The PR Warrior

What Santa Claus Can Teach Brands about creating social movements (book review)

GUEST POST: Brains On Fire book review (with a Christmas touch!) by David Scott (@dascottonline).

Also posted on Sweat Equity blog.

As your grandparents, children and Oxfam Unwrapped emails will tell you, Christmas is a time for giving.

We give, sometimes because we have to, but often because we want to. We like the feeling that we’ve helped others, and it’s a creed the Brains on Fire team obviously lives by. Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell and Geno Church have written a book that gives and gives and gives.

It gives ideas of how to engage sustainable word-of-mouth social movements for business or action group. It gives the blueprint for how this can be achieved, and the real world case studies of where it’s been successful.

Hell, it even gave me hope that the ideas I was thrashing around in my honors thesis on social movements all those years ago (back when a tweet was something only birds did) were not as hare-brained as I thought.

Giving is a great enabler – yet another theme from Brains that comes through loud and clear - so it would be remiss of me if I didn’t give something more back to you, dear reader, about the book.

Without further ado, here are the Brains team's 10 lessons for social movement success, with an appropriate Christmas theme.

1. Movements aren’t about a product conversation, they’re a passion conversation.  “Passion is contagious” write Phillips, Cordell and Church.  “How do you fit into people’s lives and make it better?”  A visit from the jolly obese man in red is a yearly wish for most children.  It drives them to prove that they’ve been nice, not naughty, and to wish for all the gifts the world can provide.  They are passionate, and share that energy with their friends and family.  As if Santa doesn’t make our lives bette
2. Movements start with the first conversation.  How many of us have left out some brandy and a cookie for the bearded wonder at Christmas, alongside a handwritten note of request along the lines of “I’d love a Playstation, but please don’t let your reindeer eat mums petunias.”  And how many times did we wake as children and find the cookies all gone with nary a few crumbs left, and a nicely wrapped shape under the tree?!  Oh how we laughed and breathlessly recounted it to our family and friends all day!  “Like that first conversation…stories are important to customers as it allows them to place themselves in the story”, say Phillips et al.  Christmas provides a compelling story for everyone.
3. Movements have inspirational leadership.  Well this is a no brainer (see what I did there?).  Be it a religious leader or cultural figurehead, all of us has someone to turn to at Christmas time for a rationale and belief.  “Most people trust the opinions of people just like themselves” is the main reason.  Well, Jesus came from a family of carpenters and Santa is a man who runs a B2C company in the arctic.  Yep, sounds like my kind of everyday people.
4. Movements have a barrier for entry.  You can’t get presents if you’ve been bad all year, everyone knows that.  If you’ve got an Italian background like me you’ve even got the threat of a delivery of coal from befana hanging over your head; pretty scary if you grew up near Hazelwood Power Station. “It must be give and take” conclude the Brains trust.
5. Movements empower people with knowledge.  Everyone knows the basic story of Christmas but no one knows the whole story.  Extra bits and pieces are shared, family to family, and through that a shared experience of Christmas takes hold.  “Knowledge can create a bond and provide common ground. And sharing it is vital to igniting a movement.”
6. Movements have shared ownership.  Engage the customer is the key here.  Do you think we’d still worship Santa if he kept bringing oversized knickers and odd coloured socks each year?  Hell no! He brings us iPads, Wired subscriptions and iTunes gift cards.  “Don't start with the customer "in mind", but actually with the customer. Anything that comes straight from their mouths is pretty damn hard to refute.” So that’s why Christmas wishlists are so successful!
7. Movements have powerful identities. Even setting aside the fact that Australians are, as one of the Irish uncles of a co-worker once put it, hilariously in love with decorating our homes with fake snow in the middle of summer.  But we identify with that snow.  It’s as Christmas as plum pudding, fairy lights and tinsel.  Says Brains “We are the collections of beliefs and values we are passionate about, and passionate people wear their beliefs on their sleeves.”
8. Movements live both online and offline.  “A real relationship is about personal investment and sacrifice” say the Brains writers.  Giving at Christmas nearly always has a degree of personal investment – what does this gift say about me? – and sometimes a degree of sacrifice.  If anything, the festive season allows us to foster better relationships than what we would otherwise be unable to do at other times in the year.  That we can do it both in the real and virtual world is a (often understated) given.
9. Movements make advocates feel like rockstars.  How damn cool does it look like being a Christmas elf?  Or an angel?  Or a reindeer?  Surrounded by toys all day, the ability to fly, or even only having to work one night a year…these are a few of my favourite things!  While we can never be any of those things, we can be made to feel part of the story, the ‘centre of the universe’ experience that most customers crave.  “It's not about how they fit into your marketing plan but rather how you fit into their lives.”
10. Movements get results.  Obviously Christmas gets it done, because we all keep coming back for more year on year.  I’ll leave it to the Brains authors to sum it up.  “Movements move people to action.  Movements transform companies.  Movements change lives.”

So if you’re in the market for a social business book to give to a friend or colleague this year, I can’t recommend Brains On Fire enough.

It occasionally suffers from the same issues as most business books – repetitive and too formulaic in parts – but the simple lesson-style layout, the engaging writing style and compelling real-world stories elevate it way above book end fodder.

Merry Give-mas!

<<< David Scott follows lots of interesting folks and tries to reciprocate on @dascottonline.  He’s trying to blog regularly about what it means to be a mid-20s white dude getting married next year at http://twoweeksonedate.wordpress.com

FURTHER READING (book reviews): 

The Marketer’s Ultimate Xmas Reading List

Socia Media are Tools - Real-Time is a Mindset

What's Mine is Yours: the Rose of Collaborative Consumption

 

The Marketer’s Ultimate Xmas Reading List

If you are a marketer or PR person or senior executive with power over how your brand is seen in the marketplace, you’d be crazy not to spend a few hours over the Christmas break reading one or more of the books discussed below.

Bottom line is: the world is changing before our very eyes.

Unless you’re immersed in the work of the world’s most progressive marketing thinkers and bloggers…unless you’re reading books like the ones below, then potentially you’re already behind. Sorry :)

Following is a selection of recently released business books that may help you re-think your current take on marketing (and possibly even help you kick-start the new year with a re-energised focus on what’s possible from a marketing perspective).

• microMARKETING: Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small (by Greg Verdino)

• REAL-TIME MARKETING & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now (by David Meerman Scott) - reviewed here

• WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (by Rachel Botsman & Roo Rogers) - reviewed here
  

• BRAINS ON FIRE: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements (by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church, Spike Jones)

• CONTENT RULES: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (by CC Chapman and Ann Handley)

• UNMARKETING: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging (by Scott Stratten)

• ENGAGE: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web (by Brian Solis)
  

• MARKETING LESSONS FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History - reviewed here

 

Content exclusive to Marketing Magazine.

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Earning the Media's Attention in Today's Real-Time World

In days gone by, if a PR practitioner wanted to attract the attention of the media they would put together a press release or media kit and distribute accordingly.

Hopefully the release and/or kit was well crafted - relevant, timely and professionally written - thus increasing the chances of landing some exposure for the company or client involved.

This method still holds true today and is particularly powerful if the approach is personalised by way of a direct (phone/email) pitch - if the practitioner has a strong and relevant story, the chances of getting editorial start to improve, particularly if the PR person can re-shape the angle while chatting with the journalist or producer (if and as required).

While it's always been important for PR practitioners to be as adept as journalists in fleshing out a suitable angle and writing the bones of the story itself, our profession is now in an enviable position of communicating directly with the people who matter most to our business, cause or issue.

Every brand can now run its own (online) TV network, radio station and magazine or newspaper. Pretty cool, huh? 

While it remains important for many companies and organisations to gain media coverage, we now have additional options (text, images, video, audio etc) available to us thanks to various online platforms and the social web.

What does this mean? If we pitch a story idea to media outlets and they don't 'bite', all is not lost - we can take our story directly to the people.

Of course this isn't as simple as just whacking up a press release on your blog and hoping it will be seen by thousands of people. In all likelihood, that ain't gonna happen (unless you're a major brand with a massive online following).

Brands wanting to go down the path of creating and distributing their own content need a plan that's strategically sound as well as pragmatic in its execution. However, that's the subject of another post or two!

Journalists are always on the look-out!

Ironically, while a brand's content marketing efforts is an effective way to bypass the media 'filter' and instead take their message directly to the people, it's also important to remember that journalists are always on the look-out for stories, photo opportunities and potential interview material.

Ongoing budget cuts to newsrooms and editorial departments means many journalists today have increased workloads compared to several years ago. Not only that but their deadlines are getting tighter if online is brought into the equation.

'Walking the beat' is increasingly being replaced by bouts of desk research; often this research will include monitoring the social web (for example, Sky News) for news and story ideas and industry personalities who can provide expert commentary on a specific topic or issue.

Depending on the industry or sector covered by the journalist, this scenario provides PR people with a raft of opportunities they've never before had.

If you have a strong digital footprint - if your brand's presence on the social web is deep and lively - then there is an increased chance at some stage you may catch ('earn') the attention of journalists covering your sector, in turn leading to editorial coverage in 'traditional' mediums.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? I'd love to hear from the media as well as PR people!

PR PEOPLE - I'd be interested to hear from you whether the (individual or corporate) brand/s you represent have been approached by the media because of the strong presence they have on the social web.

MEDIA - And journalists/editors/producers - I'd love to hear how much monitoring of social media you do. Have you ever sourced material from an individual (high profile online 'personal brand') or representative of an organisation that is particularly active on the social web? I'm sure it will vary from individual to individual (and media outlet to media outlet) but it would be interesting to see if there is a trend forming in this space.

 

Why I've Joined Edelman

The dust has settled somewhat since last week's announcement that parkyoung (the consultancy I part own with David Park) has merged its business with the Melbourne office of Edelman, the world's biggest independent public relations agency.

(Check out the official announcement here).

The move came as a bit of a surprise to many in the broader PR industry as parkyoung was still quite new (having only been established mid-2009) and despite its relative youth had quickly carved out a solid profile in the marketplace thanks largely to a deep brand presence on the social web.

Those who know me personally, however, were probably doubly surprised because I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur in the marketing communications space having run my own show more or less for 12 years.

(In addition to forming parkyoung in 2009 I co-founded Spark Communications in 1998 - later acquired by Mitchell Communication Group - and the experiential agency Ignition Marketing in 1999, eventually sold to a third-party equity holder). 

On the surface Edelman was a very unlikely move for me.

I've worked for a number of large multi-national agencies in the past (including Porter Novelli and The Rowland Company) and I wasn't exactly busting a gut to get back into a big firm again (let's face it, large agencies tend not to be very nimble or entrepreneurial).

However, Edelman is different and that's what attracted me to the company.

Overseas particularly, Edelman is a public relations powerhouse and is leading the way in ‘new PR’ thinking. This is important to me because it's the space I (attempt to) play in.

I'm not just talking social media here but broader emerging thinking around the implications faced by companies and organisations operating in today's hyper-networked marketplace, not to mention the myriad communication challenges and opportunities experienced on a daily basis.

Brightest Talents

Edelman in North America has attracted some of the brightest talents in the social media space, including David Armano, Steve Rubel (who joined in 2006) and Dave Fleet. When guys of this calibre sign on with one of the ‘majors’, it says something.

Also joining the firm in recent times is Richard Sambrook, former BBC Director of News, who heads up global content creation - this in itself was an interesting high-profile appointment.

Locally, Edelman has recently appointed an Australian CEO in Michelle Hutton plus a raft of new senior executive hires across both its Melbourne and Sydney offices, including Sydney-based digital maestro Matthew Gain.

Needless to say, the company is doing some exciting things locally (including winning lots of interesting new accounts).

Core Philosophy

But the kicker for me is the fact Edelman's core philosophy is that "PR should lead the communications mix because we uniquely engage all stakeholders in dialogue in a way that is timely, consistent and credible".

This philosophy is 100 per cent in-sync with my own professional beliefs - it's a drum I have been banging for some time and it's great to see it so passionately promoted from upper management of a large firm.

However, there's no point trying to lead from the front unless you really do have the 'street cred' and capabilities to do so.

Edelman has been a strong leader in the digital PR space, firstly with its Me2Revolution 'skunkworks' experiment and then with the establishment of Edelman Digital in January, 2008.

Indeed, global President and CEO Richard Edelman is a true believer when it comes to the social web and real-time communications (he's been blogging personally since September, 2004).

The company is also active in the area of thought leadership.

Take for instance the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual global leaders opinion study (I've written about the report previously). 

Commitment to Digital Communications

From day one parkyoung was always about pushing the boundaries of PR. When Parky and I started the business mid-2009, we placed social media and ‘new PR’ thinking at the heart the company.

To be able to join a large global organisation that shares our thinking and our values - and has demonstrated its commitment to digital communications and the social web – is very exciting.

For more information on Edelman's PR philosophy and a run-down on how it goes about its business communicating in today's "era of mass personalization", click here.