Great Moments in Trailblazing:

By Robert Wheatley

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.

Bravo!!

From editorial shotgun to building influence and engagement

By Robert Wheatley

There may have been a time when massive distributions of press releases or video and audio news releases would have been the principal component in mainstream consumer media PR plans. Those days are gone.

Have you fully made the strategic and tactical shift to focus on a different view of engagement and communications? Do conversations and relationships sit at the forefront of your campaigns, more so than looking for gross impressions and measurement yardsticks based purely on audience number delivery?

Is Internet based communication, outreach and community building getting the budget priority or is mainstream media still grabbing the spending spotlight?

At a recent meeting of the Association of National Advertisers, Coca-Cola CMO Joe Tripodi was quoted in coverage of the event saying that conversations are now more important than impressions. To be sure effective message delivery has always been a vital consideration – nonetheless mass or “tonnage” of placements was also a major part of the editorial results story.

Think Different…
• We are now participating in the era of relationship-based marketing.

• Where influence is earned based on the brand’s ability to mine relevance with the target consumer’s lifestyle.

• And true communication is a not only an outcome of optimizing the intersection of earned media and owned content, but also developing and investing in conversational tools. The crux of this effort is more peer-to-peer than loading the communications shotgun for another outward facing message blast.

Quality of contact is important and quality builds from a base of reciprocity. How do you know if your thinking is right on this score? Ask yourself this question: am I actively looking for ways that my brand can act and operate to improve my best customer’s lifestyle and enable/facilitate their personal interests?

Pay-to-Play

Even mainstream media channels are in a state of transition as audience stats once employed to lure in advertisers gets thinned by the splintering of consumer attention — mostly to places where opt-in engagement work well because the content to consume is not about overt selling. That said, increasingly the lines between editorial (church) and paid (state) are blurring. Just as computers and TV are merging into one platform so is the ability to purchase alignment of a brand message within the content side of media — digital, print and broadcast.

This is tricky because a fine line exists here between useful, valuable, helpful messaging and something less than that. Nevertheless we can expect to see more of this ahead.

The Future…

Editorial media outreach is and will remain a relevant and significant part of the PR value proposition. That said, the strategic approach has changed from big distribution plays to focus on customization, relationship development, unique angles, exclusives and narrowcasting. And operating in parallel to earned media is a growing layer of direct forms of communication (and conversation in social platforms) where quality will forever outweigh quantity as the principle driver of effectiveness.

PR experts are content creators now in opt-in channels where relevance spells the difference between aggregating an audience of followers — or not. More strategy is required. More focus. More understanding of consumer desires and passions. More targeted, interactive media activity.

Are you there?

What say you?

Is the whipsaw economy driving consumers to focus on more soulful values?

By Bob Wheatley

Do you agree that this emerging consumer mindset drives change in how brands are built?

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?

This is the first in our series of question/answer posts about effective communication, best practices in PR and social media and an occasional look inside Wheatley & Timmons.

Any burning questions you would like us to weigh in on? Let us know!

Our blog improved — now coming to you in video form.

An introduction to our new video blog post series. It’s not the Tonight Show just yet.

Check back every Thursday and see what the “Question of the Week” is. Be sure to let us know if you have a question that you would like answered.

A backwards glance shows seismic shift in the PR world

By Robert Wheatley

It was without a doubt one of the most powerful PR campaigns I’ve ever been associated with. An entirely new product category created from scratch off a compelling, dynamic public relations strategy. Yes, I said PR — not advertising or sales promotion. Over $100 million in sales (and that’s in 1994 dollars) was achieved and an 84% share of market within 16 months of launch. It was the introduction of First Alert brand carbon monoxide alarm products.

Recently we heard from the Wall Street Journal that futurist Richard Dawson believes newspapers will be irrelevant by 2022. The reference point for this incredible shift can be more fully appreciated by briefly looking backwards to a moment in time when conventional print and broadcast media were popular and respected sources of news, information and influence on consumer behavior and public opinion.

Here’s the story of PR campaign media strategies that were built from a full-scale deployment of earned media tactics.

• And the approach is no longer as relevant. New businesses are now developed in an interactive, narrowcast environment without push-button scale-ability

The lesson: the old rules no longer apply. New media protocols, planning processes and program strategies literally demand a transformation of our beliefs about brand building, PR strategies, how PR firms are put together. Thus how we look at messaging, outreach, measurement and evaluation of ideas is different than it was even 10 years ago.

When editorial media ruled!!

It was 1993, the firm I owned at the time, Wheatley Blair, was hired by First Alert, the leading home safety products brand in the US. They had invented the residential smoke alarm category and literally owned the retail market for them. Rich Timmons, now principal and President of Wheatley & Timmons, was the global marketing chief at First Alert – a marketer who had followed conventional paths focused on TV advertising and who was going to do something unprecedented: launch the next biggest thing to come along in his company’s history through PR.

A new category: Carbon Monoxide (CO) Alarms

We were awestruck the moment we learned that CO poisoning was the largest source of accidental poisoning deaths in America.

First Alert had created the first affordable residential detector for this previously unseen and little understood hazard that claimed at least 1,500 lives every year and injured thousands more.

The Silent Killer

How do you convince Americans to protect themselves from a hazard you cannot see, taste, smell or touch? And after all, headaches are common and ubiquitous, right? We created a theme that dramatically defined the threat.
• Poison center physicians, indoor air quality experts, leading fire service officials and others were recruited to help explain the problem and support the solution
• We built the Carbon Monoxide Information Bureau to house the scientific and medical evidence
• Brought together consumers who had lost loved ones in CO accidents to personalize and make the hazard tangible and real

Launching a Media Tsunami

Media tours were conducted with CO survivors and coordinated with local fire department representatives. We booked medical expert appearances on TODAY, Good Morning America and all of the network news programs. Placed in-depth hazard education features in national newspapers and virtually every major daily in the US. Similar treatments on family protection were secured in women’s service, lifestyle and DIY magazines. We assembled an in-house TV news production department that was producing a regular flow of 90-second video news packages.

Our tracking on consumer media impressions within six months topped 700 million and grew to over a billion. There were 6 o’clock news stories in major markets about lines outside stores exclaiming that First Alert alarm products were sold out. A major trade publication featured a quote from a senior buyer at Walmart who described First Alert CO alarms as the “cabbage patch doll of the hardware department.”

A business was created. A category established. First Alert doubled in size. Thousands of lives were saved in the process. Importantly, editorial media in virtually all channels was the instrument of awareness, education and motivation. The decline of traction, audiences and the splintering of media into hundreds if not thousands of platforms of self-interest make this story simply a reflection of a another age in media communication.

The same product launch, repeated today would be wholly different and geared to empower individuals to spread the word as much as media properties are addressed to influence the influencers.

For First Alert we constructed a media machine that hummed and produced and delivered editorial attention. That is no longer the way communication operates. Yet many still attempt to apply the old rules of quantity thresholds to a world now devoted to the quality and personalization of encounters with communication.

Nine years after we began, the agency moved on to represent Kidde, the other leading category brand. We helped them secure the number one market share position. This dramatic video PSA was part of the effort:

How would you launch the CO alarm category today?

Ok, which is more important, price or big ideas…

By Robert Wheatley

Many years ago I had a client who literally shopped every project among their current stable of agencies. It was a calculated effort to keep everyone grinding the budget pencil ever harder. Kind of like a bidding contest. Or perhaps the sort of challenge posed by Wal Mart buyers in a packaged good category pricing throw-down between competitors vying to retain in-store shelf real estate.

In our business (a strategic and creative endeavor) however, less is never more. And that pricing agenda drove out the passion for innovation and great thinking that lies at the base of campaigns that can transform business outcomes. I wondered are we in the arms and legs business or working to build a brand? The experience was discouraging and commoditized the entire agency/client relationship. This episode grounded me in a valuable lesson about why we do what we do, and served to refine the value proposition components we deliver to clients about competitive moves. We track shifts and changes in the retail environment and plot response strategies. We study. We pay attention. We think. We care. Great ideas drive stronger tactics…

In the mix of all this lies the tactics that will be deployed to communicate with consumers and other stakeholders. To get there we have a defined process that helps guide the selection of PR tools and how put to them to work. We built a planning model to help institutionalize the process that cultivates epiphany and insight. So our plans always come together with a sort of secret sauce attached to them. Either through conceptual thinking or research, there’s some significant audience, category, brand or product understanding that works to evolve the strategy into something quite powerful.

Not just awareness for awareness sake – or pushing the button on boilerplate tactics that get rolled out and arrayed like so many toy soldiers in a kids’ board game. My point: You can attempt to reduce the conversation about agencies, their value and services to a calculation of hourly costs – or you can replace this commodity view with an approach that’s more compelling and valuable.

Getting the biggest bang for your buck…

Tapping the brainpower and potential for great ideas begins first at an emotional level, one that springs from a sense of partnership rather than vendor-like behavior.

If you follow our planning model its virtually assured the relationship will start off on the right foot because the diagnostics require it. That said some PR assignments never get that deep because the goal is not about transformative business outcomes, but rather to address narrowly-defined communications needs that feel more cog-like than about brand building.

Our defined purpose…

As an agency we’re here to build brands and the best relationships are founded on that mutual goal. When that’s the starting point, clients always make an effort to involve us in their business from R&D to factory floor. They provide access, share research. We spend quality time with each other. Why? Because of what’s at stake. Or this can be about press releases and media tours, available at prices so low you have to stoop to pick them up.

What business should we be in?

Marketing can move from assertions of goodness to tangible proof points

By Robert Wheatley

There’s an interesting trend emerging in branded food products, one that’s about “inherent goodness, freshness, wholesomeness and balanced nutrition,” rather than vague assertions of good or better for you. This is just a great edible bandwagon and we hope to see more and more of it. Here’s why…

We operate today in the era of transparency and authenticity. Thus the product itself is front and center in the marketing. So genuine claims absolutely will trump any attempt to concoct a story more about marketing-speak than simple truth.

And simple is the transcending idea here: New products are gaining acceptance on simplified formulations — a sort of “less is more” proposition that authentically moves packaged food towards natural, real and additive free recipes. Ingredients you recognize and know. Marketing Daily has a fascinating article on the subject, tracking the emergence of products with fewer, more natural ingredients across an array of categories from beverages to meals and side dishes. This simple proposition invites scrutiny and boldly stands the acid test of what is essentially more wholesome by eliminating the artificial. On the snack front, Frito-Lay simply says the only thing in the bag of their Lays chips beside some potatoes, a bit of oil and salt is your hand. Haagen Dazs delivers great tasting ice cream with just five natural ingredients. Hmmm. How simple. (Tried the Coffee flavor – it was amazing).

If you claim you’re wholesome how does this secure more believability?

A fundamental tenet of sound public relations strategy is respect and advocacy for brand propositions and communications that accentuate and magnify what’s real and true. Consider the history of PR and its historical devotion to editorial channels of communication. We were obligated under the spotlight of editorial scrutiny to present truth and proof of what we claimed about a client’s product or service. We knew they would check into what we said, look for their owns sources to corroborate and then report.

So we labored greatly to line up the facts, provide the data and sources to validate our claims. (Of course Hollywood’s presentation of PR as hucksters and spin-doctors violates this idea of PR people as conveyors of truth. However, I happen to be telling– the truth). What can be more self-evident than a short, sweet and simple ingredients statement?

Now comes food that is deliciously straightforward. Goodness that invites inspection. That breathes the basics of healthier choice. How refreshing. We hunger now for real and are attracted to what’s honest. Better-for-you options made easier to identify and to believe through simplicity. As a marketer and PR expert I’m excited. Are You?

Agencies that lead bring more value than order takers

By Robert Wheatley

Hugh MacLeod is a creative and insightful expert who regularly exposes the soft underside of the marketing world — and helps us laugh at ourselves. His thoughts, expressed as graphic images, can be down right powerful. Today’s post in some respects is a perfect foil for a few of his engaging ideas. (Check out gapingvoid.com – and subscribe to his daily image emails).

Great work falling from great ideas can transform the future direction and growth of business. Yet more often than not, by definition, it will require clients to stretch, to have faith and take risk. And none of this will see the light of day unless agencies step up to passionately support and defend solid out-of-the-ordinary thinking. This is often the price of strategic concepts that are unique, unexpected and disruptive (in a positive way).

An insightful article on this subject was published today by Cory Treffelett of Catalyst SF. You can read it here . In his excellent piece he accurately describes the difference between a vendor and partner style relationship between agency and client. Essentially the order taker vs. the leader.

Good agencies are in the strategic idea creation business. Clients make investments in programs and concepts that will grow business, build brand reputation and attract or retain new customers. No easy task. And I can recount over the years in virtually every instance of needle-busting results, innovative concepts always supplied the accelerant. Thus risk and leadership is demanded of the agency.

The path of least resistance is easily followed and at times it feels much safer to stay within the comfortable bounds of serenity — a quiet surf made calm by the absence of tough discussion that can whip up a big wave or two along the way.

Fear – collectively our greatest enemy
What stands in the way of great ideas and game-changing initiatives? It’s fear. Fear of rocking the boat. Fear of losing the account. Fear of failure. Fear of disagreement. Fear of ruffling feathers. Fear of slaying sacred cows. Fear of the unknown. Fear of folded arms and taught expressions. Fear of shaking heads. Fear not being loved. Fear of losing the budget. Fear of the boss. Fear of mistakes. Fear of conflict. Fear of perception leading reality. Fear of risk, of making the big bet. This insidious human condition interferes so many times, closing the gate on otherwise powerful moves that may occasionally require a willingness to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

This is not a call to arrogance and conceited behavior by the way. What is in the client’s best interests at all times will be growth and development of their brand and their business results. The fact that innovation is often at the fulcrum of transformative periods only means that risk will be part of the mix in bringing these things to fruition. Clients who are challenged by their agencies to accomplish more through bolder initiatives are needed now more than ever. And are often in short supply for all of the reasons mentioned above. Just take the order, do the work and make sure everyone is happy and smiling all of the time? No great thing was ever accomplished by simply riding the existing wave. Blazing a new trail will be required of us.

Agencies and Clients Together Offer the Best Formula…
There’s an old saying, “an agency is only as good as its client.” Well in some end-game sort of reference I suppose this is true if all you ever hear is no. Should clients run from risk and punish their agency for bringing bold ideas then Houston, we have a problem!! Ultimately however, agencies have an obligation to bring this kind of thinking routinely. It should be the rule rather than the exception.

Clients can help this process by openly inviting and encouraging their agency partners to challenge them, to say no when its necessary, to think big, to look for new territory to trail-blaze. In essence to disrupt the category conventions and accepted brand behaviors that can deter major leaps ahead. Clients also acquire an obligation: to be willing to approve and fund campaigns with risk involved. And be prepared to accept a mistake along the way and learn from it.

This kind of healthy give and take — lively discourse built around discovery and epiphany — is essential if transformative programs are to get out of the developmental garage. Our daily mantra should be to make this quest genuinely a part of our culture and operating philosophy. To do less is to compromise the values and integrity of what we’re on the planet to accomplish.

What do you think?