Where Do You Stand?

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Kristin and I attended a global trade show on behalf of a client. The attendees were from many different countries and it was interesting to overhear the variety of accents and languages as we walked from booth to booth.

We were sporting standard trade show fashion accessories; the lanyard and plastic-covered nametags with our names, our company and the location. Since Standing’s main office is located, technically, in a suburb of St. Louis called Creve Coeur, Missouri, that is how our tags were labeled.

The French and Canadian attendees got a big kick out of our tags, asking us, “How do you pronounce this?” We, like the Americans/Midwesterners we are, were forced to say, “Creeve Core,” much to our embarrassment. Our French-speaking friends found this hilarious and correctly pronounced Creve Coeur loudly, and with great delight. Then of course, they wanted to know, “Do you know what this means?” I did not have to rely on my high school or college French to know that Creve Coeur means “broken heart.”

As two of a small handful of women at this particular trade show for a male-dominated industry, it was quite ironic to be wandering around branded with signs declaring, “Broken Heart.”

On Tuesday night, I was lucky enough to attend the St. Louis Blues game against the Los Angeles Kings (my thanks to the St. Louis RCGA and Cathy for the tickets). That night also was the Traumatic Brain Injury Night at the game.

Sean Glanvill, a 13 year old hockey player for the AAA Amateur Blues, was in a car accident last spring that left him with a traumatic brain injury. Sean was given only a one percent chance of survival, but 8 months later, he’s still fighting; and so is his family. His parents, Derek and Penny Glanvill, established the Sean Glanvill Traumatic Brain Injury Research Fund.

The fund was established by Sean’s family to promote awareness of traumatic brain injuries and for the advancement of research, funding for equipment and facilities or simply the care and financial assistance to families affected by traumatic brain injury.

The Glanvill family is using social media and word of mouth marketing to get their mission across. Wearing Sean t-shirts and rubber bracelets, the stadium was populated with volunteers raising awareness and funds for the organization. With a video presentation of Sean’s story on the jumbotron and all of the volunteers, it was nearly impossible for game attendees to leave without understanding the Glanvills’ mission.

The Glanvills are also making use of blogging. Derek maintains a CarePage (CarePages is a community of free websites created by patients and families so they can share information, photos and support), containing over 900 entries, 7,000 subscribers to the page and 6,300 words of support (comments). Between television and radio stories about Sean and these other forms of communication, the Research Fund has raised tremendous funds and awareness. To visit Sean’s Care Page, register at CarePages.com and visit member SeanGlanvill.

Here’s to Sean Glanvill and his recovery and the various outlets that help get his message across!

Oh yeah, the Blues beat the Kings that night 4-2; their first win after four losses.

Standing’s ”outstanding” (sorry, couldn’t resist!) sabbatical policy was just featured in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, along with some - ahem - interesting opinions on the concept of corporate sabbaticals by experts from the Society for Human Resource Management. With all due respect to the HR people, I think in this case they’re missing the point. Are there short-term costs involved with giving sabbaticals? Sure. But, smart companies - Google comes to mind - know that short-term investments in people means long-term loyalty, increased productivity and heightened creativity.

And what does that translate into? For Google, domination in its industry. For companies like Standing, happy employees (like my recent sabbatical-taking colleague Julie blogged about) mean happy clients - and happy clients means a great reputation that brings in more clients. Which means? Yep, that’s right - profits. Which makes everyone happy.

See, smart business is also fun business…and we’re having a lot of fun at Standing! How about you? Are you having fun at your business these days?

Jeremy Pepper thinks so, or at least that Greg Brady “gets it.” We all know Greg Brady, some of us probably even had schoolgirl crushes on him. He’s seventies TV star Barry Williams, famous for his role on the Brady Bunch, and now the lead blogger of The Greg Brady Project. Groovy!

Disclaimer: I found the Social Media Today post described below through pal and Post-Dispatch Online News Director Kurt Greenbaum’s Twitter account which linked to his Soup account that finally led to the post.

John Potter, VP of Technology at CNET Networks Business wrote a guest post on the Social Media Today blog titled, “Three Reasons Content Companies Need To Embrace Social Media.”

Potter’s reasons are many of the same reasons my colleagues and I encourage our clients to explore social media:

1. The primary reason for embracing social media is that you need to be where your audience is.

2. A second reason is that you expand the reach of your existing community.

3. Lastly, you will more quickly optimize your content production. Web properties learn what’s popular, and hone their programming, based on their knowledge of what people are consuming and talking about.

Do you have any other thoughts as to why companies need to embrace social media?

Neatorama has a great post with the origin and evolution of several tech company logos.  It is really interesting to see how these logos, some of them so familiar to us, have updated over the years. What’s interesting to me are the small changes that bring the logos up to date and make them more contemporary. Apple, for example, going from the rainbow-hued apple to a monochromatic look with stores that match (thank goodness they updated the logo before they designed the stores — can you imagine if the stores were rainbow-striped?)

How has your company logo evolved? Is it time for an update?

I’ve heard it said that the best way to learn a new language and culture is to live among the people who speak the language, live the culture. This technique is called immersion, of course.

In public relations we talk about “walking the halls” or spending “face time” with clients. (Now, those are some P.R. phrases if I’ve ever heard them.) The idea behind it, of course, is spending quality time with clients beyond the boardroom. We seek ways to immerse ourselves in our clients’ environments. Some Standing team members who serve a client with mining operations spent a day underground last year. Kristin and I recently spent time at an industry trade show with another client, surrounded by representatives that spanned their industry. We found the experience so rewarding and enjoyable and believe making the trip and investing the time strengthened our relationship with our client, and helped us gain a deeper understanding of their industry.

It’s easy sometimes, to get so focused on our day to day work that we forget to look up and around, outside of our internal environment. The experiences we’ve had immersing ourselves in our clients’ worlds have been so rewarding though, I know many of us are eagerly anticipating our next opportunity to take the client or industry plunge.

On Monday, NPR’s All Things Considered aired a piece about presidential candidates turning to viral and word-of-mouth marketing to build their reputations, much how large corporations do. And in many ways, opinions of the voting public are stronger than they ever were before.

The quotation on the All Things Considered Web site says it all. Political opinion that used to be formed at the water cooler is now being formed online. “And because of these [online] tools,” said Andrew Rasiej, “whether it be YouTube, whether it be a blog post, whether it be just an e-mail message — they are in effect on steroids, and that is changing the nature and the control of politics away from top-down to bottom-up.”

I suppose this isn’t a surprise considering individuals are doing the same thing - how we present ourselves on Facebook or MySpace or a blog, for example, are outlets where our audience is able to judge us.

Listen and read more here.

I have had a lot of interesting conversations lately with people about the convergence taking place in the marketing industry.  Standing Partnership’s roots are in one specific marketing discipline:  public relations.  Yet, this firm always has held a much broader view of that word and its meaning than the market affords PR today.   Unfortunately, today’s meaning of the term “public relations” almost exclusively means media relations.  I could use this post to rant about how the industry has spent the last decade dancing on the same dime, but I won’t.  

Instead, I want to float out a theory:  it does not matter which marketing discipline you claim; it matters what ideas, partners and resources you bring to the table; and most importantly, it matters who can facilitate relationships.   Who understands a voice that is conversational?  Who understands how to humanize organizations, so they can have relationships with people (not consumers…just people)?   Who knows how to match resources with internal cultures and aptitudes?  These are the people who will win.  They may be PR people.  They should be PR people.  But, others are equipped to claim this leadership role, leaving PR people simply to pitch traditional media. 

My colleagues recent posts about the mis-steps of PR people make me wonder if our industry is up for the challenge.  What do you think?