research on industry news to support team planning, events and presentations •Responsible for drafting agendas and recaps for all client conference calls as well as team meetings •Supporting staff on a variety of fun, strategic programs •Mangaging an intern

QUALIFICATIONS •Internships and / or 6 months of consumer PR experience is ideal •Excellent written and verbal communication skills •Ability to prioritize multiple tasks under tight deadlines •Highly organized and detail-oriented •Ability to successfully execute tasks/projects in a highly productive manner, examining the objective at-hand and the end-goal •Familiarity and/ passion for the beauty industry •Strong interest in the beauty media and the ability to foster positive working relationships

[email protected]

Apply URL: http://www.rprmc.com

APRIL 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM 47 WE’RE ALWAYS WATCHING THE NEWS FOR YOU

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