Grow Your Business, Grow Your Brand – San Antonio PRSA Luncheon – April 1, 2010

Here's news about our next chapter luncheon…

As a communicator and/or business owner, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about certain aspects of your business: Do we have enough cash? How can we get more business? As a business owner who works with other business owners, Ed Howie of Brand-True knows first-hand how the present economic turmoil has made those questions even more perplexing. Join us as we explore basic solutions to help you grow your business while increasing your brand value. History shows leaders who invest in telling their story reap the benefits faster when customer spending revives. Plus, we’ll collectively explore your own company’s relevance and differentiation. Come prepared to consider the power of branding for yourself…and your clients.


During the luncheon, you can participate in the 50/50 raffle to benefit the Marilyn Potts Endowment Fund. Early bird price ends the Friday before the lunch. Walk-ins on a standby basis only.

Register now!


When: Thursday, April 1, 2010 11:30 AM -1:00 PM
Where: Bright Shawl, 819 Augusta, San Antonio, Texas 78215
Price: Members $25 (early bird $20); Guests $30 (early bird $25); Students and retired professionals $12

Chevy's Road Trip Challenge Shows Off Fans Using Social Media on the Road

As I mentioned in my last post, Chevy is the lead sponsor for the Manic Mommies podcast. So it was only fitting that our meet up in Austin would be at a Chevy event. During the week leading up to South by Southwest, Chevy held an Amazing Race-type event for bloggers and fans across the country. They drove in Chevys to Austin from all parts of the country in teams stopping to do various fun and silly tasks along the way. Challenges included arm wrestling a short order cook, visiting odd tourist spots and museums, donating to a local Goodwill store and washing someone else's windshield.

The event on Thursday was a reception for the teams as they arrived. Team Detroit was the winner based on who completed the most challenges and had done the most interacting with their community on Twitter and their own sites. You can hear interviews with the road trippers here.


Christopher Barger (pictured here with Kristin Brandt of the Manic Mommies), director of global social media at General Motors, told me that this Chevrolet’s SXSW Road Trip Challenge was a way to engage fans and create some fun visibility for the brand. As you can imagine, the expectation is that when folk are in the market to buy a car, they’ll think of Chevy and give it another look than they might have otherwise.

And that’s why Chevy is a sponsor for the Manic Mommies. At their Escape events, GM has been there with cars to test drive and to cart participants around. They know the value of engaging women – who are more and more the decision makers in car purchases.

Expedition 206: Coke’s Multi-faceted Fan Campaign

I recently posted a story here about how Coca-Cola is elevating discussion of its brand with community concepts. While attending the Ragan conference at Coca-Cola World Headquarters last month, I also got to hear about the nuts and bolts of Coca-Cola’s Social Media Strategy, courtesy of Adam Brown, Director of the Office of Digital Communications and Social Media for Coca-Cola (@adamcb).

While many companies are focused exclusively on conversations in America, Coca-Cola has 478 brands sold in 206 countries, so all their conversations are global! The Coca-Cola team’s approach is comprehensive and multi-faceted; too much to cover here. One campaign, however, is worth sharing.

Expedition 206, announced last year, puts three “happiness ambassadors” on a year-long tour to every country (206 of them!) where Coke products are sold. Fans submitted video applications to become one of the three who represent the company and fans voted on the final group. As well, fans have been determining where they go and what they do.

The tour kicked off in January and the team posts text, video and short reports on Expedition 206.

The Coca-Cola communications team had 6 months from idea to delivery, which, according to Brown was 6 months shorter than their usual planning cycle. While the idea came from the public relations side, the marketing team quickly got involved to add elements to the project.

According to Brown, their campaigns are focused on earning sustainable relationships, leverage existing audiences and grow those audiences for the future. Expedition 206 seems to fit all those parameters. Take a look at a short video announcing 9 finalists and how to vote for the winners. Or follow the team on Twitter @x206. Of course, we all want to hear about the results at year's end.

Success Story of Community Building with Social Media

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of meeting Kristin Brandt, one of the co-hosts of the Manic Mommies podcast. She’s in Austin for South by Southwest (SXSW), which is a totally cool annual interactive-music-film festival. She organized a meet up for listeners in the area. About 10 women were there, most from Austin. Two of us drove from miles away.

Why would we do such a thing? Because this is a show that has developed a strong community – better than any other podcast I’ve participated in, which is why I’m telling you about it. Here’s an excellent example of how social media can be used to build and engage a community.

First a little about the Manic Mommies. The hosts are Erin Kane and Kristin Brandt who started podcasting on somewhat of a whim about five years ago. Though they didn’t deliberate much on the name of their show, they chose Manic Mommies because one of the definitions of “manic” is “overly busy.” Their tagline is “The podcast for buzy moms trying to do it all!… and then some.” The do have a sizeable following of men as well.

The structure of the show is two working moms who talk about what’s going on in their daily lives, and they occasionally have guest interviews. The biggest appeal is that they have no pretension. They are like friends you haven’t met yet.

  

Here are some examples of their community building success:

• They have a huge number of listeners, so much so that they’ve attracted sponsors like Chevy and others.
•  More listeners call in with comments than they have room for to include in their weekly show.
• They have an active Facebook fan page with 3,850 fans and ongoing conversations.
• Using Big Tent, they have set up a forum with free memberships and a "Gal Pals” section with added benefits for those who pay a nominal fee. There are multiple new discussion threads started every day. And it hasn’t waned since it was launched over a year ago. This group has about 2,000 participants.
• They blog on their web site regularly and sometimes have contests for readers and listeners. They also have a blog column for Real Simple.
• They host an annual “escape” event where women travel from across the county to spend time together. The 2009 escape was capped at 150 people and sold out in less than two weeks. They’re planning their fourth Escape for November 2010.
• They have their own line of calendars for moms through Mead that you can buy online or in stores like Target.
• They have their own line of swag through Café Press and Company Casuals.
• They have an awesome iPhone ap.
• They have a Tastebook cookbook with recipe contributions from listeners.
• They have an active online book club.

Oh, and by the way, this is their hobby. They both have full-time jobs and young children.

Their success didn’t happen all at once. They didn’t start out knowing they’d be here five years later. But it wasn’t accidental either. They have been clear from the beginning about who their audience is. They have been strategic about going for some opportunities and saying no to others. And they’ve been flexible to adapt as technology and other environmental factors changed.

That is the challenge for the rest of us as we integrate social media into our work. We typically have had an idea of where a certain effort would take us. Good media relations will likely lead to media coverage. Good event planning will likely lead to successful events. But it’s hard to say where good social media work will take us. Like with the Manic Mommies though, it could take us beyond our wildest imaginations.

Coca-Cola and Community: It’s all about the Community

There’s no doubt Coca-Cola has the strongest brand recognition on the planet. But what really surprised me during the recent Ragan social media conference I attended at the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, was how they populate their brand presence EVERYWHERE!

The opening keynote by Clyde Tuggle, senior vice president of global public affairs and communications for Coca-Cola, didn’t just take us through their latest and greatest social media campaign. He DID take us through the fundamentals which have been at the heart of his tenure at Coca-Cola: the importance of Human Relations. Tuggle opened with a compelling statement: that “taking people for granted” was a deadly sin and relationships – regardless of all the new mediums we are using to cultivate them – are the “connective tissue” for all of us.

He then offered four fundamental truths that guide Coca-Cola through its journey. They are so simple and worth sharing for all public relations practitioners.

Truth #1: We do not own our brands; our consumers own our brands. This is very simple and obvious in today’s consumer-driven economy.

Truth #2: Fish where the fish are. In determining the places where Coca-Cola needed a voice, they asked themselves the question: “how can we be part of a broader network?”

Truth #3: Let it go. Do something completely unexpected to create an emotional bond. Tuggle cited this as the most difficult to accomplish because it involves ceding control and letting fans take over.

Truth #4: Every day is election day. Every day you need to earn the vote of your customers, employees and other stakeholders.

His final thought: It’s not about the technology, it’s about finding common ground for meaningful connections. It’s about doing the right thing.

One of the examples which shows how Coca-Cola is leveraging community and geography is the FIFA World Cup Campaign. Take a look at the announcement press release and notice the many working parts as well as the video (above) from the first week of the tour.

Now, imagine how you can leverage that kind of creativity in your organization!

When Your Brand Gets Squatted in Twitter…

Here’s another story about the importance of monitoring social media and missed opportunities. What would you do if you discovered that someone had created a Twitter account pretending to represent your brand or organization?


Not too long ago, an editor of Advertising Age, Michael Werch, decided to do an experiment. He wanted to see “how long it would take a brand to realize it was being impersonated, and what course of action would it take?” And “would the brand embrace the conversation or end it?

First, he had to pick a brand. He decided it had to be big, not active in social media, and something he liked. So he chose Heinz. He created a Twitter ID, @HJ_Heinz, put pictures of ketchup bottles in the background, and included a link to the Heinz web site. Then, he started sending tweets with links to recipes on the Heinz web site and interesting facts about Heinz.

Of course, when you set up a Twitter account, you have to get people to follow you. So he registered the ID with some directories and then searched for and followed people who had used the brand name in their tweets. If they tweeted something positive about Heinz, he retweeted them. He also targeted residents of Pittsburgh where the Heinz company is located.

He never heard from Heinz.

After two weeks, he did hear from the Twitter company. With no advance notice or warning, Twitter changed is ID to @NOThj_Heinz and removed the ketchup references and links to the company in his bio. He also got an e-mail from Twitter saying he was in violation of Twitter’s trademark rules.

Once he disclosed to his followers that he wasn’t affiliated with Heinz but was just a fan, his followers urged him to keep tweeting. They were fans too.

Heinz told Ad Age that they monitor social media every morning. If that’s so, why did it take almost two weeks for them to find Michael? Other stories indicate that Twitter acts quickly when they get a complaint about trademark infringement.

The bottom line is that for two weeks, someone was in effect stealing the company’s brand. Michael’s tweets were positive. But what if they’d been destructive?

And, since Michael’s work was successful in building a following of brand enthusiasts, why didn’t Heinz capitalize on it? Why didn’t they continue it by actively engaging their fans? Don’t brands usually want people talking about them positively?

In the online version of Michael’s Ad Age story, a commenter reported that he or she had done a similar experiment with a skateboarding company with completely different results: “Instead of contacting Twitter and shutting the account down, they DM'd me and we engaged in a conversation via email. The resolution was that I handed the Twitter account over to them and they sent me some Sector 9 schwag.”

I love this story because there are so many lessons here. It’s ok if you’re not quite ready to dive in to social media. It’s ok if you are still learning and formulating a plan. But it may not be ok to ignore what’s being said in your name. I’m just sayin’.

Celebrate Success! Enter the San Antonio 2010 Del Oro Awards

By Christi Fish, PRSA San Antonio Area Chapter board member


“Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.”
author William Thackeray

All my life, I’ve heard people say the desire to be appreciated is a shortfall that deteriorates the spirit. They suggest rewards should come from within. They claim human nature prevents us from celebrating the achievements of others.

How mistaken they are!

I believe professional recognition nurtures perseverance. Celebrating the accomplishments of our industry’s leaders demonstrates our collective commitment to integrity. Recognizing award-winning work allows us to stay abreast of our industry’s best practices.

Day in and day out, public relations professionals in the greater San Antonio region improve society by delivering messages that raise awareness of important issues. And that’s no easy task.

To develop a communications plan, we research issues, gather facts and confirm our sources. We set objectives and goals. We identify our target audiences and craft key messages. We monitor the success of our campaigns and strategize ways to make our communications even more effective. All the while, hanging in the balance are reputations that take a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy.

This year, members and friends of the San Antonio chapter of PRSA will gather at the Bright Shawl in downtown San Antonio on March 6 to celebrate the region’s best professionals. Awards will be given in three categories. Del Oro Awards recognize outstanding communicators. La Plata Awards recognize outstanding communications campaigns. El Bronce Awards recognize outstanding communications tactics.

We invite you to submit your best work in this year’s competition. Thursday, March 4 is the deadline to enter your campaigns and tactics in the La Plata and El Bronce categories, respectively. The deadline to nominate outstanding communicators for the Del Oro Category is Thursday, March 18.

More importantly, mark your calendar for the Del Oro Awards Banquet on Thursday, May 6.

We hope to see you there!

Free webinar: How the new FTC regulations affect online promotions

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released new guidelines last year that could impact your social media work depending on the type of organization/business you work for or represent. PR pros Brian Solis and Sarah Evans are teaming up with Ted Murphy, principle at IZEA, and Mary Engle, the associate director at the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, for the webinar panel, “FTC Regulations and Me,” this Friday from 1 to 2 p.m. CST.

The event is free.

See details and register at Sarah Evans' blog.

Meet SA's Newest News Anchor

Local CBS affiliate, KENS5, introduced its newest news team member, Jeff Vaughn, on January 11 with his first on-air newscast. Much was made of the new anchor joining the team, as he replaced long-time on-air personality Chris Marrou. Jeff has inserted himself firmly into the San Antonio community, visiting favorite local restaurants with his wife and getting a quick education on San Antonio politics, traffic and weather.

Social Media Breakfast San Antonio has invited Jeff to speak at the February breakfast due to his early and consistent involvement in social media. Jeff can be found on Twitter at @JeffVaughn, on Facebook at his public Fan Page, and on his personal site, Jeff Vaughn Media.

Jeff will speak about how social media has changed the way his industry works. He says social media is changing the landscape of news delivery in so many ways. Journalists are now using avenues like Twitter and Facebook as sources for stories, but there also is another layer. Whereas before the relationship you had with a reporter was based on watching , listening or reading - it's now become a two-way conversation. Reporters are interacting directly with their audience, and it's having a significant impact on the development of the story as well as on how the audience interprets it. To quote a Twitter friend of mine, "News is no longer at 5, 6, and 10, IT'S NOW. "

What: February Social Media Breakfast San Antonio with Jeff Vaughn, KENS5 Weekday Evening Anchor
When: Wednesday, February 17, 2010; networking 7:30 a.m.; presentation at 8 a.m.
Where: Absolutely Everything Catering, 3915 San Pedro 78212
Who: Anyone intested in social media and local/national news delivery
How: Go to the Social Media Breakfast SA Invite to register for the breakfast

Sonic are you out there?

As my Twitter followers and Facebook friends know, over the last few weeks I have been posting photos and updates about the taxes charged on soft drinks at Sonic, my favorite source of Coca-Cola. Since they make the best in town, I frequent different locations when I'm out and about. One day, I noticed a difference in the taxes I was being charged. And not a little difference. In some locations, the tax on a medium drink is one cent. In other locations, it's a whopping 12 cents.

I have two theories about why this may be the case. One was suggested by one of my Twitter followers that the difference is due to the various tax rates of the municipalities in the San Antonio area. And the one-cent tax was not technically located in San Antonio.

My other theory is that managers of local Sonics may be confused about which specific tax codes apply to certain foods and other products. I don't know that. I'm not a tax expert. But 12 cents for a $1.49 coke is a heck of a lot.

Strangely, with all my tweets and posts and Twitpics, I haven't heard anything from Sonic. I have mentioned their name quite frequently, and others have responded to my tweets and we've had dialogues online about it. But Sonic isn't there.

At a professional development session over a year ago, I happened to meet a couple of the PR folk from Sonic. They seemed to be on top of things. But if they were monitoring online conversations at all over the last two months, they would have noticed San Antonio.

Granted, I have not created any kind of crisis for Sonic. In fact, if anybody deserves criticism, it could be the taxing entities of San Antonio and area towns. But Sonic has certainly missed an opportunity.

One of the best pay-offs to companies who use social media is the chance to engage with their fans and to support their fans to be brand ambassadors. But Sonic missed the boat. They missed an opportunity to engage with fans here and to build their customer base. So this leaves me with the question: Sonic are you out there?

Now about your broken straw supplier…

They're Counting Web Site Hits? Really? - Sooo last decade

There are lots of ways to measure the effectiveness of your web site. But I still can't believe what I read in the San Antonio Business Journal recently. There was a great article on on the front page about some new web interprise. It was a local community good news story. And the author is a writer I like to read. But as I was reading along in this case, I was amazed to see that he actually printed as evidence of success somebody's hit account. Hits? Really?


Now as a reader, I have to ask whether it was the Business Journal who used the term "hits" to describe the web site measure or if the "hits" number is what they were given by the interviewee. If it was what the reporter was given, you'd think a good journalist would have questioned it.

The term "hit" is absolutely meaningless. You cannot compare web sites based on hits. That's like asking a guy who's bragging about his diet how many times he chews each bite. I mean, really.

The more appropriate measures for web site success to start with are visits and user sessions, among tons of others. Granted, we did use the term hits in the old days of the web. But that was because it was the only number the IT folk would give us. But we are smarter now. Aren't we?

2010 TPRA Silver Spur/ Best of Texas Awards

The following is reprinted from TPRA materials (but I still mean it).

Get Your Award Entry in by January 21
It’s time to get really serious about entering the Texas Public Relations Association's 2010 Silver Spur/Best of Texas Awards Competition. It’s also not too late to volunteer to judge this outstanding competition.

The last call deadline (with a $50/entry late fee) is 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21.

Go to www.tpra.com for complete information on preparing and submitting contest entries. Or contact Julie B. Fix, APR, TPRA contest manager, at awards@tpra.com or 713-419-8494.

Nominate a PR Pro for an Award
Do you know a PR professional, business or member of the news media deserving of special recognition?

TPRA is seeking nominations for our special awards, honoring individuals and companies for outstanding contributions to the public relations profession. The award recipients will be recognized during the Leadership Day & Gala on March 5 in Austin.

To submit a nomination in one or more categories, send your nomination by noon January 29 along with supporting information to Scott White at scottwhite@bizcompr.com.

Categories include:
Golden Spur Award - Recognizing a TPRA member for a minimum of 10 years for long-lasting contributions to TPRA and the PR profession.

Outstanding Texas PR Practitioner Award - Recognizing a PR professional for outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the profession.

Alan Scott Rising Star Award - Recognizing a PR professional and TPRA member for at least three years who has demonstrated potential for leadership and outstanding contributions to the profession.

New Member Achievement Award - Recognizing a PR professional who has been a TPRA member for one to three year for significant contributions to the TPRA.

Silver Spur Media Award - Recognizing contributions by a print or broadcast reporter, photographer, editor or producer or a print or broadcast outlet to a public affairs, public education or community relations program that benefited the community.

Lone Star Award - Recognizing a company that places a high priority on public relations and values the function as a key management strategy and the PR practitioners it employs as major contributors to the organization's success.

Deadline for Your Nominations is Noon, January 29.

You Be the Judge
If you’d like to volunteer as a judge, we’ll judge entries from 2 to 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 22 and again from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, Jan. 23 at the Texas State University Round Rock Education Center in Round Rock. We are still in need of at least 10 people for both Friday and Saturday, so please contact Julie at jbfix@att.net or call her at the above number if you’re available or if you’d like more information before making up your mind. (Julie will tell you that judging a contest is the best way to improve your own contest entries in the future.)

The 2010 Silver Spur/Best of Texas Awards is sponsored by TPRA and the Austin, Central Texas, Dallas, Greater Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio PRSA Chapters.

Silver Spur/Best of Texas Award winners will be honored at the Annual Silver Spur/Best of Texas Awards Banquet Friday, March 5 held in conjunction with the Texas Public Relations Association's Leadership Conference. (See www.tpra.com for details.)

Twitter is far more than Newly-created “Twilebrities”

Once again, Hollywood takes over and turns something innovative into trite navel-gazing. A recent article in Vanity Fair examines the phenomenon of a handful of (coincidentally) females who are so popular on Twitter that a new moniker has been coined for them: Twilebrity. They have one thing in common: a career thread, in that they are all practicing in the area of public relations, marketing or journalism. The story oozes about how their daily lives are dominated by Twitter and is peppered with examples of their tweets and how important their rankings have become based on the number of followers each has accumulated.

The story is amusing, and is further evidence of how popularity dominates today’s lifestyles. But what is really bothersome about the Vanity Fair piece is the complete lack of reporting about the social good which has been derived from many social initiatives, particularly on Twitter.

Case in point: Twestival. A grassroots event held over 4 days in February, with a goal of raising money for clean water in Ethiopia. The result, from the Twestival Web site:

The 2009 Twestival brought together 202 cities around the world for one cause. Clean and safe drinking water. Led by organizer Amanda Rose, an astonishing $250,000 was raised - 100% of that money going directly to the projects. charity: water staff flew to Ethiopia weeks later to drill the first well, and connect the Twitter community with the people they served.

The group even used social media when they went to Ethiopia to drill the wells for clean water, posting four videos on the effort. Before this world-wide social media effort, the women of the Ethiopian village which benefitted from the Twitter-initiated event had to walk 4 hours for clean water.

Second case: The Iran Elections of last June, catalogued on Twitter as #IranElections. As the world watched Iran struggle with the most controversial elections in recent history, the awareness and empathy created through social media outlets is undeniable. Iranians had an outlet to communicate which was not dominated by a single entity; they could communicate with the outside world and we with them. A timeline created by Mashable aggregates hundreds of areas where photos, Tweets, definitions and videos were posted. The post starts with the elections and tracks the flow of information through the protest and unrest period after the event.

To say that Twitter is just about celebrity and OMG (Oh, my God) moments is to undermine the serious communications tool it has become for people across the world to help one another achieve goals by exchanging 140 character messages. Some Twitter initiatives are as simple as finding an alternative route home in heavy traffic or a restaurant recommendation. Conversely, others are as gut-wrenching as recent efforts to find missing persons or providing clean water and fair elections in countries that don’t have them. None of these will have a Twilebrity and for that, Twitter users everywhere are grateful.

Get a Peek of Jim Forsyth Speaking on How Radio Can Dominate in a Shrinking Print World

Here's a video from our PRSA San Antonio luncheon this week (see "Why Radio will Survive the Media Shake-out of our Decade" post).