AT&T Park, San Francisco

The return of baseball season is an exciting time at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker– it’s something to follow, discuss and tease each other about.  It represents hope (although Kerry has expressed “limited optimism” in the Padres management this year) and a renewed excitement in our downtown office, where we have a great view down the third-base line at Petco Park.

If you’ve walked by my desk, it’s not hard to tell I’m a San Francisco Giants fan (hint: you may’ve noticed the “Beard Yourself Like Brian Wilson” poster behind my computer or the Barry Bonds bobblehead on the file cabinet), but above all else, I’m a baseball fan.  I can watch a 0-0 tie going into the 9^th inning of any game and be perfectly happy.  I’m intrigued by matchups, left-handed pitching vs. right-handed hitting, fielders playing close against certain hitters, late inning switches… It’s all fascinating and predicated on the idea of playing to one’s strengths.  Sure, you can put a lineup out there and hope for the best, but good managers are active – they know their competition inside and out, they know who hits better against certain relievers, and they’re thinking several steps ahead for the good of the team.

Public relations done right is a lot like baseball.  It involves analyzing trends, assessing your competition, identifying your strengths and key differentiators, and putting together a solid game plan for success.  We’d be happy to help you think through some of those things for your business and how to best utilize that information to reach your strategic business goals through branding, media relations, online marketing, social media and/or graphic design.  And, if you want to talk baseball, we’d like that too.

“Hitting is fifty percent ‘above the shoulders.’” – Ted Williams  

Media relations can be tricky, but extremely rewarding. It is arguably one of the most important aspects of our job, as it helps our clients communicate with their target audiences. Cultivating relationships is another important aspect of public relations, which is at the core of my particular media relations style.

When working with media, I always try to envision the end result. In thinking about my client’s goals and objectives, I try to envision how I can incorporate the client into a story I would want to read or see on the news. What would entice me to keep reading? What angle is both visually appealing and interesting enough for me not to change the channel?

You’ve got to balance the needs of your client – to make sure you’re communicating the message that will enact their desired behavior change – with a journalist’s need to provide interesting, fair and balanced reporting. You’re building a relationship, both on behalf of your client and yourself. This is where the fun part starts … it’s like figuring out which puzzle piece fits correctly.

I try to put myself in the journalist’s shoes. What would be an enticing story for them, based on their beat or recent stories? What angle would offer the most news value to their readers, listeners or viewers? From my own perspective, what would be down right cool to see in print or on TV?

I also remember that the journalist I’m working with is probably under the same pressure as I am. Everyone has goals to meet, everyone has a boss and everyone has the same general work stress like too many emails and phone calls when you just need to hunker down and get stuff done.

For me, it’s important to build a relationship with the journalists I’m working with. Well, seeing the final product based on all your hard work and last minute coordination is great, too!

Here are some thoughts beyond the traditional rockstar media list and follow-up protocol that I use when preparing for and conducting media relations:

• 1. First and foremost, make sure you understand your client’s goals and objectives. Stories can easily divert from your original, approved pitch, so you need to have a clear understanding of what your client’s goal is to keep the opportunity focused.
• 2. Know the journalist’s beat, types of stories they produce and tone of voice. In your initial email, you can comment on a recent story and even frame your pitch idea in a particular tone of voice to help grab their attention.
• 3. Never underestimate the power of a type-A personality. Organization is key. Whether you’re working with a print or broadcast outlet, your contact probably has many different stories in the works. Make their job easier by providing background perspective, messaging, contact information, visuals, photos, etc., all in one document and well ahead of when they need it. They’ll thank you, and it’ll save you from being stressed out, too.
• 4. Be your natural, wonderful self. Most of us PR folks have friendly, outgoing personalities – use it! You’re building a relationship, so ask some non-work questions (when appropriate), wish them a great weekend, have a candid conversation when you see them in person, follow and comment on social media platforms. You may find you have something in common to form a bond over, and you’ll get a good glimpse into their life and be able to be a better resource for them with this knowledge.
• 5. One of our core values at NST is to be candid, but know when to back off and be supportive. Although your idea may seem like a perfect fit in your head, there are usually many circumstances in play that are out of your control. Be candid and direct about why you think your idea is a good fit for the outlet, but also know when to back off since you’re building trust and a long-term relationship!

Like my philosophy? Obviously, there’s a lot more that goes into a successful media relations campaign, starting with planning and strategy, but if you like what you read and are looking for someone to help you build meaningful professional relationships, give Nuffer, Smith, Tucker a call. We’re happy to help!

Another SXSW in the books – an exhausting yet exhilarating 10 days of panels, featured speakers, obligatory Tweeting, strong coffee, tradeshow booths, BBQ and breakfast tacos, day parties and a serious lack of sleep!  For a conference originally steeped in music and film since 1987, it’s safe to say that SXSW Interactive has become the belle of the ball in Austin during mid-March – more than 25,000 attendees strong.

What started as a small confab for the tech savvy and digitally inclined, SXSW Interactive has morphed into a schizophrenic five days of sensory overload.  The conference thrives on having 20 or more interesting-sounding panels, mentor sessions, workshops and core conversations happening at any given time – combined with dozens of apps designed to organize it all.  Although many of the panels had a distinct ‘101’ feel to them and a few panelists appeared unprepared, there were a few diamonds in the rough that left behind some interesting and possibly compelling residue. Some key takeaways:

1.     Mobile devices will become ‘mobile wallets’ over the next two years, linking consumers to loyalty programs and location-based services (still answering the privacy policy questions).  Supporting this will be more relevant product messaging and brand content delivered through mobile tagging (QR codes, MS Tags, JAGTAG’s, etc.) and integrated into offline and online campaigns. However, some panelists stressed that tagging will become obsolete in the next few years, as full-image recognition linked to search becomes a key campaign engagement tool for marketers.

2.     Much as location-based apps Foursquare and Gowalla were all the rage at SXSW 2010, this year group texting took center stage. New companies GroupMe, Beluga and Yobongo seemed to make the most noise during the conference with parties and demonstrations throughout.  This collection of services enables groups of people to participate in real-time chats on their smartphones – either through conversation or texting.  And since connecting and learning seems to be the real upside of SXSW Interactive, what better test-tube for a new app or service than the dotted and hyperactive geography of downtown Austin in the throws of technology?

3.     PR and marketing agencies need to exercise flexibility in the planning process and learn to adapt to changing requirements while aligning campaign deliverables with shifting business needs – the brand and the customer needs.  The days of rigid fiscal year marketing plans are long gone.

As SXSW Interactive gave way to SXSW Music on Wednesday, Austin started looking less Silicone Valley and more True Blood.  The perfect weather was probably tough on the indie rock vampire set, but it suited me just perfectly.  Musical highlights included:

OFF!

Screaming Females

Obits

Ume

Shabazz Palaces

John Vanderslice

The Head and the Heart

Night Horse

Kasey Anderson and the Honkies

Wanda Jackson

Looking forward to SXSW 2012!

Steven McDonald from OFF!

Do you love your job?

A friend recently asked me this to which I quickly replied, “absolutely” – and I said it without hesitation.  But let’s face it, working at a public relations agency can be tough. We work long hours and are constantly juggling projects. The phone rings and you don’t know who is going to be on the line – and it’s often a client with an aggressive deadline that causes you to shuffle projects around. It can be stressful, and it takes the right kind of person to truly love it, but if you are one of those people, you know working at a PR firm is like no other job out there.

Agency life offers variety (no two client projects are the same), excitement (the field is ever changing with new technologies and tools available every day), and the reward of knowing we are helping our clients succeed. And being a PR professional at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker means so much more than writing news releases – it’s about being part of internal teams that value not only hard work, but also fun and the needs of each individual.  This value of balance is instilled within every NST team member from day one.  We have a culture that is fun and yet strategic in all we do.  Professional development and continual learning is valued, and a strong commitment to doing the right thing and being respectful of others’ points of view are mandatory.

If you are a PR pro who likes to work hard and play hard and who believes in our philosophy, consider joining our team. Think about whether or not you love your job. If you can’t answer “absolutely,” check out what NST has to offer with our job listing.

From PR pros wearing dunce caps to the top tweets of the year, in case you missed it, here’s a sampling of information shared this week by the gang at NST:

Here’s a list all PR professionals should avoid being on: http://bit.ly/e95rc8

Facebook’s Boy Wonder got Time magazine’s Person of the Year, but this little ditty says Twitter still has the marketing power: http://read.bi/gL7WJj

Maybe this is one of the reasons Zuckerberg’s college experiment can’t carry Twitter’s gym bag: http://bit.ly/eSPpQ9

This perspective on Wikileaks says it’s less about social media and more about encrypting information: http://bit.ly/ihj4y0

Peter Shankman, the keynote speaker of our second upcoming San Diego Social Media Symposium, shows us how to use fear to create awesomeness: http://bit.ly/fD2iIF

Today Show anchor Ann Curry’s plea on Twitter to let doctors land in Haiti heads the class of top 2010 tweets: http://on.today.com/eNIRv2

While facilitating a crisis media training session for a relatively large national brand, one of the participants quipped, “But I don’t even care about social media. I’d rather just deal with real people.”

So would most of us.  I long for the day when people less than a half-dozen steps away would get off their arses and have a conversation versus send a stream of e-mail notes. But I digress, and I was one of those curmudgeon print reporters 20 years ago (albeit a cub) who thought hell would freeze over before people would opt for reading their news on a computer monitor.

Every organization should realize social media’s impact on dissemination and consumption of information, news and entertainment. Market power is shifting from organizations and brands, consumer and trade, to the consumer largely because of technology. Social media continues to grow as a consumer tool for decision-making, and it still seems many organizations and brands either struggle with, or refuse to accept, how or why they need to know how to engage in the Internet-connected, Tweeting, Facebooking, photo- and video-uploading stakeholder-engaged world. The seemingly few who are connected, Tweeting, Facebooking, et al. and inviting engagement from stakeholders recognize these connections are good for their organizations, brands and their business.  They “get it” that engagement is critical, whereas hordes of others in social media just see this as another platform to push out marketing messages a la Web 1.0

This consumer-driven engagement brings peer-to-peer endorsements and criticisms on organizations, brands, products, services and issues to an extraordinarily higher level than ever experienced. Word, not too long ago, spread gradually – days, weeks, maybe even months.  Today, with the Internet and all its social media outlets, we’re talking a matter of hours and even minutes, and not just with the families on your block.  Consumers can reach entire communities locally and globally.

That alone has a profound impact on how we manage crisis situations.  Social media is becoming the preferred platform on which an organization’s crisis unfolds and where control of the matter at hand is won or lost.  And that preference is coming from all corners except the organizations facing the crisis.

A prime example is the “United Breaks Guitars” fiasco.  The airline refused to take responsibility for breaking Dave Carroll’s guitar, and after nearly a year of getting nowhere, Carroll released his now famous video about United on the Internet, exposing the airline’s poor customer service. The video gained more than 500,000 views within a week, and mainstream media, including CNN, NPR, CBS, USA Today, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other traditional outlets globally, picked up the story, some citing “digital revenge.” Experts far and wide said United waited too long, finally proclaiming on Twitter, “This has struck a chord w/us and we’ve contacted him directly to make it right.” Too little too late? Many say, “absolutely.”

Ditto for Domino’s.  The pizza HQ waited 24 hours before posting a response on YouTube, where two workers – clearly anticipating their Culinary Institute of America acceptance letters – literally picked at some new ideas for ingredients.

There’s also Nestle, when consumers got a sweet tooth for revenge over the company’s interactions with consumers and Greenpeace supporters on Nestle’s Facebook page.  When you insult someone online, be prepared for the mob mentality – and to never win.

And there’s British Petroleum.  Where do we begin?  How about just looking at the hijacking of its brand on Twitter (see @BPGlobalPR).  Yes, it can happen to you and most know it’s a fake, but the lesson is realizing the risk of losing control of your brand.

This is all what digital trends expert Steve Rubel says clearly about what we’re facing: “An entire generation is growing up that will never dial a 1-800 number to reach customer care.”

We are dealing with real people, about 227.7 million of them in the U.S.; just not on the phone or in person – they’re on your desktop, laptop, mobile phone, iPad and soon to the next tech gadget coming down the pipeline, except for Kin.

Are you ready?

WD-40 Company has trusted Nuffer, Smith, Tucker as its PR agency for more than 15 years.  When the company said it wanted to further position itself as a socially responsible business, establish WD-40® as a staple in the automotive aftermarket, and educate automotive end-users about the product’s many uses, NST went to work right away to help build the WD-40/SEMA Cares Camaro.  Partnering with leaders in the automotive world to build a custom vehicle that could travel the West Coast, turn heads and be auctioned off for a good cause, NST also utilized the build partners as credible aftermarket experts to promote the ways they use WD-40 in their shops.

Live Tweeting

Along with traditional PR outreach, which led to articles about the vehicle on AutoBlog, CarandDriver.com, the Huffington Post and the Detroit Examiner, NST also created a special tab on WD-40’s Facebook page that highlighted the program, and live tweeted from the Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Show and Auction to keep fans up to speed.  NST also worked with Cie Studios to create a virtual version of the vehicle that could be raced in Nitto 1320 Legends, an online racing game and social network.

Got results?  The WD-40/SEMA Cares Camaro sold at auction for $75,000, with all proceeds benefiting Childhelp® and The Victory Junction Gang® Camp children’s charities.  Following are some more results from the program:

Facebook Tab

Online Media Reach: 35,067,183 impressions
Broadcast Media Reach: 1,000,000 viewers
Print Media Circulation: 560,830 readers

Total Event Reach: 1,310,000 in-person visitors
Nitto 1320 Legends: 1,000,000 members
Twitter Buzz: 1,000 tweets about the vehicle

Congratulations to Matt Tachdjian, the winning bidder, and to all who made this a successful program!

The Tiger Woods brand consistently delivered on its expectations — integrity, dignity, determination, competitive fire and loyalty — on and off the golf course.  The brand experience was highly attractive to be repeated by fans, endorsers, news media and even his competitive foes, all telling of great stories and experiences with anything Tiger.

For Toyota, quality was the axis of its brand. The automaker entered the U.S. market decades ago amid a storm of skepticism on reliability, and Toyota quickly and has since silenced the naysayers, albeit until recently.

In produce, character is often reflected in the quality of products delivered to customers and consumers alike — freshness, taste and appearance — and in environmental stewardship, labor relations and food safety standards.

Read more thoughts in The Packer on what leaders in produce, and any other industry, can learn from Tiger and Toyota.

Toyota is curiously sitting at no. 7 in Millward Brown’s top-10 list of most trusted brands as Congress spent the better half of the week giving Toyota a tongue-lashing for its handling and mishandling of the automaker’s quality control crisis.

The study’s authors readily point out that the data was collected over the course of 2009 and doesn’t reflect Toyota’s current dilemma as it unfurled at the beginning of this year.  The authors also note the automaker could learn from Tylenol, which in 1982 recalled 31 million bottles of pills after seven people were killed in the tampering scare.  That brand, which was forced to recall children’s liquid medicine last year, sits at no. 6 in the study.

Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson has a history of effectively managing crisis situations, though the FDA earlier this year ridiculed the company for being slow to respond in its most recent crisis.  What this goes to show you, however, is a history of doing the right thing and acting aggressively in a crisis situation can maintain and build trust among stakeholders, consumers in particular.  Trust is fragile, and how you respond in a crisis situation can build and maintain trust, the authors state.

Toyota started off this week with public apologies before Congress.  How it fixes its problems, communicates with stakeholders and develops systems to prevent further lapses will determine if the automaker regains or builds trust, and where it will stand in next year’s report.

Tiger Woods spent about 14 minutes doing what he should have done nearly three months ago: he took his head out of the sand trap and decided to address his crisis head-on, albeit in a tightly controlled environment.

Better late than never, and we can spend hours rehashing the premise of acting quickly to manage a crisis (hundreds did it when news broke last fall, myself included, and more will berate him for waiting too long).  What Tiger did accomplish today was take that critical first step down the longest fairway of his life.  Rather than jump on the bandwagon and dissect everything he did wrong in his “no-questions-asked press conference,” here’s a look at what did well:

• Pulling his head out of the sand.  Crisis management is pure hell loaded with fear and uncertainty for any organization, let alone one individual, unaccustomed to dealing with panic.
• Acknowledging it was his own behavior and actions that led to his tarnished image and brand.  He didn’t make excuses and took accountability.
• Pointing out he veered from his personal set of values.  Very few in a crisis situation get this, that reputations and brands are built and will fall based on values.
• Admitting the impact of his actions on others, particularly his wife and kids; additionally, his fans – children in particular, topping it off with acknowledging he failed as a role model (Charles Barkley be damned).
• Asking to believe in him, not right away, but over time.  Tiger knows he needs to regain trust, from his family, from the corporate sponsorship world, from his peers and from his fans – and he also knows that’s a feat that won’t happen simply in the days and weeks ahead.  It will be his actions over a longer period of time – off the course.

Check out this interview on KUSI News on Tiger Woods’ first public appearance http://bit.ly/dff9ei