Observations from the world’s largest fresh produce stand – PMA Fresh Summit:

Packed Floor
Reports from the floor indicate this year’s trade show was the association’s largest in its 60-year history with more than 20,000 attendees.  Some think it’s an indicator of an economy on the rebound, considering the expense for scores of marketers and sales folks to set up shop on the trade show floor.  Add to that the costs of the customer dinners, lunches and receptions, and from the looks of the morning hangovers (I’m fighting a combo sinus infection and allergy attack, so my consumption was a two-beer max), there were plenty of good times and cash flowing.

The prevailing theory, however, is consumers are turning to fresh produce more often in this economy – choosing to dine at home and forego family dinners out on the town.  Couple that with the national dialogue on health and swine flu scares, it’s more likely consumers are taking the bounty of fresh produce health benefits to their own kitchens and dinner tables.

Food Safety
Food safety was the dominant discussion on the floor and even outside the Anaheim Convention Center.  The fresh produce industry is well known for its very high self-regulation of an unregulated industry.  The challenge is our political administration is under the gun from various interest groups to establish standards and policies on an industry the administration has very little knowledge of.  What’s more, those on the floor say, it’s highly likely the administration will push down standards and policies with little regard for what the industry, grocery retailers and foodservice operators have done together to affect change.  Fortunately, leaders of the three channels have spent ample time in D.C. trying to bring our elected officials up to speed.

Social Media
Given all the talk and lightening-speed momentum in social media over the past year, it was astonishing to see what little (emphasis on minuscule) has taken hold in the fresh produce industry.  There were exorbitant amounts of discussions and displays about engaging with consumers, but you have to wonder if the industry is still grappling with what social media is and how it can bring consumer engagement to the next level – well beyond the product giveaways and numbers of friends/followers and the like.  The industry is missing a phenomenal opportunity in building true relationships and loyalty with consumers and in creating ROI for their customers.  It all hinges on strategy.

NST Cited in State of the Industry
Nuffer, Smith, Tucker’s Food Foresight trends anticipation collaboration with California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research at University of California, Davis was cited by PMA CEO Bryan Silbermann in his state-of-the-industry address Saturday morning. PMA is a long-time partner and client with NST. Earlier this year, the firm helped PMA design and facilitate a foodservice think tank with the National Restaurant Association and International Foodservice Distributors Association. The event, sponsored by Markon Cooperative, another NST client, brought together leaders from foodservice chains, distributor companies and produce suppliers together to identify collaborative opportunities for increasing produce usage at foodservice. The group put forth a plan to double usage of fresh produce in foodservice by 2020.

Great Food
I’m woefully inept when it comes to cooking with fresh produce.  The sights and smells of the fresh produce, and the amazing cooking demonstrations, kept me starving for hours on end.  Each year, I make a pledge to eat more produce, and today for lunch I had two burgers from the fast food joint down the street.  But I do have my sights set on making a mean stir fry this weekend.

TechCrunch, in its soap opera about the PR profession, finally made a valuable and worthwhile point: Our writing, collective as an industry, stinks.  I hate to admit it, but author Robin Wauters got it right in a rant about 10 Words I Would Love To See Banned From Press Releases.

Robin is dead-on accurate. Seeing those words in news releases is better at inducing vomiting than ipecac.  Are we lazy and leech onto the lowest hanging fruit when banging away at our keyboards?  Are we choosing sizzle over substance?  I know I’ve heard time and again until my ears bleed about what “sounds good.”  It might be fancy and sound or look good, but realistically we look like foolish grade-school writers and, worse yet, we embarrass our clients.  Every organization wants to talk about “quality” products or services, or “leadership” in a category or on an issue.  But are we clearly differentiating them from the competition?  If we can’t clearly define and back up what we’re writing, thus demonstrating a competitive advantage, then it’s just puffery falling on deaf ears.

Most of all, I suspect, is speed.  The 24/7 information cycle forces many of us to crank out material with little forethought on what we’re trying to accomplish.  Time is of the essence, but at the risk of clear, compelling and informative writing.

Here are the other culprits:

Colleges and universities: Classic liberal arts training, where writing well matters, is disappearing, and we’re getting a young workforce that literally struggles writing something as simple as a new product announcement or new hire release.  Not only are they challenged with how to write the release, but, moreover, with basic sentence structure, grammar and punctuation.  Yes, all you new grads out there will be peeved at me, but it’s true.  Many of us old folks in the profession lament about the quality of writing new grads have, but if you’re dedicated to writing well and are lucky enough to land a job at a place that has the same view, you’ll do just fine – just be prepared for some mentoring.

Social media:  Yes, I said it, social media is destroying the very essence of communication – human interaction, clear and skillful communication and, for *#&(@ sakes, good writing!  It seems to be more about getting information out fast and sacrificing proper grammar and excellence in writing.

PR Industry: Every firm or in-house communications department should ensure they at least have one resident word nerd on the team.  In our shop, all new hires – regardless of their level of experience – go through a lengthy writing program, and every product we produce goes through an arduous QC protocol.  What’s more, we all should follow the basic tenets of communication writing:
•    Identify a need, concern or interest
•    Present a desired behavior as a solution
•    Show the benefits of action and the consequences of inaction
•    Give your reader some rehearsal steps

Spell check: Just ban it, write and edit slowly, and pick up a dictionary.

Millenials: How can we xpct dem 2 care abt ritin good in 140 chrctrs or <?

Consider this:

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. – Rudyard Kipling

Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness – when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven’t had time to know how much better it ought to be. – J.B. Priestley

In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. – Joan Didion

“Increased government oversight” isn’t a phrase that many individuals are likely to be in support of these days, but the new proposed revisions to the Federal Trade Commission’s advertising guidelines may not be such a bad thing.

As consumers experience an erosion of trust in traditional information sources – including corporate America, media, government organizations, etc. – many are turning to their own personal networks (virtual or otherwise) to obtain the information they seek. We’ve seen this firsthand with the rise in popularity of sites like Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, Twitter and other social platforms that allow consumers to share information with people they trust.

In the virtual world, knowing who you can trust is a difficult task, and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawyers have drafted up some new guidelines for the online world, including blogs, product reviews and discussion boards (as well as some offline marketing tactics such as street teams that have surfaced since the guidelines were created in 1980) that are intended to help protect consumers from being misled by less-than-transparent sources.

The Federal Trade Commission, which among other tasks helps protect consumers from false claims in advertising, is set to vote on the revisions to the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (PDF) this fall to include regulations for these new types of media and marketing tactics.

In essence, the new guidelines would require posters to disclose any paid relationships “between the endorser and the advertiser” and could hold both the endorser and the advertiser legally responsible for any false claims. In addition to blogs, the recommended revisions also target discussion boards, such as product review sections.

A recent example of these misleading tactics was perpetrated by Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company in New York, which asked employees to pose as customers and write positive reviews about its procedures on various sites. The company also created a number of sites that appeared to be independent on which they posted additional fake reviews. After an investigation by the New York Attorney General, the company reached a settlement of $300,000.

Transparency is a practice reputable public relations practitioners have been preaching for decades, as we know that being honest and forthright with our actions helps us to build back that eroding trust among our key stakeholders.

While the FTC agrees the new guidelines will be difficult to police, some in the blogging community are screaming “Big Brother,” and are anxious to see how government oversight, and potential investigations, may impact the free flow of information on the blogosphere. The FTC has stated it doesn’t intend to troll the Internet searching for violators and admitted that investigation of this nature will “be most likely because its an outgrowth of some other kind of investigation.”

So whether or not you’re in support of having the government regulate yet another faction of our lives, I think all Internet users, particularly marketing and PR professionals, can agree that a more authentic, honest exchange of information will be an overall improvement.

The annual ICM Crisis report is a fairly in-depth look at the most affected businesses and industries over the past year, explicitly pointing out several instances that garnered media attention (traditional or social) – and there’s the rub.  The analysis is derived from a look at negative news coverage, and the takeaway appears to be that issue and crisis management is merely about keeping bad news off CNN, out of The New York Times or off Twitter.

So there were 10,000-plus crisis situations that made news in ’08, but what about the thousands that didn’t make news because the organizations or industries were prepared for the worst that could happen?

Sure, every CEO’s bladder will burst on the boardroom floor at even the notion of bad publicity, and the poor soul in corporate communications will suffer mop-up duty consequences.  We’ve all been there facing panic-stricken suits looking for a panacea, and it’s not a catheter or ultra-absorbent Jockeys. Our role in these circumstances is obviously helping company executives communicate to their stakeholders, but we’re failing miserably if we leave it at that.

The very premise of issue and crisis management is prevention – not just stopping the headlines or social media storm, but anticipating internal and external threats or vulnerabilities and shoring up those gaps at the operational level.  It’s spending painstaking hours in the C-level suite agonizing over what gives the CEO insomnia and working with the senior management team on systems and protocols, and collaborating with industry, academia, vendors, suppliers and any other party in the supply chain.  It’s putting procedures in place to minimize the likelihood of disruption in business.  (Toward the back end of the ICM report, the authors talk about “smoldering crises,” and this is were we as counselors are most effective.)

Case in point: Shortly after wrapping up a crisis plan for a food client with distribution throughout North America, disaster struck – bacterial contamination.  Systems and protocols were in place; all hands were on deck, and steps were followed.  While all hell broke loose, the crisis – with significant financial implications for the client – was managed effectively and not one headline written.  Was it not a crisis because it didn’t make the news?

Here’s another: A bug practically naked to the human eye has the capability to wipe out the California citrus industry.  News and social media coverage is but one facet of the communications strategy to call upon stakeholders to take action before the problem becomes too serious.  Is it crisis out of control or effective issue management before reaching crisis level?

One more: A widely known national consumer brand dating back to the ’50s closes manufacturing operations, putting thousands out of work.  Protocols supported strategy, and there was barely a mention in any form of media.  Crisis?

It goes without saying that even the best laid plans can likely end up falling apart (human error; unidentified gaps) and manure will hit the fan any second.  It’s the construction site explosion and not just readying the foreman for the media onslaught, but also preparing him to deal with death and liability.  Or the bagged-salad company looped into a national recall, even if its product was perfectly fine; counseling the company and its legal team on strategy, including a review and revision of its disaster preparedness.

Handling media is but one part of the job; operating holistically is doing the whole job.