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

The reasons for this commitment are easy to understand. Having a diverse workforce allows Network Health to better serve, understand and represent its members who come from a wide range of ethnic and racial backgrounds. And the strategy appears to be working: Today, Network Health employs more than 400 employees, 46 percent of whom are non white, and 24 percent of which are in supervisory positions. Network Health’s employees speak nearly 20 languages themselves, and provide customer service in more than 170 languages.

The commitment to diversity, in large part, stems from Vin Pina, vice president of Human Resources. Pina, who experienced discrimination firsthand when a landlord refused to rent him an apartment due to his race, has made it a priority in both his personal and professional life to promote diversity and the understanding and acceptance of other races and cultures. When Pina joined Network Health, he spearheaded a three-year strategic effort to diversify the health plan’s workforce in accordance with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EOCC) employee-diversity standards. Under Pina’s leadership, Network Health hired twice the number of minority employees than standards propose in only two years.

As Pina said, “It’s simple: If our employees speak the same language as our members, and know our members’ neighborhoods, struggles, customs and traditions, we can be more efficient and effective in connecting and communicating with them.”

Pina was soon recognized for his dedication to diversity and was named a 2011 Boston Business Journal Leader in Diversity. It was then that we knew Network Health had a compelling story to tell and we used this recognition as a launching point. We developed a PR campaign that would highlight Pina’s unwavering commitment and showcase the multiple programs Network Health has created to promote cultural diversity and inclusion in the workplace. As a part of the campaign, we also highlighted the fact that health care reform would result in a dramatic increase in the number of minority patients entering the health care system in 2014, when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is set to take full effect. In other words, embracing diversity would be more important than ever.

The media responded immediately to the campaign. Through carefully crafted storylines, we secured several feature stories for Network Health in mainstream media, UMass Amherst Magazine (Pina’s alma mater) as well as a number of multicultural publications such as OJournal, Southcoast Today and TuBoston.com. We also helped Pina author contributed articles for outlets such as Color Magazine, which highlighted his personal experience with discrimination and views on why diversity is a societal imperative.

In addition, the campaign helped secure further recognition for Pina and his work at Network Health.  Most recently  he was named a 2012 New England Human Resources Association (NEHRA) Diversity Champion.We’re proud of our work on behalf of Network Health and look forward to sharing the many ways this Massachusetts company is making a difference in the lives of its employees and members.

Jessica Boardman is a senior consultant at Greenough. Follow her on Twitter @J_Boardman.

Getting answers to questions like these is challenging work—and well worth the effort. But even with access to so much data, we can still tell very little about customers and prospects by observing their relatively passive social network participation. To really understand behavior, we must rely on a concept that is both so simple yet so poorly applied in social marketing that it borders on stupidity: stimulus and response.

Most classically-trained marketers understand the concept of introducing an offer (stimulus) and waiting for a response. And over the years we’ve learned to not just measure uptake, but also to understand more about why and when a prospect actually becomes a real marketing-qualified lead. Significant investment is made in refining this process, but I hear too many stories about this discipline not finding its way into social engagement.

Before I go into five discipline-building tips, I must offer one strong caveat: I’m not saying that you should simply treat social networks like any other channel – these are venues for strategic brand storytelling, not lead gen repurposing. So, with that said, I offer five steps for bringing stimulus/response into your social marketing strategy:

• Listen first. Take the time to understand your audience before engaging them – it’s okay to listen for a while. Don’t even think about promotion until you’re sure you understand the community’s vibe.
• Earn your way in. Don’t think offer first. That will probably deliver new followers, friends, members and circle joiners who are undoubtedly there for the wrong reasons. Share, help and tell stories before you even think of asking for something.
• Tailor, don’t generalize. Why not segment your followers, friends, members, etc., for more targeted, relevant campaigns. Sure, it takes more time, but you’d be surprised at how much more lift you get when you really understand what makes different segments unique. Generalize and you’ll just be another marketer to your audience.
• Stimulate in bites, not batches. A campaign within social networks needn’t always be a fully-integrated, highly-structured program that relies on aggregated metrics alone. This is especially true in B2B marketing where five well-nurtured social contacts could actually make a salesperson’s quarter. Try to understand a few prospects better through bites of engagement and tailored offers and see what that yields.
• Study responses by hand. If you’ve listened, earned your way in, tailored your campaign and taken the extra effort to engage in bites, you likely have a good idea of who’s who in your strategically-expanding social ecosystem. Look at who they are, study commonalities and refine your content strategy to match your ideal prospects. Don’t simply generalize anymore.

We love data at Greenough. We pore over it daily, but we also understand that social marketing isn’t driven by data alone. Yes, stimulus and response works well with highly-structured data analysis, and you should have a plan for that too, but don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and use it like a conversation instead of simply a scientific probe.

Scott Bauman is executive vice president at Greenough.

Susan interned at Greenough’s San Francisco office during her senior year Stanford University, then joined the company full-time after graduating. She worked for a true mentor in Helena Kimball, and earned immediate client and media exposure due to her excellent skillset and Greenough’s boutique structure.

“I had the rare and rewarding experience of getting to make an impact very early in my career,” said Susan. “I wasn’t hidden from clients at Greenough. Far from it – I had the opportunity to work on client-facing items and even new business opportunities almost from day one.”

When Greenough’s San Francisco office closed, Susan joined the rest of the team in Boston. There she became a day-to-day contact for multiple clients. Under the mentorship of Helena, as well as Phil Greenough, Stacey Mann and many others, Susan learned to become a subject matter expert, manage account demands and hold her own by providing clients with a strategic advice.

“The level of responsibility I received was tremendous,” said Susan. “I distinctly remember going on my first new business pitch only a few months into the job. It was terrifying, but also one of the most valuable work experiences I’ve ever had. It was especially gratifying when we ended up winning the business!”

After five years with Greenough, Susan left to become a corporate relations manager for Genentech, a biotechnology company in San Francisco. She says one of the most valuable skills she learned at Greenough was how to acquire a high level of expertise about any industry in a short period of time. Susan leveraged this Greenough-honed ability to research and process information when she earned a job in biotechnology, an industry in which she had little experience but a great deal of interest.

“Greenough taught me how to develop a knowledge base so strong that client experts would ask me if they had forgotten to mention anything during a media interview,” said Susan. “That has come in handy many times in my professional life, not least when I had to go up against people with years of biotech experience as I was interviewing for my Genentech position.”

In her role at Genentech, Susan manages external communications for several bio-oncology medicines and helps inform the way the company’s story is told, including creating appealing, media-friendly narratives using all the information at her disposal, from clinical trial statistics to real-life patient experiences.

Susan found Greenough’s investment in cultivating her strengths and recognizing her successes made the company a rewarding place to work, but she also says that Greenough’s most valuable asset was its people. “This is a place with a committed focus on mentoring,” she said, “and on making employees take ownership of clients regardless of their position in the company.”

Jake Navarro is a senior consultant at Greenough.

If the South Korean Government selects the Bay State (timing TBD), the upside would be huge—an enormous influx of capital would help drive local robotics innovation and product development, two activities that are already happening in at least two universities (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute) as well as at dozens of startups around New England.

Equally important is the impact such a visionary investment would have on creating jobs.

While traditional New England manufacturing operations for such industries as shoes and toys has moved offshore, advanced manufacturing, which the robotics industry requires, creates new, high-paying jobs. In fact, advanced manufacturing is the fourth largest employer in the Bay State, according to Ted Acworth, founder and CEO of Artiac, speaking at a recent Robotics Cluster gathering sponsored by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.

Earlier this spring executives from several local robotics companies and state legislators hosted a South Korean delegation in order to “pitch” the Bay State as the perfect location for the new center; next month delegates and legislators are expected to dine with executives from local robotics companies in order to continue the conversation.

It goes without saying that all robotics companies in and around Massachusetts, from Hydroid, iRobot and Harvest Automation to Symbiotic and Heartland Robotics, stand to benefit from this potential development, as does our economy (new high-paying jobs equals stronger local economy).

Naturally I hope the South Korean Government selects the Bay State for its new center. And I encourage everyone—at robotics companies or otherwise—to get involved, if you can, with whatever it takes to win this prize. But at the end of the day, even if the South Koreans decide to build elsewhere, the new attention on the topic of robotics will only help fertilize this budding business. Layer in Amazon.com’s recent purchase of Kiva Systems for $775 million and I believe we’re sitting on a rocket ship that’s about to take off. And yes—I can see robots driving that rocketship to Mars and beyond, can’t you?

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

I agree with Besser’s assertions that by acting overwhelmingly on S2214, An Act Relative to Competitively Priced Electricity in the Commonwealth, Bay State legislators have demonstrated their shared belief that the innovation economy is a critical tool for the region’s economic development and for the state’s job-creation efforts.

Passage by the Senate sends the bill to the State House of Representatives, where members will likely take up legislative debate in the coming weeks.

S2214 strengthens important tenets of the landmark Green Communities Act (GCA), which Governor Patrick signed into law in 2008 as nation-leading energy efficiency and clean technology legislation.

To date the GCA has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of net benefits to electric and gas ratepayers in Massachusetts, primarily through smart investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy. These investments have helped reduce energy waste and have lowered reliance on imported fossil fuels while promoting clean technology jobs.

Among the key provisions outlined in Besser’s blog, S2214 achieves the following:

• Preserves a framework for Massachusetts to enhance its nation-leading energy efficiency policy;
• Expands net metering opportunities, providing energy users with an incentive to install renewable generation and the ability to save on their energy costs;
• Opens net metering to anaerobic digestion, a renewable technology that reduces organic waste going to landfills, provides local economic development and reduces greenhouse gases;
• Extends and expands long-term contracting for renewable energy, reducing financing costs to developers and thereby reducing costs to energy customers; and
• Resolves property tax issues for solar projects, facilitating residential, commercial and industrial deployment of a technology whose costs are coming down.

I believe strongly that the Senate’s passage of S2214 is an important next step for our state. Do you agree?

Jay Staunton is Vice President, Account Services, at Greenough.

Last week I read an article written by the Globe’s Scott Kirsner that reinforced this sentiment, offering up things the Bay State can and should be proud of; not in terms of athletics and traditions, but in terms of technology and innovation. What made the list? Our leadership in life sciences; fostering entrepreneurship; our top notch colleges and universities; our local hangouts,  which allow for the exchange of innovative ideas; contribution from big companies such as Microsoft, Raytheon and iRobot and the accomplishments of Terrafugia, the creators of a flying car.

So what about the areas the Bay State needs to work on?  Kirsner argued that Massachusetts isn’t creating enough public, economy-invigorating companies, we ignore potentially lucrative consumer-oriented innovation, we make it hard for talented foreign college graduates to remain stateside and we don’t mint enough “angel” investors, who fund cool startups.

Well put.

As far as the areas in which the Bay State is doing well, a few other areas could have made the list. What about renewable energy and clean technology? Just yesterday, our client Harvest Power, a Waltham-based startup that turns food scraps into energy, received $110 million in series C funding, a milestone that will undoubtedly propel the organic waste industry forward. Or, how about companies like BigBelly Solar which uses solar power to cut waste collection trips by 80%? And, you can’t forget Boston’s robust information technology and cloud computing industry. In addition to the heavy (IT) hitters like EMC and Akamai, cloud start-ups in the Boston area, such as Cloudant, Sonian and Kinvey, are making quite a splash in the industry.

When it comes to innovation, Boston is no Silicon Valley, a sentiment that many Bostonians are probably sick of hearing. But, maybe we don’t want to be Silicon Valley. Massachusetts is a unique area with deep historic roots and is home to many extremely bright individuals. Boston can and should create its own path of innovation, and I would argue that we are already doing this. As Kirsner noted, there are always areas for improvement, but from the work being done to develop breakthrough medical treatments to the conversion of organic waste into energy, we are making great strides just like the marathoners will on Monday.

Jessica Boardman a senior consultant at Greenough. She can be reached via email at jboardman@greenough.biz or follow her on twitter @J_Boardman.

The ACO model brings healthcare providers together under one business umbrella to manage the needs of patients. Unlike the HMO model of the 80s, which was led by insurance companies, the ACO approach is driven more by physicians and hospital groups. The goal with this model is to increase the quality of care while keeping costs down. Providers share any cost savings associated with their services as long as they meet certain quality-of-care requirements. The move is a significant one; it’s taking the industry from what has traditionally been focused on fee-for-service with rewards for volume to more of a shared-risk strategy that relies on fee-for-performance. Unlike HMOs, this model is also patient-centric; the goal is to improve quality and lower costs – without limiting choice (which, as many will remember, was one of the leading consumer frustrations with HMO plans).

ACOs are still in their infancy, but many healthcare providers are pooling their resources.  Local companies, such as Waltham, Mass.-based Medventive, stand out by helping healthcare organizations use technology, including clinical-integration and risk-management tools, to successfully transform themselves into ACOs. Other key strategies of successful ACOs include integrated-care models that improve communication between primary care doctors, specialists, hospitals and other caregivers and allow providers to focus more on case management and preventative care.

In Massachusetts, Senate President Therese Murray is working on a major healthcare bill that would also move the industry away from a traditional fee-for-service approach and toward more of an ACO approach. The bill is another effort by the Commonwealth to address the soaring costs of healthcare.

In recent remarks to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Murray noted that “Hospital systems have stepped up their efforts to provide quality health care within set budgets.” Murray referenced five Massachusetts healthcare systems that were recognized this year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as “Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations” for “providing better care at a lower cost by emphasizing primary, preventative care, improving integration between doctors and reducing unnecessary tests and hospitalizations.”

Thirty two Pioneer ACOs have been selected nationwide –including Partners HealthCare, Steward Health Care System, the Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization, Mount Auburn Cambridge Independent Practice Association and Atrius Health in Massachusetts.  The purpose is to test different payment arrangements for Medicare beneficiaries that support these organizations in providing better outcomes at a lower cost and, ultimately, to demonstrate the viability of the ACO model to all patients. As Dr. Gene Lindsey, president and CEO of Atrius Health, said in a recent article, Atrius “follows the ‘Triple Aim’ — high-quality care of the individual, improving the health of populations and doing it all at sustainable costs.”  That sums it up nicely.

What do you think? Will ACOs succeed? Why or why not?

Stacey Mann is EVP, Account Services for Greenough. Follow her on Twitter @sliedermanmann

Courtesy JPott

At first, I was prepared to disagree entirely with Christine Dunn’s post from last week, “Email Is Still the Best Way to Share Content among Consumers and Businesses.” I’ve since relaxed my stance, but I still don’t believe it’s the “best” way, although I’ll concede it’s still important and valuable in many instances. But things are starting to change.

Just because email may be the “most-used method” today doesn’t mean it’s the best. Why is that distinction important? Because it continues to provide a false sense of security, especially for traditional marketers who are still overly reliant on tools they’ve always used. Yes, email is still the original killer app, but can it survive fundamental changes in how we interact with our surroundings and each other in mobile ecosystems? I’m not so sure.

I strongly agree with Christine that encouraging “smaller, more intimate groups of colleagues, friends and family” to share content is an important goal for all marketers. But I’m not sure if email is really the ultimate tool for doing this, it just happens to be the most familiar to many. The StumbleUpon study Christine mentions (overview here from AdAge) suggests that its users, a younger demographic, “want a direct line of communications,” but the fact that email is one of the ways information is shared doesn’t prove that it’s the best. Maybe it’s just the easiest from the SU interface. I’d need to see more data.

When I think of “direct line of communications,” however, I think texting. I’d wager that more people 34 and younger are communicating via text than email, at least outside of work. And even people older than 34 are growing increasingly more comfortable with texting. It is more immediate and fluid, something that can also be said of popular mobile apps used today for discovering and sharing content such as Instagram.

The discovery-sharing paradigm is much more complex – and potentially powerful – than standard approaches to outbound marketing. That’s another reason I was so eager to disagree with Christine. In fact, her reference to the BtoB marketing study finding that “email marketing is still considered the ‘workhorse’ of the marketing industry because it’s inexpensive and effective” really set me off because the bar for what’s “effective” in email marketing is often quite low.

The BtoB study offers unsurprising stats about how marketers plan to send more content through email, but that still doesn’t prove its value. The report summary teases the notion that marketers can no longer ignore email/social media integration, but I think strategic mobile integration is even more important; and not just mobile versions of online networks, but new methods to experience content that tap either new technology or new approaches  to advance the discovery-sharing paradigm.

No, email isn’t going anywhere soon. But let’s not get carried away with its perceived value, especially considering the source (marketers comfortable with it). I don’t have the answers, but I do think that as we spend more time in a mobile ecosystem, email, at least as it exists today, may not be such a workhorse any more. At least that’s a possible sea change we should all be watching more closely today.

Photo courtesy Beaufort’s TheDigitel

One pioneer in the public health campaign around sugar is Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, and Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at the University of California, San Francisco.  Lustig spearheaded this movement with his 2009 YouTube video Sugar: The Bitter Truth,  which explores the health damage caused by sugary foods and encourages dietary regulation. Dr. Lustig argues that sugar in all forms, such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, is one likely cause of lifestyle diseases. Lustig’s video, to no one’s surprise, went viral, and The Bitter Truth opened the door for further research on the topic of sugar and health.

Lustig’s campaign is supported by molecular biologist Kimber Stanhope, whose studies have shown that people who consume large amounts of high-fructose corn syrup are at higher risk for heart disease and stroke.  And researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are studying whether sugar can cause a sudden spike in the hormone insulin, which in turn may fuel certain types of cancers. This is an alarming premise, especially considering that America’s consumption of sugar has increased dramatically in the last two centuries, from just around six pounds annually in 1822 to more than 100 pounds in 1999.

Despite these recent findings, sugar’s effect on the diet is a complicated issue. Lustig admits that scientists are still trying to understand how different forms of sugar are processed by the body—the theory is that some types of sugar are worse than others (Is brown sugar worse than white sugar? And so on). Furthermore, the debate continues regarding the effect of sugar in healthy foods. Dr. Lustig admits that an apple is good for you, despite its high fructose content. Many nutritionists would say the apple’s  high fiber content and complex interplay of nutrients offsets the fructose.

Settling on a solution may be equally complex, especially considering the consequences.  Some groups are calling for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to mandate that food companies list any added sugars on the nutritional panel of every item.  Radical proponents such as Lustig are even more rigid, proposing stopgaps to sugar access, much like what we have with drugs and alcohol today. This includes sugar taxes, placing age limits on sugary food purchases and even limiting advertising of sugar-sweetened food and beverages.

In the absence of government intervention, I believe the onus is on healthcare providers and leaders in the healthcare industry to raise awareness of the sugar/health issue and offer solutions.  As one of the world’s most advanced cities for healthcare, Boston and its medical community has risen to this challenge. A number of Boston-area hospitals have created Public Health Campaigns to encourage limiting excessive sugar consumption. Last year, Carney Hospital in Dorchester  became the first hospital in Massachusetts to ban the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages on its campus. Since then, nine additional Boston hospitals, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Boston, have pledged to work together on efforts to reduce consumption of sugary beverages.

Absent government intervention, if that’s even warranted, I believe today’s leaders in the healthcare industry must work together to encourage lower sugar consumption. To date, I’m impressed with what many of Boston’s leading hospitals have initiated to raise awareness to the issue, and I believe it bodes well for future public health campaigns. Do you agree?

Sarah Hurley is a Consultant at Greenough. Follow her on Twitter at @Sarah_Hu