Moving Strategy from SWAT to SWOT

Companies have to move fast in the world of a voracious 24-hour news cycle that feeds on the slightest development and then spits out an issue for digestion by vast social media networks.  Small issues can become tidal waves in hours. We see it happen every day. There are no ideal solutions for dealing with the reality of instant access in a highly transparent environment. As in everything, advance strategic planning helps.  But situations that call for rapid fire decision making are usually caused by unexpected issues that are difficult to anticipate. Prior direct experience helps, but the range of possibilities confronting a business in assessing its choices can make an an individual's relevant experience one dimensional.


So, how do companies identify strategic choices when the pace accelerates or the pressure increases?


How do you try to provide a context that can rapidly find the major points you need to consider in coming to the right course of action?  Using three basic elements can provide a very useful solution when fast paced strategic decisions need to be made.

• Process:  It is surprising how many companies don't have a defined and tested process for dealing with rapid fire strategic issues. This is like responding to a fire without an escape plan. So we counsel companies to develop a clear process for identifying what to do when fast strategic decisions are required.
• Team: The second element is to assemble a small team of the right people -- usually 5-7 members who either have direct involvement in a situation and/or a cross section of related and authoritative backgrounds in specific areas. For example, if a competitor announces a disruptive technology aimed directly at a company's core market, sales, marketing, research, and product development teams are rallied together. When a new product is delayed, marketing, sales, finance and engineering meet to decide the potential impact from several aspects. When a CEO leaves, HR and PR teams are quickly aligned to develop a plan for internal and external communications.
• Tools: If a company has done 1 and 2 -- defined a process that includes access to the right SWAT team for a particular strategic choice -- the third element is to define the choices and their potential impacts to reach the best decision as fast as possible.  This is where SWAT teams need to become Strategic SWOT teams.  

Strategic SWOT starts with a traditional approach identifying internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Opportunities and Threats.  The key to turning SWOT analysis into a strategic tool comes in the filters you apply. Here is a brief four-step process anyone can use to master this:

• First, use the S-O filter to match the internal strengths with external opportunities and list these in the upper left quadrant of a two-by-two matrix.

• Next, match internal weaknesses with external opportunities and list these as Weaknesses-Opportunities (W-O) strategies in the upper right hand quadrant.  

• Align internal strengths with external threats and list these Strengths-Threats (S-T) strategies in the lower left hand quadrant.

• Finally, use the lower right right quadrant to list Weaknesses-Threats (W-T) strategies by aligning internal weaknesses with external threats.

At this point, your SWOT list should be transformed into a number of potential strategic options to consider.

In a perfect situation, most companies would choose offense: strategies that applies company strengths toward the greatest opportunities -- S-O strategies. But rapid fire strategic decisions don't always involve opportunities to show your best stuff. In general, here is what the the other three quadrants will lead you to consider:

• W-O strategies overcome a client's weaknesses to pursue opportunities.
• S-T strategies identify ways to reduce vulnerability to external threats. 
• W-T strategies establish a defensive plan to prevent the firmʼs weaknesses from making it susceptible to external threats.

Strategic SWOT is not a perfect solution, and the strategies are not automatic.  But used properly with the right cross section of team members, it can get you a lot closer to better decision making when time constraints are the most pressing. If you've had experiences -- good or bad -- using this or another form of SWOT, we please let us know.

Tell Your Story

In recent weeks, I generated a couple of posts with the theme of "the more things change, the more they stay the same."  Specifically, I was referring to two constants in the public relations business. The first was that PR pros have been practicing for decades what is today called "content marketing." The second was despite the proliferation of social media and new digital forms of communications, the majority of tech journalists and bloggers prefer e-mail-based communications vs. all other types.

I also called out a few of the revolutionary changes in our business, many influenced by advancements in technology.  For example, how we write with SEO and SEM in mind.  The entrée of real analytics to how we measure results vs. the THUD factor days of old.  And even how the Rolodex is being replaced by services that peg story ideas to specific journalists and bloggers.  For example, HARO, PRManna.com, Reporter's Source and PitchRate, among others.

Remember the Rolodex? Ever have one on your desk? 

They still exists, of course, but they mostly reside in Gmail, Linkedin, Twitter, etc., these days.

For a PR pro, the size of their over-stuffed Rolodex used to be a badge of success.  It communicated to colleagues, competitors, clients and prospects that they were connected.  And their vast connections meant they could open doors and close deals.

Today, a Rolodex -- real or figurative -- doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to.  The advent of HARO-type services reinforce this position.

Instead of asking "who do you know?," clients and prospects should be asking their PR and social media agencies about their process for researching and developing clients' stories; their process for creating memorable, diversified content based on strategy and messages; and their process for engaging their audiences in a conversation.  

Having close connections at the Wall Street Journal, Fortune or InformationWeek are nice-to-haves.  Crafting the right story on behalf of your client and communicating it to their customers, though the right channels, are must-haves.  

Strategic Tools for Strategic Content

Content is useless if it doesn’t tell a story.  A story is not very helpful if it doesn’t relate the right information about a company’s brand.  Yet, time and again, we see content-centered communications programs in the market that appear completely disconnected from brand or strategy. 

Here are three ways you can use communications as a catalyst to define real business strategies and messages into your programs:

1.  Strategic SWOT:  We’ve all done SWOT.  How do you turn it from a list to a strategic tool?  The answer is quite simple: align strengths with opportunities to identify offensive strategies.  Then align weaknesses and threats to identify defensive strategies.

2.  Develop an elevator statement: These statements have been a cornerstone of communications for years, However, in a 140-word world, they are more critical than ever.  Fortunately, there is a great new website that steps you through the process of building your elevator pitch quickly and powerfully.  Try it at Buzzuka.

3. Be clear about what you mean by strategy.  Michael Porter, the father of modern strategic thinking, said it best:  Strategy is what you choose not to do!  Clients and communications programs can get easily bloated by trying to do everything instead of trying to do the strategic thing.  Take a look at one of our earlier blogs to understand the relationship among strategy, objectives and how to use them the right way.http://www.3pointcommunications.com/Beyond%20the%20Arc/blog.php?id=3331023617869510929

E-Mail Rules the Roost For Tech Journalists and Bloggers

Technology journalists, working in print and online -- and bloggers - overwhelmingly prefer e-mail as their preferred method of communicating with PR pros.    

Amen.

Despite the many alternatives to email, from cloud-based collaborative apps to social media channels to the telephone, tech journalists and bloggers say e-mail is king.  

This news flash is according to the good folks at PRSourceCode, a service provider to PR professionals, which recently released this stunning news -- among other tidbits -- in its 5th annual "Top Tech Communicators" report.

A little about the PRSourceCode survey and report:  a survey was administered to more than 800 tech journalists and bloggers in the third quarter of this year.  The results were made public a few days ago.

The survey also asked the participating journalists from such industry stalwarts as Wired, CFO, Information Week, eWeek.com, and CIO, among others, their picks for top tech PR agencies and top in-house tech PR practitioners.  

But for the purposes of this post, I find the recommendations for becoming a "2011 top tech communicator" much more interesting, at least until the time that 3Point Communications makes their top 10 list!

What I find most interesting from the survey results is that for all of the mind-numbing changes the PR professional has had to adapt to in recent years, the core tenants of how we find success haven't changed all that much.  

In last week's post I sided with Ford Kanzler of Marketing/PR Savvy, who argued recently that  content marketing has been a successful PR strategy for decades.

So this week it's only fitting that I'd report the same: that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The PRSourCode results help me make my point.  Here they are:

• While the tech journalists and bloggers encourage PR pros to "experiment with new media," their emphasis is on e-mail based communications.  More than 90% of the print journalists prefer e-mail communication and online journalists and bloggers are right there with them.   A distant second is communications via Twitter.

What about in other aspects of practicing sound tech PR principles, like being proactive?  Nearly 80 per cent of the participating journalists report that their sources and ideas for stories come to them via PROACTIVE pitches from PR folks.  Oh, and ensure you read past stories from the journalists you're pitching so you learn what they're interested in before pitching them. The same rule applies to pitching bloggers.  This is new?  No, I don' think so.

How about this gem:  journalists want PR pros to get back to them quickly because they have this thing called a "deadline."  Oh, and don't promise what you know you can't deliver.  Aren't these just the basics of doing business, whether your working in PR, journalism or most anything else?  But the fact that the survey respondents point these issues out tells us that not every PR pro approaches the job in the same way.

I should note that the bloggers who participated in the survey prefer to hear from PR pros via Twitter and Facebook more so than their print and online colleagues.  But as noted earlier, the vast majority of bloggers prefer e-mail above all other channels.

Click here if you want to view the full report.  My guess is the 6th annual report will look pretty much the same.  

Still True: the more things change, the more they stay the same

A recent blog post from Ford Kanzler of Marketing/PR Savvy has been getting its fair share of attention on Twitter and the blogosphere.

Kanzler's post, "Content Marketing Has Been a Successful PR Strategy for Decades," makes the claim that the term Content Marketing is a shiny new term for an age-old marketing and PR technique.

I couldn't agree more.

To me, Kanzler's post is a reminder that although the public relations profession has morphed in recent years -- as have many professions, thankfully -- the PR person's keys to success have fundamentally remained the same for eons.

Case in point:  creating exciting content and distributing it through targeted channels has been part of the PR pros daily regimen for years.  Today, it's called Content Marketing.  The reality is that PR pros have been practicing Content Marketing for years.

We just used to call it PR.

Here's how Junta42, a content marketing firm, defines content marketing:  Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience -- with the objective of driving profitable customer action. 

Sound familiar to any PR pros out there?

When we, as PR people, interview a product manager about a new software release, we turn it into (hopefully) remarkable content in the form of a press release -- just as we have forever. And then we market it to specific audiences.

When we interview a client's customer about how our client's solution saved their customer time and money and improved product quality, we turn it into exciting content in the form of a case history, a blog post, a by-lined article, an instructional podcast or Webinar, Web site or You Tube video, etc., and then we promote it.

When we want to pitch a story to an influential journalist or blogger, we create content in the form of one exciting "teaser" paragraph to peak their interest.

Yes, how we exchange this content and measure it has changed significantly, especially in recent years thanks in large part to technology advances.  And we reach our clients' audiences in new formats and on new devices, and this will always be changing.

Joe Chernov, Eloqua's director of content, said in a recent tweet:  "'content marketing'" is different now, w/rise in SEO, collapse of print, networked customers who need info to share."

His points are very valid.  Content marketing is different now. 

But so is Kanzler's point, who says, "Just don't think that calling it content marketing makes it something entirely new."

What do you think?  Is Content Marketing an updated handle for a battle-tested discipline?

Where is the Second Internet Bubble?

I read an interesting blog yesterday by Christopher Mims, a blogger who writes for MIT Technology Review and other publications.  In it, Mims poses a question that has puzzled me recently.  Six times more U.S. households are online today than during the dotcom era, but why have we not experienced a second Internet bubble?  Where is the inflation we experienced in the early days, and why are there no crazy speculative investors throwing money at companies destined to create wallpaper stock?

One could assume it is because lessons were learned.  But, come on, this is about money.  The American investment community gets real irrational real fast about entire sectors when one company has a favorable exit of any kind. Late money -- dumb money --  is never beyond the reach of hungry entrepreneurs who can point to the latest market forecasts and woo investors with the potential return of gaining only a fractional percentage of a multi-billion dollar market forecast. I've experienced it myself as the COO of an early stage company with no profit and barely enough revenue to buy coffee cups listening to otherwise intelligent investment bankers from leading global firms telling the company why we should choose them for our IPO.  

Mims points to the work of Shane Greenstein, an economist at Northwestern University. Writing for the IEEE Spectrum, Greenstein cites serval interesting points, two of which ring particularly true to me:

1. For all the negative memories we harbor, the dot.com era created incredible new e-commerce successes like Amazon, eBay and Expedia that generated significant value, and

2. The second wave of internet business has not been about value creation, but cannibalization of brick and mortar retail. 

If you believe the past helps us define the future, you will be interested in the very negative impact of the Internet that Greenstein describes. He and Mims have a lot more to say on the topic. It's a good assessment that reinforces what we know -- real value usually is borne of innovation and effort not remodeling.

Three Great Password Management Systems to Keep Hackers on the Run

A good friend of mine told me this week he manages more than 200 separate password-protected online accounts.  At first I thought he was exaggerating, but after further discussion with him, I realized it's fairly easy for any of us to get close to that number.

Consider all of your password protected media sites (free and paid), banking and brokerage accounts, personal and professional email accounts, retails sites, project management sites, social media channels, etc.  You can see how someone who goes online only out of necessity, and not desire like many of us, can quickly accumulate a significant number of password protected online sites without really trying.

And as the hackers out there know, people generally use the same one or two easy-to-decode passwords (like their first name, or qwerty or letmein) for all of their accounts. It keeps things simple.  Unfortunately, it also makes the hacker's job that much easier.  All a hacker has to do is to figure out one of these passwords and suddenly he/she has access to a large number of your accounts and to potentially critical personal information.

What now?

Well, as I learned earlier this week, after you get hacked is not the time to be looking for the additional security you need to guard against getting hacked in the first place.

Still, better late than never.

It's like trying to buy a snow blower in a blizzard, a generator in a power failure, sandals in July.  Your best bet, and for the best deals, is to purchase these things before you need them.

And in the case of added security for your protected online sites, many of the software products that fortify your electronic fortress are free, up to a certain point.  You still need a comprehensive security suite running on your computer and you may also want to invest in an email security-specific product as well.

But in addition, and on the heels of my Gmail account betting hacked earlier this week, I've become a big proponent of password management systems as an added layer of steel between you and the hacker.  My friend with the 200 password protected online accounts became a proponent some years ago when his Gmail account was hacked. And now, I too am convinced. You should be too.

There are a lot of great products out there that more or less do the same thing, but here are three password management solutions I researched and want to share with you.  We'll never put the hackers completely out of business, but we can make their job as hard as possible:


KeePass:  This is a free open source password manager.  They talk about themselves this way:  You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file.  So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database.  


RoboForm.  Lots of awards and great reviews from leading trade pubs like PC Magazine, Bloomberg and Morningstar.  RoboForm says on its website:  Security is our highest priority.  RoboForm Password Manager has gone through multiple security reviews and is used by Fortune 500 companies and the government. 

Passpack.  This is the solution my friend uses.  Here's how Passpack talk about themselves:  We believe access to data privacy applications should be an unalienable right. We're working hard to make that a reality.


The truth is, it doesn't matter too much which one you pick.  As long as you pick one.

Don't Let This Happen to You

Earlier this week my Gmail account was hacked.  It left me with the same feeling of violation I experienced about 25 years ago when my then beautiful Toyota Celica was broken into and my AM/FM in-dash cassette player was stolen.

I realize this has happened to many of you before, but having my email account hacked was a first for me and it really took me by surprise.   Just as the break-in to my titanium silver Celica did.

Why?

Because I thought I was protected -- in both cases.  After all, on my two computers I run the latest version of the Norton Security Suite -- courtesy of my Internet service provider, Comcast.  And I also run the free version of Malewarebytes Anti Malware.

And the Celica had a motion-sensor security system. What could go wrong?

As it turns out, all of these well-known and dutiful security solutions gave me what has turned out to be a false sense of security.

The nastiness started just before 8 p.m., just after I finished a great dinner and as I was settling in on the couch to check out what financial funny-man Jim Cramer had to say on his nightly show, which I DVRed.

I powered up my Toshiba Satellite L305-S5968 laptop, which had been in sleep mode, and opened Gmail.

And then - wham!

Once loaded, I saw that my inbox was filled with dozens of out-of-office responses from Gmail contacts around the world, dozens of delivery failures (I guess I need to update my address book), and a number of emails from a few former clients, co-workers and friends wondering what was going on.  I also received a few alerts from Twitter and Facebook friends.

Many of the recipients I heard from immediately recognized the email they received from me as a bad case of spam.  Most recipients didn't open up the message (story of my life). But for the more adventurous souls who did click through, they saw the goat (or is it a ram?) pictured here along with this verbiage:

"This journal has been suspended. Its contents are no longer publicly visible. LiveJournal cannot discuss the reasons for a journal suspension with anyone except the journal owner.about Livejournal.com being suspended." 

Now, I have nothing against a goat (or ram) wearing an eye-patch and a pirate's hat, but ....

So before I share some information (coming in tomorrow's post) about how you can better protect your email account from being hacked, even though you too may think you are already protected, I want to share a few of my favorite responses from a few of the hacker's victims:

"This seems a little dodgy--did you get hacked? I didn't click through...figured I would check with you first. Hope all is well!"   ...from a fellow PR pro working at a big IT management company.

"Jim -- Long time, no contact ...good to hear from you.  The note below, however, looks suspiciously like something might have hijacked your address book and is sending out emails to all of your 'C' contacts. ...Hope all is well."   ...from a former client who works at a big IT management company (not the same company as above).

From another:  "virus or real?"   ...from a former client who works for the world's largest technology company.   

And another:  "Hi Jim, is this legit?"   ...past client now working for a leading data governance solutions company.     

Finally:  "Are you toying with me?"   ...friend and former colleague working for the world's largest technology company.

Tomorrow, I'll share what I learned from someone who has over 200 password-protected accounts and  is passionate about password management systems as a way to keep email hackers at bay.

You Know It's Real When It Enters the "Trough"

In August, Gartner Group released its annual Hype Cycle on Emerging Technologies. We here at 3Point Communications were awaiting the release of this year's Hype Cycle because we were particularly interested to find out if cloud computing -- which had been at the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" in 2009 -- would begin its descent into what Gartner terms the "Trough of Disillusionment."

You see, the ultimate goal of any emerging technology is to become an accepted technology as quickly as possible, go mainstream, thus lowering the cost of production. It is then that the investment in the new technology can be recouped and profits realized. This doesn't happen until the emerging technology makes the perilous trip through the Trough.

Some emerging technologies enter the Trough of Disillusionment never to be seen again, such as broadband over power lines, while others, such as interactive TV and speech recognition, are well on they way to mainstream adoption.

It is our belief that cloud computing will quickly become standard operating procedure for businesses and consumers alike, and this was confirmed by Gartner's recent report which has cloud computing going mainstream within 2-5 years. So seeing cloud computing entering the Trough was a welcome sight.

Here are five reasons we think cloud computing is here to stay:

1. It's already here. If you've used a photo-sharing site such as Shutterfly or accessed email on a friend's PC, then you've already tapped into the power of cloud computing. These simple applications, and countless others like them, don't exist on your PC, laptop or mobile device, they "live" in the cloud and are accessed on an as-needed basis. On the business front everything from email to CRM to customer support has migrated to the cloud. Not every company has moved every application from internal IT systems to the cloud, but the trend is well underway and in our opinion inevitable.
2. Cloud computing saves money. When businesses move infrastructure, platforms and software applications to the cloud, they save money. If your core business is not IT, why invest resources, time and money in owning and managing an infrastructure? A good example is Recovery.gov, the first government-wide system moved to the cloud, which expects to save $700,000 in its first budget cycle with more savings to follow.
3. Cloud computing is more secure than people realize. The number one concern among CIO and IT professionals is security when moving a company's data and resources to the cloud. But in many cases, cloud-based security is more secure than a company's internal systems. For example, an Aberdeen Group report found that a company's email security may improve by as much as 53% when moved to the cloud.
4. Going mobile. With the success of Apple's iPad, new tablets hitting the market, smartphones and other mobile devices, businesses and consumers are both accessing information on the go. These devices simply don't have the storage capacity or internal power to house thousands of apps. Rather, mobile devices are portals into the world of cloud computing. And IDC predicts that more than a quarter of a billion smartphones will be sold this year and numbers will increase next year by 10% or more. All will access the cloud.
5. Money talks. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Cisco, CA, Oracle and thousands of other companies big and small, are investing billions of dollars in cloud computing. Some, like Microsoft, have made bold claims that cloud computing must be the future of the company if it is to survive and thrive. With this much momentum behind the cloud, it is only a matter of time before it becomes mainstream.

We would interested in your thoughts on cloud computing. Are you there yet? Have you begun the journey? Or is something holding you back?

For the record, 3Point Communications embraces cloud computing and uses cloud-based applications to manage and run our business.

Better RFPs Yield the Best Results

It appears that a  number of tech companies are taking the advice I imparted last week in Beyond the Arc:  that it's a great time of year for corporate communications teams to ask themselves a question.

"Are we getting the desired results from our PR agency?"

OK, so perhaps it's just coincidence that we're seeing increased interest from prospects, as is the competition, on the heels of last week's post, "Six Key Categories for Gauging the Client/Agency Relationship."

Whatever the reason may be (OK, OK, it's the time of year and not my post...I know, I know), companies coast-to-coast are gearing up for an end-of-year sit down with their agency or are further along and may be putting the finishing touches on a PR agency "request for information" (RFI) or the more elaborate "request for proposal" (RFP).

A prospect's invitation to compete in an agency "bake-off" is reason for celebration at most agencies, whether it's a boutique shop with a deep speciality or a full service global firm.  Of course, once the excitement of being considered by the prospect wears off, it's time to get to the hard work of fulfilling the proposal's many requirements.  Responses numbering 40, 50, 60 or more pages are not unusual.  Fulfilling the request can monopolize a small shop's time for weeks as well as the time of key employees at larger agencies.  Personally, I much prefer an RFP with a shorter deadline.  In this business, the more time you have, the more time you take.

Once the response is submitted to the prospect, it's pretty much out of the agency's control.  It's during this period that a participating agency holds its collective breadth, works on other business and tries to pretend that they're not phased or worried by the lack of communication from the prospect.  A prospect's silence is deafening, especially during business climates like this one when so many great agencies are hungry and pulling out all the stops to compete for new business.

And, while you're finally busy working on other projects, an email or phone call arrives from the prospect telling you what you had hoped to hear: that you're agency made it to the next round, typically a live meeting with the prospect and the key decision makers.

The agency review process is equally intense for the client.  But when done thoroughly and thoughtfully, the process should yield a successful and sustainable agency/client relationship.

Of course, some companies run end-to-end agency reviews better than others.  Kathy Cripps of the Council of PR Firms pointed out that some RFPs act "more like a barrier, rather than a gateway to a productive client/agency partnership."

From what we're seeing, RFIs and RFPs are getting better and better at clearly stating company objectives, what the organization truly values and wants from an agency, the scope of work, fairer timetables, etc.  So as an industry, we're making progress.

If you're interested, there are a number of RFI/RFP building tools and resources for companies to leverage.  Here are a few:

• RFP Builder from the Council of PR Firms.
• "Request for Proposal:  A Guide to Effective RFP Development"    
• The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) offers a number of helpful articles on its web site.      

To include 3Point Communications in your agency review, please get in touch with the appropriate 3Point partner from our "Contact Us" page.

Five Factors Driving The End of "Passive Media"

There was a time not that long ago when most Americans got their news and information from a combination of the nightly network news, the morning or evening newspaper and the local weekly newspaper.  We passively awaited delivery in print or broadcast and shared what we learned orally with family and friends. There are still places in America where that routine is the norm.  But even in the most distant outposts of the country, the days of passively awaiting information is waning as technology moves from top-down distribution of information to an open, many-to-many networked media environment.   

I would suggest that any of our readers who who are interested, involved in or impacted by this change take a look at a study by the American University's Center for Social Media in Washington, D.C.  The authors set out to explore the impact of this change on public media and published an excellent white paper titled, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics.  In part, the research offers an assessment of the impact of new media on traditional media. While many of us have written about these changes, the AU research pulls them together in an interesting framework that makes sense out of a number of technologies that seem headed on a collision course.

The AU paper identifies five elements creating this massive change in the way we interact and access media. These "five C's:" Choice, Conversation, Curation, Creation and Collaboration are having a massive impact on our use of video, databases, social networks, location media, distribution, platforms and metrics.  

In the words of the researchers, here are the specific items they identified:

1. Choice: Rather than passively waiting for content to be delivered as in the broadcast days, users are actively seeking out and comparing media on important issues, through search engines, recommendations, video on demand, interactive program guides, news feeds, and niche sites. This is placing pressure on many makers to convert their content so that it’s not only accessible across an array of platforms and devices, but properly formatted and tagged so that it is more likely to be discovered.
2. Conversation: Comment and discussion boards have become common across a range of sites and platforms, with varying levels of civility in evidence. Users are leveraging conversation tools to share interests and mobilize around issues. 7 Distributed conversations across online services, such as Twitter and FriendFeed, are managed via shared tags. Tools for ranking and banning comments give site hosts and audiences some leverage for controlling the tenor of exchanges. New tools for video-based conversation are now available on sites such as Seesmic. News is collaboratively created, gaining importance by becoming part of electronic conversation.
3. Curation: Users are aggregating, sharing, ranking, tagging, reposting, juxtaposing, and critiquing content on a variety of platforms—from personal blogs to open video-sharing sites to social network profile pages. Reviews and media critique are popular genres for online contributors, displacing or augmenting genres, such as consumer reports and travel writing, and feeding a widespread culture of critical assessment.
4. Creation: Users are creating a range of multimedia content (audio, video, text, photos, animation, etc.) from scratch and remixing existing content for purposes of satire, commentary, or self-expression—breaking through the stalemate of mass media talking points. Professional media makers are now tapping user-generated content as raw material for their own productions, and outlets are navigating various fair use issues as they wrestle with promoting and protecting their brands.
5. Collaboration: Users are adopting a variety of new roles along the chain of media creation and distribution—from providing targeted funds for production or investigation, to posting widgets that showcase content on their own sites, to organizing online and offline events related to media projects, to mobilizing around related issues through online tools, such as petitions and letters to policymakers. "Crowdsourced" journalism projects now invite audience participation as investigators, tipsters, and editors—so far, a trial-and-error process.

The research then makes an interesting connection that illustrates how our changing media habits are affecting the tools we use and the ways we use them.  Again, in the words of the researchers, these trends involve:

• Ubiquitous video (choice, creation, collaboration) Professional and amateur video alike are migrating online to sites such as Hulu and YouTube; nonprofessional online video is becoming part of broadcast news and newspaper reporting; live streaming and podcasting are routine aspects of public events.
• Powerful databases (curation, creation) Deep wells of data and imagery are increasingly valuable for reporting, information visualization, trend-spotting, and comparative analysis. Databases also now serve as powerful back-ends for managing and serving up digital content, making it available across a range of browsers and devices.
• Social networks as public forums (conversation, collaboration) Durable social-networking platforms, such as Facebook, and on-the-fly social networks, such as the open-source Ning, allow multifaceted media relationships with one person, a few, or many people.
• Locative media (choice, creation) GPS-enabled mobile devices are allowing users to access and upload geographically relevant content, and a new set of "hyperlocal" media projects are feeding this trend. Conversely, maps are becoming a common interface for news, video, and data.
• Distributed distribution (choice, curation) News feeds, search engines, and widgets are allowing content to escape the traditional boundaries of the channel or site. Users are coming to expect access to anywhere, anytime searchable media.
• Hackable platforms (creation, collaboration, curation) Open source tools and applications are becoming increasingly customizable. Media makers can tailor their platforms, sharing tips across a broad community of developers, and users can pick and choose how they will interact with content.
• Accessible metrics (creation, curation) Ranking and metrics sites, such as Google Analytics, Alexa, and Technorati, make it easier for media makers to compile and compare their audiences—and for outsiders to more easily judge and note success.
• Cloud content (choice, creation) Applications, media, and personal content are migrating away from computers and mobile devices and onto hosted servers—into "the cloud" of online content. On the one hand this offers simplicity, easy sharing, and protected backups; on the other, it threatens control and privacy.
• Pervasive gaming (choice, collaboration) Gaming—playing computer, Web, portable, or console games, often connecting with other players via the Internet—has become as ubiquitous as watching TV for young people.

When we look at these in isolation, the media universe may first appear as a random set of trends propelled toward some kind of chaotic convergence with an unknown and unpredictable outcome.  But when seen in relation to each other, there appears to be not only an order but at least a set of potential outcomes that we will look at in a future post.  

Connecting the Dots

I'm surprised it took so long for the mainstream media to connect the dots on recent acquisition activity here in Silicon Valley. For those of us steeped in both cloud computing and mobile telecommunications, the pattern has been clear for a long time. Nonetheless, I found it encouraging that the Valley's newspaper of record, the San Jose Mercury News, finally reported on the trend in a front page story today.

If you haven't been following the M&A action here in tech's heartland, let me do a quick recap.

• HP just today acquired 3Par for $2.4B after a fierce bidding war with Dell. 3Par's products combine virtualization software and hardware to increase storage capacity and lower operating costs, making them ideal for cloud computing applications. Also this year, HP acquired 3Com, Palm and Fortify Software.
• Intel acquired McAfee on August 19 and then 10 days later acquired Infineon. McAfee makes security software which is a critical element for both cloud computing and mobile telecom. Infineon makes wireless chip sets for three primary markets, security, communications and energy efficiency.
• Google has made a number of smaller acquisitions this year including Aardvark, a social media search engine for $50M, AdMob, a mobile advertising platform that's particularly popular with iPhone app developers, ITA Software, a flight information software company, and just last month, Slide, a social application company.
• In addition, Cisco Systems acquired Tandberg for $3.3B and Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4B

The recent Silicon Valley acquisition frenzy, which has already seen five billion-dollar plus acquisitions this year, illustrates two irreversable trends in technology -- cloud computing and mobile telecommunications.

According to the IEEE, by 2014 smartphones and other mobile devices, such as Apple's iPad, will send and receive more data each month than they did in all of 2009. More than 75% of that information will come from Internet traffic and nearly all of the balance will come from audio and video streaming.

A big part of the increase in mobile data will come from cloud computing applications. Utility software (such as maps) will lead the way, followed closely by productivity tools (especially for sales, data sharing and collaboration), then social networking and search.

A senior analyst at ABI Research, a telecom analyst firm in Oyster Bay, NY, predicts that the number of people subscribing to mobile cloud computing applications will rise from 71 million today to more than a billion by 2014.

Asia will lead the way with the largest number of mobile cloud computing app subscribers, but North America will bring in nearly as much revenue because high-paying enterprises will have a larger slice of the pie here.

So it's no wonder that Silicon Valley tech companies are scrambling to acquire companies and technology that will give them an edge in either cloud computing or mobile telecommunications, or both. And if the month of August was any indication, there will likely be several more billion-dollar acquisitions before the end of 2010.

Six Key Categories for Gauging the Client/Agency Relationship

With Labor Day only five days away here in the U.S., it's almost that magical time of year again:  immersing yourself in the 2011 strategic planning process.

Yesterday, colleague Bill Bellows blogged about an easy-to-follow process (called OST, for Objectives, Strategies, Tactics) for creating business objectives:

• Set objectives first
• Follow objectives with strategies
• Begin doing the actual work with tactics that drive strategies

OST simplifies the process of creating business objectives for organizations who may be starting from scratch.  And it's also useful for organizations who are revisiting their business objectives.  It's something companies who aren't satisfied with the status quo do regularly as a response to the twists and turns of the market they sell into.

While CEOs, CMOs and business development executives are preoccupying themselves with the business objective-building phase of the 2011 strategic planning process, their corporate communications teams are likely engaged in a parallel process:  evaluating the 2010 communications effort and their desired results for next year.

For the corporate communications pro, the 2011 strategic planning process will likely include a formal, or at least informal evaluation of their external communications resources, such as public relations agencies.  

Reviewing the annual performance of a public relations agency, or other marketing services provider, is a big deal.  Doing it right is time consuming and may take you away from your "day job" for a stretch.  And the results of the review could wind up creating even more work for the corporate communications team, i.e., a full scale agency review including the issuance of an RFP, the painstaking review of the RFP responses, the live presentations of the finalists agencies, the selection and buy-in from executives, etc.

Phew, I'm spent just writing about it.

Nonetheless, an annual review (again, at least informally) of your outsourced communications resources is absolutely necessary.  

But like Bill said in his post about OST, "this is not rocket science."

Reviewing your PR agency doesn't have to be rocket science either.  It just has to get done.  

To help you get started, I put together this list of six key categories for evaluating your agency:  

• Does your agency team know your market at least as well as your internal team does?
• Have the account team leaders taken the time to understand the pressures you face as an internal communications pro?  Or do they see the world only through their eyes?
• Is your agency team visible?  If not, why not?  Are they too busy working on other accounts or pitching new business when they should be in your face?  Is your business important enough to them?
• When do you see or hear from the senior-most agency executives?  Only when there's a problem or only when there's good news to share?  Or are they truly engaged with your business, in the trenches with the account team creating ideas and insights to propel your business?  
• Is your agency listening to you?  Or are they hell bent on doing things only their way and pout when you insist on an alternative approach?  So, is your agency part of your team or are they their own team?
• Does your agency do what they say are going to do? Is their follow through as strong as it was during the first three months of the account or has it tapered off over time?  Does this mean your agency team has become too comfortable?  

In the best agency/client relationships, any issue that comes up during a review shouldn't be a surprise to either party.  In the better relationships, communications are open and frequent enough so that major issues are dealt with as they erupt.  

But in too many agency/client relationships, issues are put on the back burner by one or both parties hoping they will disappear on their own. They rarely do.

What's the relationship with your agency like?

It's almost Labor Day and a good time to ask.

Three Steps to Creating Business Objectives that Work

We often read comments urging consultants to align marketing programs with business objectives.  It sounds great. Unless, of course, your client or company hasn't specified their business objectives or, more commonly, has confused strategies with objectives. When you encounter a company like this (and you'd be surprised how many billion-dollar companies do not use objectives effectively), you have two choices: run like hell because this is a clear sign of organizational dysfunction or strap on the responsibility of helping your client define their objectives.  In most cases, we choose the second option -- better to be part of the solution than adding to the problem.  


If you choose to lead or guide your clients through this process, you immediately need to sort through the fundamental distinction between objectives, strategies and tactics. Crazy as it may seem in this era of endless analytics, companies and consulting firms often languish and struggle to get on the same page when these terms are unclear. Worse, metrics may be misaligned, misinterpreted or misunderstood when one person thinks they are talking about strategy and the other considers it an objective.


You can navigate through these situations with a simple three-step process that we call OST.  This is simply a hierarchal reminder that Objectives, Strategies and Tactics have to be developed in that hierarchal order to build actionable, successful programs. This is not rocket science, but it bears explanation for those who may know marketing, media and customers, but not business. 


1. Set objectives first:  Objectives communicate what the client organization plans to achieve. They need to be realistic, specific and measurable. A fine objective would be: To increase sales by 10% in the first quarter of 2011.


2. Follow objectives with strategies:  This may sound contrary to the way you think of strategy. Many of us are conditioned to talk about the client "strategy" or the strategy for the program as though strategy itself is what guides business.  It does not. Look back on your experience. How many great strategies have you heard that never came to fruition?  How many times have you heard frustrated or disillusioned employees talk derisively about the "strategy du jour?" There is a reason for this. Frankly, strategies without accountability are easy to articulate. They motivate, excite and even inspire people -- until they fail. We need to understand that strategies are general in nature. Untethered, they are likely to remain little more than words. Placed in the right hierarchy -- attached to specific, quantifiable objectives -- they become dynamic and charged with the energy required to make them actionable.  An acceptable strategy tied to the objective cited above would be: Cross sell the division's new WonderProduct II to existing clients.

3. Tactics drive strategies: After you have established quantifiable objectives with supporting strategies, you need to begin doing the actual work. Tactics are what you do to make strategies work. They are the building blocks of programs and they make or break the success of programs and business.  They are the phone calls, the conferences, the articles and community building that has to happen day in and day out.  While Nike's famous call to "Just Do It" rings in our ears, tactics can be disastrous in isolation of objectives and strategies -- especially as you communicate with customers, media and channel partners. Audiences will take your words at face value, and will assume you already have set objectives and strategies before going public with a program. As you have probably experienced, this is not always the case. Nothing can freeze a customer faster (and make your company or your client look ridiculous) than to suddenly stop pursuing a tactic you've been driving publicly, because somebody in the organization realized it was out of synch with an objective or strategy. In business, companies can thrive when the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. An example of a tactic is: Introduce the new Wonder Product 2 solution to all current customers in the CEO's keynote speech during Company World 2010 in October.

One final note is in order. When setting up objectives, be sure you and your clients do not tackle more than you can handle. Establishing too many objectives may make you look great to your client or boss in the beginning but it sets an unrealistic expectation that may color your performance review in the end if you are unable to achieve what you promise. If you specify more objectives than the budget enables you to accomplish, you will find your program log-jammed and bleeding dollars trying to tackle too much and ultimately achieving too little. We suggest you follow the urging of a client Marketing Vice President to simply "Do Fewer Things Better!"  Based on our experience, here are some targets to consider:

• set a maximum of four to six measurable objectives for the year 
• establish no more than three strategies for each objective, and
• create a fresh set of 5-10 tactics each quarter that align with your strategies.

It may not always be as easy as this, but it doesn't have to be much harder. Breaking down the process into the right hierarchy creates clarity and leads to specific achievable metrics for you and your client to agree upon. You do yourself and your client a great service by simply putting Objectives, Strategies and Tactics in the right hierarchy to understand how they depend on each other for success.