Bloghound

Jerry Yang of Yahoo yesterday blogged (“OK, so now what?” ) about Microsoft’s decision to withdraw its offer. I give Yang credit for writing something and allowing comments, which is more than most CEOs do.

But Yang’s post doesn’t sound genuine; it sounds like something the corporate PR folks wrote in a committee. Too bad. In today’s world, people want the real language of the person behind the ideas. After reading the post my reaction was, “Does Yang really care — or is this just a PR move?”

A better approach would be to give the CEO a few of the major points that communications thinks should be conveyed — and then let him express it in his own words and style. Who cares if the words and grammar aren’t perfect. Neither are real people.

I’m so honored and thrilled that my book Beyond Buzz has been awarded a gold prize in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards in the Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations category. I’m especially honored to share the gold with Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing. Here’s a list of all the winners.The awards are sponsored by Independent Publisher, Inc, Jenkins Group, and Padilla Spear Beardsley.

Francois Gossieaux has a good post why social media needs to be a big part of any public relations strategy today. Two interesting stats he cites:

• 84% of journalists say they would or already have used blogs as primary or secondary sources.
• 54% of journalists report to get their story ideas from blogs, 51% from RSS feeds

Reporters aren’t opening most emails from PR people or agencies unless they have a really good relationship with them. Forget phone calls. But do remember a blog helps you get good ideas direct to people in your market — and is the new source for journalists.

(Note: Recently reporters from The Wall St. Journal, The Baltimore Sun, Business Week, and The Chicago Tribune have called me based on one of my blog posts. I’m witnessing what Francois writes about.)

Like many, I’m an impulse buyer, especially when it comes to music. I read a review or hear an artist interview and I go right to iTunes to buy. Here’s the problem. Seems like I read reviews, go to iTunes but the music isn’t available for a couple or few more weeks. Frustration! I usually misplace the review, and then forget to check back. Seems like the pr folks in the music industry should wait until the music is available online, then promote. It would make for a better customer experience and certainly more sales.

Who are many CEOs and sales executives most similar to?

a) Al Gore

b) Bob Kerry

c) Bob Dole

The answer is all of the above. The reason is that most CEOs and sales executives, like unsuccessful political candidates, present litanies of facts, figures, and rational reasoning to try to persuade people, and they overlook (or dismiss) the power of emotions.

They rely on dispassionate logic. Yet, neuroscientists and psychologists have proven that the more “rational” a message, the less likely it is to trigger the emotional circuits in our brains that activate behavior and decisions.

The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of a Nation by psychologist and political scientist Dr. Drew Westen is a fascinating read about the science and practice of persuasion in American politics, particularly about how the Democrats, with the exception of Bill Clinton, have blown it so many times by relying on dispassionate reasoning and policy discussions rather than connecting with people on an emotional level.

People decide by how they feel about you. (Or your company or party.) Republicans and many consumer products marketers are masters at this; most Democrats, business-to-business and professional services are not.

Aside from being a political junkie from a communication strategy perspective, I found the book interesting because the principles of political persuasion are the same for business, and are becoming even more relevant in our video, podcasting, blogging world. Most companies obsessively talk about their products, capabilities, roadmaps, strategy du jour ( Six Sigma, anyone?), and obvious trends (“we’re all about helping customers reduce risk and cut costs.”). But they fail to first connect with people, be they customers or employees, in an emotional way that engenders feelings of competency, trust, and liking.

In my book Beyond Buzz, chapter 3 (“Make Meaning Not Buzz”) explores why emotion is the superhighway to making meaning and understanding. Westen’s exploration of scientific research goes much deeper in showing why the mind is hardwired to tune into emotionally compelling appeals vs. rational reasons, and offers strategies on how to appeal to that neural network of often unconscious decision making.

Here are some takeaways from the book that I found especially interesting for those of us in in business.

On getting attention

“We do not pay attention to arguments unless they engender our interest, enthusiasm, fear, anger or contempt. We are not moved by leaders with whom we do not feel an emotional resonance.”

On driving behavior

“Emotion is one of the most potent sources of motivation that drives human behavior. It is no accident that the words motivation and emotion share the same Latin root, movere, which means to move.”

Thinking beyond the message itself

“The implications of these findings suggest that the choice of words, images, wounds, music, backdrop, tone of voice and a host of other factors is as likely to be as significant to the electoral success of a campaign as content.”

The right feelings vs. the best argument

“As decades of survey research demonstrate, people are driven in the voting booth by their feelings, and these feelings reflect the extent to which they believe a party of candidate is attending to their interests and values.”

“The data form political science is crystal clear: people vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the candidate who presents the best argument

Beware messaging by focus group

“Virtually every word that came out of his mouth [Gore, 200 presidential campaign] had been market-tested using focus groups and hand-dials indicating when listeners liked and didn’t like what he ways saying in practice debates. Unfortunately, the more his words seemed market-tested, the less genuine they seemed. And the less genuine he seemed, the less likable

The appeal of being clear

“Political scientist Larry Bartels found, as expected, that voters prefer candidates whose values and policies match their own preferences. But he also found that voters prefer candidates who are clear on what they believe, even if it is not what they believe.”

4 questions that matter in deciding

“Voters tend to ask four questions that determine who they will vote for…Candidates who focus their campaigns on the top of this hierarchy and work their way down generally win.

1. How do I feel about the candidate’s party and its principles?
2. How does this candidate make me feel?
3. How do I feel about this candidate’s personal characteristics, particularly his or her integrity, leadership, and compassion?
4. How do I feel about this candidate’s stands on issues that matter to me?

Now, take a look at the sales deck your sales reps are using, the speech your CEO recently gave to employees or partners, the marketing messaging “playbook,” the “look and feel” of your company’s PowerPoint style .

• How do they make people feel about your company?
• Do they tell a compelling story in words and images – or are they a rationale laundry list of capabilities, products, competitive advantages and other dispassionate facts and figures?
• Do people like telling your story? Or are they dispassionate and not genuinely engaged with the ideas?

One of the most interesting ways to measure media relations is to correlate media coverage with customer satisfaction. That’s just what Xcel Energy does, and the insights from the analysis have been especially helpful in guiding strategy, according to Steve Roalstad, director of media relations and one of the fellow speakers at last week’s Minnesota International Association of Business Communicators conference.

Steve measures media favorability against the company’s Voice of The Customer key drivers, assessing media relations results and ongoing monthly customer satisfaction surveys. He doesn’t rely on expensive, special media analysis software, but instead uses off-the-shelf Microsoft Excel and Access software.

One interesting finding, which has helped focus business and media relations strategy: customer satisfaction increases with positive media coverage about issues associated with environmental concerns or alternative energy resources, whereas a few years ago stories about service reliability had the most influence on customer satisfaction.

So media relations measurement approaches produce stats that have no relation to business measures. Steve seems to have figured out a straightforward way to measure his organization’s work in a way that gleans insights for future strategy and makes good business sense.

How to measure marketing communications  (beyond lead gen) or PR (beyond "hits") seems like a question that’s never really answered in a way that executives or marketing and PR professionals feel good about. I’d like to propose an alternative.

Empirical evidence shows that two questions on teacher evaluations correlate with independent measures of student learning, according to Ken Bain, author of "What the Best College Teachers Do."  

1. Did the professor help you learn?
2. Did the professor stimulate your interest in the subject?

Now apply this to marketing or corporate communications:

1. Did the PR/marketing professional (or conference/speech/Web site/podcast/article) help you learn more about the company?
2. Did the PR/marketing professional (or tactic) stimulate your interest in the company/category/product/issue?

Understanding and interest have to be in place  before people make a decision to act, whether that action is calling to set up a meeting with a sales rep or buying the product.

These seem like more informative measures than web hits, clips, white paper downloads…and much less expensive than some of the  complex  measurement approaches that companies often put in place to measure marcom and PR.

Too simple? Maybe.  But when I think of my favorite professors and my best experiences buying from B2B and B2C companies, they would all score off the chart on those two questions.

Sun Microsystems’ use of dynamic bidding as one element of its recent
agency search process has put the PR agency industry in a tizzy.

PR Week just published an article, “Dynamic Bidding: PR’s race for respect heads south with dynamic bidding,” where
PR agency heads bemoan the involvement of procurement in the agency
selection process and say it will commoditize the industry.

“As
more companies like Sun turn to dynamic bidding during agency reviews,
many PR pros argue that the process turns the industry into a
commodity,” reported Andrew Gordon in the May 2 issue.

Oh,
puhlease…procurement’s involvement can’t turn you into a commodity. But
there is something that can – and has for many pr agencies. Here’s my
letter to the editor about the topic.

To: Letters Editor, PR Week

As
the firm that managed the Sun agency review, I must say that PR
agencies should be worried about being seen as commodities – but not
because of dynamic bidding, as Andrew Gordon’s May 2 article contends.

A
major obstacle for public relations agencies is their own marketing and
business models. If you line up most agencies’ value propositions,
marketing materials, staffing approaches, and services, it’s difficult
to distinguish how they differ. As brands become more similar, purchase
decisions become more heavily weighted toward low price – and this fact
applies to all business categories whether it’s office supplies or
public relations services.

When internal PR execs understand the
differentiated business value an agency can provide, they will go to
bat with procurement to make sure that the agency is hired – regardless
of cost. In absence of understanding that value, all bets are off.

A
case in point: the agencies Sun selected (Bite, MWW) had especially
clear and unique value propositions that made the hiring decision easy
and defensible – even though these agencies were not the lowest bidders.

Lois Kelly
Partner, Foghound
Providence, RI