2009

There is a good customer dissatisfaction video on YouTube about a band member that had his guitar damaged when flying United Airlines. According to the video, there were witnesses to baggage handlers throwing the guitar and taking absolutely no care with it. Currently, there are only a few hundred views of this video, but many, many comments – most of them saying they are appalled at how United has handled this issue.

Apart from being an interesting (and entertaining) video made by a dissatisfied customer, this also brings up something that we have recently been discussing here at AHA Creative Strategies: social media measurement – in all its forms. We provide evaluation on projects, media coverage and other initiatives to quite a few clients and the accuracy and credibility of that evaluation is very important to us. Social media is a challenge because the natural reaction is to use traditional evaluation methods, and that’s a little like comparing apples to oranges.

I had this discussion with my friend and colleague Stephen Hodgdon of Beaupre and I thought his response—while specifically about blogs—was worth repeating and could be applied to many forms of social media. He said: “Blog traffic has a number of advantages over traditional media reader metrics, including that it tends to drive more customers directly to your business website, enables you to engage with your customers directly, and increases your search engine visibility, to name a few.”

In the case of the United Breaks Guitars video, it is interesting to note that there are companies that specialize in the transportation of band gear (full disclosure, one of the top companies out of the U.S. that does this is an AHA client.). Think about the gear of big name acts like The Rolling Stones, Britney Spears, U2, Matchbox 20, Kelly Clarkson and Nickleback and the hundreds of other acts flying around. (These acts aren’t necessarily connected to our client). They tour globally and for the most part – they take a lot of their gear with them. The shipment of guitars and drums and other instruments and equipment needed to put on a world-class show can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per band. So, not only has United put off this one particular customer, who happens to be in what appears to be a smaller band, it may also be showing other much larger clients that United can’t be trusted with this kind of cargo. What do you think would happen if someone had to explain to Bruce Springsteen or Jon Bon Jovi that their favourite guitar was damaged in transit? That wouldn’t be good for anyone.

So, from this video – not only do I now believe that as a single passenger, United Airlines will do nothing to help me, I have also sent it to my client, who runs a company that promises that a band’s gear will get to the next city on time and in one piece.

In this day and age, it’s not how many people hear the good or bad about your organization, it’s who hears about it and what that means to you.

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First off, let me state that I am not going to speculate about why Sarah Palin resigned her position as Governor of Alaska. I am, however, going to put forward a few things about her resignation that make you go hmmmm…

As communicator’s we know that sometimes the news (both mainstream and online) focuses on one big story and may exclude others. In the past couple of weeks that story has been about the death of Michael Jackson. Coverage about how the “King of Pop” died, his will and the custody of his children has been extensive. I found it curious that Sarah Palin decided to announce her resignation in the middle of this coverage and on the Friday of the July 4th long weekend.

I can remember as a young reporter being told by a gruff, old journalist that I should always keep an eye on news releases or announcements sent out on a Friday afternoon. He explained to me that they were done on purpose. It was done in order to slide bad news by us, so that by Monday, it was old news. I never forgot that and when I saw Palin’s announcement on Friday, I wondered about the timing. As I flipped through several U.S. news stations to see their coverage, they were all saying the same thing, they were surprised at the news and some described the news conference as “hastily arranged.” (Which, I would imagine, is why there is speculation about why she resigned.) Hastily arranged, surprising to political journalists and all on the Friday of a long weekend. It makes you go hmmmm…

I had put the Palin resignation out of my mind and wasn’t even going to blog about it, but then I heard all kinds of news coverage yesterday about Palin’s attorney saying she would sue journalists and bloggers speculating about her resignation. Because Palin responded, I thought about the timing of her resignation again. I learned about the speculation of why she resigned and I heard that she was threatening lawsuits. So did the use of the threat of lawsuits provided any benefit to Palin. I don’t think so. It just stirred the pot and got people talking more about the negative.

There is an interesting article on politico.com that talks about Palin’s Facebook response to mainstream media’s reaction to her resignation. It’s worth a read. Online media has changed how we receive our news and how we can respond and participate. It will be interesting to see how this will play out over the next few weeks.

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We’ve got change. In fact, there is a great deal of change going on at AHA right now. We are refreshing our brand, our vision, our approach to business and our website.

Bridging Two Worlds, the service (and the blog) that we offered in partnership with QUAY Strategies is wrapping up – since QUAY is closing and the two partners, Patsy and Della, are off to new chapters in their professional lives. We’re excited for them and inspired by their decision to embrace change when it would have been easy to stay with the status quo.

AHA has never been your average PR agency. We’re different and we’re proud of that. We know that we’re not the right agency for every organization and over the past six years, we’ve come to relish that thought. Sometimes it means turning down business and other times not being awarded a contract for a project, usually because of the misperception that we’re too small. In our brand and vision refresh, we’ve decided to approach those misperceptions head on. We are a small agency but—working within the new paradigm of business—we have created the ability to expand our agency’s people power, skill set and expertise in direct relationship to our clients’ needs. We have been focused on building a core team that provides the knowledge, expertise and skill sets that you might find at a much larger agency. The difference, our team is virtual.

We have an account executive and senior writer in Toronto, our coordinator/copy editor is in Calgary, our online digital producer, communications strategist and writer are in Vancouver and our interactive design strategist is in Gibsons. And, of course, I can’t forget to mention my business partner, Paul Holman and myself. Paul is AHA’s project and events manager – he makes sure each project or initiative is completed on time, on budget and that it exceeds expectations. He manages our media relations and publicity initiatives and his attention to detail and proactive approach make him a natural here. And then there’s me (Ruth), I provide strategic direction, issues and crisis communication management and am the go to person for social media. In reality, I do pretty much anything our clients need and everything Paul tells me to do.

Our “head office” (we’re not much on this kind of hierarchy, but the “head office” is the centre of the universe when it comes to AHA) is in Gibsons on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of BC. Here we have our office, space for workshops, training and group brainstorming and our reception area is called The Tiki Lounge. The Tiki Lounge is where everyone goes after an intense day of work to relax and wind down with a game of pool, darts or foosball and a cold beverage from the AHA mini-bar. 

And we also have an office in Vancouver for client service and business development. With the closure of QUAY, we’re in the market for new office space and will keep you posted on where our new Vancouver home will be.

We’ve always been a little bit ahead of the curve and it feels like technology and business attitudes are just hitting their stride in this area. Forward thinking organizations see the value in companies like AHA and our approach to their success. The right time, the right place, the right approach and the right expertise – it’s a nice place to be.

Stay tuned for more information about the refreshed AHA and, of course, our thoughts and ideas about PR, social media and the world. (And our new website is just around the corner.)

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First off, I have to apologize for this blog being less active than usual. As many of you know, things are changing in our world. QUAY is closing its doors and AHA is refreshing and re-energizing and getting ready for the next stage of our professional life. As of June 30, this blog will be over, but – within a few days (or a week) of that, our new AHA blog and website will be up and it will all be back to normal with almost daily blog posts and even some vodcasts and podcasts. And, of course, we will also keep you posted on what’s happening with Patsy and Della and hope they will come on as guest bloggers every once in a while. So stay tuned…it’s going to be great!

Now back to the real blog post!

Todd Defren has an excellent post at his PR-Squared blog today. (He often has excellent posts so if you don’t subscribe to his blog, you really should.) In it, he talks about the importance of having your PR team believe in what you do because they have tried your service or product and genuinely believe it has value.

At AHA, we won’t take on a client that we wouldn’t tell our friends or family about, that we wouldn’t be proud saying “hey, we work with them, we’re a part of their communications team.”  We have clients that offer things that might not be relevant to any of our team at this stage of our lives/careers…for example, we have done quite a bit of work with BCIT’s School of Health Sciences and it’s highly unlikely I am going to give up PR and go back to school to become a health care professional. However, I have spent a great deal of time with many of the instructors, program heads and the Dean of the school, Kathy Kinloch and I would recommend the School of Health Sciences to anyone I know that wants to enter the field of health sciences.

When I was a journalist and got a pitch from a PR person, I could tell in seconds if they were just feeding me a bunch of words or if they really believed in their client. Let’s be realistic, if your PR person doesn’t believe in what they are pitching the media – the media isn’t going to either.

AHA is a small agency by choice and one of the reasons we decided to stay “boutique” is because we want to make sure that we only take on clients we can get behind, that we believe in. We don’t want to become big enough that we have to take on work to support the company. And, let me tell you…there have been times early on in our company’s history when it would have been much easier financially to take on certain clients, but we held fast to our belief that we needed to understand and experience what they were offering wherever possible – and we need to believe in them. Which, by the way, doesn’t mean that we just take the message out “there.” We develop a strategy, work on story angles and develop engagement concepts that will connect like-minded people through social media sites, etc. But, at the heart of it, it’s that we think this organization is worthy of your time and/or energy and sometimes even your hard-earned dollars.

When we take on a client, when we “get” what they are offering – it’s so much easier to pitch media, to blog about them, to put information out on Twitter or to share it on Facebook or other social media sites. More and more these days, as social media blurs the line between professional and personal, it’s important that as communicators that we embrace the value of our being authentic in what we put forward on behalf of our clients.  For us, it’s not just about being awarded the contract. It’s about finding great organizations that we can put our expertise, experience and our reputation behind. It makes such a difference to our success, to our client’s success and to what the future holds.

No matter what organization you choose to work with, make sure they “get it.” It’s crucial.

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Your online presence, no matter whether you are a newspaper, a not-for-profit, a small business, a large corporation or government is important. We talk to clients and workshop participants about this a great deal. Your website is key in your communications strategy. Without a good site and using Twitter, Facebook or any of the social media tools available to us, you are really not doing your organization justice.

Twitter is great for sharing and discovering information, but if you follow some of the best Tweets, they lead you back to a blog, a website or somewhere you can get more information. Don’t lead people back to an old website that hasn’t been updated in months.

Take a good look at your website – is it dynamic, do you have fresh content posted regularly, is there an opportunity for feedback and interactivity? What are your stats and are you digging in to see who is coming to your site, what they are engaged in, and what they stick around to read?

Online communication is of great value, but don’t run before you walk. Take a good look at your website and make sure it is of value to the people you want to engage in conversation.

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