Inside Atlanta PR

Posted on February 20, 2012 by chris

Jeff Dickerson likes a good battle and he’s in another now: Transportation

Over the years, PR pro Jeff Dickerson has written for the AJC, the Atlanta Business Chronicle and appears on local TV, but what he enjoys most is fighting the tough battle. He’s been doing it since high school.

“My attraction is to those cases that look like they can’t be won,” Jeff said Friday, driving from the WAGA Fox-5 Studios where he just finished taping another segment of the Georgia Gang. “I spent a lot of years at newspapers getting people into trouble with the press and that prepared me pretty well to help people get out of trouble with the press.

“In high school, I went out for the debate team. The debate topic was gun control. ‘Which side are you on,’ they asked me. I said, ‘I don’t care, just give me a side and I’ll argue it.’ ”

Jeff Dickerson

Right now Jeff is fighting for the July 31 Transportation Referendum, working with two other communications professionals, Bert Brantley and Saba Long, for passage of the 1 percent transportation sales tax that appears on metro area ballots.

“We’ve never come together as a region,” Jeff says. “Never ever. Now we can raise $6 billion, generating nearly 200,000 jobs over 20 years and get some traffic relief and stay competitive with other regions that want to eat our lunch. We have to learn how to stop thinking parochially. We’ve just got to do it. We have to think beyond this county didn’t get train or that project. We have to think as a region.”

Jeff didn’t have such long-range thinking when he left the University of Michigan and started walking down the street in Detroit – in January in the snow.

“I wanted to be a lawyer and was on my way to the post office to get apply for a job,” Jeff said. “The wind was blowing and the post office was a half mile away. So I turned instead into the Detroit News building since it was closer and I got a job right away as a stock boy. Soon, I was on the copy clerk in the editorial department.” Within five years of that snowy walk, he was editorial page editor of the News, which at the time had a daily circulation of 650,000 and 850,000 on Sunday.

“The News was in an amazing newspaper war with the Free Press – they were 15,000 apart in circulation. After I moved to the AJC, former managing editor Jim Minter discovered I had written some opinion pieces with the conservative News and he said wanted me to edit the Journal editorial page (then separate from the more liberal Constitution). I wrote on and off for the editorial pages 17 years,” Jeff said.

He never did become a lawyer, but he thinks the PR industry has lots of parallels. “A PR professional is like a lawyer in that everyone deserves a public defense,” Jeff says. “Only a fool represents himself in the court of law and it is pretty much the same in the court of public opinion – except out here there are no rules, no judge, no discovery – a reporter doesn’t have to share information with our clients the way a prosecutor has to share with the defense. I think it is much more foolhardy to go into public event without seeking professional help.”

Former Atlanta PR executive Betsey Weltner finally talked Jeff out of the newspaper business. “A week before I was to join Betsey’s firm, I called her and said, ‘Tell me again what it is I’ll be doing in PR?’ I had no concept of what I was to be doing. I had worked at paper for so long, it was sort of a huge risk in 2000, when newspapers were still fairly healthy. She said, ‘You’ll figure it out when you get here.’ The first Saturday a client had a big issue come up and I jumped right in. Then I realized what I was supposed to be doing. It was an easy transition.”

Later that year, he went out on his own, Jeff started Dickerson Communications with the Georgia Bankers Association as a client and later SCANA. He helped SCAD secure its Midtown campus and then jumped into the fight for the parking lot in Piedmont Park. He represented the Atlanta Botanical Garden, which had to secure approval to build the lot despite neighborhood opposition – a project that reminds him of the current Transportation debate.

“I think our chances of passage of this initiative are 50/50. If we do a lot of work and really articulate the benefits of coming together as a region, then we will prevail. We have to listen and appreciate and respect others’ opinions and argue benefits and not be judgmental. If we do that, it will put us over the top., ”

He hopes to ride some of the new less-congested roads on his motorcycle – one of his hobbies. “I just jump on my bike and I never really know where I’m going to end up,” he said.

Sort of like that snowy day a long time ago in Detroit.

– Chris Schroder

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Trending

Posted on February 20, 2012 by sarah

Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer Study Finds Trust in Government Decrease, Media on the Rise

Edelman recently released the results of its 12th annual Trust Barometer survey. Given everything that happened in 2011, it’s no surprise that trust is pretty much decreasing across the board. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer examines trust in four key institutions – government, business, media and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) – as well as communications channels and sources. In the U.S., trust in government remained stable, despite all the political discourse, but the majority of countries surveyed do not trust their government to do what is right. Governmental officials are also not the least credible spokespeople, with only 29 percent considering them credible.
Like every year, the Barometer looked at the number of times people need to hear something to believe it – 63 percent said between three and five times, which is a four-point jump from last year.

”Business is now better placed than government to lead the way out of the trust crisis,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. “But the balance must change so that business is seen both as a force for good and an engine for profit.”

Media happened to be the only institution to see an increase in trust over the past year, with new media jumping 75 percent. This is how media is broken down:

  • Traditional media is still the most trusted source (+10% from 2011)
  • Online multiple sources, such as search engines and news/RSS feeds, trails traditional media, but the gap is small (+18%)
  • Social media, which consists of social networking sites, constant-sharing sites, blogs and microblogging sites, saw the biggest percentage increase (+75%)
  • Corporate media was the least-trusted media source, but still jumped +23% from 2011 (Corporate communications and corporate/product advertising)

Before moving forward into the Barometer’s implications in the field of PR, I wanted to mention one more interesting set of findings. As previously mentioned, government officials suffered the biggest decrease in trust of any spokespeople (and in Barometer history), falling 14 percent. Only 29 percent of those surveyed viewed them as credible. CEOs were not far behind, falling from fourth most-trusted to second least-trusted. As these two categories become less a source of information, people are once again turning to their peers. “A person like me” has re-emerged as one of the three most credible spokespeople, with its biggest increase in credibility since 2004. Regular employees also saw an increase in trust, rising 16 points. So it would seem the smart thing to do would be for CEOs to empower regular employees to drive the conversation among their peers about the company and its role in society.

Instead of making your head spin with more numbers and findings, let’s talk about how this affects public relations, and more importantly our clients. The study shows that traditional media is in fact not dead, but actually a trusted source of information. Traditional media – TV, newspapers, magazines, radio– and online search engines are the most trusted sources of information for people searching for general news and information, new product information, news on an environmental crises and company announcements. This makes total sense. For instance, when news of the Costa Concordia cruise ship accident first broke, I heard something about it on the radio in my car. I didn’t have time to listen to the whole story, so I went home and Googled it. Other people saw it on TV over their morning coffee, and still others read about it in the paper. Traditional media also did a solid job covering numerous crises in 2011, including the Bank of America debit card fee, the Netflix/Qwikster snafu and the Occupiers.

Even though I do like to read an actual newspaper every now and then, as a 24-year old, I’m much more likely to use digital media and social media to read about current affairs – and I trust those sources. I use my iPhone to look at Twitter, which has a story from CNN that I click through to read the story and watch a video. It’s no surprise to me that social networks witnessed the most dramatic percentage increase as trusted sources of information. We need to communicate this rise to our clients. The continuing rise of trust in SoMe and online sources is a signal that our clients need to think beyond print while communicating. Again, traditional media is NOT dying, so we should still focus efforts on placement there, but should not count untraditional media out. We need to provide a complete media cloverleaf and use all of these outlets together effectively in order to communicate effectively.

That being said, gaining new fans for your clients isn’t an equivalent to ultimate success and trust. Social media can be used to show transparency and to show CEOs are “people like me.” Social media is not traditional media, and cannot be thought of similarly to traditional media. Instead it needs to be thought of as bringing people together around a common interest – your client’s service/product.

Here are a few more takeaways we can learn from the Barometer:

  • We need to work on raising our clients’ search engine optimization (SEO) rank. It is so important to ensure content about your client can be easily found online.
  • We also need to get our CEOs and experts to talk. A great example is a Thought Leadership site. CEOs, presidents and key executives write weekly blogs here and that offers transparency. These are heads of companies writing their thoughts for the whole world to read. Hopefully if more CEOs write blogs, become active on SoMe sites, etc. their trust will increase for the 2013 study.
  • The very first PR maxim I learned was people usually aren’t interested in what you have to say… unless it concerns them. Listen to consumer needs and feedback and place consumers ahead of profits.

 

If you’d like to see the results and draw your own conclusions you can click here to see the presentation. Also, leave a comment below if any of the results are surprising to you or if you have other ideas to increase trust for clients.

2012 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Deck

View more presentations from Edelman Insights

by Sarah Funderburk

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Inside Atlanta PR

Posted on February 13, 2012 by chris

Rob Baskin on What Clients Really Want – and, yes, he should know.

Rob Baskin has worked on all sides of the PR equation: as a reporter, a client and now as president of the Atlanta office of Weber Shandwick, a global PR agency with offices in 81 countries.

“I’m equally comfortable on either side of the desk,” he said Friday. “It’s really one and the same skills, though applied differently. Having worked both sides, I’m now better at both of them.”

Rob Baskin

So what do clients really want, we asked?

“Clients really want three things: they want their PR firm to listen better, execute well and to be a good source of ideas,” Rob said. “Agencies and their people, by necessity, have to be in the forefront of change. A communications professional’s skills have to be honed ever sharper each year.

“We are all subject to innovation in marketing and communications – ever more true with technological innovation – but certain principles of communication have not changed. Public relations professionals need to be widely read, well informed generally and specifically on how people acquire and use information. Of course there are online aggregators, but younger professionals should remember there’s this great invention called the newspaper. It organizes a summary of what’s going on in the world – whether it’s in print, online or on a mobile device – in an informed way that provides a general overview and gives its readers a sense of community that can be useful to clients.”

Like a lot of PR folks, Rob started off in newspapers, first as a reporter for the Marietta Daily Journal covering county government and later joining a trade group (Southern Newspapers Publishers Association) as program director, training reporters and editors in 14 states in the fundamentals of newspapering.

“My great lament as a journalist is that the newspaper industry had a virtual monopoly on subject expertise in whole areas of local interest – government, schools, lifestyle, sports and they squandered that. They thought they were in the newsprint business and didn’t understand they were in the news business and they unknowingly abdicated their leadership. They didn’t have to.”

Rob said he went back a couple of years ago and read “Future Shock,” a 1970 book by Alvin Toffler. “I was blown away by how accurately he forecast how we’d live, how information would flow and how people would gather information. I liken the changes to what the agency business was 20 to 30 years ago: It was checkers and now it’s a three-dimensional chess game that never ends. The PR professional has to know how information moves through society and to manage that flow. We have to present it in an influential manner. While that’s always been true, the dynamic is dramatically more complicated today which, in turn, makes our business much more interesting.”

Fitzgerald + Co. CEO Dave Fitzgerald brought Rob over to Weber Shandwick a year ago. “We were friends for 30 years and we had had conversations about my joining his PR unit four or five times over that period,” Rob recalled. “In the fall of 2010, we literally bumped into each other and Dave said, ‘Am I ever going to be able to lure you over here?’ I said, ‘Well, actually, this is the perfect time to make the deal.’ ”

Rob first entered the PR world as account director at Cohn & Wolfe when there were eight people in the firm that soon grew into the biggest shop in the South. He was later its general manager in between stints on the client side at Coca-Cola, where he was director of PR in North America and director of corporate communications during Coke’s fast-growth years in the 1980s and 1990s. Before joining WS, Rob was with MSL Group, serving as managing director for MSL Atlanta and interim managing director for MSL San Francisco and MSL Los Angeles.

A Cleveland, Ohio native, Rob majored in political science and earned a graduate degree in journalism at Ohio State before heading south in the late 1970s.

So, what lesson did he learn he’d like to share with PR folks?

“Some agency people get frustrated when they present new ideas to clients and the clients don’t readily embrace them. Clients work on funding and execution cycles and they can’t always make decisions quickly. Clients want ideas, but for them to take root can take time. A PR person has to have patience and staying power.

“Eighty percent of the jobs in a PR firm are tactical in nature and that is a must – you throw yourself into those details and work it hard to make programs successful. But that’s table stakes. Every agency does that or tries to. What differentiates agencies are the consistent efforts at presenting new ideas that bolster a client’s business objectives and offering them up in such a way that clients keep asking for more – even when they don’t immediately act on them.”

– Chris Schroder

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Inside Atlanta PR

Posted on February 6, 2012 by chris

Media Guide project turned into a business for Mitch Leff

Little did Mitch Leff know in the early 1990s when his boss at Cohn & Wolfe asked him to take over the firm’s 20-year-old Atlanta media guide that he was looking at a future revenue stream for him and his wife Karen. After he opened his own media relations firm in 2002, PR people around Atlanta would suggest that Mitch revive the annual guide that had originally been a printed booklet.

“PR people took great pleasure in calling me to say it was out of date right after it was printed, but of course it was,” Mitch said. “Media people move around all the time and some always did the week we printed the guide. The firm used it internally and then began selling it to others for $10. We used the money from selling a couple of thousand each year to pay for the firm Christmas Party.

Mitch Leff

“I told Jim Overstreet we could sell it for more than that. He finally let us raise the price to $16 or $20, including an occasional updated insert. People would show me their books all written over with changes. The project went on until Cohn & Wolfe closed their Altanta office in early 2000s.” Mitch said.

“Ten years ago when I was on my own, I thought about doing it as a CD, but it turned out the cost of a CD was more expensive than a website – and you’d still have to update a CD,” Mitch said. Finally, he decided to produce his own database online and call it Leff’s Atlanta Media. (Schroder PR designed and built the website for him.)

Today, hundreds of Atlanta subscribers pay $149 for an annual subscription to the database – “an incredible bargain!” Mitch proclaims. “We update it every day and update whole sections every month. The website allows you to search for more than 1,500 contacts in a 15-county area of metro Atlanta – print, TV, radio, online, national bureaus and freelance writers.”

In addition to the directory, Mitch provides subscribers with a PR guidelines section, tips on how a business can work with the media, Microsoft Word templates for pitches, press releases and fact sheets. He’s expanded the site to include Mitch’s Media Musings, where Mitch can explain media moves in more detail, as well as Mitch’s Media Match, a companion site that connects journalists with local sources to help flesh out stories on which they are working. It’s free to journalists and only $150 a year for a firm that might want to post experts on its searchable site and receive emails from reporters on deadline who need a source to interview.

Mitch has thought about expanding the service to Georgia or other Southeast markets, but it already takes up to 20 percent of his time and he does have a media relations firm and a family to manage.

A Long Island, NY, native, Mitch moved to Atlanta in 1979 and graduated from Peachtree High School and Emory. At Emory, he majored in finance while planning concerts on campus. “I’d bribe college reporters with tickets in return for an article – something that doesn’t work in the real world,” he said. He graduated a few months after “Black Monday” on Wall Street, eliminating most opportunities for a finance job.

“So I started looking at other things to do and since I’d been doing marketing and PR, I thought maybe I could get paid to do it.”

He first started working on the Goodwill Games during a 10-year stint at Cohn & Wolfe. He later joined Edelman, GCI and Turner Broadcasting before starting Leff & Associates with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America as his first client, a non-profit for which he had been volunteering and which he still serves today.

One of the ironic parts of his job is “when reporters call me and say I haven’t written about their publication lately in my blog. So I just tell them, ‘Send me some news!’ ”

– Chris Schroder

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Trending

Posted on February 6, 2012 by sarah

Power of the People: Planned Parenthood vs. Komen for the Cure

If you still had doubts about the power of social media after the SOPA incident, the recent Komen vs. Planned Parenthood incident should erase them.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve no doubt heard that Komen for the Cure recently decided to halt grants to Planned Parenthood that were mainly used for breast cancer screening for women who needed financial assistance. Planned Parenthood said the move was made as Komen gave in to pressure from anti-abortion activists. Komen said the main reason was that Planned Parenthood was under investigation in Congress. (To learn more about the investigation, click here to read an LA Times article.)

Though many blog entries, news articles and op-eds have been written on this PR disaster, what we should take away is the role social media played. The story could have gone under the radar, especially because the amount of money involved was such a small portion of Planned Parenthood’s annual budget. Instead, Facebook and Twitter users employed these tools to speak out against Komen’s decision. What used to be something discussed over dinner, has now turned into instantaneous posting, viewing by social media users, and potentially allowing millions to see.

Minutes after the news broke, social media sites were bombarded with viewpoints on the decision. Women from all over announced they would “stop buying pink.” A “Komen Can Kiss My Mammogram” board on Pinterest was created, pinned with “I support the cause, not the pink” and “We will not RUN for Susan G. Komen, we STAND with Planned Parenthood” pins. On the other side, anti-choice supporters were also vocal with their tweets and posts, like encouraging followers to write to Komen to thank them “for their truly pro-woman decision to defund abortion group.”

One of the several anti-Komen pins found on Pinterest.

What was most surprising was Komen’s response: no immediate response. Komen didn’t post to its social media sites the day the story broke or the day after. Its only action of Facebook was to delete the anti-Komen comments. On Twitter, it only tweeted a story about prostate cancer in mummies. Even Komen sponsors received backlash from Planned Parenthood supporters. People vowing to join an “Energizer boycott,” until Komen reversed its decision, quickly overtook the battery provider’s Facebook page.

Komen has since reversed its decision, planning to “amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Obviously ignoring a problem is not the best way to handle a situation. Komen was barraged with angry reactions and promises to take donations elsewhere, while Planned Parenthood gained 10,000 new donors, raised $3 million in three days and managed to recast its controversial image. Komen acted like this incident was taken completely out of context and had nothing to do with pro-choice/anti-choice politics, but with the presidential election coming up in November, American’s are extra-sensitive to hot issues like abortion.

So, what now? Komen’s next moves are very crucial to the organization. It’s going to take years, if ever, to regain the public’s trust. According to Bloomberg, two-thirds of more than 3,600 sentiments expressed online about the split were negative to Komen. Even after the decision was reversed, questions have been raised about Komen “playing politics with women’s lives.” It doesn’t matter now how much money the foundation has raised in the fight against breast cancer, it will have every move questioned from now on. Will Komen choose sides in the abortion debate? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. It’s already a lose-lose situation, in my opinion. Komen angered and lost the trust of pro-choice advocates by pulling money from Planned Parenthood, and then did the same thing to anti-choice advocates by reinstating the grants.

I think the most important thing right now is transparency. Anti-choice supporters have come out to say they didn’t even know Komen supported Planned Parenthood, and pro-choice advocates may never trust anything Komen communicates ever again. Komen executives need to act quickly and communicate everything to the public. Instead of having a silent social media presence, its activity should be off the charts. It should use the “hair of the dog” approach with its social media strategy. Social media had a major affect on Komen’s image last week. This week, the goal should be to use social media to regain trust (and followers). Every move Komen makes is going to be scrutinized, but engaging with its social media fans is a much better plan than staying silent and inviting more distrust.

– Sarah Funderburk

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PR 101

Posted on February 6, 2012 by sarah

Looking at Differences between Agency PR versus Corporate PR

As per 101 style, today’s post is about a basic part of public relations: agency vs. corporate. I understand that in our current economy, we don’t always have the luxury to be picky about which positions we accept, but it’s still important to know the difference.

I’ll start with a disclaimer: my only “experience” with in-house PR is my social media internship with Auburn University’s Division of Student Affairs. However, I have researched the two aspects of our field when applying for jobs and when I decided to write this entry, and I’ve spoken about the pros/cons associated with each with several PR pros who have worked in both. So, since I know a little bit more about agency PR, I’ll start there.

While agency public relations is not for everyone, I have thoroughly enjoyed it. The first reason I enjoy agency PR is the most obvious difference between the two: variety. Agency practitioners are exposed to different clients in varying sectors, which has allowed me to work with everyone from architects to Broadway clients. There’s something fulfilling about working with a range of clients. I face new challenges everyday and although it can be stressful to keep track of projects, all it takes is organization and prioritizing to keep your head above water.

I imagine that agencies tend to work at a faster pace. Colleagues are constantly working on separate projects, jumping from one client to another. If you want to work in an agency, be sure you know how to juggle. It can be difficult to focus on one project at a time, but don’t lose sight of overall goals. Time management is essential in agencies.

The last reason I’ll mention is agencies can have as many or as few clients as they want. I’d guess that most agencies are always on the lookout for new clients, so there’s always an opportunity to work on a new exciting account and add to your resume.

On the other hand, PR professionals who work in-house have the opportunity to be more focused on overall strategy. Agency work can be separated by project, so it’s easy to focus more on each single goal rather than a company’s overall strategy.

Also, in a corporate environment, the expectation is that the team you work with will be your team for much longer than in an agency. The projects you take on and the responsibilities assigned and encountered have the potential to create lasting impressions of you and your abilities. So, basically it’s important to be in it for the long haul at a corporate firm. You may never know the thrill of a 12-hour turnaround on a make-it-or-break-it project for a client, but you will make a lasting impression with a focus on results and your contribution to the credibility of a team.

I take tremendous pride in my work and the results Schroder PR gets for our clients. But corporate PR is all about one brand, one company producing one set of results. Clients may come and go in an agency, but in corporate, that’s it. You are part of the company that needs the results. You see its successes and failures every day, firsthand. You’ll probably tend to be just a tad more prideful and more defensive or your brand.

Lastly, I think independence is a major factor in this great debate. At an agency, you may be in charge on certain accounts, campaigns or social media accounts. Essentially, you are responsible for your destiny. If you do well and deliver for your clients, you will get credit for your accomplishment, whether internally or from the client. In a corporate environment, it’s more deliberate and structured because everyone is thinking about how to help the company. Your goals will rely on the contributions you make to the team and others’ developments.

So while corporate PR may be repetitive to some, you frequently take a deeper dive into each project. And while you may have the chance to work independently more frequently in an agency, your colleagues will typically have a wide range of professional backgrounds and your office becomes a melting pot of ideas. There’s no concrete answer to which is better or worse, it just depends on the PR practitioner.

– Sarah Funderburk

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PRo Bono

Posted on February 6, 2012 by chris

Cookerly PR planning fashion show to aid Children’s Centers

After a broken dishwasher left the children at Murphy-Harpst Children’s Centers eating off of paper plates, the staff at Cookerly Public Relations pitched in to buy a new dishwasher. During the holidays, employees further adopted the children at the residential treatment facility for severely abused and neglected children by purchasing gifts from their wish lists. Over the past three years, pro-bono support for this Atlanta-based charity has evolved far past the occasional press release – it’s become personal.

Carol Cookerly, president of Cookerly Public Relations and an avid horsewoman, was familiar with Murphy-Harpst and its equine therapy program for years; about three years ago, she began looking for ways to connect clients to the organization. As she learned more, she decided to connect not just herself, but her company. The relationship started with asking the center to create memorable holiday cards for clients. Cookerly said, “I was impressed with Murphy-Harpst’s equine therapy program and thought clients would enjoy receiving cards that the children designed; pictures that showed the joy these children received from their horses. The cards were a hit with clients and it felt good to know that the proceeds were going to a cause I believed in.” Little did she know, Murphy-Harpst would not only become a special cause for herself, but meaningful for the whole agency.

Cookerly PR employees stand with Brian Hampton from Murphy-Harpst with gifts the staff collected for the children.

Recognizing the needs of Murphy-Harpst, Cookerly brought the center on as a pro bono client. The agency has fully embraced Murphy-Harpst as a client and provides support with media relations, collateral support, digital marketing, event planning and promotional items, among others.

Cookerly Public Relations has also taken on agency-wide initiatives to support larger needs of Murphy-Harpst, such as the dishwasher and holiday gift donations. Employees have also visited the treatment center to further personalize the connection.

The agency’s current initiative is working on a spring fashion show at Tootsies in Buckhead to benefit Murphy-Harpst. The event will be held on March 15 and will include a professional fashion show, cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres, as well as personal appearances by clothing designer David Peck and jewelry designer Jill Reno. VIP tickets are $200, which includes a seat for the fashion show and a gift bag, and general admission tickets are $100. To reserve tickets, please RSVP to MHCCfashionshow@gmail.com. To learn more about Murphy-Harpst Children’s Centers, visit murphyharpst.org or facebook.com/MurphyHarpst.

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Inside Atlanta PR

Posted on January 30, 2012 by chris

Claudia Patton Developing Talent – and Tastes – around the World for Edelman

When Claudia Patton was named Chief Talent Officer (CTO) five months ago for Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, she figured she would be spending a lot of time helping its many U.S.-based employees expand their global horizons. So she had to smile when she was in London recently and met with a PR professional from their Shanghai office who was preparing to spend 18 months in Atlanta as part of Edelman’s “Fellow” program.

“I think she might have been a little intimidated when she connected with our Atlanta team via Skype video,” Claudia said Monday, back in her Atlanta office. “There she was in Shanghai and she looks into the screen and sees 80 Edelman employees staring back at her. She asked what it would be like when she moves here in May, so each of us took a turn telling her what we would partner with her on. She took it very seriously, so when I saw her in London, she had a detailed list of questions she wanted to know more about, including ‘hot dog at The Varsity.’

“That’s not something you can really explain,” Claudia said. “You just have to experience it.”

Claudia Patton

Claudia began her professional experience as a teacher in the DeKalb County Schools, later entering the music business before teaching a commercial music course at Georgia State. Being an entrepreneur by nature, she started a small PR firm on the side with a hospitality focus. The Headline Group eventually grew to $3 million in revenue and captured Richard Edelman’s attention when he was looking to grow his fledgling Atlanta office.

She not only grew the combined office from the 14th largest firm in Atlanta to the largest, she was soon appointed the Southeast leader for the New York-based PR firm. She says the teaching background really helps her understand how to help each individual employee grow his or her international perspective to meet the increasingly global client base.

“You have to listen first,” she says. “Then you can pick up how each person learns.”

No longer responsible for a profit & loss ledger, Claudia is charged with ensuring the firm has a global mindset, “developing growth plans for each of our employees whether they are sitting at their desks or working in a global client’s office.”
Her world now is filled with developing career paths, building computer training programs with graphics and video, ensuring everyone is sharing knowledge and cultural insights and organizing the Fellows program, which immerses employees in a totally different culture for 18 months at a time.

“Already I’ve found when leaders are repatriated into their original offices, there is a big difference in their mindset and their passion about their clients. It is supercharging the company for our next generation. Everyone has to understand each other culturally as well as from a business perspective. We are planning who we are going to be years from now.”

It’s required a little cultural change for Claudia as well. She wakes up a couple of hours earlier each morning to be on the phone with Europe and then late at night she’s talking to Asia.

“It’s cut into my exercise time,” she said. “But I can get back to that soon enough. Right now, it’s all very exciting.”

– Chris Schroder

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PR 101

Posted on January 30, 2012 by sarah

It bothers me when people confuse their, there and they’re.

After last week’s discussion with Collin, I began thinking more about proofreading. It really is a basic tool that all public relations professionals have to utilize. Because good grammar is a necessity for our field, it bothers me that much more when I spot typos or hear someone use an adverb incorrectly. I wish everyone had to take the “Newspaper Fundamentals” course that I took at Auburn University that gave students spelling, word usage and AP style tests, or the grammar test I took before interviewing for my current position at Schroder Public Relations.

So, in an effort to prevent embarrassment for my fellow PR pros, this post is going to remind us of some common proofreading mistakes. We all know that even spell check doesn’t catch every slipup.

An 18-point checklist from PR Daily.

One of the most annoying errors I see is a sentence like this: “I’ll meet you their.” Wow. If I receive an email, or even a text, that misuses their, they’re and there, I cringe.  Homonyms are tricky. Spell checker didn’t even put a squiggly green line under the mistake above, so it surely won’t notice if you use “no” instead of “know” or “two” instead of “too” or “to.”

Which brings me to word usage. Let’s start with more than vs. over. More than is preferred with numbers, while over generally refers to spatial elements. Someone once told me to think of the nursery rhyme, “The cow jumped over the moon.” That’s worked so far. Also, please remember that the phrase is more than … not then. Farther refers to physical distance, while further refers to an extension of time or degree. And AP says to use that and which in referring to inanimate objects or animals without names.

Toward never ends in an s. Also, according to Daily Writing Tips and me,  “anyways” is a “colloquial corruption of ‘anyway.’ I know these are trivial things that are going to overcook some grits, but it’s (not its) important to go back to the basics sometimes. While we’re (not were) at the basics, the proper form of OK is just that, OK. “Okay,” “Ok” and “ok” should not be used according to AP style. (I know a certain editor at New South Publishing will be very happy I included that.)

I know that I have trouble with affect and effect, but a professor once told me just go with the one that sounds right. That obviously doesn’t always work, but just remember that most of the time, affect is a verb and effect is a noun. Or think of the aardvark. The arrow affected the aardvark. The effect was eye-popping.

I could go on for – four – days about other common mistakes, but we all see them everyday … and then point them out to anyone around. Hopefully this PR 101 entry will make you double check all releases and emails before pressing send.

Here are some helpful sites … and some examples of mistakes you don’t want to make:

 

- Sarah Funderburk

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Posted on January 30, 2012 by marynevaire
Posted on January 30, 2012 by mary nevaire

Media Relations in a Social Media World

Elyse Hammett and Kimberly Kennedy

In the 1950s, the model of communication between PR representatives and the media could be drawn in a simple black and white chart. Then, charts became PowerPoint presentations, letters became emails, and phones now talk to you. The digital age consists of blogs, email, Facebook, Google Chat and Google +, RSS feeds, texts, Twitter, and YouTube. All the avenues might make you miss the easy days of Andy of Mayberry, but don’t worry. To prepare for a Public Relations Society of America meeting in January 2012, Elyse Hammett, APR – Executive VP of PR, and Kimberly Kennedy, media and communications coach, both of EOS Marketing and Public Relations, did a qualitative study of journalists throughout Atlanta. Here are some guidelines for our current Law & Order world based on their survey results.

Know where reporters are going for stories. 62% of reporters use Facebook, 44% use Twitter, and 25% turn to blogs to find new material. To get the word out about your product or company, start with these tools.

 

 

Know when to pitch to reporters. 38% say it’s best to pitch a few months out, and 38% say several days out. Only 6% want a pitch the night before. And what about calls, texts, or emails after hours or on the weekend? If you’re reaching out to reporters when they’re off the clock, it should be for a great story. 31% of reporters don’t want to be bothered, while 62% say it depends on the strength and time constraints of a story.

Okay. We’ve got when and where, now what about how? 94% of reporters want to be contacted in an email and 64% want to be contacted directly. When you’re writing an email, don’t get clever; get to the point. Let the reporter know why it’s a good fit for them, the station, or the paper, and how it will benefit their readers.
Be sure to avoid a reporter’s “pet peeves”. These were given as the most annoying PR pitfalls. Be upfront about the money trail. Say whom you work for in the first line of your email. Take “no” for an answer. Be positive! The next pitch might be a perfect fit. But don’t pester them, or your emails could end up with “miracle” diet pill offers in the Spam folder. Be discerning. Ms. Manners may love reading about trends in the housing market, but she won’t be writing about them in her column.

Building Relationships The Andy Griffith world is gone, but “Nothing replaces old-fashioned connections based on relationships and years of performance,” says Ms. Hammett. We just use 21st century tools to sustain them. Facebook has 800 million users, and your go-to journalist is on it. 85% of business-to-business journalists comb Facebook for stories, and 35% use Facebook for story angles. “Friend” them and follow them on Twitter (84% of journalists are on Twitter and 27% use it more than anything else) to scope for stories they’re interested in. Remove their name from mass email lists and instead send them custom designs. When you pitch, have real people ready to interview.

– Mary Nevaire Marsh

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