Thumbs up

Earlier this week, I was surprised to see that my friend Patrick Fortner had endorsed me on LinkedIn. It took him the click of a mouse—less than a second—to show that he was a fan of my work. In much the same vein, I’ve had colleagues and co-workers write letters (now emails) of recommendation, make phone calls, or otherwise advocate on my behalf. In these small ways, they build my brand, sanctioning who I am and the methods by which I do it.

 

These minor gestures carry a big weight. We trust people we know, and value their opinions, so when they express approval, it holds a lot of sway. It’s enough to influence hiring decisions, change votes, alter buying decisions, and make us question our choices.

 

As PR and marketing professionals, it’s easy to forget that we can capture and direct some of this same power. No matter the organization, there are hundreds—perhaps thousands—of people who like the products or services it provides and are willing to tell their friends. It’s what social media expert Ted Rubin calls a Return on Relationship. They might need a little nudge from time to time, but the potential is there.  

 

For example, I blogged two weeks ago about the positive public relations my alma mater’s football team is generating for the school. At the center of that buzz is an unassuming kid named Johnny Manziel, a phenomenal athlete who is likely, next week, to become the first freshman player to win the Heisman Trophy.  

 

While the national sports media is generating a lot of the excitement, the power of one amazing quarterback to elevate the Texas A&M brand is also being bolstered by alumni and fans who have a stake in the game. We already had a positive feeling about the product (Texas A&M University). Now we’ve been shown a clear and easy path to advocate for it (by simply saying nice things about a nice Texas kid). And we’ve got the numbers to make an impact: with 333,308 “Former Students”—the A&M name for alumni, whether or not they received a degree—we’re a sizeable group of potential promoters.

 

Like any good mar/comm department, A&M has made it easy for supporters to become cheerleaders. They’ve developed a dedicated website, complete with a fun and flashy video that can be shared at the click of a button. They regularly share stories from ESPN, The Sporting News, Associated Press, and other major media, encouraging us to “share on Facebook and other social media.” Which we do. And they involve us at every key moment, like invitations watch press conferences online via streaming video feeds. In other words, they make us part of the team.

 

These efforts do two things simultaneously: first, the Heisman campaign gives the alumni a splashy and cool way to talk about something we love. Yes, it’s about football—but it’s also an opportunity to say “Look at us! Oh, and while you’re here…did you know we’re a member of the Association of American Universities because of our research and that we’re nationally ranked in number of academic programs?”

 

Second, it bolsters brand loyalty from within. While we’re out there cheerleading for our favorite school, we’re reinforcing our own positive feelings about the organization. Long after the football season has ended, we’ll favorably respond to requests for donations, political advocacy on behalf of the university, and other endorsements.

 

Of course, you don’t get donors or lifelong customers overnight. But building brand advocates can start very small—literally small, in fact. For instance, you can get a “mini buy-in” by asking people for the most basic show of support. Think about the yellow plastic “Livestrong” bracelets. More than 80 million of them have been sold (at just $1 each) since 2004. If you have one on your wrist and see it every day, how much more likely are you to respond to the Foundation’s fundraising mailer? The same holds true for a pink ribbon or a political candidate’s bumper sticker. It’s asking for an almost insignificant commitment, but one that can yield dividends for the organization in the long term. Why? Because it’s the beginning of a relationship that you can cultivate and grow over time. It forms a connection—one that must be nurtured, certainly, but a starting point nonetheless.

 

If you’re thinking this sounds like added work for the communications team, you’re probably right. Conversely, though, it’s a force multiplier: you’ve extended your staff from one or two PR people to a potentially unlimited team (that also works for free). Worth a little extra effort, I’d say.

 

As for me, I’m happy to endorse friends, tout projects, and tweet about nonprofit causes on your behalf. But—and here’s the key to most brand advocacy—you’ll have to ask. I’ve got a lot on my to-do list these days, and need a gentle nudge. Except when it comes to Aggie football, of course. Have I mentioned Johnny Manziel should win the Heisman?

Pie, pie again

The pecan pies were an absolute disaster—burned on top, liquid and unset inside. As the bakers in the family, my sister-in-law and I were horrified. What had gone wrong? And more importantly, how could we fix it on Thanksgiving morning, with guests already arriving?

Because Jenny and I both have event-planning experience, we’re great at managing minor messes. This didn’t faze us, but we knew we had to act fast.

 

“You make two more crusts,” Jenny said, “and I’ll check Baking 911 to figure out what went wrong.”

As the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” No matter how well executed, there is always the likelihood that something won’t work as you envisioned. Good strategies—whether for Thanksgiving pies or corporate communications—build in contingencies, budget and resources to cover the “what if” scenarios. For us, it was simply buying enough ingredients to make two more pies. For my sister Jill, our host for the day, it meant having a stash of Gigi’s Cupcakes in the pantry as a backup.

Yes, we’re a family of planners.

This doesn’t mean we always have a complete secondary plan, however. Sometimes the event contingency kit is a roll of duct tape and a couple of safety pins. Or a friend on speed dial who can give an amazing keynote when the speaker’s flight is delayed. Sometimes the food rescue is making the original into something else entirely. It’s what my dad calls “The MacGyver Move.”

“Yes!,” said Jenny’s mom, warming to the concept. “What would MacGyver do? Serve ice cream and pour the molten pie on top! Mmmm!”

But it’s not always about the disasters. Comms expert Peter Shankman reminds us that you also have to have a “backup plan for success.” What if things go wildly RIGHT? What if your idea suddenly goes viral and the orders are pouring in?

It’s a predicament that catches many businesses off guard, including my own backup plan, Donna’s Pie House on Lover’s Lane in Dallas. I went in earlier this week to order a pie or two as my “just in case” (because my family doesn’t take chances when it comes to pie). But when I said I needed to place an order, the counter woman shook her head.
 

“We’re overwhelmed with orders,” she said, gesturing to three women frantically rolling out pie crusts behind her. “I hate turning away customers, but we don’t have the resources to make any more pies this week.”

She said that Donna’s is enjoying a growing following, in part thanks to features on local foodie blogs like Feed Me Dallas and Cravedfw. I know from personal experience that it’s also getting a lot of word-of-mouth buzz—more than one Facebook friend directed me there for Thanksgiving dessert options.

“We’ll be ready for this craziness at Christmas,” she said. “Now that we know, we can adjust.”

As for my own Thanksgiving dessert crisis, everything turned out fine. The second batch of pies cooked perfectly (turns out my aunt’s oven cooks too hot, so we just adjusted the temp accordingly). Those extra cupcakes came in handy: last minute (but welcome) guests arrived just as we sitting down to eat. And as my dad will tell you, slightly burnt and liquefied pecan pie makes a delicious ice cream topping.

Another angle on school PR

This past Saturday, the Texas A&M football team unexpectedly beat #1 Alabama, the program that was widely expected to win this year’s national championship. The Aggies went into the game as a 13½ point underdog and emerged as one of the most talked-about teams in the NCAA.

It was a huge win for the university—not just in terms of a great sports moment, but for the institution’s overall brand and visibility on a national level. The game drew a Nielson rating of 6.6 overall and a peak of 9.8 during the last 15 minutes of the close game. In plain English, this means nearly 10% of the total 114.2 million television-equipped households in the United States were tuned in. Not 11.4 million people—11.4 million households.  

This kind of an audience obviously gives Texas A&M amazing publicity. According to a recent article in the Texas A&M student newspaper, The Battalion, “the media coverage surrounding the A&M-Florida football game [in early September] generated an estimated $6.5 million in exposure.” And that was before the football team had played a single game.

So what does football have to do with academics?

 “We’re very unique in higher education in that we have a consistent identity between athletics and the University,” said Jason Cook, Texas A&M’s vice president for marketing and communications. “So the same logo that’s seen on the side of the football helmets, seen by an average of 4.5 million people on a national SEC broadcast, is also used by the University. It’s used by every college and division on our campus. Brand consistency is where you have the greatest impact.”

This consistency has been in place since 1999, when the university launched its Vision 2020 “institutional evolution,” a strategic and comprehensive plan that maps out administrative priorities. Brand and marketing are embedded in all aspects as part of the plan’s “culture of excellence.”

But, admits Cook, moving to the nation’s most visible athletic conference sure didn’t hurt.

“For too long, Texas A&M has been seen as a regional institution within the state of Texas,” he said in an interview in July. “I think a lot of that is because of our athletic conference affiliation, whether it was in the [Southwest Conference] or even the Big 12, which is concentrated in a thin sliver in the center of the United States.”  

In 2011, the Aggies’ previous conference, the Big 12 (which they left to much controversy last year), averaged only 2,347,000 viewers per college football broadcast. The SEC conference averaged about 4,447,000 viewers. That’s an extra 2 million viewers every week—and that’s JUST for football.

 

"It's interesting that [as] part of our deliberations in the conference move, we never did talk about what our football record was going to be in 2012," Cook said. "This was truly a brand move for Texas A&M. Just like the University of Texas wants the Longhorn Network to expand their brand, we believe that the move to the SEC provides the opportunity to expand the Texas A&M brand on a national level."

Or as “Gig ‘Em Nation,” the Aggies’ official ESPN blog, put it: “The Aggies hope to use the national platform that the SEC provides to educate the nation on their university. From its academics, to research, to athletics and its fan base, Texas A&M is looking to show the country what it is all about.”

At least one academic researcher says that the athletic brand does translate into academic growth. In his paper, The Benefits of College Athletic Success: An Application of the Propensity Score Design with Instrumental Variables (mentioned in a 2012 Freakonomics blog), Michael L. Anderson says:

For FBS [Division I Football Bowl Subdivision] schools, winning football games increases alumni athletic donations, enhances a school’s academic reputation, increases the number of applicants and in-state students, reduces acceptance rates, and raises average incoming SAT scores.

The estimates imply that large increases in team performance can have economically significant effects, particularly in the area of athletic donations. Consider a school that improves its season wins by 5 games (the approximate difference between a 25th percentile season and a 75th percentile season). Changes of this magnitude occur approximately 8% of the time over a one-year period and 13% of the time over a two-year period. This school may expect alumni athletic donations to increase by $682,000 (28%), applications to increase by 677 (5%), the acceptance rate to drop by 1.5 percentage points (2%), in-state enrollment to increase by 76 students (3%), and incoming 25th percentile SAT scores to increase by 9 points (1%). These estimates are equal to or larger than comparable estimates from the existing literature.

I’m not sure how the Aggies going from 7-6 last year to a projected 10-2 this year raises incoming SAT scores, but I’ll take the other benefits any day.

Oh, and by the way, the money’s not bad, either. Cook says that “since Texas A&M announced its move to the SEC, licensing revenues have increased by 27 percent, compared to an average growth of 7 percent by our peer institutions.” Add to that the extra $3.4 million in conference revenue sharing,  the increased alumni donations, sponsorship deals, ticket sales and other income, and you’ve got a brand strategy with impressive ROI—not to mention a lot of very happy fans.

 

On the fence

The windows of my home office look out into my backyard, where a crew of men is building a new perimeter fence. The Love Your Lawn guys are on Day Two of this noisy job, one that my elderly neighbor Leo is watching with great interest. I walked outside to ask him what he thought about the chain-link coming down between us.

“The new wooden fence will look real nice,” he replied, “but now your kitties can’t come over and visit.”

Of course, this made me immediately start brainstorming on ways to provide cat access as part of my fencing plans. I had a lot of thoughts and ideas, all of which distracted me as I tried to focus on a communications project for work. But then I realized that fences and access—at least in the virtual sense—could be just as important to PR planning as they were to my backyard projects.  

Consider this: 20% of American adults over 18 years of age don’t use the Internet. If you use the most recent census figures, about 46.9 million adults are not online. This “digital divide,” the split between those who do and do not have internet access these days, is a real barrier—a fence keeping people out of the data-based world that most of us take for granted.  

The reasons for this divide vary significantly. Some people have disabilities that make it difficult to use technology; senior citizens don’t readily adopt these options; low-income households can’t justify the expense of broadband; a small number lack basic literacy skills. But more than half of those not using the Internet, according to the Pew Internet Project, say that “that the main reason they don’t go online is because they don’t think the internet is relevant to them.” Hard to wrap your head around, isn’t it?

Still, it’s an important consideration, especially when designing public relations for nonprofits that might target these audiences. Your tactics shouldn’t center on social media, for example, if the intended recipients don’t use Facebook and Twitter. A website is not the best information source if it means a trip to the library to view it on a public computer. A woman in an abusive situation can’t take the risk of having Genesis Women’s Shelter on her browsing history.

Before you panic, remember that there are plenty of alternatives to digital options. (In fact, we used to do a lot of cool PR before Al Gore invented the Internet for us.) For some audiences, an old-fashioned flyer or handout might work very well. For others, an event might generate buzz. And sometimes it’s enough just to get people to talk about you: Keller Fay, author of The Face-to-Face Book, claims that “90% of these conversations [about brands] happen offline” in real conversations between people.

The end objective is to do what’s right for your particular audience. Look for the “fences” you may have put up and the unintended barriers you may be creating. Are you building a nice landscape that disappoints and excludes your nice old neighbor? How can you get around those issues while still creating something of value?

As you sort through the answers, these challenges could change your plans—perhaps for the better. For me, they meant standing in the back yard, explaining to a perplexed contractor that I needed a small hole cut in a brand-new fence.

“Whatever works for you,” he replied, shaking his head. Yes, indeed. Whatever works for me.

Ask anyone. In fact, ask everyone.

One of the most significant benefits of our interconnected digital world is that we now have more access to knowledge than at any other time in history. The answers to nearly every question are at our fingertips. We need only look in the right place.

It’s access that extends far beyond websites and data. Through technology, we can connect with the talents, insights, and creativity of other people—what they know how to do and the ideas they have for doing it. One way of tapping into this creative collective is called “crowdsourcing,” soliciting the “crowd” or a large number of people to either help complete a task or find a solution to a problem.

Crowdsourcing is probably best known as a source of cheap labor—getting a lot of people to do small parts of a larger job or parsing out very small jobs, as is done on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. But it can also be a methodology for finding the specific proficiency you need to address a challenge.

 “What really happens in crowdsourcing as it is practiced in wide variety of contexts, from Wikipedia to open source to scientific research, is that a problem is broadcast to a large number of people with varying forms of expertise,” says Dan Woods, CTO of the Evolved Technologist research firm, in a recent Forbes column. “Then individuals motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution.”

In other words, it’s more than just a survey or poll. It’s asking your customers or constituents for answers to a legitimate issue and then (important!) actually implementing one or more of those submitted solutions. It gives them a stake in the game and literally makes their efforts a part of your work. 

For example, Dell has a very active IdeaStorm community. Participants submit ideas for innovative technology and the public votes on their concepts. Anything that gets enough votes is developed by Dell technologists. And if it sells, Dell gets the profits: as it says in the Terms of Services, “a posted idea will grant Dell royalty free license to use and implement it without compensation to the originator. Participants should be aware of this before posting any ideas.” Ah ha.

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly followed a similar model for their InnoCentive website as a way to break down the silos of drug research and get them on the market quicker. They even opened up the network of scientists to their competitors, including DuPont and P&G. Any company can post a problem, development issue, or question—and the community of experts can try and solve it.

We’re seeing the idea spread rapidly across the internet. Reporters are tapping into this stream for help with investigative journalism. Web-based sites use it as a source of goods and services, from stock photography to video content for a new Ridley Scott film, Britain in a Day. One woman even used crowdsourcing to name her baby, a technique that she later turned into the Belly Ballot website, where expectant moms can let friends vote on names for their newborn. 

As you can imagine, this kind of broad exposure to a specific target audience makes crowdsourcing an effective tool for public relations, generating interest and prompting engagement in your product or service.

“The payoff to your company will be an increase in customer involvement, loyalty, and perhaps even an insurance policy in case something happens,” says marketing strategist Ivana Taylor in a recent Survey Analytics blog post. “Those who start early and adopt crowdsourcing as a part of how they do business will have already established themselves as an organization who cares and involves their customers.”

It’s an approach that can yield remarkable results. Earlier this year, PR firm Razorfisk created “Mein Burger,” a crowdsourcing campaign for McDonald’s 40^th anniversary in Germany. Via an interactive site, people could create a new burger concept. Within a week, the site racked up 45,000 different entries (330,000 over the full campaign), and more than 1.5 million people voted on their favorites. In total, the site received seven million unique page impressions—“the most successful individual McDonald’s campaign,” according to the agency. (The winner, by the way, was The Preztelnator, a burger topped with ham and two kinds of cheese on a pretzel bun. And, yes, McDonalds now sells it and the four runners-up in its Germany stores.)

It’s also one more example of connecting with your audience through a two-way conversation, giving them a level of ownership that transcends traditional media. Crowdsourcing builds relationships and strengthens positive impressions, which—in the end—is the true objective of any public relations effort.  

 “Approach crowdsourcing as an opportunity to engage a new group of potential supporters,” says Soha El Borno of Idealware in a recent column on crowdsourcing for nonprofits. “In the end, the tools don’t matter. What’s important is coming up with meaningful ways to engage, learning from other organizations that have successfully used crowdsourcing, and having faith in the process.”