Inside PR 3.03: The gang’s in Toronto

August 15, 2012 • admin • PR

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When we record our ‘one-track-pony’, Gini, Joe and Martin are all in Toronto and about to watch Gini talk about her new book, Marketing in the Round at Third Tuesday Toronto. Here’s a link to the event Twitter feed on Storify.

The night before Gini was at Third Tuesday Ottawa and the following day, she and co-author Geoff Livingston are at Social Mix 2012. Busy? Why would you ask?

This week’s topic centres on the post Gini wrote about Ryan Holiday’s new book, Trust Me, I’m Lying. Holiday claims he’s a media manipulator. To prove it, he and his assistant conducted a test where they posed as sources and responded to reporters who were looking for experts to quote in articles. Holiday made up lies that were included in various publications. He claimed this demonstrated how few media do their homework and how easy it is to bamboozle them with false information.

The three of us agree this is unethical behavior that casts a shadow on the communications industry and reinforces negative stereotypes about PR that, in the majority of cases, just aren’t true.

Joe says that in journalism and PR mistakes do happen or something falls through the cracks, but that’s the exception and not the rule and that Ryan is a publicity-seeking outlier who’s out to sell books.

The situation reminds Martin of P.T. Barnum, a promoter and publicist (among other things), who would do anything to get attention. But it runs counter to our industry and the ethics many of us practice every day.

Gini contends it’s not unlike the get rich quick schemes that people fall for and wonders if you need to lie to succeed.

Have a listen to our discussion and let us know what you think.

This is our last recording of the summer. But we’re not going on a full hiatus. We’re featuring podcast interviews from PRSA Silver Anvils, Social Capital Conference, PRSA International conference and more. We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming mid-September.

So stay tuned… And thanks for listening!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR 3.02: Jet Blue lands better relationships with their pilots

August 7, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week we feature an interview that Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley did at the PRSA Silver Anvil Awards in New York with the Jet Blue communications team.

Jenny Dervin, vice president of corporate communications at Jet Blue, Victoria Neville, manager of communications for flight operations at Jet Blue, and Phil Walotsky from MWW Group, and their full team where nominated for a PRSA Silver Anvil Award. They share with us on today’s show the communications challenges they faced when their airline went through a union battle.

The team built a communications plan that would inform pilots of their choices and the benefits of not unionizing the airline, but maintaining a positive and direct relationship with pilots and to preserve their company’s culture.

Also, the hosts of Inside PR want to give a big shout out and thank you to their producer Kristine Simpson for the awesome birthday gift celebrating our 300th show, a blooper reel from the past six to seven months. Check it out on her blog. Her gift was much better than the other birthday gift we got, a virus on our website. That may explain the lack of activity on the website, but we are back up and running. Thanks to 76design for the hard work putting us back online, and thanks to everyone for your patience!

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Special edition of Inside PR: Lara Wellman and Karen Wilson talk Social Capital Conference in Ottawa

July 12, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, Inside PR hosts a special episode with Lara Wellman and Karen Wilson from the Social Capital Organizing Committee of the upcoming Social Capital Conference happening in Ottawa, Ontario on July 21.

For the first time, producer Kristine Simpson jumps in to the role of roving reporter and catches up with Lara and Karen to learn more about the conference.

Social Capital is a one-day conference that will fill the need of Ottawa’s active and passionate social media community. The conference will blend formal presentations with community/un-conference style sessions on topics ranging from Twitter to LinkedIn, the technical details of self-hosting a blog to the how-tos of personal branding, and online community building to social media in the workplace.

Inside PR’s very own Martin Waxman will give an opening keynote on the Social Media Barometer. A cannot-miss presentation!

With countless opportunities for networking and learning, Social Capital will be the perfect destination for all who are interested in social media, be it for personal or business reasons, for the beginner or the expert, to come together and learn from each other. Attendees will leave with new skills to implement and a larger social network than they walked in with.

To find out more information on the conference visit their website at socialcapitalconference.com. Tickets are still available and those interested in attending can register online.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 3.00: Happy birthday to us!

July 12, 2012 • admin • PR

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This is our 300^th episode! So we thought we’d take a few minutes to celebrate reminisce about a few of the highlights from years past.

Inside PR started out in 2006 with Terry Fallis and David Jones as creators/hosts – the early days of podcasting. They came up with the idea and vision for the show. We wouldn’t be here without you, Terry and Dave.

In episode 201, Terry and Dave were joined by Julie Rusciolelli, Keith McArthur and Martin and had a grueling recording schedule – Sunday evening at 10:30 p.m. (we’ve since moved it to Friday afternoon).

Gini got introduced to the podcast four years ago during Martin’s first foray as a roving reporter at Counselors Academy, ‘have Zoom, will travel…’

Joe recalls that in episode one, Terry and Dave did a shout out to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, whose podcast For Immediate Release inspired them – and is still going strong today. They also talked about a new philosophy for media training – authenticity versus the message machine.

Martin mentions that the more we change the more we stay the same and that some people in our industry are still focusing on message and control rather than two-way communications.

Special thanks to our talented and dedicated producers, Chris Clarke, Kyra Aylesworth, Samantha Lovelace, Janna Guberman, Sarah Laister, Yasmine Kashefi and our current producer – Kristine Simpson. If we had our sound machine, now would be the time for some cheering and applause!

The first episode the three of us did was on April 27, 2010: we talked about what we were going to talk about and asked for listener input. And we decided to shorten the format. It took a few weeks for us to figure out the chemistry and flow (and along the way each of us forgot to press record…)

2012 is the year of the interview where we’re highlighting conversations with leading practitioners and thinkers, thanks in large part to our partnership with PRSA.

As always, a big thank you to all our listeners for hanging in there with us, and sharing your comments and stories. We would love to hear what you’d like us to talk about in the coming year and, if we choose what you suggest, we’re going to invite you to come on the show.

And, finally thanks Kristine doing such a great job editing the blips, keeping our sound waves balanced and including a special effect where we need it most. We want you to come back on the podcast again soon! And all the best with your Young PR Pros podcast.

Hopefully, we’ll have more exciting times ahead. Stay tuned.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR and PRSA present: 2012 Best of Silver Anvil Awards Winner

June 24, 2012 • admin • PR

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Inside PR and PRSA present a special interview with the 2012 Best of Silver Anvil award winner: IBM’s ‘Centennial Celebration of Public Service’ featuring Lisa Lanspery, manager of Corporate Communications, IBM and Esty Pujadas, partner and director of the Global Technology Practice at Ketchum.

Last year IBM turned 100, a rare milestone for a technology company, and the organization wanted to mark the occasion with a year of celebrations. Looking to their values and heritage for inspiration, they created a comprehensive corporate social responsibility program that focused on activating and engaging employees to share their skills in projects around the world.

IBM has over 400,000 employees globally and all were encouraged to contribute at least eight hours of their time. The corporate communications team and Ketchum developed an integrated communications strategy inviting staff to give back through active participation in hyper-local programs that provided a direct benefit to the communities involved. And they wanted to provide a platform that enabled staff to share stories and visuals about the positive impact their work produced.

Central to the program was a digital map of the world showcasing the various activities. The employees’ stories offered a glimpse into their dedication and the breadth of the volunteerism whether it was engineering and computer projects or personal donations of time. What made it stand out was the human element – how the company empowered employees to help.

For its anniversary, IBM wanted to make a difference its staff’s efforts and their results were impressive: 80 per cent of IBMs work force volunteered on programs in 120 countries and touched the lives of 10 million people.

And it was captured and amplified via social sharing and traditional media, with a message to spread the word to others to volunteer.

It’s an innovative and inspiring initiative and we want to congratulate IBM and Ketchum on their honor. And the volunteerism from within IBM continues.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.99: We Mesh with David Weinberger

June 13, 2012 • admin • PR

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The Mesh Conference, in it’s seventh year, hit Toronto once again this month, where attendees were able to hobnob with some of the best and brightest minds of social media.

Martin Waxman attended the conference and caught up with David Weinberger, the author of Cluetrain Manifesto and Too Big to Know. They discussed networked knowledge, which is a contrast to book-based knowledge we’re accustomed to having most of our lives.

Weinberger brings up a great point about knowledge. It used to be that knowledge had to be settled enough that it fit between the two covers of a book. There was no jumping out of the book, on to the web, to get more information, to have debates, disagreements, or even confirm what we were thinking after having read a particular book.

We used to think knowledge could be mastered, but now we’ve come to realize it’s linked and messy and contradictory. We tend towards media the confirms our beliefs, which creates an echo chamber and it also makes us more extreme in our stances.

Moving from books to the web happens every day. In fact, Joe Thornley has been talking about this for a couple of years, when he discusses how long-form reading is slowing down as we read smaller stories, essays, blog posts, and articles so we can bounce around the web to learn more about what the author is theorizing.

The interview goes into this further. Listen on to learn more!

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR and PRSA present: Silver Anvil Awards Finalists – Part 2

June 5, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, Inside PR and PRSA present the second of two special episodes featuring Martin’s interviews with Silver Anvil Awards finalists.

Adrienne Hayes is the general manager of consumer marketing at Edelman in New York. She led the team on its campaign for Church and Dwight called ‘Trojan Pulls Back the Sheets on Sexy Tech’.

Focusing their strategy on making the subject matter more approachable, they leveraged ‘adjacency categories’, that is industries that were also known for product breakthroughs. They decided to treat the new Trojan products as cool ‘tech gadgets’ and launch them at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And while some media were red-faced when presented with the story, they quickly understood the tie in; it appealed to media who wanted something new and fresh to write about.

They continued their creative approach during the second part of the year when they took the show on the road and launched the ‘Good Vibrations Truck Tour’ around Manhattan to give people an opportunity to ‘see, touch and feel’ the different products. They used social media to drive awareness of where the trucks would be and encouraged consumers to talk openly about what has traditionally been a taboo subject.

Doug Piwinski, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Toms, tells us about the company’s ‘One Day Without Shoes’ initiative, which began as an April Fool’s gag and developed into a global campaign. Tom’s is unique as a business because they don’t rely on traditional advertising and instead build relationships with customers through social media and word of mouth. Each year the company activates its community by asking them to give up wearing shoes for one day in order to experience what life is like for children who don’t have shoes.

The program comes to life through a series of grassroots events in cities around the world and is promoted via a microsite which encourages people to plan and post events.

They worked with Ketchum PR in LA to craft a phased strategy and weren’t expecting the snowball effect that took place this year including stories on the home page of AOL and MSN and becoming number one trending topic on Twitter. Toms effectively uses an influencer strategy to inspire people to engage, raise awareness for an important cause and think about social entrepreneurship in a new way.

This year’s Silver Anvil awards will be presented in New York City on June 7, 2012. Inside PR will be there.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.98: Diving in to content marketing with Marcus Sheridan.

June 1, 2012 • admin • PR

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Would you like to be able to generate more than $2 million in new revenue for your company simply by writing a blog post? Marcus Sheridan, our guest on inside PR this week, has done just that.

Gini Dietrich caught up with Marcus after his keynote speech at the PRSA Conference last month in New Orleans.

Marcus shared an in-your-face and engaging presentation at the conference about content marketing. Marcus made a name for himself when he started a blog about fiber glass pools. His goal was to drive traffic to the website and eventually lead potential customers to his front door. To accomplish this, he answered common questions he had heard relating to installing or buying a fiber glass pool on his blog. Long story short, the traffic to his website blew up. He and his partners became “the guys that knew about fiber glass pools”.

Martin Waxman, Gini and Joseph Thornley discuss how Marcus’ image of content marketing can be adapted to the way PR and communications professionals craft and promote their key messages today in the connected era.
For more information on Marcus and his story, here is a little video that sums it all up.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR and PRSA present: Silver Anvil Awards Finalists – Part 1

May 26, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, Inside PR and PRSA present a special show where Martin interviews two Silver Anvil Awards finalists.

Scott Brooks is vice president, marketing and communications for IBM Research. He talks to us about Watson, the computer-contestant on Jeopardy that defeated two of the show’s best players. Watson’s technology is based on the concept of ‘automatic question answering’. A team of 25 people worked for years to improve the ability of computers to answer questions. When the communications folks saw the initial results, they realized the PR potential to build awareness and contacted Jeopardy to see if they might be interested in a man-machine competition.

Getting an early start and narrowly targeting their prelaunch outreach was one of the strategies the communications group used to tell the complex story in long form. About 18 months before the matches, they approached three media influencers, New York Times magazine to write a feature, PBS TV’s Nova to produce a documentary, and author Stephen Baker to write a book. The three had open access to Watson throughout its development.

The biggest communications risk IBM faced was presenting Watson live on television and not knowing what the outcome would be. Brooks said they made big decisions early on that were game changers including what to name the computer, what kind of voice it would have and what it would look like on stage. Watson was actually named for for first president of IBM.

Their strategy paid off and Watson garnered prelaunch awareness and much traditional and social media coverage during the matches and after the win.

Kari Mather works as a senior communications consultant in corporate communications at Allstate Insurance Company. (Disclosure Allstate Canada is a Thornley Fallis client though we don’t work with Allstate U.S.)

The company created the Allstate Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, to fund cause-related programs in support of safe and vital communities, safe driving and ending domestic violence.

In this case, they helped the community of Tuscon Arizona build a playground in honor of Christina-Taylor Green, the young girl born on 9/11, who, along with 10 others sadly lost their lives during the shooting that injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Not long after the tragedy, the Allstate Foundation learned the community wanted to commemorate Christina’s short life, stepped forward and granted funding to build a playground at Christina’s elementary school and ensuring her classmates were involved throughout the project.

In addition to the funds, Allstate Foundation was active throughout the design and build, brought in more than 100 volunteers and stood side by side with the community to help bring the Christina-Taylor Green Little Hands playground to life.

What could have been a local story was picked up by local and national media and it became an important milestone in the company’s history as they were able to involve the community, agencies and employees in a cause they really believed in.

This year’s Silver Anvil awards will be presented in New York City on June 7, 2012. Inside PR will be there.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.97: Jazzing it up with Counselors Academy

May 17, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, Gini, Joe and I are all together at PRSA Counselors Academy’s annual conference for agency owners/leaders in New Orleans (and we all had our parts to play…). The theme is ‘Jazz Up Your Agency: Stylings from the Best in the Biz’ and we thought we’d recap our first day and a half.

Joe talks about the opening keynote – a one-two punch featuring Gini and Jay Baer. They interviewed each other and offered a primer in content marketing and how agency owners can build trust and their businesses by integrating certain aspects of their personal and professional lives. We may think otherwise, but we get clients based on people and not the company name.

In addition to an engaging talk, the attendees all received a copy of Gini and Geoff Livingston’s new book, Marketing in the Round.

We continued our focus on content marketing with our second keynote, Marcus Sheridan, a hilarious, in your face presenter, who transformed his pool business into a content marketing powerhouse that used the long tail of search to generate sales results. His takeaway is to think about all the questions your customers are asking and write content that offers helpful answers.

As an event geared to business owners, Counselors’ other focus is to provide practical sessions that improve the way you run your agency. These range from profitability and processes to understanding and managing people and creating a culture. Joe did a roundtable on how to get your staff thinking about the business of the business and turning them into an army of entrepreneurs, based on Jen Prozek’s book and her 2011 keynote.

Next year, the conference will be in June 2013 in Austin Texas and Dana Hughens is the chair. If you’re an agency owner or leader, we think you’ll find a lot of value and encourage you to check it out. In the meantime, you can get a flavor of Counselors Academy from the Sharypic photowall.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.