A clear vision helps drive your career decisions and events
By Robert Wheatley
Here’s the next installment falling from an insightful and engaging conversation with Ron Culp and what can be gleaned from his experiences and path which represent guidance for anyone with some ambition to excel in the PR world.
As we segue to talk about his career moves and key moments along the continuum that opened doors and built opportunities, the “get involved” theme is pervasive. And it is a reference point for the entire conversation, so we will revisit it here.
Ron’s first piece of advice: be willing to make a geographic move. To be sure there’s some natural pull to stay close to home and family. But openness to a move also opens possibilities and doors. In Ron’s case his college experiences had brought to the front an intense interest in the political game. And his willingness to make a move from home territory in Indianapolis to Albany, New York for a post with the New York legislative assembly — It created the launch pad for the political experience he wanted and inevitably would need.
“I would not have been on Eli Lily’s radar screen if I hadn’t done it. So back to Indianapolis for a time. Next up was a big jump in title and responsibilities again by being open to a move to Connecticut with Pitney Bowes as PR chief and a chance to rub shoulders with New York-based media,” he said.
There’s an underlying condition here that should be flagged: a willingness to step outside your comfort zone and take some risks. No great thing can ever be accomplished without doing so.
The Pitney Bowes stint turned out to be mission critical for the next move – to Sara Lee. Critical because the search criteria Sara Lee was working off called for finding someone from the East Coast with New York media experience. “I was the perfect fit for them – a mid-westerner with New York credentials.”
Choices, choices, choices – time and how you spend it…
Lots of people – probably most people – go into careers with no network. In Ron’s case his “get involved” philosophy started early and became foundational for a life well spent. It is paying dividends 20, 30 years later. What’s the action step? Say yes. Raise your hand. Get involved. Seek out opportunities for extra-curricular activity.
“I’m on the Lincoln Park Zoo Board sitting together with the captains of industry here. These relationships matter now and will again in the future,” he reports. It is this eye always on the future ball that helps bring shape to decisions and steps and moves. What’s going on underneath all this is a larger goal – we’ll get to the reveal of what that is shortly.
From Sara Lee to Sears and then a complete departure from this client-side focus to agency life at Sard Verbinnen. Why you ask? “Because you need the experience of a consultant in order to become one,” Ron says. You see Ron wants to walk ultimately in the footsteps of another person he has known, respected and held in high regard: Jack Raymond – a business consultant who during the course of his storied career helped organizations understand the barriers to their success and how to make better decisions.
The move to the agency world provided that inside dig into the life of a consultant. We are advisors, strategists, soothsayers, analysts, creatives, idea people — also builders of programs and campaigns aimed at improving and growing the business and reputations of those we represent. Ron wants to be Jack. And now he has the pedigree to do it with substance and horsepower.
If we can distill Ron’s recipe into its core elements, a few key ingredients bubble up to the surface:
o You need to approach your choices and time decisions with a healthy dose of ambition
o You need to construct a thoughtful and considered path that is always forward looking
o There is an absence of fear here — A willingness to go outside the comfort zone
o Thus an ability to make the moves that will accommodate the purposeful path
o And supremely important, involvement in outside activities that leads to relationship creation
Keep the involvement going. Keep adding. Keep fueling. And keep your eye squarely on the target. As Ron can now say definitively: “Yes, I am now Jack.”
Ron Culp is a friend and former client of some 21 odd years. His personal story is remarkable. It is a teaching moment for anyone considering a career in the PR world. His blog, Culpwrit.com, is one of the most popular around among those looking to get their careers off the ground.
And here we are at the front end of another school term, perhaps the beginning of that all-important senior year for those ramping up to liftoff in the real world. So let’s explore some of the best advice you’ll ever hear on how to optimize that final season and get ready for the rest of your life.
Ron graciously consented to let me peel back the veneer and get closer in on the grist that helped propel his life through remarkable experiences as head of corporate communications at two the most iconic companies in the world – Sara Lee and Sears. From there he moved to the agency business running the Chicago office of financial and merger/acquisition specialist Sard Verbinnen and then moved on to Ketchum Public Relations as regional chief and head of its North American corporate practice. We will also bring you up to date on the dawn of the latest chapter in Part II.
So you may want to take notes. Here we go:
Ron landed on the fundamental point about college life, your life; any point in life – all you have is time and your choices about how to spend it. “The central marker of my college experience was involvement in extra-curricular activities. You can basically split your life between doing your studies and managing your social life. Or you can follow a slightly different path,” he said. In Ron’s case, with dramatic results connected to his choices. His point is simple but profound — you can choose to be passive or really active. It’s a clear choice. A conscious decision.
In our business contacts and relationships matter, and Ron started developing his connections while in school. “I’m still hearing from people in my network that began in the college years. Just today I received a text from a guy I went to school with who 40 years later wanted to convey an opportunity I might be interested in.”
What was the Ron model?
o President of his dorm
o Editor of the campus newspaper
o Statewide chair of the College Republicans group
o Student member of the School Board of Trustees
o And through this connection involved in other University committees
Chief takeaway – this decision set in place a life-long devotion to raising your hand, saying yes and getting involved. The benefits are tangible and compelling – career altering in fact. Ron claims the social life can be woven through all of these activities and thus it’s not just a singular slavish focus on nose to grind stone.
But make no mistake this habit of his was a deal maker for a future filled with great opportunity. “As you can imagine through my school paper experience, I’m interviewing the Mayor. I’m meeting the Gubernatorial candidates during an election. I enjoyed being in that space because I was interested in politics and thought it might lead me in that direction. It did.”
What’s going on here? Can you see the theme? Ron secures meaning, enjoyment, interest that fuels his passions FROM his involvement in all these activities beyond the classroom. To be sure it was purposeful. He’s a purposeful guy. The advice: get involved – no, really involved. All you have is time. How you invest it will make the difference later in where you get to go, what you get to do.
Tomorrow’s post will bring a focus on Ron’s career choices and key moments along the path that helped shape his trajectory. Stand by for more.
Where does superior work come from in the PR and marketing communications field? Ok, so you say the work comes out of the heads of talented people. To be sure. But what separates the players from the posers? How do some people take their careers and business solutions to higher levels while others just mark their time “executing the project”?
We all think of super successful professional athletes and musicians or actors as people with incredible talent. Born that way maybe? Physically designed for success in their chosen field in some way? Lucky even? Maybe not. Read on.
The Brains Business…
In the PR and marketing game, we live in an intellectual property world informed by big ideas and remarkable insights. Certainly at the academic level there’s specific training in communications, public relations and marketing that helps fill the brain with understanding how these tools and disciplines work. But as said earlier some will succeed on higher levels down the line.
How can PR people achieve at the top levels? What separates the best from less than that? Is it luck? Ingrained talent? IQ scores? Contacts and relationships? No truer words were ever spoken on this earth than “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.” And therein lies the start of understanding the path to better performances. And nowhere is this better illustrated than by example from one of the most successful rock bands of all time, The Beatles.
Fab Four Fame an Act of God, Force of Nature or Sheer Luck?
In his fabulous book, Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell dissects success and achievement, blowing away the myths of fate and born-with-it talent that seems to pave the way for superstardom in one’s chosen field. The Beatles it turns out were a living example of what Gladwell calls the 10,000-hour rule. The band, formed in 1957 in Liverpool, was unremarkable in its early days. Until, a club owner in Hamburg, Germany signed them up to play over a period of years in a setting that is absolutely remarkable for one thing: the Clubs were open 24 hours. The band played seven days a week, often for 5 to 6 hours a day or more.
Over a two-year period, The Beatles played 1,200 times. Most bands don’t even secure that much on-stage performance experience in the course of a career. They played non-stop thus having to learn extraordinary amounts of material. They played, and played, and played. Outcome: the enormous amount of work put in forged a band with incredible skill sets. Gladwell’s conclusion: what separates the major winners from also-rans is at least 10,000 hours of focus and dedication to learning, growing and doing in ones field. Mastery is achieved when the effort put in is exceptional and extraordinary. Anything less and mastery is virtually impossible to secure.
How does this play out in PR?
Study, study, study and then study some more. Know everything about your client’s business and category. Read every publication you can get your hands on related to our field and practice generally. Feed your head through a continued effort to draw from the best minds in the marketing and communications field.
How do you leap ahead of “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know”? By making the communications and brand-building world an avocation as much as it is an occupation. Study, absorb, listen, read and focus your efforts on learning. Write and publish in our field – writing by the way is an essential practice (we’re story tellers) and one that you get better at only by doing. The more you know about a business and the competitors and the consumer who buys, the more creative and strategic the solutions get.
Out-sized ideas are not accidents, they are the outcome knowing, studying, digging deep to get your arms around the grist of what drives a business and what stands in the way of its growth.
As you work to expand what you know and understand about communication, human behavior and brand creation, the more clients will believe you have something special to offer. Programs get better, more creative. Your ability to help solve more problems grows exponentially.
How can you get to your 10,000 hours more quickly? Sorry there’s no way around it. Hard work followed by more of the same.
Ok, so what’s an editorial voice and why does it matter? If you’re exploring the role of content marketing (brand produced media content) in the mix of your communications efforts, then editorial voice is job one in helping you define the best practices to position your brand as a trusted source.
In a recent edition of AdWeek magazine some important facts emerged: 27 million pieces of online content are shared daily. 23 percent of social media messages contain links to content. There are brands in virtually every consumer category now looking for the right path to more productively activate their presence in social media channels. Fundamental to that goal is creating and offering compelling content that serves as the fuel to drive and activate social engagement.
So it’s no surprise brand owned content is rapidly gaining traction as a rising star in the marketing arsenal. Back in the day brands looked at media as something you bought. Today brands ARE media – publishers and producers of video and narrative content that operates in the same way as conventional media to reach, engage, educate and sometimes purely entertain your best customers.
But this is unlike the media proposition most CMOs are used to. It is not advertising. And shouldn’t be handled as such. It is closer in many respects to the tenets and principles of editorial media and reporting – the province of PR. News has always thrived no matter if its investigative or soft feature oriented, based on its relevance, value and credibility as a reliable source of interesting information. Even as brands acquire the tools to become publishers and producers, the same rules apply: you must first be a trusted source. And that’s as much in the saying as it is in the doing.
What’s the key to making all this work? Finding your editorial voice.
It is hard for businesses to do this internally. The skill sets and needs require a blend of editorial savvy, experience AND creativity. Consumers recognize a voice that is pure promotion from one that is meant to inform, teach, advise, explain or entertain. And its not that easy – you can’t bore your audience into engagement either.
Public relations has been viewed and defined for decades as a discipline focused on knowledge of the news media, reporting principles and access to this credible and powerful channel of communication. To be sure there’s more going on in the PR discipline than publicity. But for the most part, the outside world quickly “goes there” when looking at the value proposition for PR in the mix of communications tools for businesses and brands.
Now that same expertise and capability you reached for to get into the newspaper, magazine or TV program, is coming to the fore as best-in-class creators of content published by brands in social channels.
Editorial voice is about how messages are crafted and presented. Whether in narrative or video form yes, it MUST BE entertaining and interesting but it also can’t feel like a sales pitch.
Here are the essential keys to doing this right:
Editorial calendar
Put some infrastructure underneath this effort to think and operate like a traditional media organization. From quarter to quarter, what topics will you cover that will be of interest to your consumers? Build an editorial calendar to shape this content schedule and help you focus on tasks required to produce it.
Deploying outside expert voices
Outside experts bring added cachet to the table, respect and credibility to what’s being said. Trust is key here to success and can be helped along by routinely using outside experts as quote-able sources. The brand gets instant rub-off benefits of reliability when respected third parties are involved in the content you develop.
Reportorial approach
Don’t pitch, inform. Start a conversation. Speak with not at. Yes authority is useful and important but the editorial voice doesn’t cross the line into overt selling. It’s an unselfish form of communication that springs from businesses that truly care about their customers and thus want to become a relevant part of their lifestyles.
Emerging trends
“You heard it here first.” Well if not first then at least early in. Start the discussion on emerging trends. Become a valued source on information about subjects that impact your consumer’s lifestyle.
Frequency matters
What’s the shelf life of a newspaper? One day and then it lines the cat box. Similarly news and content should be constantly in a state of evolution and change. New episodes, articles, interviews. Keep it fresh. Short lead media like blogs can be supplemented with long-lead material like e-zines, webinars and e-books. Mid-stream content in the form of video and podcasts should be considered in context of where these mediums most benefit the story telling.
Aggregate and curate
Bring in and showcase other outside sources of content you know are relevant and offer it up to your audience of brand fans. Again your objective is to be a respected and trusted source and thus a reason to be generous in recognizing other work from other places that is meaningful.
PR lives in the editorial space and understands how to create messaging that conveys information in this way. The great news: the end product is nonetheless a controlled message. Its delivery is assured. And the platforms where it exists are measurable in every way. What is your responsibility though to make this work successfully? First find and retain your editorial voice.
The value proposition for what a great agency can (should?) deliver
By Robert Wheatley
What is powerful communication? Well you know it when you’re confronted with it, right? When it moves you. When it evokes a strong feeling or visceral response. This leads us directly to discovering the value proposition for an agency such as W&T. What is it exactly that we deliver to our clients?
Hopefully it includes transformational ideas that can alter the course of a brand’s trajectory and business results. To be sure the usual litmus test of our capability is often examined through the lens of campaign-able events and larger-scale integrated projects and programs.
That said at a fundamental level PR and social media communication is made powerful by how we use specific words and pictures to convey a story. In-other-words WHAT we say and importantly, HOW we say it. With sentiment. With anticipation. With passion and emotion. Please watch this video all the way through — then let’s talk some more.
Was there an “aha” moment here? Yep. A change of verbiage delivers a change in behavior. Sure this is a story well told. Point has been made: words matter. They can be used to great impact or something less than that. You can state the obvious — or develop dramatic new context by altering the way a brand message or proposition is conveyed.
Every so often we come face-to-face with process working to overtake ideas. With the urgency to “get the word out” driving the program boat, sometimes there’s a chance this momentum will super-cede the need to devote time and energy to creating a stronger and more compelling message.
Words can take you somewhere unexpected – or not. What you say can be simply a statement of the obvious – here’s my product, my feature and my benefit. Or, with a change of positioning, you can alter the course of brand history with a thought that grabs consumers in compelling fashion.
This is what we’re on the planet to accomplish at W&T. To find the right context that inspires and engages.
YouTube functionality supports converting engagement to sale
By Robert Wheatley
Scanning the recent edition of Google’s recent self-published e-zine Think Quarterly, I ran across an article on functionality improvements at YouTube that permit viewers to buy items they like within the production via a point/click hotlink to another web platform.
Video is an engaging and entertaining medium. With high involvement categories that naturally attract an enthusiastic fan base, you can immediately see the business-generating opportunities when taking advantage of viewer interest and converting “in the moment” to a purchase opportunity.
The site above, You-Tique, is a great example of a fashion business aggregating a series of trend videos around everything from “What’s New for Spring” to occasion based ideas, such as what to wear for a hot date. The use of a Stylist expert helps set the credibility and value equation at the right level right out of the gate.
From there viewers can watch a model wearing the products and click to buy while viewing the video. It’s easy, pretty painless and, in my opinion, way more effective than looking at still photos of a product with narrative information alongside.
Zappos has figured out that online e-tailing gets compelling when you combine the right products with exemplary service. So who knows if the folks behind You-Tique have similar policies for returns and friendly live support. That said, the concept of watch and buy is just plain captivating.
You get richer story telling, context, validation and other benefits that outshine static web site galleries by adding the flavor of video production to the whole proposition. May not be right for every product category but this peek at the future is exciting none-the-less. Think Quarterly says the click through rates for You-Tique have been stellar…
The word “remarkable” now transformed for the digital age…
By Robert Wheatley
Yes, there was a time – way back when in the very early years of my career that I succumbed to an age old maneuver popularized by the likes of P.T.Barnum — and others way before me who discovered the media magic of a stunt.
I built the tallest cake in the world. At least it was the tallest then at 36-feet and weighing in at well over a 1,000 pounds. Why you ask? My client, a local independent TV station in the Seattle area had just completed a new broadcast tower that would be the highest man-made thing in the city. How to gin up some clutter busting awareness for something so benign as a massive pile of steel tubes? Sure it would radically improve the broadcast signal thus reception for this channel (stop laughing already — I know this sounds reminiscent of rabbit ears), but, yawn, it just didn’t feel like it would be rewarded with more than a mention here and there.
What to do? Wait I know, let’s build the tallest cake in the world in a popular shopping mall and sell pieces of it for charity! How cake got into the mix in my head I don’t quite remember but baked goods were always a favorite of mine. Perhaps the best move of all was the Associated Press photographer I had hired who got the perfect vertical moment-in-time photo: a large crowd gathered around TV news cameras pointed upwards to the ceiling just as the baker — standing on a giant lift – leaned over to place the last layer of cake that topped the world record. It was media magic around the globe – the remarkable photo and story ran everywhere…west coast, east coast and beyond.
Remarkable then not so remarkable now…
So this cake gambit brought added value in the era of push marketing communication when businesses were at the top of the heap in controlling the flow of news and information outward. Now we’ve seen it all, been there and done that. Shock and awe from around the world sits in our hands via smart phones. Thus the sheer novelty of really tall cakes seems quaint and underwhelming like the 4th of July farm tractor parade in a rural town.
We’ve dialed out the noise, disconnected ourselves from irrelevant stuff, put a hold on what’s coming at us as we self-select only the media channels that most reflect our personal interests and passions. We’re in the era of “me.”
Today remarkable means a brand and business has found a way to connect with us directly – as if in a personal conversation that’s about our self-interests not their own. We are amazed when businesses seem to know us personally and understand our needs. And even more surprised when the effort includes tangible acts of unselfishness and dare we say “friendship” behaviors that transcend the traditional “sell-buy” dynamic that pervades the old transactional style of marketing.
No what’s remarkable now has evolved. Not about stunts, cakes, shotgun media hits and PR by the pound. Today best practices aren’t found solely through the lens of a TV news camera trained on a larger-then-life stunt. We gain more ground now through intimate connections and relationship building. It’s tougher, requires more patience, more strategy, more effort and more insight than a Guinness record-breaking cake will ever serve up.
What do you think?
(The cake tasted great and editors ate it up, literally – ok, I’ll stop here)
One of the greatest marketing evolutions in the Internet era: brands have acquired the ability to be content creators – publishers, producers of their own media. This fits perfectly with the other great strategic upheaval — brands can no longer simply imprint messages and attempt to exert “control” over consumer behavior by pushing messages at consumers.
As I write this, many brands still believe this will work.
The brand/consumer relationship is tougher to build now and demands a more selfless form of engagement. It requires singular devotion to understanding and mining relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests and passions. Brands-that-matter to their users can earn permission for a relationship by connecting tangibly, emotionally to activities and interests their consumer already cares about.
So doesn’t it stand to reason that working hard to become a source of valuable, interesting, engaging, entertaining information about these lifestyle passions could be important? For a fashion or jewelry brand it’s the opportunity to tap into that creative self-expression that is at the core of what drives a fashion-focused person. For the food brand it might be enabling the culinary creativity, learning and emotional payoff going on everyday in the kitchen (experimenting with new dishes, tastes and techniques).
In virtually every category insight research can help you unearth this unique emotional grist that drives the most devoted fans and followers. And from there is an enormously powerful opportunity to cement that relationship by casting the brand as an enabler and provider of stories and content that offers intrinsic value – How? Information, ideas and experiences that help the consumer enjoy, do what they do better and connect with others that share their interests.
Trust is the key to engagement…
But the word trust looms large in this. How does a brand successfully establish itself as a trusted and valued source? Here are five ways a brand can develop a respected and reliable channel of rich-content media:
1. The value of respected outside voices
In the news business, outside quote-able sources are employed to validate assertions made in a news story. Similarly, outside experts, influencers and knowledge-brokers can bring their own credibility and cachet to the story telling in brand-owned media. Bring in the experts as contributors and steer clear of putting them in a compromised position of endorsing or directly selling your product.
2. The type, tone and tenor of the content matters
Watch the overt selling. Your media mission is to be helpful, useful. Think like a magazine editor or TV producer working to build exciting, interesting stories that add value to the reader’s lifestyle. Operate like a traditional media organization focused on reader and viewer benefit. Take a reportorial approach to the content. If the communication comes off like reporting and informing rather than persuading, you’ll earn the attention of your best followers.
3. Identify the storytellers
Create an editorial board of editors and contributors. If you identify and position the writers and producers, you humanize the entire interaction for your audience. You also create an environment for trust to take root because the contributors are identified and thus “real people” are engaged in the communication.
Create an editorial board of editors and contributors. If you identify and position the writers and producers, you humanize the entire interaction for your audience. You also create an environment for trust to take root because the contributors are identified and thus “real people” are engaged in the communication.
4. Transparency
How do real friends speak with each other? Honest, straightforward, real, open communication is fundamental between true friends. Treat your audience with the same respect. When issues and complaints arise, don’t hide or spin. Be matter-of-fact. Admit mistakes – probably the hardest thing to do, but also the most refreshing and endearing behavior you can show. Nobody’s perfect. No one expects your organization or brand to be perfect.
5. Be entertaining
You can’t bore your customer’s into loving you and coming back for more. Valuable, useful information is a prerequisite. How that information is served up can vary from tedious to fun and interesting. Make them laugh and make them cry. Video may be the most powerful medium available and offers the magic of words, picture, sound, music, personalities and color. It’s a bite-size world we live in now so keep it short. But most of all keep it entertaining. Mainstream media is working overtime to achieve this and so should you.
What’s the end game? Once a respected source, you have an open channel of communication that’s direct. And with content that’s got their attention – a long way from the good old days of beating people over the head with repetition and self-serving messages you hope and pray will break through the noise. Ten years ago brands could only dream of creating such a relationship. Now it’s possible.
You know what’s great about powerful ideas? You can recognize the strengths almost instantly. And yesterday that happened at ragan.com’s review of Whirlpool’s web content strategy. So today we’re applauding and recognizing some terrific work in PR and brand building. As we’ve said before here at the Brand Trailblazer blog, if you look at your best consumers as walking wallets and view the relationship with them as transactional, you are risking failure in your ability to engage and communicate effectively.
On the other hand, treating consumer relationships the same way we regard our closest friends and family (we truly care about them) opens the door to an entirely new spectrum of programs and strategies — aimed at building relevance for your brand in the lives of those you hope to sell to. We call this finding and mining your brand’s “Higher Purpose”.
Whirlpool offers us a terrific example of this kind of thinking, well executed, that demonstrates a profound understanding of how brand relationships are built in the era of consumer control. Whirlpool has created the Institute for Fabric Science and Institute for Kitchen Science as platforms intended to help, advise and engage consumers on problems and needs they may have in their daily lives around cooking, cleaning (appliances) and laundry.
This works to establish Whirlpool as an expert knowledge broker and advisor on issues the consumer faces. Further real people are involved in the content creation and delivery, which helps humanize the brand. It takes about a second to see the vast array of potential extensions these platforms offer for earned media activity and additional multi-media content creation, so vital to aggregating and activating an audience at Facebook.
Monica Teague, Whirlpool’s Senior Manager for PR and Brand Experience had this to say in her Ragan.com interview: “And that’s the whole point of the Institute of Fabric Science and its sister, the Institute of Kitchen Science. Acting as a resource—versus promoting products—goes a long way in developing brand loyalty.” Amen to that. And we would go a step further to point out that now brands are obligated to earn permission for a relationship with consumers based on their ability to authentically connect with lifestyle needs and aspirations. It’s this kind of thinking that helps forge real bonds with people over time.
In the absence of strategies like the Whirpool effort, brands risk disengagement and commoditization – where finding a lower price becomes the only emotional value consumers experience with your business.
Aside from any social, moral or environmental priorities, your primary goal in business is…. to sell more products, more often at better prices. Success often assumes you have a relevant brand in a healthy category with the right value proposition. But wait, how brands connect with consumers is in a state of change.
Now we learn the consequence of our whipsaw economic environment is a thorough re-evaluation of what matters, what people care about. Gone are the remaining vestiges of consumption for its own sake and consumer’s defining themselves and their lives on the basis of the products they acquire.
In its place comes a soulful desire for greater life meaning. A refined sense of purpose. A drive for community and social engagement.
• Are you witnessing this change?
• How will this impact how you position your brand?
• How you go to market?
• What should your brand’s message be about?
• What tools you should use to reach out?
Please share your views and opinions. You agree, disagree? Why?
By Robert Wheatley
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