2011

There are times when good is good enough. This may sound odd coming from a small agency that prides itself on exceeding expectations and delivering excellence every single time. It might even sound a little hypocritical. I think it’s realistic and smart business.

There are times when the excellence comes in the moving forward component – in joining the conversation, in engaging with stakeholders, in reaching out and opening the door for discussion. Over the years, I have seen several client organizations get stuck – and I mean stuck – in rewriting speeches, articles or entire websites over and over again because they weren’t perfect. I have seen communications teams fracture over this type of approach. And it doesn’t mean the work wasn’t good or that it wouldn’t have been effective.

This type of dysfunction is more about the organization than about the work. Sometimes it’s a weird form of passive aggressive behavior. Other times it’s because someone (or several people) are paralyzed by the fear of moving forward and making a mistake. I can tell you that in many situations, the mistake is in doing nothing.

It is easy to hide behind perfection, the lawyers, or to create a committee that can’t agree and so nothing moves forward. When that happens, it isn’t about the communications strategy or initiatives, it is a much bigger issue that needs to be addressed. It’s about leadership and teamwork.

Check out the great piece on Ragan.com entitled: 6 lame excuses for not communicating for more on this topic.

How does your organization behave? Are you good enough?

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We’re working on a campaign for a client right now that got off to a bit of a slow start. We were brought in after the approach had been chosen. In a perfect world, we prefer to be a part of the concept and initial campaign strategy planning because the PR perspective adds value to that component, but sometimes that isn’t what happens and we live with it.

This campaign has some challenges. It’s a crowded market place and there isn’t much news value in what the client wants to announce. Not that it is isn’t interesting to the people involved, but it didn’t meet any of our AHA external news value criteria. We took on the task of developing an interesting angle that we felt more confident about pitching to media and bloggers and sharing on social media networking sites.



We had a good brainstorming session with our AHA crew about what to pitch media, and like every story meeting we have – it was lively. We’re respectful in these meetings, but no one holds back. It can get loud; there is often a lot of laughter, loud voices and a lot of “AHA moments.” We question the ideas, concepts and angles and spend time poking holes in each of them and define what the heart of the story is, so the pitches are solid when we are ready to send them to media and bloggers.



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There is a great article on Ragan.com that focuses on the results of a study that says most companies are not prepared for a social media crisis. It’s worth a read.



How and when an organization responds and reaches out using traditional communications vehicles and through social media is crucial. One of the challenges is that social media has turned the world into a 24/7 news cycle. Many organizations aren’t prepared for that. How do you strategically and authentically respond if you aren’t prepared?



There are many steps an organization can take to put processes in place in case they are faced with an issue or crisis.



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One of the most powerful tools that we have used to help educate and engage stakeholders is an article. We often write articles for our clients – about their organization, about successes and challenges (and how they overcome the challenges to achieve success), and even about new products and services. We distribute the piece to traditional and online media for use – free of charge. We use it on the organization’s website, in industry association or other relevant newsletters, and we often share links to the article with a range of stakeholders. We’ve had great success in this area.



One of our key assets is that we have several people on our crew that come from the journalism world. Another is that we write the articles in an editorial style. It is researched, balanced and well written.



As simple as it sounds, there are times when we have to explain why we take an editorial approach and why it matters. When organizations are used to using marketing or sales copy, it can be a challenge for them to embrace a more balanced, authentic way of telling their story. They just aren’t used to it. For some organizations it is a culture shift.



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