HC+T Update: March 29, 2013

From: "HC+T Update" <shel@holtz.com>

Subject: HC+T Update: March 29, 2013

Date: March 29th 2013

March 29, 2013
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Marketers and communicators have been fixated on Ford Motor Company this week. The automaker found itself at the center of a controversy it didn't create as mock-up ads from its India agency circulated, depicting women bound and gagged in the back of a Ford vehicle. At the same time, BP was in the middle of its own dust-up because one of its communicators followed Wikipedia's own rules in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the oil giant's article on the crowdsourced encyclopedia site. Both stories remind us that crises don't have to be of our own making, and that we need to be prepared to address them in the real-time environment of today's media. Now, on to this week's news...

Items from the Holtz.com blog published during the last week:

Charging a fee for customers to shop raises the bar for cluelessness

Showrooming is a real problem for brick-and-mortar retailers. Customers use the store to scope out physical products and get advice from knowledgeable salespeople, then buy the product for less from an online-only retailer. Despite the fact that several organizations are innovating ways to get people to buy from the store while they're there, some are jerking their knees and making very stupid decisions, like an Australian gluten-free shop that is charging $5 for customers to come in and look around. Read the story here

The woeful state of business literacy on the front lines

A disturbing report reveals that most employees can't identify their own company's publicly-stated strategy, even when they can pick it from among six choices. The situation is worse the lower you get in the company's hierarchy. The study also reveals that the companies that employ these workers are doing quite well, calling into question the need to align frontline workers with strategy. There are other issues to consider. Get the details here.

Goof-offs aren't your most engaged workers

It was a week for disturbing studies! One from Knowledge IQ suggests that employees who spend the most time goofing off are also the most engaged workers in 42% of the 200 companies studied. The problem is, Knowledge IQ employs a definition of "engagement" that nobody else does. The report could, however, lead some companies to back away from efforts to grow the population of highly engaged workers. Read the story here.

A summary of the items appearing in this week's Friday Wrap. (You can peruse the entire collection of articles from which I selected these items on my link blog at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com.)

Google wants to keep sponsored content out of Google News

Back in 2010, Silicon Valley Watcher's Tom Foremski declared that every company is a media company. But it has been only in the last six months or so that agencies have jumped on the bandwagon, fueled by the rise of sponsored content, a move by revenue-starved media companies to inject marketing material directly into editorial streams for a fee. Edelman has named Steve Rubel to a new position, chief content strategist. (I'll post a podcast interview with Steve to the For Immediate Release site next week.) Weber Shandwick has launched a content marketing unit (story below). All of which is creating fears that content appearing on media sites can't be trusted to be real, genuine news. So fearful is Google of the pollution of news with marketing content that it has warned publishers to "keep such content out of Google News," writes Danny Sullivan in Search Engine Land. From the Google News blog: "If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you separate non-news content on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only. Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News."

Is Twitter a PR tool?

Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group (the umbrella company that counts 332 companies in its fold, including Hill & Knowlton, Ogilvy Group, Burson-Marstellar, JWT and Young & Rubicam), raised a stir when he declared Twitter is a PR medium instead of an advertising channel. "Because it's limited in terms of number of characters," he said, "it reduces communication to superficialities and lacks depth." Nobody, it appears, took his view to heart. PRWeek's Arif Durrani wrote that "Sorrell's outspoken view holds little traction with many agencies." For example, "Jam's Wayne Deakin...accused Sorrell of 'old-fashioned, atomized thinking.' He says: 'Consumers -- and marketers -- don't care how it's defined. They don't pay more attention because they think it's advertising as opposed to something else. It's about engaging with people creatively.'

Most CEOs have lost faith in their marketers

No less than 70% of CEOs have lost trust in their marketers' ability to help the company grow or provide evidence that their efforts generate return on investment. That's the conclusion of a new report from Fournaise Marketing Group, which said that 73% of CEOs believe marketers lack credibility because they can't prove that their efforts produced any measurable impact on the business. MarketingWeek quotes Founraise CEO Jerome Fontaine saying, "At the end of the day, Marketers have to stop whining about being misunderstood by CEOs, and have to start remembering that their job is to generate customer demand and to deliver performance. This is business. When is the last time you heard CFOs whine about being misunderstood by CEOs?" CEOs report that they maintain marketing departments "purely out of tradition" and have "made the conscious decision not to expect more from mark eting than branding, look/feel good ads and promotions."

Flipboard introduces curation

Flipboard made a name for itself by reinventing the idea of news consumption via mobile devices. The company has taken another giant step by adding a simple curation tool that allows users to tap a + icon that will appear on items found in Flipboard -- or a Flipboard bookmarklet -- "readers can fill their magazines with content that expresses a point of view, reflects personal tastes or shares ideas they find inspiring," according to the company announcement. Or, as Brian S. Hall puts it in ReadWrite, "Flipboard has introduced a poor man's like button." This departure from Flipboard's history as a tool for discovering and consuming content from a variety of sources could conceivably disrupt media, according to Mathew Ingram, writing for Pa id Content. "Some advertisers are already creating their own magazines using both their own ads and content from other sources," Ingram writes. "Those magazines could then be selected and highlighted by Flipboard's algorithms just like any other effort by a Flipboard user." Ingram also notes that Flipboard is considering revenue sharing with individual users who create compelling magazines from curated content.

Weber Shandwick opens new content marketing unit

It's not what you'd expect from an old-guard PR agency, but Weber Shandwick has set up a new unit "attempting to capitalize on content marketing," writes Alexandra Bruell in AdAge. Dubbed MediaCo, the unit will help clients with native advertising and digital media buying. MediaCo has been staffed with "new sorts of talent," including brand planners, editors, user experience designers, writers, SEO experts, media planners and producers. The unit will presumably go head-to-head with boutique content market agencies as well as traditional rivals like Edelman, which has also invested in its content marketing capabilities. If nothing else, Weber Shandwick's move validates the importance content marketing plays in today's media environment.

PR for Kickstarter products

While Weber Shandwick focuses on content marketing, London-based Dyanmo PR has introduced its own special unit designed to handle PR for products created as a result of Kickstarter funding. While the PR required for such products isn't any different from the PR practices applied to other products, the people who sought the funding probably didn't have any PR in mind. A PRWeek article quotes account manager heather Delaney noting, "These people need dedicated Kickstarter PR to guide them every step of the way and social media support to truly gain momentum."

Google tool calculates impact of mobile marketing

It's foolish to ignore the undeniable shift to mobile. It's equally difficult, at this nascent stage, to quantify the value of your mobile marketing efforts. Google is coming to the rescue with a calculator it calls Full Value of Mobile, desitned to help businesses that use Google's AdWords and other mobile ad services measure the impact of their efforts. According to a Google blog post by Johanna Werther, head of Mobile Ads Marketing, the calculator offers "simple equations and benchmarks" pertaining to various dimensions of mobile marketing. According to Ingrid Lunden, writing for TechCrunch, these include "how many people phone you as a result of an ad (using Google's automatic dialing feature); and what impact is a cross-device campaign having versus one across a single platform?" You can find the calculat or here.

LinkedIn enhances its search capabilities

Know what used to drive me crazy? Entering a company name in the LinkedIn search and clicking to start the search before realizing I hadn't changed the search parameters from people to companies. That won't be a problem any more, since LinkedIn has upgraded its search to unify people, companies and jobs. MediaPost's Online Media Daily reports that, "In addition to making search more centralized, LinkedIn is also seeking to speed up the process through features like auto-complete of search terms, as well as 'suggested searches.'" Reporter Mark Walsh explains, "For example, typing in 'product manager' will bring up other search queries for people or jobs related to product manager along with a preview of top results."

Facebook changes brand page cover image rules

When Facebook launched cover photos for brands, the rules were rigid and widely communicated. For example, an image couldn't contain pricing, contact information, calls to action or contests. The latest revision to the brand page guidelines rescind many of these rules. One rule that hasn't changed, though, is that the text in a cover photo can't exceed 20% of the image. Facebook marketing guru Mari Smith not only has details, but a tool to help you figure out if your cover image complies with the 20% rule. While we're talking about Facebook changes, we should also note that the social network has finally introduced a feature that lets readers and Page owners start conversation threads, according to FastCompany's Nina Mandell.

I'm speaking at the PRSSA conference at Kent State University in Ohio on April 19.
Mark your calendars! Andrea Weckerle will be our guest for an FIR Book Club at noon EDT next Friday, April 5. Andrea is founder and CEO of CiviliNation and author of Civility in the Digital Age. You'll be able to ask Andrea questions in real time. Details are here.
I'm joining two outstanding healthcare marketers for a pre-conference workshop at the Healthcare Strategy Institute's meeting on May 5 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
On May 8, I'm presenting to IABC's Portland, Oregon chapter.
I head to Amsterdam in The Netherlands on May 15 to speak at Ragan's International Social Media and PR conference. Details are here.
I head to Wisconsin on May 21 to conduct a social media planning workshop for the World Council of Credit Unions.

Strategic Planning

HC+T works with your organization in a collaborative fashion to develop strategic plans that are aligned with business objectives, measurable and actionable. Whether you're updating an existing plan or developing one from scratch, we can help. HC+T is experienced in strategic planning for social and digital media, employee communications and a host of other communication disciplines. Give us a call at +1.415.881.7435 or email me at shel@holtz.com.

Since 1996, HC+T has helped organizations communicate effectively in the emerging online space using intranets to reach employees and various dimensions of the Internet to communicate with other stakeholder audiences.

HC+T provides a full range of services for large organizations, from speaking and training to communication audits and strategic plan development.

Visit us at Holtz.com.

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