See How Clients Rate Our Passion for Their Business

Thursday, May 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment 

Surveying your customers in order to gauge their satisfaction with your products or services is nothing new—and applying that same principle to a PR, marketing and communications agency such as ours makes perfect sense. And we’ve been measuring client satisfaction for 11 years.

The results, as you might expect, help us assess our strengths and weaknesses, and they form a strong foundation for determining the agency’s to-dos, whether that’s to build on our ability to drive new sales for our customers or polish our storytelling capabilities.

Instead of purely bragging about our results, however, which you can see a select sampling of here, we challenge you to assess your own PR/marketing/communications agency on the following criteria:

1) Is your agency an extension of your own team? By this I mean does your agency work efficiently and effectively with your staff? Do the two teams have a solid rapport and bullet-proof communication? Does your agency enhance your own capabilities (versus creating redundancy) and complement your existing skillset (versus replicating key abilities)? If it didn’t violate any contracts or policies, would you hire the staff at your agency as employees? Do they have the same (or complementary) core values, work ethic, personal style (and even sense of humor) as your strongest team members?

2) Does your agency demonstrate a passion for your business? Let’s face it—it’s difficult for anyone to know your business as well as you do—but a good agency can come damn close—and should. Your perfect agency should demonstrate complete immersion in your industry, including knowing your competitors, understanding the key issues and having a familiarty with the major players, trends and developments. We’re not talking about a quick refresh before your next in-person visit or conference call—we’re referring to a deep  and ongoing knowledge of all your strengths, weakenesses and paint points—internal and external. In a word, your agency should be a subject matter expert in your company and your industry.

3) Does your agency work proactively on your behalf? Someone once said you can’t teach people to be proactive—they either are or aren’t. In my opinion, the best employees are wired to take charge and think ahead—they try to solve problems ahead of the curve. The flip side, naturally, is less desirable—the reactive (versus proactive) employee waits for your orders before they move. Seems pretty clear which type makes a better partner, don’t you think?

4) Last but not least, and perhaps most importantly, does your agency help drive new sales? Is your agency connecting you to qualified leads? Yes, a large part of PR, marketing and comuinications work involves building a brand, whether that’s through thought leadership (contributed articles), social media (Facebook likes) and/or media coverage (Wall Street Journal). But is your agency working from a strategic point of view, directing, managing and integrating all the efforts, from content creation and media outreach to social media, ongoing measurement and reliable follow-up, in order to drive new business into your hopper?  At the end of the day, just answering that one simple question may be the truth you need.

Barbara Call is director of content at Greenough. Follow her on Twitter @BarbaraCall1

Making the Transition from Journalist to Marketer

Monday, January 30, 2012 | Leave a Comment 

I’ve seen several blog posts of late referencing the trend for PR and marketing agencies to hire journalists. Having recently made the transition myself, I’ve got some advice for journalists considering the move and agencies considering the hires.

Seven reasons why journalists make good marketers

1) We understand the concept of audience. Any experienced editorial person knows one of the first questions you ask when you’re handed an assignment is this: Who’s the intended audience? We’re familiar with changing the format, tone and length, among other things, depending on the audience and where, when and why they’re reading our content. That skill is critical in marketing PR content development, as you might be crafting a contributed article for a trade pub, assembling a press release for the business press, editing a case study for prospective customers, creating pithy copy for a Facebook posting or writing a white paper for prospective business investors. Not only does the audience, tone and type of writing vary between each of these, you also need to understand the underlying messaging and the correct voice for the client.

2) We’ve been pitched articles by agencies. As a result, we can give our colleagues tips for what works (and what doesn’t). We’re also used to researching story ideas, and that’s often an easy way to start a dialogue with writers and editors on the media side. Having sat on the other side of the desk, we can tell you how the editorial process works, what we’re often looking for and what really turns us off. We also bring an assortment of media contacts to the agency, which usually gives us an inside edge on landing a story or nailing coverage for our clients.

3) We understand the need for context. No successful journalist would ever show up to an interview (or input session, as we call them here at Greenough), without doing our research. We’re used to casting the net very wide, then distilling that information to assemble the story. The first step in casting that net is a basic understanding of the company, its customers, the problem it’s trying to solve and the industry it competes in. We like doing research—it’s part of the journalistic process—and it’s critical in developing compelling and accurate marketing PR content.

4) We’re usually very detail oriented. What, exactly, does that mean? Three sets of skills rolled into one person: We’re expert proofreaders, solid copyeditors and seasoned fact checkers. I’ve worked with and for established publications, where fact checkers doubled back to verify my quotes, titles or statistics, but most of the time the job of fact checking my own work fell to me. This is critical when assembling materials for clients, which should be perfect.

5) We like variety. A journalist’s job is never boring. One day you’re writing a piece on weight training for Women’s Health; the next day you might be updating small business owners on the current lending market. We’re used to diving into a topic area, getting up to speed quickly, churning out an authoritative piece and moving onto the next topic. Sure, many journalists develop an expertise (or, if you’re coming from a newspaper background, a beat), but even within a particular subject matter we enjoy the variety of changing topics. We’re naturally curious, and we ask a lot of questions. Most of the time these skills translate nicely into understanding what our marketing PR clients need.

6) We like to write. Enough said.

7) We’re on top of the news. Part of a journalist’s job is spotting trends—and that means staying on top of current events. That skill translates perfectly to agency work, where finding opportunities for your client’s CEO, for instance, to comment on current events or trends is a nice win.

The #1 thing journalists need to know about working for an agency

1) The client is always right. Pleasing them comes first. Forget about writing the pieces you want to write—your job is to understand the client’s messaging and strategy, then craft the right words to relay that message across multiple channels and readers. Got something else to say? Channel your opinions to your personal blog or do freelance work.

Barbara Call is director of content for Greenough. She can be reached on email at bcall@greenough.biz or follow her on Twitter @BarbaraCall1

The Streaming War is on – Pass the Popcorn!

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Gone are the days of going to the movie theater or renting a DVD especially now that Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy.  With the rise of Netflix and other companies that stream movies and television shows online, it makes it easier to watch new releases at home – and has subsequently started an online streaming war.

The New York Times recently reported that Netflix is the front runner in the online streaming world with its subscription service, Watch Instantly. With the ability to watch movies on a computer, television, iPad or iPhone, a whopping 61% of Netflix’s 15 million subscribers streamed movies in the second quarter.

Netflix CEO CEO Reed Hastings - living large in the streaming wars.The only downfall is that Netflix’s catalog of 20,000 steaming movies doesn’t include many recent hits because the company hasn’t been able to negotiate rights from all the Hollywood studios. Most of Netflix’s deals require the movie to be on store shelves for 28 days before it can be available on DVD or online.

Not having the most anticipated movies and television shows available to stream when they are released makes other options very tempting. For example, “Robin Hood,” is available to stream on Amazon, but will not be available on Netflix until mid October. The online video hub, Hulu, which recently launched the subscription service, Hulu Plus has the current season of “The Office,” while the most recent episodes on Netflix are from last season.

What side will you take in the streaming war? Will you stick with the leader, Netflix, or the up-and-comers who offer the most recent releases? I’m voting for the underdogs!

-Contributed by Jena Coletti. Follow her @jmcoletti.

Game Boy? What is that?

Thursday, August 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

I grew up playing old school Nintendo. My favorite game? Duck Hunt. I would spend hours at a time holding the Nintendo Zapper Light Gun as close to the television as possible to hopefully knock down a duck or clay pigeon. I remember when Game Boys were all the rage and you had to blow inside your game cartridge to make sure it worked properly. I’m most comfortable with console games, but clearly the industry has changed over the years and it’s booming online. 

This week, the market research firm NPD Group distributed a study that showed that one out of every five Americans over the age of six has played an online social game at least once. That’s nearly 60 million Americans! That figure leads me to believe that consoles, like Game Boys, will soon be a thing of the past and games will strictly be played online. To back up my point, most of the NPD study respondents had never played a traditional video game and 35% had no previous gaming experience whatsoever.

With games like Duck Hunt, practice made perfect; you didn’t have the option to buy skills or items that would make you a better player. Today, gamers can buy virtual goods to improve their game play. The virtual goods market has become a cash cow and Mashable reports that by 2013 it is expected to hit $6 billion in sales. Now, games provide entertainment and cash rewards.

Do you prefer a console or focus exclusively on social games? I predict that user adoption of social gaming will continue to rise and one day, kids will wonder why their parents ever played games on a television screen.

-Contributed by Jena Coletti. Follow her @jmcoletti.

Be Careful Where You Click

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

There are endless reasons right now to dislike BP. The company will now always be known for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its immense environmental costs, most of which have not yet been fully revealed.

In another Greenough blog post, Jennifer Eberline asks: Is it even possible to lead a strong communications strategy during a crisis like this? My answer to that question is: “not really.” Especially in the case of BP who is spending significant dollars buying up all of the “oil spill” terms on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo so users can “Stay Updated On BP's Gulf of Mexico Response Efforts.”  See photo below, courtesy of the Mashable article, “BP Buys Top Google Result for “Oil Spill”. 


Although the sponsored links are labeled as such, should BP have the privilege of giving anyone searching for information on this catastrophe its side of the story first?  In my opinion, no!  As someone who works in the PR industry, I can sympathize with how difficult a task it must be for their PR team to continually put out fires left in right – and there have been many. However, when clicking on the BP-sponsored “Oil Spill” link I find it insulting to watch Tony Hayward talk about how they have taken full responsibility for cleaning up the oil spill, let alone watching all the wholesome images of workers cleaning up the spill in their clean white shirts.

As one journalist said, “While it may take BP years, or even decades, to clean up the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the oil giant is wasting no time to attempt to clean up its tarnished image.”

When it comes to public image, what do you think (if anything) BP could do better?  Would painting a more honest picture of the crisis (as Jennifer suggested) be enough, or should they tone down their PR efforts and lay low for awhile?

-Contributed by Chantal LeBoulch. Follow her @cleboulch

Choose Your Own Context

Monday, March 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

What does the remix culture mean for business storytelling?

Last week, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote an insightful and thought-provoking commentary on how the “mash-up culture” of our increasingly digital age affects how we consume texts.  I urge you to make time to read Kakutani’s piece, “Texts Without Context,” in full. 

First, it’s well worth it.  And second, part of Kakutani’s commentary is that our reading habits and attention spans have changed.  Take her piece as a challenge; see how many times you’re tempted to look away, to open a new tab in your browser, to go back to whatever task was the previous victim of you short attention span (this blog post, perhaps).

The piece starts with a short review of  David Shields’s book “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” which Shields created in its entirety by splicing together quotations from other works.  You can read an excerpt here. But Kakutani’s commentary doesn’t dwell on written texts.  It envelopes examples from literature to technology (e.g. Twitter, Google Wave) to reality TV (Jon & Kate Plus Eight, Jersey Shore) to art (a 3-D rendering of Picasso’s Guernica on YouTube), music and video games. 

Interestingly, the UK’s The Guardian recently asked, “[Is it] time for a press award for crowdsourced journalism?

What is the result of this copy-paste-collaborate-remix culture on storytelling?  To some degree, we’re already recommending this approach to clients when we suggest blogs or Twitter accounts with multiple contributors. But the cultural shift is not only about a new way of creating content; it also reflects a new way of consuming content.  A consumer might read an executive’s short statement in one place, jump over to read a tweet or two, scan an outsider’s comment on the company blog and then skim the list of headlines on the company’s press releases Web page.

If content consumption has become like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, what’s the best approach to telling a business story?  Do we jump on the remix wave and become ourselves collectors and splicers, combining customer quotes, reviews, etc?  Do we feed the short attention spans of consumers by providing tiny morsels of the story in different places?  Do we try to keep telling the story at all, or let consumers tell our story in whatever form bubbles up from the collective?

Let us know your thoughts.  But first, go read Kakutani’s article.   All of it.  Trust me, it will be good for you. 

Contributed by @c_morgan

Print’s Big Chance

Thursday, March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Le Monde newspaper in France has 300,000 traditional subscribers per month who receive the publication on their doorsteps.  And they have 100,000 online subscribers who pay $8/month for access to online content.  That’s a pretty great ratio.  The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, has 2.1 million traditional subscribers and 400,000 customers who pay online.  That ratio isn’t quite as good.

Free online content ensures readers, but not money.  Paid content might snag some money, but not many readers are willing to pay.  It’s a tough scenario, and as we speak the print industry is trying to decide on the best way to monetize the changing nature of consumer news consumption.  The debate between paid versus free, if it ever really faded away, has been brought back to the forefront by developments such as the iPad and the highly publicized decisions of publications like The New York Times to erect pay walls.  I’m not going to jump into that brawl in this post, but I did want to share a very interesting view on the situation and one that hasn’t received much attention.

Howard Gossage was an advertising executive in the 1950s and 60s (yes, like Don Draper), and he wrote a very interesting essay on the basis of print journalism.  In the early days of the industry, newspapers and magazines relied on readers for funding.  If a consumer believed that the content was worth it, he paid.  As advertising came of age, the publications all of a sudden found a new source of income, and as circulation grew so did ad revenue.

Eventually, Gossage writes, “Two opposing economic spoilsports – rising production costs and competition – started to ruin the whole lovely thing.”  To keep readers the papers had to keep prices down, but costs were driving the price up.  The industry “committed itself to an increasingly irreversible course,” and chose to sell the content for less and pander to the advertiser.

This came with huge consequences.  Newspapers and magazines now depended entirely on advertisers, and a reader was simply a circulation number, not a patron.  Content changed as well.  Gossage advocated expunging advertising from a publication’s pages and selling the content for what it was truly worth and what it would take to maintain it.  And look where we are today.

The Times’ move to a walled garden pay structure, and that of other publications, has been met with a range of reactions from spectators and industry insiders.  But looking at the industry within this historical perspective defends the pay structure and makes it seem downright revolutionary.  Rupert Murdoch is sticking it to the advertisers!  Sort of.  Advertising and print are inextricably linked in a symbiotic relationship that I can’t see ever totally losing value for either partner, but a pay structure that prices content at a premium fundamentally fights circulation figures.

Newspapers are already beginning to find the customers that really want the content and charge them for it, and one way they’re doing this is with mobile applications, many of which are advertising-lite.  More and more people use their phones to access the news, and this will only increase over time.  It’s clear that “the life or death of a publication no longer depends on whether its readers like it but whether advertisers like it,” as Gossage writes, and when I really think about this, it just seems sad, and I can’t help but wonder if the industry’s current predicament is really a huge opportunity for print to revert to its former business model.  But is that even possible in the age of the internet?

Contributed by Jim Fay.  Follow him @JGF3.

Banishing the Blogger Backlash

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | 1 Comment 

Earlier this week, New York City passed a law recognizing what most of us in the media industry already know—bloggers are journalists too. Until Mayor Bloomberg announced the new rules on March 2nd, access to city hall press conferences and similar events sponsored by the city were restricted to members of traditional media only. According to Norman Siegel, an attorney who filed the lawsuit resulting in the ruling on behalf of several bloggers; "Online journalists will now be considered as 21st century journalists and be treated equally to print, television and radio journalists."

Reading MediaBistro’s article on the news, I couldn’t help but wonder what took the Big Apple so long? The days when the majority of Americans turned to traditional platforms for breaking news updates are long gone. With the proliferation of smartphones and other devices, we’ve become increasingly reliant on non-conventional sources for the most up-to-date information. In fact, according to a new report out this week from Pew Research, 92 percent of Americans get their news from a combination of platforms, including traditional print, mobile and online. Only seven percent of those surveyed reported getting their news from a single platform, and those respondents pinpointed the Web or local TV news as their go-to source for information.

The Pew report further found that Americans view consuming the news as a social process; 75 percent of people who reported accessing their news online read it via an e-mail forward or post on a social network site, and 52 percent shared links with their social networks via email, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. For those of us in the industry, this finding too should come as no surprise. We know that a blog comment or retweet from an industry influencer can be just as compelling as a feature article in a traditional print publication. In many cases, the ROI resulting from coverage in a social media channel is more actionable, as it can be traced in real-time throughout the duration of its relevancy.

So, while New York’s City Hall is admittedly a bit late in their recognition of the bloggers’ legitimacy, the announcement is nonetheless an industry milestone. By granting non-traditional journalists the same access afforded to members of conventional media, the ruling enables New Yorkers to receive their news via the preferred combination of platforms. As the media industry continues to undergo rapid changes, I’m betting we’ll see other government institutions and organizations alike follow New York’s lead and banish the blogger backlash.

–Contributed by Kate Finigan. Follow her @PRKateFin

Dear Abby? Not Quite.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 | 2 Comments 

I thought it was a joke when my co-worker first told me. Ashley Dupre, the call girl embroiled in last year's sex scandal involving then New York governor Eliot Spitzer, is the New York Post's newest advice columnist. No, really. 

In her weekly "Ask Ashley" column, Dupre will share her expertise on all things related to love and sex. I'm sure you won't be surprised to see that the column is accompanied by a color photo of Dupre in a low cut blouse, doing her best sexy librarian pose.  And I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out the catchy "Spitzer's babe answers your love questions!" line.  I know the newspaper industry is in big trouble, but come on…really?

Dupre's introductory column featured this note from the editor: "Sure, she's made some mistakes. But now, the former escort who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer is sharing what she's learned in her new sex, love and relationship column — exclusively in the New York Post. Is your husband cheating? Is your daughter on a dangerous path? Our readers asked — and Ashley fired back with her no-nonsense advice." 

Here's *my* question: what woman in her right mind would ask a former escort for marital advice? But I digress.

Dupre's new column is yet another sad reminder of how desperate some media entities have become. What message are we sending when some of the country's best journalism school graduates can't find work, yet a former call girl is given her own column in a New York daily?  "I used to be on the front page of the New York Post," brags Dupre in a video on the newspaper's website. "Now I'm writing for it."   

I asked my friend, media analyst Steve Safran, for his take. "The New York Post has never pretended to be a model of journalism," Safran says. "This hiring shows just how low they will go to sell newspapers."  Indeed. Safran says he's not surprised by the paper's choice to make New York's most famous escort its newest star, but hopes it isn't a trend copied by other news outlets.  "There are plenty of problems facing the news industry,”  Safran adds, "but I hope they can come up with better content solutions than this titillating but dubious offering."

Only time will tell. We'll have to wait and see whether Ashley Dupre becomes the next Abigail Van Buren, solving the world's relationship problems one email at a time.  I have my doubts, but you never know. 

- Contributed by Amy Erickson. Follow her @amyerickson

You Say You Want a Google-ution

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 | 1 Comment 

By now, you’ve probably heard News Corp.'s, Rupert Murdoch’s complaint that Google, and other high profile search engines, are making money by stealing his content.  The first question that comes to many peoples mind is, Mr. Murdoch, do you know how Google works?

It’s no surprise that the Internet is continuing to climb as the preferred way for people to get their news.  According to an article in the New York Times, “Web Passes Papers as a News Source,” even though 40 percent of Americans get most of their news from the Internet, this number doesn’t represent an actual decline in the popularity of newspapers – or even getting news via the television.

The funny thing is that Google doesn’t force Web sites to be included in its search listings, and in fact, it’s very easy to remove yourself from its listings.  For instructions on how to do this please see the blog post on Newsweek, “Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Stealing His Content. So Why Doesn't He Stop Them?”

With the ability to find news articles and new publications/blogs from a simple search on Google, I find that I’m not only reading more, but that I'm also following numerous sources (rather than just one). Google does a great job of letting you choose the sources you want to read, so isn't it silly to think that making content less search-able will be good for business – especially online newspapers?

Let’s face it, we’re all a little bit curious about what would happen if Murdoch declined free traffic to his sites from Google.  Is it possible that publications like the Wall Street Journal have built up enough credibility that we’d still read the stories AND pay for them without being directed to them from our innocent Web searches? 

If you take Google out of the equation, exactly what is Mr. Murdoch's plan to drive Web traffic?  This will be interesting to watch.

- Contributed by Chantal LeBoulch.  Follow her @cleboulch