By now, people have likely read about the Air Force One "Photo Op" in New York City that caused significant panic among some residents of the city and outrage by the mayor.
This reminds me of two truisms:
1) There is always someone who doesn't get the word.
2) If you can think of a way for what you are doing to be interpreted negatively/inappropriately, thousands of people are thinking of it that way.
But in today's connected communications environment, there are more channels than ever for services companies and organizations to get the word out.
I am admittedly playing Monday Morning Quarterback here, but the Air Force is very good when it comes to social media communications. From the blogging decision chart to the Twitter channel they know how to get the word out. I am surprised they did not use those channels to inform people of the event, or respond to criticism.
I am not here to cast blame, but rather look at best practices services, technology, consumer and other companies can use in their PR efforts to avoid events like this.
1) Game out scenarios and prepare response channels - Proper planning is essential. This is Crisis 101. When developing an event, be ready for what can go wrong and have a response plan in place. Even if nothing goes wrong, it is not a wasted effort.
2) Answer questions before they are asked - If a call comes into 911 or the customer service center, it is often already too late. Yes, those people need to be prepped (and NYC did a good job there), but realize there are multiple channels consumers turn to for information. Have your Website updated, Tweet about it, reach out to all stakeholders, prep your sales force and your marketing team. If it is a big enough initiative, make sure everyone in the company is away - for in today's social media environment, everyone is a company spokesperson. Even better, be proactive and post the information prior to an event if possible.
3) Overcommunicate: Include everyone who can be effected - There are times to talk quietly, but when doing a major public event, make sure all key stakeholders have been contacted and are aware of what you are doing and why. This ties back into proper planning, but there is no excuse for companies not to communicate with all stakeholders.
4) Respond quickly and accurately - Changing the story mid-way is not a good response. Give the facts and give them quickly.
By following these four steps, people would have been better informed and much of the criticism would have been muted.
RSA, one of the biggest IT security shows on the planet, takes place this week in San Francisco.
Given the size of Schwartz Communications' security practice, we are involved in several aspects of the show, and you can follow along through the Security PR blog.
-- Schwartz will have a big Twitter presence. Check out all our Tweets on a special page on the Schwartz home page.
-- Mike Farber, Jen Spark and I will be blogging, plus Jen will be recording interviews from the show floor with industry luminaries. So navigate over to the Schwartz podcasting page for more information.
-- Director John Moran will be hard at work behind the scenes, editing podcast content and posting the interviews so they get out to our subscribers.
Given the temperatures in San Francisco right now are unusually warm, I could say something like "RSA is already heating up." Whether you are at the Moscone Center or following along elsewhere, enjoy the show!
Congratulations to Schwartz and its long-time client partner CheckFree (now Fiserv). We are a finalist in this year’s PRSA Silver Anvil awards, which are pretty much one of the most prestigious awards in the PR industry. The nomination, in the "Marketing Consumer Services Technology" category, highlights our work promoting green living and fighting fraud with online bill payment. This is a testiment to a great client who is committed to research and creative campaigns, and a close, long-term working relationship.
Schwartz and CheckFree (Fiserv) secured more than 1,500 articles and on average the majority of articles contained at least two key messages and/or statistics. Green coverage for the campaigns ranged from key blogs and regional papers to the Sierra Club magazine. Working closely with CheckFree, partner banks and the industry, the company offered various promotions, including an offer to plant a tree for each E-bill activated. This generated more than 125,000 new users and planted that many trees. If you are interested in finding out more, visit ebillplace.
The identity fraud campaign was just as successful, and generated more than 1,000 total articles, blog posts and TV stories. More than 60% of the articles contained at least two of the top messages including paying bills online is safer than mailing them.
A client for ten years, the CheckFree (now Fiserv) and the Schwartz team partnership is no stranger to awards. It's the fourth time in seven years that the CheckFree/Schwartz team is a finalist---and we took home the gold for two of those.
I wonder if we have a Meryl Streep thing going here?
As pointed out on Mashable this morning, Ashton Kutcher and, now, Oprah get Twitter but, surpringly, most of CNN's audience doesn't. The CNN vs Ashton race and CNN's breaking news alert when Kutcher reached the million followers mark might help bring the CNN audience along. Regardless, no one can deny Twitter's impact as a channel for reaching consumers and even driving behavior. Witness the 111,000 and climbing followers Oprah has amassed since her first post this morning.
Amazon has been on a PR rollercoaster ride since Sunday when gay-themed books began disappearing from the sales rankings and search algorithms. The Twitterverse immediately swung into action claiming a new anti-gay policy and AmazonFail soon eclipsed Easter as a hot topic. Although the sales rankings are returning to normal, the story rolls on with coverage of why and how the site changed and even a claim of responsibility from a hacker.
This turn of events clearly demonstrates how social media compresses the timeline for managing a crisis. It also illustrates an important rule of PR: Either proactively manage your brand or the Twitterverse and other online communities will do it for you.
With that motto in mind, here a few general tips to create and protect consumer brands in today’s communications landscape.
1) People on Twitter are typing what others are thinking. Don’t discount the opinions expressed on Twitter or any other online channel as the “vocal” minority. Vocal yes. Minority, probably not.
2) Don’t let the conversation be one sided. The mantra of social media is – “Join the conversation.” Listen just as much (if not more) than you talk online. The good news is that, by establishing a rapport, you have the ear of the community when you need it.
3) Use the rapport. Do not walk away from the conversation when it matters most. The Amazon Twitter feed’s last update was on April 9, the Friday before this all broke. The Amazon corporate feed primarily features tweets about the Amazon Daily blog. Even though the Twitter feed stopped, the Amazon Daily rolled on. The Amazon Daily on Monday (day 2 of the situation) featured a number of book and product reviews. There was more timely content too: reports on the Obama’s new dog and Phil Spector’s guilty verdict. The CTO of Amazon kept on Tweeting, just not about the controversy.
4) What happens in the Twitterverse doesn’t stay in the Twitterverse. Obviously, the mainstream media follows what happened at Amazon but many smaller events cross over every day. In fact, most reporters are actively using Twitter to track trends, find resources and hunt for story ideas.
5) Brand management in the social media realm is an ongoing process. Just ask Southwest Airlines, which furthers its reputation as a customer centric brand every day by using its Twitter feed as a very public demonstration of fast, effective customer service in action.
For those of you who may not know Merv, he has been a significant figure in the technology analyst community for many years, first with Giga, and then later Forrester. I first met him when we represented Austin-based Pervasive Software for a number of years shortly after its IPO in the 90s. (Ron Harris was CEO and Rob Adams was the VP of Marketing.) Merv really got our story and had no problems setting us straight on the things we didn't get as we waged war with Oracle and Sybase---both of which were trying to move down into the embedded database market.
Like the best analysts, he never knee-jerked his judgement, and pushed in all the places that hurt with great suggestions for repair.
Anyway, enough memory lane. I encourage you to RSS to Merv's blog and reach out to him. He has a fantastic mind and terrific experience.
And this just in: Merv's BeyeNETWORK channel hits in a week. Stay tuned!
Social networking threats are among the security trends we're expecting to hear more about at Infosec. Once the domain of university students and rock bands, social networks are now unquestionably mainstream (my parents recently joined Facebook; I grimaced at the update that they are now "married"). Today, in many industries, we rely on social networks to DO our jobs rather than AVOID our jobs.
A study done by Trend Micro back in July found nearly one in five employees have visited social networking sites on corporate networks (I'd venture to say its actually a lot higher), making companies vulnerable to a wide variety of cybercrimes, from phishing and spam to virus attacks and identity theft. But as social networks become increasingly valuable productivity tools, many companies are hesitant to go so far as to block them.
The answer is not only a robust security solution that arms a company against cyberattacks, but also an alignment between HR and the CIO that supports policies to require employees to get permission before downloading third-party apps and education that warns them to be careful where they click.
Find us on the show floor at Infosec to talk more about social networking threats!
Creating content can be a daunting task. Blogs, contributed articles and commentary, direct marketing communications to prospects and clients – all of these items can be challenging and time-consuming to create.
A growing number of our security PR clients are finding that the fastest path to generating content on pressing topics is to begin with a podcast. A fifteen minute call with a client executive, a customer company, or a partner can quickly yield the necessary content to fuel multiple areas of the security PR mix, with far less effort than was previously necessary.
A good example of this process in action can be seen in eIQnetworks, a Schwartz client with a deep bench of security and compliance experts. eIQnetworks and the Schwartz PR team have worked together to build a process that maximizes the value of the expert interview. These interviews are conducted as discussions of industry trends, emerging regulations like the HITECH Act or commentary on relevant breaking security news, such as the April 1st trigger date for the Conficker worm.
The process is fast – studios and complex editing suites are no longer necessary to produce polished commentary segments. With minimal time investment from company spokespeople, phone interviews are recorded and then edited by Schwartz to create podcasts segments that can be posted in company blog entries and shared through e-mail marketing pieces. These segments are also rich content resource that can be mined to create contributed articles or commentary.
So next time you have a pressing issue that you’re looking to quickly turn into media coverage and marketing activity, let us be your first interviewer – we’ll use it to generate results across multiple high-impact areas of your security PR program. We look forward to discussing this topic more with you at RSA in a few weeks, as well as Infosecurity Europe.
New Media Age today reports on the imminent launch of Twitter Partners – a new consultancy aiming to "help brands, media companies, and celebrities harness the power of the Twitter ecosystem".
Set up by angel investor and serial entrepreneur Peter Read, and backed by a stellar cast of advisors,the company intends to first offer consultancy services to brands, before rolling out a product set designed to analyse Twitter buzz and help companies engage in conversations.
Twitter Partners is already boasting a roster of big name launch clients, including several major labels and studios, quadplay provider Virgin Media, the Knitting Factory music venue chain, and virtual pop band Gorillaz.
While plenty of PR, marketing and social media agencies are already offering consultancy services to brands wishing to dabble with Twitter, the most important element of the Twitter Partners launch is that Twitter itself has endorsed the company by taking an equity stake.
Indeed, Read tells New Media Age that Twitter is more than happy to refer brands on to his new venture, as the majority of its 30-strong staff is engineering and unable to cope with the current volume of commercial interest.
This endorsement must also give us a hint at Twitter’s future business model. Much speculation so far has pointed to monetisation through banner ads or premium accounts for corporate users, but Twitter Partners suggests that selling metrics and analytics around the service is a much more compelling offering.
As my colleague Ross Levanto pointed out last month, many Twitter users are sceptical about following corporate accounts, so their value to brands is minimal. By learning lessons from much-hyped predecessors Second Life and Facebook, where user experience was quickly compromised by brand saturation, Twitter must realise that quietly tapping into the word-of-mouth aspects of the service will be the key to commercialisation, not thrusting logos upon happy users.
If Twitter Partners can, as it promises, offer the first service to comprehensively monitor Twitter chatter and enable brands to use the service as a viable tool for CRM, focus groups or audience profiling, then it may well be the first to turn a profit from the microblogging explosion.
One of the issues we're expecting to hear a lot about at Infosecurity Europe 2009, Europe's largest security industry trade show, is mobile security. Giving employees the option to work from home is becoming increasingly attractive from both a financial and an environmental perspective, and is often seen as a perk at a time when pay rises and bonuses aren't possible. Furthermore, an estimated 4.5 million new requests for flexible working could flood UK firms today, Computing reported, as new legislation goes into effect that extends the right to request flexible working to all parents with children under the age of 16.
Without taking the necessary security precautions, mobile working could open up a can of worms. A complete mobile security strategy must include the same level of protection that exists in the office, with special consideration given to the increased risk of loss or theft. Full-data encryption to guard against data leakage, a VPN for secure connectivity, a proactive patch management solution and a network access control application are all key technologies businesses must have in palce to secure mobile workers.
Workers' attitudes can also expose businesses to security threats. A study released by Vodafone UK recently and reported on in ComputerWeekly found that nearly half of employees regard their work laptops or mobile devices as their own property once away from the office. Half (49.6%) of employees used their own mobile broadband connection and 29.6% used Wi-Fi with their company mobile device when at home, leaving businesses vulnerable.
At Schwartz London, we're looking forward to seeing what new mobile security solutions companies will be talking about at Infosec.
After months of planning, Infosec is nearly here. The three-day event, taking place on 28-30 April in London, is the largest security conference in Europe and attracts more than 12,000 visitors and 300 journalists. We've seen several London-area trade shows cancelled recently in the wake of slashed marketing spend, yet Infosec organisers have moved the show to a bigger conference hall this year--Earls Court--and expect to break record numbers for attendance.
Despite new research from both Forrester and Gartner that predicts a grim year for global IT spending, the security industry shows fewer signs of stress than, say, retail tech. Infosec is still moving full steam ahead and the mood at the show is anticipated to be bouyant and focussed.
Over the next few weeks, in the Security PR blog, Schwartz London will be taking a look at some of the trends and issues we expect will be top of mind at Infosec this year, from mobile computing to cloud security to social media phishing. Then we'll give reports from the show floor on the people we meet, the sessions we watch and the parties we attend. Stay tuned!
Part of the larger, $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama in mid-February is $19.2 billion under a bill called the HITECH, or Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. Hey, no one said these things would have simple names.
That $19.2 billion directs most of the funding - $17.2 billion of it - to pay for the widespread adoption and "meaningful use" of "certified" interoperable electronic health record (EHR) technology. The other $2 billion covers a wide range of healthcare information technology projects including health records, health information exchange, computerized physician order entry, clinical decision support systems and electronic prescribing. Recently we ran a webinar about the HITECH funding - slides and an audio are available below.
The EHR funding will be administered through CMS - Medicare and Medicaid - in the form of reimbursements available to physicians and hospitals, and spread over several years. The $2 billion is allocated by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to be headed by Dr. David Blumenthal, appointed to the job on March 20, 2009. A couple questions come to mind:
How do you get healthcare stimulus money? As of this week the details of the process are still being developed by several federal agencies.
So what does this mean for healthcare IT companies and how can companies get stimulus funding?
First, the stimulus funding is intended to boost rapid technology adoption in the hopes of controlling healthcare costs, making healthcare more efficient and perhaps creating jobs. Despite the fact that there are more than 200 companies offering some form of EHR technology to physicians and hospitals, adoption is still too slow - by some estimates, well below 15% market penetration with perhaps a third of those using the systems effectively. An even worse EHR market assessment was published on March 26, 2009, which said that just 1.5% of non-Federal hospitals in the U.S. are using a comprehensive EHR system. Yikes!
(An interesting recent development is the start of a backlash, often from doctors, against the orthodoxy that widespread use of HCIT technology is an unquestioned good. The latest is this opinion piece from Time, this week. Among other intriguing points, it argues that EMRs could increase healthcare costs and push providers to input inaccurate information. I’ll write more about this later.)
Second, the stimulus funding is intended to foster better integration among the various proprietary HCIT technologies, which have been notoriously complex and difficult to integrate.
Third, the EHR funding encourages adoption through a payment schedule that can subsidize the costs of purchase and implementation, but it also includes a penalty. In 2014 physicians will see reduced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements if they have not implemented EHR technologies and are not using them effectively.
The details of accessing the ARRA and HITECH funds are not yet fully developed, but the race is on for companies to tap into these funds. Whatever the details turn out to be, HCIT companies with a strong public image and strong brand awareness will be best positioned to take advantage of this rare opportunity in which the government is essentially funding their customers to buy their products. That means HCIT companies with strong government relations, strong brands and a strong public presence must maintain and extend it. HCIT companies without those advantages had better build them, and fast.
Several of us from our Healthcare IT Practice will be at HIMSS next week. We’ll be in booth # 3145, so please stop by and let’s talk about this.
Trade shows have lost their mojo in the last few years to the point that very few matter. Being seen just to be seen no longer is worth the $20,000 minimum investment. The calendar used to include an almost weekly smorsgasbord of festivals, including Comdex (from the Mesozoic era) Internet World, etc. Now there are very few; companies can’t afford to have their executives and sales people but of the office schmoozing their competitors and partners, and with the rise of social media, the laborious meet and greet and lavish booth is going the way of the daily newspaper.
But some do still matter or else Las Vegas would cease to exist. One of the remaining ones that matter is CTIA Wireless, the annual gathering of all things hip and mobile in which began today in Vegas. With mobile technology about the only bright spot in the technology industry, meaningful news is expected this week.
Based on recent developments in the industry, CW predicts that the news from the show could include:
• Tier two mobile handset manufacturer launches device that has .003% more capabilities than the iPhone or enough to get positive reviews but no prediction of commercial success.
• The next killer mobile application, based on GPS, launches to an initial big buzz followed almost immediately by privacy concerns. Of course, everyone forgets that people walk around everyday with their life’s information stored in their phone so privacy has ceased to be a big issue, no matter what Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes claims.
• The latest 4G network equipment and devices hit the market, despite the fact that most of us still are accessing 2G networks with our phones, meaning we can barely get the Yankee score on ESPN.com from two innings ago.
• Leading analyst firm reports that smart phone sales continue to out perform laptop and PC sales but are not accelerating as fast as previous quarters. Stock prices for cell phone manufacturers tank and rise at the same time.
As someone who has worked in the mobile industry for years, the hype always leads reality by three years or more; we are almost at the point where, as one client predicted in 2000, we will all be reading Forbes.com on our cell phones while bidding for a Chevy Chase Pez dispenser on eBay. It really is a Brave New World.
In their own words, the RSA Conference 2009 is the "premier information security event" and the "RSA Conference plays an integral role in educating and connecting security professionals across the globe." The show snapshot shares that over 17,000 people attended the San Francisco-based conference in 2008 and that this year they have over 275 security companies exhibiting. Finding a way to stand out amongst that crowd is not an easy undertaking.
Something you may not know, every year the RSA Conference is built around a different theme which highlights a significant historical example of information security. As reported on their website "in 2009, RSA celebrates the influence of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was fascinated by cryptography, which he often treated in his journalism and fiction. He concealed anagrams and hidden messages in his own poems. His famous story - "The Gold Bug" - centers on the solution of a cipher, which turns out to be a map to hidden private treasure."
While the theme is probably lost on 99.9 percent of the attendees, Schwartz’s Security PR team encourages vendors to play into it. The theme was not arbitrarily selected -- it was part of a thoughtful and strategic decision for the RSA conference coordinators. Like any business trying to attract, convert and keep customers, the RSA Conference event planners will be seeking ways to publicize the event to both attendees and vendors for next year, and will be on the show floor filming b-roll and talking with vendors who can advance their message. Any activity that spotlights your company’s booth will benefit company branding and drive traffic in the long run. This is also a recommendation that we provided to our clients who sought to lock-in speaking opportunities at the show - appeal to the conference decision makers by tying in Edgar Allen Poe theme as part of the call for papers proposal. (Worth noting, Schwartz clients are strongly represented in the speaking track, with executives from Qualys, Purewire, BeyondTrust and Cryptography Research among the many selected).
Additional recommendations include:
- Don’t announce big news at the show! As tempting as it is, there are too many players and too much "noise" to get the attention your company is due. Your efforts are better spent creatively attracting buyers as well as media and analysts to the booth with meaningful presentations and tools for which the IT buyers can take back to the office and use to develop a strong budget argument for your technology. They will appreciate you doing the legwork for them...
- Prepare for breaking news opportunities - thought leadership is a key component of Security PR, and the more prepared and well-versed you and your spokespeople are in security trends and threats, the more likely your company can have a presence within articles generated at the show. It also helps to define a repeatable mechanism for generating supporting data for security trends, reporters and bloggers appreciate the quantitative support for their stories. Pay attention to the topics discussed during keynote speeches, and without blatantly plugging your technology, find ways to creatively draw parallels to the security problems facing businesses today and the benefits your company’s offering brings.
- Invite your customers and prospects to your booth, even if you have to cover the cost of their travels, and ask them if they would be willing to speak with media and analysts, without the expectation of news articles. While the state of the media is such that they are charged by their editors to deliver articles that drive click-throughs, there are still a great handful of folks from the media who value the informational conversation with end-users on why certain technologies are on their must-have list for 2009 and beyond. The media will appreciate the low-pressure, end-user perspective and your prospects and customers will appreciate the opportunity to explore the show and have a voice in the discussion, even if anonymous
No, we're not fooling with this one. A bunch of Schwartzers really will be hanging around at the Skellig in Waltham after work today, starting at 6pm for our April Fools Tweetup.
The only April Fools joke would be on me, if I'm sitting alone at the bar.
While today many bloggers will be spending the time on April Fool's jokes, I wanted to take a minute to highlight some of the best and most recent entries on other Schwartz blogs. There is more to Schwartz's blogging than just Crossroads, we have blogs for a number of markets.Following are links to three recent entries that stood out to me.
Social networking threats are among the security trends we're expecting to hear more about at 
One of the issues we're expecting to hear a lot about at 
