Elements of A Communications Plan

05/25/2011

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Organizations communicate best when they communicate with purpose -- guided by a well-conceived and closely followed plan to reach, influence and hear their target audiences. In a way, a strategic communications plan is like a budget: You might flounder along without one, but you'll invariably miss opportunities and inevitably get caught unprepared at a crucial moment.

But what does a strategic communications plan comprise? Well, there's no cookie-cutter approach creating one, because each enterprise -- for-profit, nonprofit, governmental -- is unique, with its own stories to tell, its own messages to convey, its own audiences to reach and its own suite of other variables to consider.

But there are certain core components that all should include, contends my friend Kris Putnam-Walkerly of Putnam Community Investment Consulting. Kris is one of the nation's most respected nonprofits-management consultants, so when she speaks, nonprofits listen. That's why her Philanthropy 411 blog has such devout fans.

I'd note that the principles Kris lays out aren't limited to nonprofits. For a solid primer on strategic communication planning, have a look at her 15 tips for effective communications planning. Then ask yourself: Is your organization ready to communicate effectively?
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OOH! A mis-TWEET-ment! (So what?)

05/18/2011

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Yawn ... The Twitter Police are a-twitter again today, and every day, over someone's gaffe. I think it's 7-Eleven most recently, although there may have been 100 new ones since then.

Each time this happens, the tongue-clucking echoes around in certain circles as loudly as a 17-year-cicada emergence. And it's all so predictable that I swear there are people out there at Salon, HuffingtonPost, Ragan.com and Slate with stock templates -- pre-written speculation about how (insert offender's brand) has been critically damaged, followed by "seven lessons" (or five, or 10) that the rest of us must follow to avert our own Twitter armageddon.

The thing is, I can't remember who yesterday's offender was. Or the day before's. Or last week's seven offenders. Can you?

Outside of Twitterpol, most of us don't really care anymore. Most of us actually see Twitter for what it is: a place where lots of people spout stream-of-consciousness without a hell of a lot of editing. We extend a bit of benefit of the doubt, or we've become jaded -- the way the French expect their politicians to have mistresses.

I'm not endorsing careless or cavalier microblogging, mind you. Only a fool would advocate unprotected tweeting. Those who truly commit a grievous Twitter sin -- if indeed that's possible -- ought to be held accountable. Anyone with a brand to protect should be vigilant and use judgment.
 
But to all of you who keep playing the self-righteous gotcha!/gossip game, I say: Enough already. Your sport is as played out as Auto-Tune and "I'm just sayin'."

Really, is there a major brand anywhere that has suffered serious, lasting damage from a Twitter faux pas? Did anyone not buy a Chrysler because of that poor PR peon's stupid misfire a few months back? (It was Chrysler, right?) I can't remember which fashion designer inflicted such self-crippling damage with an indiscreet tweet about Egypt, and I'm sure I'm far from alone. The only people who got all kerfluffled over the supposedly brand-destabilizing Red Cross mistweet a couple months ago (scandalous words to the effect of, "We got some beer here!") were a few hundred social-media consultants who aim to exploit these gaffes by blogging about them and then proclaiming they can teach your business safe tweeting (for a fee, of course). And -- perhaps unfortunately --  I doubt anyone will pass on a Slurpee over whatever 7-Eleven's offense was. (I personally don't know the content of the tweet, because I won't bite on the bait.)

So please -- let's move on from the silliness and grow the hell up.

- Jim
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PR's Bad PR

05/16/2011

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I pick my professions for maximum esteem, don't I?

For most or all of my career, I was a newspaper reporter and editor. No matter how well I did my job, the public eye lumped me together with the irresponsible poseurs, plagiarists and polarizers at journalism's antagonistic extremes. And each time one of them did something outrageous, all of us would be lassoed together into one loathed behemoth known -- as though we were a single living organism -- as "the media." (Hiss!) 

The media take everything that everyone says and twist it all around and put a slant on it and spin it and take it out of context. Everybody hates the media.

I must have an unnaturally high need for hatred, though, because about a year and a half ago, I moved over to public relations.

Now, understand that to journalists, PR is sort of like Alabama to their professional Arkansas: It's even farther down in the public's pecking order, and thus it gives journos something to scorn and makes them feel better about themselves. When the public calls reporters "distorters" and berates the liberal (or right-wing) media, journalists can pop open a beer and sneer down at "the sellouts" in PR who have "gone over to Dark Side," and feel better about themselves and their own status.

I suppose the last logical step in my descent would be to run for Congress, which would land me right in professional Mississippi. But God gave me a nose specifically so that I can look down it, so I refuse go to the bottom.

Then again, if we're to believe opinionista Jack Shafer over at an online pub called Slate, I'm already there. Here's how Shafer characterized PR in an essay on Friday:

"Not to get reductionist on you, but most PR campaigns are 'smear campaigns' if the definition of a smear campaign is to spread untruths or half-truths or other deceits in an organized fashion."
Shafer was reacting to the sensational revelation that Facebook had hired a renowned PR firm called Burson-Marsteller to engineer negative publicity about Facebook arch-rival Google. The fact that a few B-M turds took that shady assignment and the fees attached to it is just the kind of incendiary anecdote that PR's critics (meaning: certain self-loathing journalists) love to hold up and shout, "Aha! Gotcha!"

Sophomores will always have freshmen to taunt, and Shafer is sophomoric to the extreme. When he wasn't berating PR in his piece, he was sanctimoniously chiding all the rest of journalism for being so much stupider than he is because other journalists actually place some occasional trust in their PR sources.

Unlike many of my new peers in public relations, I didn't feel embarrassed for PR so much when I read Shafer's screed. Instead, I felt a bit embarrassed about my past as a journalist, because that associates me with folks like him.

He is, of course, lying. And, of course, he knows it. PR can't be defined by orchestrated smear campaigns any more than journalism can be defined by its periodic plagiarism scandals. But lying, link-baiting, hyperbole and name-calling stir things up, and that gets Shafer the attention he deliberately and desperately seeks. Attention-seeking and self-glorification, not public enlightenment, have become the ultimate object of too many in journalism today.

Burson-Marsteller and Facebook deserve every lump they take over this fiasco. And if the firestorm they ignited scorches PR and burns down every ethically compromised PR practitioner who thinks it's OK to lie or deceive, the world will be a better place. As a reporter, I dealt with plenty of them -- connivers, obstructionists and outright liars.

But when that fire dies, the vast majority of PR practitioners will still be standing -- and maybe applauding.

That's because most of the ones I know aren't evil.

They try to connect organizations with the folks they are related to -- employees, communities, customers, shareholders, government regulators, peers and, yes, critics.

Done right, PR helps companies tell their stories to those "publics." Honest interpretation by ethical PR people can help dispel irrational fear of the unknown. It helps small but wonderful charities become big and wonderful. Strong PR programs listen more than they talk, and they establish a feedback loop that lets leadership of any organization hear public criticism and adjust accordingly. They answer questions, and they answer critics. For every attempt at obfuscation, there are two attempts at transparency -- it's all the fashion in PR today.

I have always believed, somewhat naively, that journalism should do all of those good things, and more. PR would lose at least half of its reason to exist if the media truly did their jobs -- if they only employed those who are ambitious enough to find every story, smart enough to understand every nuance, gifted enough to explain every complexity, compassionate enough to care about every person, and ethical enough to subordinate their own egos to the truth.
 
Unfortunately, ego is all that matters to the Jack Shafers of the world. They inflate their own self-importance by blowing other people and institutions up, the way that self-congratulatory sophomores do. Their self-promoting and shallow, one-dimensional, vindictive reporting aren't an antidote to PR -- they're half the reason it exists.

Only by leaving the media have I come to understand that people don't necessarily fear the media because they have something to hide. The deep public distrust of journalists is, in large part, earned -- if only by a minority.

Just as Shafer's petty sideswipe unfairly besmirches all PR practitioners, a small slice of my old journalism peer group has committed sins of unethicality, incompetence and indifference, and all journalists wear the stain.

My disgust for what those awful journalists have done to my old profession made it just a little easier to leave.

But now look where I am.

All I can say is, thank God for Congressmen.

- Jim



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The Power of a Brand Name

05/11/2011

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A good friend once worked in development for an operation called the Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine and Pharmacy. Quite a mouthful, eh?

Fundraising calls might not last long, because folks would lose interest and hang up before the caller made it through the school's preposterous moniker. And who wants to read correspondence from an entity whose letterhead logo says (continued on Page 2)?

The acronym was just as bad: NEOUCOM. Sounds like something the Pentagon dreamed up.
How do you build a brand around brand names that are so painfully bad that the mind seems to treat them like autopsy photographs and consciously drive them out?

You don't build it very well, that's for sure: The school has been a non-entity in the region's civic life, unknown outside certain small circles. It gets no attention, no press, no prestige. It wouldn't take much longer to count the school's Google News hits than it would to say NEOwhatchamacallit.

Such brand deficits would make it awful hard for the school to get support, raise money and recruit talent, I'd think. 

Today I opened The Plain Dealer and saw a banner headline above the lead story on the Metro page about NEOMED -- Northeast Ohio Medical University.

Voila! Same school, new name, instant credibility hike, measurably better results.

NEOMED's new president, Dr. Jay Gershen, seems to get it. Under his leadership, NEOUwhatever rebranded itself last month with a stroke of the governor's pen.

The story under the headline -- about a plan to steer more new doctors to inner-city practice -- wasn't news: I heard Gershen discuss it during a panel discussion at the City Club of Cleveland many months ago. A PD reporter was there. She may have fallen asleep, though, during the minutes it took the moderator to pronounce the mystery med school's name as he introduced the panelists. Whether asleep or awake, the reporter didn't care much what the president of this obscure institution on the metroplex fringes of had to say. The school has rarely earned the newspaper's attention, and Gershen's predecessors didn't really seem to care. That's ironic here in one of the world's great medical capitals.

Of course, a new brand name doesn't change NEOMED's underlying substance, good or bad. But with a snappy, descriptive, clean name, it no longer sounds like a place to enroll for an associate's degree in surgery. It gets attention. Played well, it should help the school build credibility, which in turn should lead to greater resources and talent.
The lesson here isn't to change your enterprise's name just for the sake of change. The lesson is to have a brand name that works. Does yours? Are you a Northeast Ohio Medical University? Or are you a NEOU...zzzzzz?

- Jim
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10 Things to Stop Doing in Relationships

05/02/2011

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A few months back, I bookmarked a list: "10 Things to Stop Doing in Relationships."

Now, I get a bit weary of today's proliferation of lists, especially the negative ones that tell us what not to do instead of what is helpful to reaching our goals. But this one contains good advice for all of us, particularly those who run organizations and manage people (or raise children). Among the things that disrupt relationships: Giving solutions to people who really just want a listening ear; being defensive when receiving criticism; not following up on things you agreed to; and a few more.

Are there things you do that hurt your relationships -- private and business? This list will give you a starting point for some reflection.

- JN
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Hey Startups - you NEED PR.

04/28/2011

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Rosanna Fisk at DigiDaily shares some insightful thoughts on the myth that small companies and cool startups don't need strategic communications. Her message: "[D]on’t cast aside what can be incredibly value to a young, growing business just
because your industry buddies say it’s uncool."
This should be required reading for entrepreneurs and those running small- to mid-sized firms. I'll share some of my own ideas and observations on the topic sometime soon. It's a critical issue here in NE Ohio as we reshape our economy from a big-industry base to one built upon smaller enterprises.

- Jim
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Nice to meet you!

04/27/2011

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So we've launched a communications consulting firm, and a few people want to know why. Aren't there enough PR firms and freelance writers fighting over too few meals out there?

Not the way I look at it.

I have no great manifesto to nail to the door. But I do have a couple of good reasons for creating Coleridge Communications.

First, I believe in Cleveland.

I see a city on the rise, where new companies will   proliferate and young ones will grow. We have globally renowned hubs of intellectual capital and research, including our universities, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, and NASA Glenn. In biomed, alternative energy, advanced materials/polymers and other sectors, our region is either a world  leader or is benefiting from well-run efforts to claim leadership. We have some venture capital power. Our philanthropic sector has created national models of  innovative economic development. Younger people, many from outside the region, have brought new attitudes and ideas, and are breaking down the crusty, insular old ways of doing business here.

Excitement and optimism are in the air for those willing  to tune in to the right wavelengths.

Second, I believe in Coleridge Communications and our  ability to help those companies – and yours – at a value-packed price point.
 
We can help you nurture and build excitement and optimism within your own organization. We’re masters of storytelling and message  development – skills that start with listening. We harness the power of the written and spoken word to turn those stories into stronger relationships with employees, current and potential customers, community, peer organizations, and
other important audiences.
 
We’re a boutique operation offering expertise and quality rivaling big-name public-relations and marketing-communications agencies, but with the personal attention you’d expect from a friend. And we offer our portfolio of services at substantially more affordable rates than the big firms, because we don’t have the fat overhead. 

Communications shape relationships. Relationships shape perceptions. Perceptions shape the bottom line.

So if you’re reading this, communicate with us. Let’s establish a relationship. Let Coleridge Communications help you boost your bottom line.

- Jim

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