Interactive Marketing and PR:  Star Trek provides a good visual

Today I continue a recent discussion about the challenges in aligning PR and interactive marketing. The battle lines are drawn with the two sides competing for the hearts and minds of clients.

Consider these two quotes:

The first is from Jonathan Kopp, Global Director, Ketchum Digital.

PR firms are poised to lead the way in social media because they approach conversation influence from an earned media perspective — finding existing story lines and figuring out how to make their clients’ point relevant. PR firms with a digital development capability can use visual and dynamic storytelling to add a deeper layer of engagement–digital assets designed specifically for social media engagement.

The second is from Michael Kogon, CEO of Definition 6, an interactive marketing firm based in Atlanta.

In the past, PR has typically been responsible for communications with internal and external audiences; developing the communications strategy and leading the execution. For most organizations, interactive marketing includes all the “online” marketing stuff. Today, with so much more communication taking place online, it’s more common to see progressive interactive agencies managing all online communications efforts, particularly around blogging and other social media.

So which side is better equipped to manage a client’s social media strategy?

I appreciate the battle lines.  Each has a lot at stake.  But I am not taking sides because I believe each has a critical role to play.

The debate reminds me of a famous Star Trek episode.  The characters in question were in fact more similar than they realized, but their differences in perception drove them apart. The two characters fought to the end, unable to reconcile differences.

OK a little poetic license, but my point is that interactive marketing and PR are very similar.  They are focused on increasing engagement and use the same tools to get there.

But while their services complement each other – positioning/branding,  messaging/key words, impressions/click throughs, storytelling/application building – their strategies and success metrics are very different.

As a result, we create great tools that don’t necessarily extend PR’s finely crafted messages.  At the same time, the messages PR creates don’t always evolve to reflect the way users search for information. And we tend to overestimate PR results and underestimate interactive marketing’s. Our individual clients may be happy, but an overall social media strategy may suffer.

And so the larger question for me is not who wins the battle, but how do we tap the talents of both sides to align marketing and PR objectives?  How do you create a strategy that incorporates key words and messaging, click throughs and impressions and storytelling and technology?  My next post begins to take on these questions.

In the end we may need to reframe the debate and demonstrate how PR and marketing and are extensions of one another, not opposites and not independent of each other.

Let me get back to you.

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This post looks at the gap that still exists between PR and interactive or digital marketing agencies — even as social media continues to blur the boundaries that traditionally divide them.

The disconnect is one of the reasons I wanted to partner with the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) and asked Definition 6, an independent interactive marketing and eCommerce agency, to become a sponsor of PR Camp Atlanta.  It’s time to bridge the worlds of PR and interactive marketing and foster new ways of thinking.

As Michael Kogon, CEO at Definition 6 said:  ”There couldn’t be a more exciting time to be working in interactive marketing. While Definition 6 has been doing search and social media since long before it was cool like it is today, clients are much more receptive today to trying new things.”

And I was encouraged that half of the attendees to PR Camp Atlanta were marketing professionals. Friends had recommended I change the name. They thought it would be to narrow and discourage marketing professionals from attending.

A Difference in Positioning

At one level, PR and interactive marketing speak the same language and share common goals. We both promote social media.  We use many of the same tools.  Yet most PR and interactive marketing agencies still continue to position themselves differently.

Consider Altanta’s largest public relations firms.  “Social media” and “digital communications” are gaining more prominence, but the most common capabilities listed in the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Book of Lists (a paid yearly industry summary) were:

Media relations, reputation and brand management, crisis communications, event planning, corporate communications, executive visibility, grassroots advocacy, media and speech training.

Now look at some of the core competencies of the largest web design and development companies:

Website development, interactive marketing, SEO/SEM, application development

It shouldn’t be that way.  SEO is now critical to doing PR.  Reputation and brand management is integral to many applications that interactive marketing firms are tasked to create.

Old habits die hard, but to be fair, our clients need to shoulder some of the responsibility.  In most organizations, each functional area uses a different lens to analyze the same social data.  Little effort is made to coordinate efforts and align results.

Take comments.  My good friend and digital marketer and lead catalyst at mass+logic Peter Fasano summed it up perfectly:

The Social PR Leader will measure comment count to capture share of voice, earned media and sentiment.

The Social Marketer will measure Short URL Click through rates and conversion.

The Social Researcher will measure the number of comments by segments to capture the consumer preference of the red or black car.

The Social Customer Service Representative will measure comments with complaints or questions.

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I wanted to share the outline of the discussions from PR Camp Atlanta. It reflects the comments that attendees made during the three sessions.

As a follow-up to PR Camp Atlanta, one of the sponsors – Definition 6 – is allowing me this week to host its TwitterINGO game as a way to make the outline more interactive. I’ll be selecting a mix of keywords pulled from out sessions at PR Camp.

TwitterINGO is a free, downloadable widget that allows you to view real-time tweets while playing the game.

I hope many of you will tune-in for this PR Camp edition of TwitterINGO. The game starts sharply at 3pm today, and you’ll need to download the widget (and follow @definition6) before 3pm. For more information, and to download your game board widget, please visit: www.twitteringo.com.

PR Camp Atlanta Discussion Outline – August 21, 2009

Session I: Get clients and bosses to extend their interest in new media

Why bosses resist:

1. Emotional reactions:

- Fear of change, unknown and unforeseen consequences

- Senior professionals don’t use social media for personal use: lack understanding of layout and function of different features (RT, groups v. pages, connections, referrals, etc)

- Lack of understanding how mass audience uses the tool and which demographics are using and for what purpose

- Rapidly changing technology (are we investing in the right social media tool?)

- Abandoning other methods

- Afraid of negative feedback, executive exposure to negative content

- Lack of understanding of relationship development through social media

- Customers in control

2. Liability:

- Privacy
- Legal issues (what needs to be approved? Who owns it? Intellectual property?)
- Network security

3. Questions concerning strategy:

- Aren’t willing to participate with risk of failure

- Is it consistent with brand strategy (what language is being used to represent the brand?)

- No rules of engagement: what role does the staff play in interacting with the page?

- What is the right social media strategy (mix?)

- B2C, B2constituent, B2B, B2Employee

Where bosses most often won’t allocate:

1. Additional headcount funding, budget, time, commitment, resources

What are they willing to consider:

- Competition (what others are doing)

- Saving money

- Willing to track activity (results/insights)

- Doing it in phases

- Taking small steps

- Info gathering/focus groups

- Test via tactics, try it out

Session II: Help senior professionals tap the social media experience of junior colleagues

Start small (Baby steps are a great way to present an unstable and ever-changing technology and misunderstood social media in a non-threatening way):

- Get your boss involved in a way that’s personal (Get signed up for his/her favorite Meetup group to see how cool social media can be)

- Print it out! Have hard copies, graphs, pie charts, or even make a PowerPoint presentation

- Show them what it is. Immersion (Describe one tool at a time), competitors (audit), encourage personal use, learn how to speak social media (included in brand strategy)

- Engage your boss one tool at a time – blog (with comments), Facebook/Youtube

- Listen, watch and analyze what is going on in social media without interacting.

Reverse mentoring (benefits of):

- Both senior and junior professionals need tools at their level to understand impact of social media

-One-on-one dialogue

- Young people learn business tactics; mix old and new strategies

- Share mistakes

- Meet in the middle. Create a situation where a senior professional creates a solution and junior professional does the same

Which young professionals do we use?

Watch internal activity on intranet and use key influencers to join the social media team as experts.

Session III: With PR and Marketing blurring, determine the best ways to measure success

Get PR and Marketing to align:

1. Have PR, marketing and social media talk before start of project

2. Long-term goals to create a profitable alignment between PR and Marketing departments:

- Communicate
- Admit interdependency
- Compare goals
- Be transparent
- Discuss who owns what
- Discuss success metrics
- Try to avoid technology snobbery

Metrics:

1. Engagement: is the audience interacting? Is it a 2-way conversation?

2. Sales: is social media being used to drive sales

3. What is the market size?

4. Does personal interaction with the brand add to overall customer value?

5. Interim metrics: followers, tweets, fans, positive mentions, click-throughs, link-backs, length of digital trail, site visits

Tools of measurement:

1. Google Analytics,

2. Facebook Insights,

3. Number of followers

4. Retweets (quantity v. quality; how many of them are retweetable?)

Types of Measurement:

1. Surveys

2. FB insights (stats)

3. Comments

4. Reach

5. CTR (click through rate)

6. Benchmarking (e.g. in 6 months we want 50% more fans)

PR + Marketing + Customer Service:

B2B v B2C metrics

Use social media to increase brand awareness or drive sales

What Constitutes Success:

1. Trust (how do you measure trust?)
2. Become beloved brand
3. Find common ground through communication

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I hope this was useful.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Let me get back to you.

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Managing generational differences in social media will be one of three featured topics at PR Camp Atlanta this Friday, August 21. In what may be one of the more lively discussions of the morning, representatives of Generation Y will pair off with their Generation X and Baby Boomer counterparts to understand how professionals at different levels are approaching their jobs.

It’s all part of the PR Camp Atlanta’s goal to immerse Atlanta’s PR and marketing community in all things social media.  We will avoid discussions on how to use the latest tools. There will be no formal presentations.  Instead the focus will be on helping professionals identify business opportunities, tap resources, and measure success.

In many ways, planned discussions at PR Camp Atlanta parallel the changing roles and responsibilities that are taking place in the workplace.  Increasingly social media is allowing Generation Y to assume leadership roles.  It’s also allowing PR and interactive marketing professionals to work more closely to manage reputations, build relationships and extend brands.

PR Camp Atlanta is a forum to examine social media’s impact on our profession. Changes in our industry are also the reason why I reached out to Definition 6, an independent interactive marketing and eCommerce agency, to be a sponsor.  I want to break down barriers and encourage the PR profession to look at what we do differently.

As Michael Kogon at Definition 6 said, “As we work to help clients adapt to the new challenges and opportunities, created through social media, hands-on experience using these communication platforms is mandatory at all levels. Events like PR Camp Atlanta are a great way for professionals to get started with social media; it also provides them with a great opportunity to meet other professionals in the physical world.”

Final Agenda

Session I: 9:00 AM – 9:55 AM

Get clients and bosses to extend their interest in new media.

• Melanie Babcock, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy & Services, Manning Selvage & Lee
• Bert Dumars, Vice President E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid
• Jenny Schmitt, President and Director of Client Strategy, CloudSpark
• Katie Mingo, Senior Marketing Associate, Delta Airlines

Session II:  10:00 AM – 10:55 AM

Help senior professionals tap the social media experience of junior colleagues.

• Nick Ayres, Interactive Marketing Manager, New Media + Content, The Home Depot/Corvida Raven, Author of SheGeeks.net
• Marilynn Mobley, Senior Vice President, Strategic Counsel, Edelman PR/Matt Epstein, Account Coordinator, Definition 6
• Shirley Powell, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Turner Broadcasting System/Tolu Ogbechie, Social Media & Development Associate, Prevent Blindness Georgia
• Carol Flammer, Managing Partner, mRELEVANCE, LLC/ Lauren Culbertson, Communications Assistant for U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson

Session III:  11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

With the blurring of PR and marketing, determine the best ways to measure success.

• Peter Fasano, Principal/Lead Catalyst, mass+logic
• Christopher Jones, Digital Strategist, Ketchum PR 
• Irfan Kamal, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Ogilvy Public Relations
• Debbie Curtis-Magley, Public Relations Manager, UPS

Sponsors

• Definition 6 
• Neighborhood America 
• Georgia Tech Research Institute 
• PR Newswire 
• Atlanta Day Book 
• CBS Atlanta 
• I Send Your Email 
• Social Media Club Atlanta 
• CloudSpark 
• Peachpod Studios 

Registration is now closed.

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