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All Publicity Is Not Good Publicity

By Richard Becker

While most people need look no further than the oil spill to see BP isn't benefiting from the event that earned it more exposure than any other event in its history, there is a new study that suggests the old adage — all publicity is good publicity — doesn't succeed with much more subtle circumstances either. 

After reviewing more than 3,000 advertising campaigns, professors a the University of Toronto and MIT's Sloan School of Business found that highly visible advertisements (pop us, two-way communication, etc.) generate awareness and content-linked ads (banner ads, textual links, etc.) can increase purchase intentions. 

However, when you combine the two tactics, it actually reduces the willingness of the consumer to make a purchase. This proves especially true if marketers ask for demographic information prior to a purchase.

In simplest terms, this may mean that getting people's attention online also increases the awareness that your only goal is to sell them something. And the result of this awareness, increasing the likelihood that their defense barriers will go up. 

It raises an interesting dilemma for some marketers who given up on marketing in favor of lead generation. While targeted lead generation usually results in a higher percentage of conversions, some marketers may be turning even more prospects simply because they ask too much prior to the sale.

How about you? Are your current marketing tactics akin to driving awareness and then leading prospects to pages designed to collect more information or aggressively make a sale? If so, you might rethink it. 

The Difference Between Brand And Reputation

By Richard Becker

One of the most common mistakes in business is to use two terms — brand and reputation — interchangeably. (The same can be said for brand and identity.) The confusion has become more pronounced in recent years, in part, because some social media experts frequently combine identity, brand, and reputation. 

Richard Ettenson and Jonathan Knowles understood the difference between  brand and reputation well enough in 2008. 

They defined brand as a “customer-centric” concept that focuses on what a product, service, or company has promised to for its customers and what that commitment means to them. In short, it's the total net sum of all positive and negative impressions about a company based largely upon the consumer-company relationship. 

Reputation, on the other hand, is a “company-centric” concept that focuses on the credibility and respect that an organization has among a broad set of constituencies. This would include everyone: employees, investors, regulators, journalists, local communities, and customers. And, it would include all those factors cited by the Reputation Institute. 

If you need an example to help drive the difference home, Walmart is one of the best companies to consider. It frequently scores high as one of the best known brands, but its reputation often serves as its primary detractor. It will always be that way for Walmart until the company holds itself to a higher standard.

What It Takes To Establish A Strong Reputation.

1. Product/Service. The ability to deliver on a brand promise — products and services — is paramount to establishing legitimacy. It's one of the primary reasons Google sucked some of the air out of Yahoo as search stewards. As Yahoo bought companies and rebranded them to the central brand, it also inherited and transposed product and service issues. Sometimes it worked out okay with platforms like Flickr, but it suffered the opposite fate with platforms like MyBlogLog. Google, on the other hand, saw its reputation soar as it transformed its acquisitions into Google culture. 

2. Brand & Identity. While reputation, brand, and identity are different, they work in tandem. While the products and services may have differentiation, the ability to communicate that differentiation makes all the difference. Apple is paticularly good at this by demonstrating its minimal design elements and innovation virtually with everything it does, right down to the people we expect to see behind the counters of any Apple retail outlet. 

3. Advertising. While anyone can argue the finer points of whether social media has circumvented the traditional principles of advertising, it's still the primary source of message delivery. Advertising, more than any other discipline, communicates the brand promise, establishes the identity, and attracts enough attention to create sales opportunities. Sure, sometimes advertising drives sales, but mostly it focuses on everything else. 

4. Public Relations. While some people might take exception to seeing public relations follow advertising, there is some truth to the idea. Public relations (and this includes but is not limited to the art of media relations) works to have other groups — ideally employees (via internal communication), investors, regulators, journalists, local communities, and customers — to adopt and believe in the brand promise. To do it, public relations professionals need to assist in creating an environment of mutual trust. 

5. Corporate Citizenship. Great companies do not operate within a void. They generally consider corporate philanthropy part of their culture. Even small localized companies can learn from larger companies in that if the community isn't economically viable, healthy, vibrant, and provides a better quality of life, then it will wither. And with it, so will sales within that community.

The same can be said for individuals. There is much more to establishing a reputation as opposed to a personal brand or a personal/professional identity (image). Reputation represents a more holistic approach. 

The original post is Establishing Reputation: A Holistic Approach To Business. For a ranking of 28 brands by reputation, see The World's Most Reputable Companies.

What Communication Budgets Can Tell You About Employers.

By Richard Becker 

A recent study by the Strategic Communication & Public Relations Center at the University of Southern California reveals something that employees might consider. Fifty seven percent of public relations/communication departments increased their budgets last year. 

Among those that did, they all shared five common characteristics: 

• They do not report to marketing, but directly to executive management. 

• Most characterize their organizations as focused on long-term strategic planning. 

• Budgetary spending is cautious, but neither frozen or reactive to the economic climate. 

• Most indicate they have strong internal communication, with proactive people-driven environments. 

• The increase in optimism for 2010 is tied to organizations that grew or expanded budgets during the recession. 

 For job candidates, this could be a reasonable indicator of the kind of company you are looking to join. If there communication/public relations budget went up in 2009, then they are more likely to be an innovative, people-oriented company. If those budgets went down, they are more likely to be reactionary. 

 For more communication-related analysis from this study, please see the original post at Copywrite, Ink.. For recruiters, knowing these details might reveal how satisfied the placed employee will be at a new company. Or conversely, which companies might have higher turnovers and need placement services.

Simplifying Messages: Why SWOT Is Not Enough

BY Richard Becker 

You've heard the old saying and so have I. You can't compare apples and oranges. Yeah, sure. All that is fine and good, unless you happen to be in business. 

 In business, being an apple among apples leaves sales to nothing more than random chance. So, to help distinguish people and products, many agencies invest a good deal of time and client money in developing unique selling points. Sometimes they use SWOT. 

 As a strategic planning method, SWOT can be very useful. Except, it tends to be too introspective. And therefore, it's not enough.

Writing For Public Relations: Simplifying Messages

View more presentations from Rich Becker, Copywrite, Ink..

The above deck is a supplement deck for Writing For Public Relations at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The intent of this deck is to provide students with an understanding of SWOT, but then demonstrate how CORE message systems further help identify people, products, services, and companies in the marketplace. You can find a written comparison between the two here.

Five Tips For Better Blog Posts

By Richard Becker 

Every now and again, I'm asked why do some blogs written by less experienced authors attract more attention than others who have earned their right be experts. More often than not, the reason can be found in the writing. Better writing keeps people engaged. 

Five Elements For Better Writing. 

Accurate. Accuracy matters above all. If the information is wrong, nothing else matters. 

Clear. Clarity is less about the writing than the decision to be understood. 

Concise. Concise writing strives for maximum impact with minimum means. 

Human. Great writing has always been about having a conversation with the reader. 

Conspicuous. Commands attention to draw readers in without being garish or cliche. 

When you par these five with tips from other writers and communicators in "On Writing And Editing" deck, you'll find that many of them are the same, separated only by their presentation.

CFOs See Economic Upturn But Slow Employment

By Richard Becker

According to a fourth quarter survey conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, optimism in the economy is coming from what many would consider the least likely source: chief financial officers.

"CFOs overall closed 2009 with a much improved sense of optimism than when it began, but they are realistic about the challenges that still lay ahead," said John Elliott, dean of the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College. "CFOs are indicating that they have learned lessons from the downturn and can face the coming year looking forward to the opportunities at hand."

Highlights From The FEI/Baruch Survey.

• Net earnings expected to rise by 22 percent by the third quarter.
• Gross revenue anticipated to grow by 10 percent this year.
• Technology spending anticipated to increase by 6.1 percent.
• Inventory anticipated to increase by 2.5 percent, reversing reductions.
• Prices are expected to increase by 1.13 percent this year.

Where CFOs are more reserved is on employment. Nearly nine out of ten CFOs reported they are looking for efficiencies over new employees. Two-thirds said they would invest in technology; one-third said they planned additional restructuring.

Companies seem hesitant to hire new employes for several reasons, including cost containment (uncertainty of future costs associated with new employees); an increased emphasis on public perception (slower, more manageable growth); a shift from growth-orientation toward leadership-orientation (restructuring to serve a smaller, affluent base); and concerns over the current government administration. Sixty-four percent said the U.S. economic outlook has weakened since Obama took office.

How RiseSmart Is Disrupting Outplacement

By Richard Becker 

When RiseSmart first entered the recruiting industry in 2008, it set its sights on a specific niche. One year later, RiseSmart shifted its business model to include outplacement. The difference between the two places presents a case study in disruptive business. 

RiseSmart is a provider of Web-enabled outplacement and job search services. The former helps laid-off employees find jobs faster. The latter helps professionals find jobs in the $100k market. 

"Our initial thought was that we would need to make significant traction with a B2C offering in order to build interest in the B2B solution," says Sanjay Sathe, founder and CEO of RiseSmart. "But the moment we introduced Transition Concierge in the second half of last year ... we had an extraordinary amount of interest, and were signing up Fortune 500 companies almost immediately." 

Are Recruiters Violating Privacy By Digging Deep?

By Richard Becker 

"Recruiters shouldn’t care about that Facebook picture of your beer pong game in college." — Shel Holtz, ABC, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology.

Holtz calls the increasing shift toward total transparency a cultural transition, spurred on by social media. And, as a consequence, "Animal House [by Millennials] behavior really shouldn’t matter to hiring managers today." 

The communication has sparked an interesting conversation, with Jen Zingheim, Media Bullseye, wondering if "Millenials are perhaps setting themselves up for future problems, because it's hard to put that privacy genie back in the bottle." At the same time, she recognizes that she came from a different era, one that celebrated the separation of professional and personal, work and play.

Prospective Employees Be Warned: Some Employers Search

By Richard Becker 

According to Career News, some employers have taken to the Web to learn more about potential employees. How far have they taken it? 

 Facebook pages and random tagged photos are only the beginning. Some have even looked up where prospects live in order to determine the value of their homes through zillow.com or the local tax assessor. They can tell when the home was purchased, the annual taxes, and if it's for sale. And for good measure, they can visit your home via Google maps.

While some of it is unavoidable, anyone hoping to land a job might think twice about how they act on the Internet.

Here are ten tips that might help bloggers and other social network members.

Abstract Presents Communication Measurement Formula

By Richard Becker

I've been working, on and off, to refine a measurement formula for the better part of two years. My hypothesis was simple: the return on investment is related to the intent of the communication and the outcome it produces. For anyone interested in communication measurement, you can find a link to the abstract, Measure: I | O = ROC, a.k.a. The ROC, on my company's blog.