Laura Kempke

Tongue-in-cheek marketing from the neighborhood realtors

Blogs are a delightful creation, but so many bloggers are a tad big prickly ... evidently looking for ways to skewer someone just a little more effectively than the blogger they just read. We all know this. Maybe it's the next Olympic sport--lobbing insults via blogs. Feel the burn.

It makes me look for multiple meanings in otherwise mundane stuff that I read. Do I "get" what the writer's trying to say? Do I want to?

Into this larger context drops a postcard from our local Coldwell Banker realtor, sent to "postal patrons." There's a nice photo of a meadow on the front. [My town has an abundance of trees. Deer like the woods and ticks like the deer. It's a problem because much of the town seems to get Lyme disease each year.]

The realtors write, "Through the years, we have become aware of the tick population which has led to the discovery of a tool which removes them. This handy gizmo is called 'Ticked-off.' If you would like one, call either of us. The supply is limited, so call soon for your free tick remover. Happy Summer!"

First I rolled my eyes (bad habit), and then I thought ... well, we do have a tick problem. Then I thought a second longer and figured that this is actually a brilliant attempt to turn people off to the town and list their houses with this realtor. Now I don't really care what motivated this post card campaign, but am mystified by my own inability to take at face value what I read and to stop questioning the agenda of the writers.

For this, I don't thank graduate education, living in a "liberal" state or any of the traditional guilty parties. For this, I thank too much time spent with blogs.

Posted by Laura Kempke on August 13, 2008 at 9:20 PM
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Does "Face Time" Still Matter?

I was reading the latest from BusinessWeek Online and didn't have to get past the headline "Are There Too Many Women Doctors?" to get a bit irritated. 

It turns out that women work slightly fewer hours than men because they spend more time taking care of their kids. This disparity puts pressure on other doctors--generally male, oftentimes older--who are left to pick up the slack. The study also points out that women often go into underserved areas like primary care or pediatrics, which pay less than other medical specialties, in order to gain scheduling flexibility. Anyone who succeeds in scheduling an appointment with a primary care physician or pediatrician likely benefits from the decisions many women doctors make.

When you need to be seen by a doctor, you need to be seen by a doctor, but the article got me thinking afresh about the value of working in an office building surrounded by coworkers vs. the obvious trend toward electronic communications and remote work. Indeed, I've always wondered what it says about me that my best client relationships are often with the people who I rarely see.

At the same time, I benefit enormously from being able to walk down the hallway and ask 15 other VPs what they think about my PR conundrum of the day. It's hard to say no to collaboration when someone plops themself down in your office, but certainly my colleagues could make their excuses about being busy and I'd clear out.

This is nice, but what I always find interesting is that colleagues working in other cities, whom I've never met in person, are just as willing to help. A little stroll down the digital hallway is just as effective as seeing people face to face.

Of course there's business you can conduct only in person. But when you've got a group of people with common interests, do you have better relationships with those you can see? Is there clear value to being in the office simply to be in the office--to putting in that face time?

My hope, and I'm pretty optimistic that this is really happening, is that social media allows groups of people with similar interests not just to compare pet peeves on Facebook or to post photos of their vacations, but to remove most of the need for face time. It'll probably be of minimal use to the 50 percent of medical students today who are women, but for the rest of us who are looking to "be there" for both our families and our employers, the ability to interact in a way that's increasingly targeted and personal--yet is entirely electronic--sure holds a lot of promise.

Posted by Laura Kempke on June 25, 2008 at 12:54 PM
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Tech Print Journalists Take Up Multimedia

On Tuesday night I attended a wonderfully informative PRSA Boston / Social Media Club event on the future on journalism in a social media world.

I'd gladly have sat for an hour to hear any one of the panelists (listed here) speak about his own thoughts and experiences. Moderator Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers and upcoming Secrets of Social Media Marketing, brought the big questions and kept the discussion moving right along.

Too much great, usable information to summarize, but one thing I took out of it is the need to help reporters make their stories more visual.

[I should note that my clients are technical--biotech, nanotech and business-to-business computer technology. There's no obvious visual element to most of these stories beyond the obligatory headshot of the company spokesperson (suit or golf shirt?). Sometimes we mix it up with a network diagram or image of a 96-well plate. Our teams that represent consumer technology and medical companies have long understood the need for beautifully conceived and produced visuals.]

Tech journalists who used to just write are now carrying around cameras and other equipment in order to capture more elements of the story at hand or to be able to present it to a wider audience. It's increasingly common that reporters will talk with a client and then videotape an interview or record a podcast. (Some examples are here, here, here and here. Disclaimer: they're Schwartz clients SpikeSource, Appcelerator, Sentrigo and SugarCRM.)

Nice for a start. The next step is to contribute more to the slide shows that media are starting to rely on because each slide requires a click--advertiser heaven.

Our job has always been to make technical stories accessible. Now, as the media looks to layer a multimedia dimension onto reporting, look for entrepreneurial tech companies to differentiate themselves to reporters by providing new types of ideas and content. Most aren't doing it today--clearly an opportunity for those willing to try something new.

Posted by Laura Kempke on May 22, 2008 at 9:35 AM
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The Future of Journalism in a Social Media World

The rapid evolution of tech journalism as it's impacted by social media, among other factors, is affecting every company in the tech industry. Media relations isn't what it was last year, and it's monumentally different than it was 10 years ago.

Anyone who works with the media or who relies on it to help reach customers, partners or employees has to understand the pressure journalism is under and the resulting changes it's undergoing. It's that basic!

To that end, you're invited to learn more about "The Future of Journalism in a Social Media World" at next Tuesday's event sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America's Boston Chapter and the Social Media Club. (Registration is available through the PRSA Boston website. The event will be held in Weston at the American Cancer Society's offices.)

Veteran journalist Paul Gillin, author of "The New Influencers" and the upcoming book "Secrets of Social Media Marketing," will lead the discussion. Questions he'll ask include:

• How are blogs, podcasts and online video impacting both the business and the reporting of news?
• Will journalists need to master video, audio and photography in order to practice their craft in the future?
• How has journalism been impacted by the success of bloggers moving into the reporting business?
• What does the future have in store for mainstream media? How can those media stay relevant?

Panelists include:

• Ted McEnroe, director of digital media, New England Cable News
• Robin Lubbock, director of new media, WBUR
• Howard Sholkin, director of communications and marketing programs, IDG
• David Wallace, consultant, adjunct journalism professor at Emerson College and former writer for The New York Times, Reuters and numerous websites

Promises to be an informative evening!

Posted by Laura Kempke on May 15, 2008 at 10:30 AM
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CNN.com Gross Out

We're all well aware that traditional media have been under strain for years, first due to the web and now as a result of competition from "new media."

Some are handling the challenge as gracefully as they probably can, given the situation, and some are not. CNN.com (U.S. Alexa ranking: 19) splashes down into the latter category.

CNN has always, in my mind, been a mix of fluff and serious reporting. You might disagree, but I think that what CNN does well (e.g., some international reporting), it does better than just about anyone.

So that makes all the more stark the contrast with CNN.com. Mixed in with "American cancels 900 flights" and "China says 35 arrested in Olympics bomb plot," we have "Wedding bed found in polygamist temple" (voyeuristic--is this the most important element of the story out of west Texas?), "I'm a sociopath, hiker's killer tells police," "Witness: beheading victim asked for help," "Woman makes gruesome find after mom dies" and "Principal nabbed with teens, porn, pot."

Seriously?

It's depressing to see CNN.com take events that deserve careful treatment and clearly pander to site visitors' desire to read about and view the sordid, the morbid and the just plain gross.

NYTimes.com (U.S. Alexa ranking: 33) manages to pull in huge traffic without upping its eeew factor, but they're the only general news site giving CNN.com a run for their money.

Perhaps when CNN.com readers have their fill of sludge, they're heading to NYTimes.com for a more serious take on events. One can only hope!

Posted by Laura Kempke on April 14, 2008 at 9:15 AM
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Big Night at SC Magazine Awards

Congratulations to Schwartz clients Sentrigo, Fortinet and Qualys, who were recognized at last night's annual SC Magazine Awards Gala, which is held in conjunction with RSA.

Sentrigo, an innovator in database security software, won Rookie Security Company of the Year; Fortinet took home the award for Best Integrated Security Solution for its unified threat management systems; and Qualys was recognized for Best Audit/Vulnerability Assessment Solution.

Congrats to all -- details on the winners are here.

Posted by Laura Kempke on April 9, 2008 at 9:58 AM
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The Waltham Globe

My office looks out on Route 128 and since last fall, I've been watching the demolition of a building, clearing of the site and now the digging for the foundation of a new office building. They've been blasting and when this is about to happen, state police stop traffic in front of the building across all eight lanes of the highway.

I'm sure that blocking traffic is necessary to keep Massachusetts drivers, rubberneckers all of us, from driving off the road. But it also creates nasty traffic jams during times when travelers would typically expect to get from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time.

Route 128 carries something like 200,000 cars a day and continued development of big office buildings and shopping areas along it affects people who live and work along 128.

Where should those people turn for information about the development? Big regional newspapers?  Well, no. The last time the Boston Globe, for example, covered this sort of development was four months ago.

Obviously they can't cover everything repeatedly. But where are 200,000 who wonder what blew up next to Uno's to go?

I keep heading for Wicked Local. I'm so happy that a news outlet recognizes that there's much more to the Boston area than Boston itself. And for those who love the city, a coworker recently pointed me to Universal Hub, a wonderful aggregate of all things local.

Financial constraints and, certainly, assumptions about what the masses want to read have for years impacted regional dailies' coverage of companies that haven't yet reached the size of a Fidelity or EMC. As someone who believes the action is with the smaller companies, I've long been irked by this.

This opening has cleared the decks for the success of an Xconomy, which is more than happy to dive into the growing tech companies (disclosure: this one's a client) that drive much of our local economy.

Without a doubt, major media have done much to successfully rework themselves, but I have to believe that readership of newer sources will keep growing as people like me look to the news outlets in their backyard.

Posted by Laura Kempke on March 19, 2008 at 11:26 AM
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Beats Facebook Wall Any Day

A former colleague sent me a postcard from her recent trip to India. I was ridiculously happy to receive it. 

Yes, I keep up with her on Facebook and email and all, but a postcard was so much more fun to receive.

I'm sure this is just yet more proof that I need to get out more, but there's something to be said for going old school when it can make a friend stand in the middle of the hallway smiling in a way that Facebook never has.

Posted by Laura Kempke on March 13, 2008 at 1:19 PM
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Click to Confirm Your Google Alert

When Google introduced the Google Alerts service, my first thought was "Great! Now my clients don't need to pay for expensive news searches." Many of them had already pared back their use of such services because they were looking to save every dollar coming out of the tech recession, so they were just happy to find a cheap alternative.

My opinion changed when some clients became obsessed with tracking not only their own coverage, but that of their competitors. I had a number of conversations with people who had a tough time accepting that it's not realistic to expect the agency to stop--literally to prevent--other companies from getting noticed in the media. (Intruding on those companies' coverage--there's the goal.)

I still think it was mostly an emotional reaction to being able to really understand, probably for the first time, where their competitors were appearing in the media.

But now, most clients are way past the emotion. They're deep into their site analytics and are tracking visitors who come from news articles, product reviews and blogs. I love to hear that an article the PR team helped out on brought in a bunch of well-qualified visitors, some of whom went on to download the client's software.

Tech (and increasingly healthcare) companies and PR people talk about what this means for the practice of PR. Certainly, no one wants to feel like they're spending money on faith alone, so they're holding PR up against things like SEO and other marketing tools.

To be sure, measurement can be a wonderful thing. But I wonder if the techniques most in vogue today really capture the cumulative effect of steady-state volume--that stream of Google Alerts that companies love and that helps stack them up nicely to their competition--plus positive (not just okay) reviews, plus getting the Fortune 50 customer (not the no-name) to talk on behalf of the start-up, plus the CEO Q&A that gave him space to talk in depth about his or her corner of the industry ... and so on.

Some of these things have no immediate tangible effect, but does this mean they won't matter in sum six months or a year out for companies trying to establish a new category or go up against a much bigger player?

I'm thinking that PR's real value these days lies in the ability to bring all of these things--some easily measurable, others not so much--together. It's not social media to the exclusion of "traditional," or product PR in lieu of thought leadership campaigns. If I were running a tech company, I'd ask myself how I could have all of these things AND still have money left over for my Google AdWords campaign.

Posted by Laura Kempke on March 12, 2008 at 11:44 AM
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Measuring PR: Clients like it, PR people ought to love it

I recently attended a conference on PR measurement put on by the Institute for Public Relations. Hearing what’s working for other PR people is always interesting, but this conference was particularly welcome because it brought together people who are doing the deep thinking on probably the hottest topic in PR: evaluating PR’s impact.

Measuring PR is rough for a number of reasons. Just a few include the difficulty of tracking changes in perception of a company or product to editorial coverage (as opposed to advertising, opinions articulated by colleagues, etc.), the sometimes prohibitively high cost associated with measurement itself and, not least, the desire PR people have to defend their budgets.

Conference presenters included a senior director at Microsoft who’s working to represent the effectiveness of PR for that company’s product lines and executives with a single number. There’s an appeal to the simplicity of a single-number score. But I didn’t understand why obliterating the nuance associated with, for example, media reports on Vista, was a good idea. Nevertheless, good to know that Microsoft is playing with the idea of measuring PR with one number.

At Schwartz, we work with entrepreneurial companies that are looking to grow very quickly. In the past, many of them “just knew” when PR was working. They’d report more in-bound calls, greater willingness of potential customers and partners to take meetings, and so on. We liked to hear anecdotal evidence that our programs were working, but it was only partially satisfying.

A few companies found it meaningful (some still do) to look at advertising equivalents. This is okay—if nothing else, it makes the case that PR is cheaper than advertising—but ultimately not that useful.