104 West Partners

Truth Telling and PR

From the desk of Patrick Ward...

This past week Chuck Todd, the eminently brainy political director at NBC News, posited that McCain campaign was so far behind in the polls that there was a chance of a Bullworth moment.  The idea was that, with nothing more to lose, the campaign would suddenly, like Warren Beatty’s 1998 fictional politician, become bluntly honest and eschew the traditional political artifice.  In other words, stop the spin.

First, this is not a political position. I have no predictions on the election and if I did I would keep them to myself. This is Todd’s premise. But it seems odd to me that it takes a lost cause to invite truth into the process.  Many talk about PR as spin and the marriage between PR and political positioning is well known.  Hillary Clinton’s former chief strategist, Mark Penn, is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest PR firm.  But I always bristle when someone refers to my profession as a spin doctor.  It seems diminishing.  It diminishes the value of what we do, as if we can just re-shape the truth into a more palatable form.  It diminishes the audience, either the press or some stakeholder, as if they can be duped that easily. And it diminishes the client, as if whatever blemish exists can be buffed away with cosmetics. 

We have a common phrase we employ when a client has a touchy issue. “What’s the truth.  Let’s start there.” Now, sometimes the response we get is not unlike the look a dog gives you when you hide his ball. You know the one: a slight turn of the head, ears perked up and eyes seemingly saying, “huh?”  But more often clients are relieved at the simplicity of the approach and happy they won’t have to architect some series of artificial talking points. 

In this election season, we get to see the high discipline of political campaigns’ communications efforts and people are exposed to a lot of ‘spin.’  It gives communications a bad rap.  So the prospect of a Bullworth moment might be very welcome.  It is troubling that many would consider that the exception and not the rule, however. 

Death of the Blog?

From the desk of Patrick Ward...

Writing in Wired this morning, Paul Boutin from Valleywag has proclaimed the death of the blog.  The argument is that blogs have become too unwieldy and impersonal, more like columns by professional columnists.  That’s just crazy!  An upstart group of enterprising writers developed a viable format and now the professionals have come in and commercialized it. Can you believe it!?!

I suspected that this day would come (I don’t want to profess that I saw this coming entirely), principally because the amateur quality to many blogs – including this one perhaps – just begged for the pros.  Follow the money, the sage advice goes. So, as blogs became increasingly popular, then advertisers came in and well…If you demonstrate that a market exists for a product, then, guess what, people will make money off of that market.  And that includes the New York Times Company and the Graham Family.  A recent report by Technorati said that a blog with over 100,000 uniques each month could earn as much as $75,000 per year.  The kiss of death?  Or commercial progress?

Boutin proposes that the heir to the blogosphere is Twitter, principally because it is short form.  Steve Gillmor has been talking a lot about Twitter as the successor to IM, which seems interesting. Personally, I have looked at Twitter as a sort of virtual aside, a web-based ability to comment to your friends in much the same way you might as you walk down the street…”oh, that’s a cool car… I’m getting hungry…that Sequoia presentation was a bit doomsday.” But many -- read Scoble here and Gillmor too -- use it to fire off insightful comments which is clearly where Boutin derives his position.  But I think he’s missing a critical part and one that may sustain the blog too.

Twitter is all about ‘followers.’  And that is just Twitter-slang for a community.  I read Gillmor’s tweets because I like and respect Steve and am eager to hear what he thinks.  The same goes for Arianna Huffington.  I met her at D: All Things Digital last year and we struck up an acquaintance, mainly because she was interested in learning how to rent a place in Denver during the convention.  But she also signed me up for a daily email from the Huffington Post (at least I think she did, because I don’t recall doing it; and I was honored she did and kept it).  Now I really liked her.  We joked about her relationship with Rupert Murdoch and she has that fabulous accent, so now I read her blog.  I don’t always agree with her, but I am part of her community.

The point is that I think the demise of the blog may be exaggerated.  The format is irrelevant.  It’s the community that matters.  It is true that many blogs will grow beyond a conventional definition of a community, but for communities that already exist, such as a software development community or an internal employee community or investors or customers, blogs represent a real and valuable communications platform.  Now, I can hear the derision coming.  “That’s marketing BS and that’s not what true blogging should be.” And the Village Voice is the only real newspaper in New York.  I can appreciate the idealism, but I don’t buy the idea that corporate blogs are a bastardization of the form; they are an expansion on the original idea. And again, the form is incidental.  The community is the thing.

I have written before in this space about communities and will again and again, because I am convinced that communities represent a superior metaphor for how to acquire, nurture and grow customer bases and other stakeholders.  And if the 2004 notion of a blog has transformed into a corporate shell of its original form, so be it.  And if the pioneer bloggers are eschewing the form for others, that’s OK too.  But I doubt anyone is saying: you know I think I’ll stop blogging, because I really am sick of communicating with all those people who valued my opinion. So, invested communities – like company stakeholders – will continue to read corporate and other sorts of vertical blogs as valued resources even if they’re not so cool anymore.

VC in the Rockies

Have you been to Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR Winter)? Well, we have and this year you’re going to be hearing a lot more about it – we were selected to help promote and draw national attention to this year’s event. For those of you who might not know, VCIR Winter is the largest and longest running capital conference in the Rocky Mountain region. It showcases emerging growth companies from the Rocky Mountain region to more than 200 venture investors, CEOs and entrepreneurs.

It’s a perfect fit for the 104 West team given our expertise working with start-ups and growth companies – we understand the importance of connecting with the right industry influencers, including investors as well as media and analysts. Stay tuned as there will be more postings about the event – and at the event! 

Details:
VCIR Winter will be held on March 3-5, 2009
Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, Colorado
www.vcirwinter.com

Supporting the Arts in Denver

Looking for something to do this Friday night? Check out the fundraiser 104 West’s own Courtney Walsh is putting on for the the Colorado Honor Band Association – she’s the president of the board of directors. (Yes, we thinks it’s cool that she’s “president”.) CHBA is a non-profit, after-school program for kids that fosters learning, friendship and a sense of responsibility through music education.

Friday night’s event, CHBA at the Arts, will feature live ensembles by current and past CHBA members as well as a silent auction.  The price per person is $30 which includes admission, hors d’oeuvres, beer and wine - and of course artwork.

The event will help raise funds for student scholarships for participation in the program and pay for the organization’s essential necessities: concert venues, band music, instrument repair, teacher salaries as well as reduced student tuition for summer camp and weekend workshops. If you would like to attend register today or visit CHBA for more information.

Reigning Cats and Dogs

From the desk of Patrick Ward...

An old friend of mine who now runs a major PR agency used to opine that the difference between advertising and PR was like the difference between cats and dogs. The idea goes something like this:  advertising agencies have a certain independence. They tend, in a decidedly feline way, to eschew approval in favor of self-satisfaction. A certain ambivalence is construed as intelligence and nonchalance; go ahead pet me or don't pet me, it makes little difference to me. But if you want my affection, it will be on my terms...prrrrrr. 

The analogy extends: PR people are in constant and dire need of approval and will work inexhaustibly for it.  Like the family canine who rushes his owner as he walks through the door, PR people are always looking for what more they can do, perhaps to their detriment as clients assess their value.  If you throw that ball, I'll go get it and bring it back here and pant and urge you to do it all over again.  The cat, all the while, perched on the window sill in the afternoon sun, watches the whole episode with disdain. This past week's chapter of the Emmy-winning advertising drama, Mad Men, suggests the condition is nearly 50 years strong. While on a work sojourn to sunny LA (which must have a been a real oasis in 1961) an advertising executive is stranded at his hotel and phones his prospective client to inquire "Is there any chance we could meet here? I don't have a car and can't get a taxi to take me to Pasadena.  Great. We can meet by the pool."  A PR guy would have hitchhiked.

I don't mean to indict our sister profession.  But as times look to be toughening and clients begin to make budgetary choices, an examination of value propositions seems warranted.  Last week, someone, perhaps irresponsibly depending on your perspective, leaked an internal presentation between the general partnership at Sequoia Capital and its portfolio companies which appraised the economic environment.  The admonitions were aplenty and dire.  The basic message: there is a terrible and unavoidable storm on the horizon and you had better conserve cash and hunker down. 

In these downturns - and I have been through three in my professional life: 1988, 1992 and 2001-2 - a convenient target is marketing overall, including both advertising and PR. That conclusion always seemed facile to me: after all, if you are trying to preserve sales revenue, why would you slow down its engine?  But, that is the reality.  So, as we venture into an economic climate whose severity ranges from bad to really bad, and companies examine which costs are unessential, the cats and dogs get nervous.  And unfortunately, the cuts tend to be with hatchets, and not scalpels, so the nervousness is justified.

I think you can see where this is going: predictably, I'd make the case for the dog.  But, my reasons are both tradition and nontraditional. Traditionally, PR is good value for money, to borrow a phrase from my British friends.  The cost of a traditional PR media effort that has even mediocre results can return a 'CPM' (now before we get in a lather, I know it's not a perfect analogy, but it's what I got) of somewhere around 40 cents.  And that's pretty conservative.  That is only the pure media ROI and doesn't include non-media efforts like speaking engagements or strategic counsel.  But we should also look at the non-traditional advantages.  PR is essentially the ability to sway opinions.  (Some might suggest it's more pedestrian than that; I'm not sure the pedestrian assessment isn't an undervaluation, as much as mine may be an overvaluation, but it's my blog.) And there is an opinion that this economic crisis is very much the result of emotion and opinion.  Now I am not downplaying the reality of the credit crisis or the housing slide, but markets are very often driven by emotion.  How else would you account for 1000 point swings in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a matter of minutes?

Will credit be harder to acquire in the next two quarters? Yes.  Will companies suffer? Yes. Will consumers slow spending? Yes.  But is it rational that a company's market capitalization is less than the cash on its balance sheet?  Could be, but that seems upside down intuitively. How do you explain that in an ad?  Both presidential campaigns believe that there is economic growth is the shiny metal object called Clean Technology.  I know of a company that is creating clean engines that will power whole fleets of delivery trucks and another that is making a new generation of batteries that will extend electric power for boats and small engine vehicles well beyond today's standards. Does anyone think that we can transform a nation's love affair with gasoline-powered toys in a series of 30-second spots?

When the era of the keyword presented itself not long ago, a host of search engine optimization agencies heralded the demise of PR; and I wrote in this space not long ago about another effort by other 'new media' pundits to impart PR has become irrelevant.  Those media are effective but are best used in a simpler context.  And the solutions offered by others instead of PR simply don't scale.  The complexity of the communications effort needed to justify expenses on goods and services in the coming months will not lend itself to marketing's blunter instruments and even if they did, the cost of making them successful is incongruent with the belt-tightening we are all facing.

So, you need the dog.  Cats are sublime, even luxurious.  Dogs are utilitarian. A cat rubs against your shin, ostensibly in a sign of affection, but truly for his own benefit.  A dog gets your slippers or your newspaper.  A cat is mysterious.  A dog is obvious.  A cat is finicky.  A dog is compliant.  And when was the last time you heard of someone getting a cat to protect their home...or their business? 

There are hard choices in the offing and prudence is going to be a budgetary watchword.  Clients will need to discern their best course of action.  But I offer one simple question as they assess their most sensible and productive expenditures: who is man's best friend?

Today, even maps have a social life

From the desk of Matt Otepka...

If the glove box in your car is anything like mine it has dozens of tattered and yellowing road maps for states you haven’t lived in for 10 years or from past road-trips through places that you don’t have any plans to drive back through, at least until a second mortgage isn’t needed to fill up your car. You probably also have random driving directions in the form of recent print outs from Mapquest.com or Google Earth, which got me to thinking – do people still buy maps?

Tens of millions of us have the Web with us right in the car now and even more carry GPS-enabled cell phones – the old Rand McNally atlas is a thing of the past. The great thing about online maps is not only the freshness of location data but also the depth and breadth of additional, relevant information. Traditional maps only show you roads, cities, rivers and maybe denote locations for museums, post offices or state parks. (Snore- today, people want more.) And, if you’re really, really lucky, you might have a map with a legend showing where to find fishing and camping access or where churches or rest stops might be. (A sarcastic whoopee for that!!)

Now, pull the same map up online, and depending on what program you use, you’ll be able to find mountains of relevant information about everything in front of your eyes. You can search, sort and pinpoint places of interest like restaurants, bars, hotels, retail shops, or see traffic and weather patterns or even get street-level views of specific locations.

And thanks to the growth of the mobile web, new Web 2.0 applications and hardware advances in handheld devices, all of this is at our fingertips – whether on a portable laptop or out in the world from our iPhone, BlackBerry or whatever. But what is really exciting, especially as I’m in the process of planning my next road trip, is the integration of social data into maps.

How much more powerful and relevant do maps become when you can look at them in the context of where your friends have been and what they thought of those places and events while they were there? That’s what the web is moving to and there is a new application called Whrrl that does just that. (Full disclosure – Whrrl is a product of a client of ours, Pelago, and I must admit, I fell in love with the application on my last road trip. Goodbye, Rand McNally.)

The social data that apps like Whrrl provide fundamentally changes the notion of a map. It changes it from a navigation tool – something to help you get from point A to point B – into an entirely new social discovery experience.

So the next time you’re taking a road trip or just going to a part of town you don’t know, look at a paper map and then imagine thousands of little dots popping up all over it highlighting places visited by people in your social network. Or, open your cell phone, hop on Whrrl and start discovering new places with the help of the people you know and trust – your friends.

104 West Grows its Team!

We’re pleased to announce the promotion of Courtney Walsh to Account Manager and the addition of Kim Schloss to the 104 West team.

With her promotion from account executive to account manager, Courtney will now serve as a day-to-day contact with clients to manage ongoing communications programs. Before her life at 104 West Courtney was a member of the media - working as an assignment editor at the Los Angeles Bureau of CNN, a reporter for public radio and a general news intern at the Denver NBC affiliate, KUSA. Court in a busy lady, not only is she working hard at 104 West but she also serves as the president of the Board of Directors for the Colorado Honor Band Association (CHBA). She's an absolute rock star!

Transitioning out of a successful internship with 104 West, Kim will assume the role of account associate - a new position the agency just created. Kim brings a variety of communications, event planning, technology and new media experience to the firm from her previous positions at EchoStar. If you haven't already, check her out on Twitter. 

Congrats, Courtney and Kim!