Ruth Atherley's Posts

It isn’t often that I get to write a post like this – one that celebrates an organization that authentically lives its brand and keeps its brand promise. However – I just had (yet another) excellent experience with WestJet and I think they deserve to be acknowledged for this experience and for consistently behaving in an authentic, respectable and customer-focused manner.

I recently flew my father and his wife into Vancouver for a visit. My dad had a bad fall last year, shattering his femur, and he is still recovering from that. He still has some mobility issues, so when I booked his flights, I requested a wheelchair.

Well, I have to say, WestJet treated my dad and his wife like royalty. They were treated with respect and they were well taken care of – and not on WestJet’s schedule, on their schedule. They got to the airport early and because of a bad snow storm in Ontario, their flight was delayed – they were taken to a restaurant and were told to take their time; the person who was chauffeuring them around the Toronto airport in one of the carts would come back when they were done and take them to the gate.

On the return flight, it was the same approach – completely customer service focused. Everyone from the person at the ticketing counter to the person loading the plane to the flight attendants to the person who helped them get their luggage treated them with respect and went out of their way to help them.

Every airline has planes that get delayed or issues that happen, and WestJet is no different. But I have to say, as a traveller and a customer, even when stuff happens, I have found WestJet to be responsive, to be accountable and to focus on what they can do to make me, as the customer, feel better about the experience.

When given the option, I choose to travel WestJet. I am loyal to this airline because I feel that the people who work there actually care about me as a customer. That means something in this day and age, and the result is customer loyalty.

Now, I happen to be a PR professional. So I am always looking at customer service, how the staff communicates the brand promise and what that means for public relations and building trust and loyalty with their target market. WestJet does it right and everyone in that organization deserves to be congratulated. I have said time and time again that you can create a great brand and develop a fabulous brand promise, but if the people who work there don’t bring that brand promise to life every day, then you are going to have an issue. WestJet isn’t going to have that issue – because they live their brand authentically and they have engaged and inspired the people who work there with their brand promise. Not an easy thing to do, but so valuable.

Thanks WestJet – not only are you our favourite Canadian airline, you are also a great example of an excellent brand being brought to life one person at a time.

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Recently at AHA, we have been doing a great deal of brand journalism work with clients. More and more, organizations are focused on telling their story in an editorial style rather than through marketing or advertising pieces. Quite often, a good brand journalism story accompanies an advertising campaign.

Sunday’s Super Bowl is a perfect example of how brand journalism has slipped into the mainstream, without us really noticing. For many people who watch the Super Bowl, the ads are an important part of the experience. And let’s face it, they are pretty entertaining. And they should be, given how much they cost to air. I think the last estimate I heard was $3.8 million for a 30-second spot and that doesn’t include the cost of producing the ad. It’s a big investment for an organization. And the smart ones are making the most of it by attaching the “real story” behind the ad.

For example, Doritos ran a series of ads and one of them featured a funny little dog that had a lot of character. I happened to see some information about it on my Facebook page prior to the Super Bowl, so I went to check it out. It turns out the little dog in the ad is a rescue dog that was “discovered” – a little bit of a doggie Cinderella story – from being abandoned and in a shelter to becoming a star.

As a dog person, that story caught my attention and it gave me the chance to better connect with the Doritos brand – even though it didn’t promote their product to me in any way. But, as an animal lover, I like that the producers of the ad didn’t go to a breeder or only look for a purebred; they took a dog that likely hasn’t had the best life and they put her in the spotlight. This could lead to people seeing this and maybe thinking about adopting a shelter dog instead of buying one. That makes me happy. And it makes me feel a connection to the Doritos brand. Had they just run a funny ad with a quirky little dog, they would have caught my attention for a moment. Through brand journalism, I was told the backstory – and they engaged me. Smart. There are a lot of dog-loving, nacho chip-eating people in the world and that commercial and the story will get every one of us.

What’s your story? What do you have to share with your stakeholders, your target market and your community that will speak to them? Go beyond the traditional approach and think about what stories you tell your friends and family when they ask you about your organization. What makes people lean in and say: “really, that’s interesting…”

What are the human elements you can share that will engage and inspire people? Those stories are at the heart of your brand personality and they will bring your brand to life.

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There is an ongoing discussion out there about whether or not the press release is dead. (Google: “is the press release dead?” – you’ll see.) And on that topic, in my humble opinion, the title “press release” is dead. It should now be called a “news release” or a “media release” to reflect the shift in journalism from print publications to broadcast and digital media. According to Wikipedia, the press release was first used in 1906 after a train wreck. It was distributed to the press, which back then was printed.

We believe the news release still has value, but you have to clearly define what the objective of your announcement is in order to decide if a news release is the right option for your outreach. Sometimes a targeted pitch is better. However, for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, a news release can be a good tool. It can help you directly connect to your target audience. There are lots of free or reasonably low-cost websites out there where you can upload your news release and help your target audience find you.

There is also, of course, the digital news release (also called the social media news release) that includes images, video, links and other resources. We’re big fans of this because we believe that there is an opportunity for organizations to authentically tell their story through images, video and well-written content. The digital news release may be a media relations tool, but it is also brand journalism.

Whatever format you choose – your news release needs to be informative and newsworthy. Those lame quotes should be pulled (although full disclosure, we distribute some releases with them because the client insists), and anything that isn’t newsworthy or doesn’t answer who, what, when, where, why and how doesn’t belong. Your news release needs to provide value; it needs to meet the criteria of being newsworthy. It needs to tell the journalist something that will be of interest, in some way, to their audience. We put our clients’ news releases through the “who cares” test – if no one outside of their workplace or immediate family is going to be excited about the information in the release, we need to either identify more interesting and timely information or talk to our client and see if this information isn’t better suited for a newsletter or other internal communication piece.

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I got up quite early this morning (2:30 a.m.) because I had some work with a tight deadline that I had worked on over the weekend and wasn’t quite happy with it yet. I had an early ferry (6:20 a.m.) to catch, so that meant that getting up at my usual early time (5 a.m.) to catch up on things was out of the question – I needed to get up earlier. As I hauled myself out of bed, I wondered if other people do this – get up this early because something is due and it needs work. I thought about my boundaries and the AHA boundaries that we set – and if we need to be stronger about them. Then I had a cup of coffee and laughed at myself.

The fact is, some of the work we do happens on weekends. This weekend, we had a client with an important event – so for three hours on Saturday and Sunday, Paul was on the phone with media pitching them to come out to the event. He was pretty successful and his efforts resulted in three major media outlets covering the event.

I am working on a big project for a client and I feel a little behind on it. It seems everyone on the client team feels that they are behind too – it’s a result of the enormity of the project – and we’re all working hard to keep up. I don’t like feeling behind; I don’t think anyone can do their best work if they are always rushing to meet deadlines, and my goal for this week is to get ahead of this project – no matter what it takes (early mornings, long days and working on the weekend).

We have great clients. They approach the relationship as a true partnership – they work with us, they listen to our advice and counsel, they bring us into interesting projects, and they rely on us and trust us to provide support for the tough projects (like when they may be facing an issue or crisis and need strategic communications help). And in return, we do whatever it takes – within our abilities and power – to deliver excellence. And I have to say, excellence isn’t a 9 to 5 activity. It goes beyond that. We are committed to our clients and in our world that means something to us and to our clients. And the work we do doesn’t always happen during the regular workday. It’s great when it can and does, but it’s not the reality we live in.

We believe in a work/life balance here at AHA. We believe in working as partners with our clients – and that means setting boundaries on both sides that are clearly communicated. And we believe that our commitment to our clients pays off every day. We have loyal, caring clients that are engaged with us, they pay us in a timely fashion and they go out of their way to recommend us to other organizations. I’d say that getting up a little earlier is a small price to pay for those kinds of professional relationships.

This morning, as boundary thoughts bounced around in my mind, a blog post by Danielle LaPorte came winging into my inbox and, since I am a big fan of hers, I drank my coffee and read it (I always want to know what she has to say to me!). She is a sassy, upstart, smart, spiritually-focused business/life coach who defies description. She isn’t for everyone, but if you “get her” and are ready to truly listen to her and yourself, she can change your entire life (business and personal) for the better. And her blog post today was about boundaries. It’s worth a read.

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Like many, I am fighting off a cold, the flu or some other illness that is threatening to sideline me from the piles of work I need to get done in the next few days. An annual report to review for a client, a communications plan to write, a video storyboard, a proposal and script to revise… The list just goes on. And writing the AHA blog post is one of the tasks that I needed to get done yesterday that I didn’t quite accomplish. Client work is always more important to get done and I focused on that, but our AHA blog posts are important too.

With that in mind, I am going to send you to a great source for communicators – ragan.com – to read about the importance of punctuation. It is important and not always as straightforward as it might seem. We have lots of discussions here at AHA about the details of punctuation. And I know I am guilty of using too many commas (I even have a grade four report card that says that I appear to have a special connection with commas – go figure). I also know that one of my pet peeves is the overuse of the exclamation mark. It drives me crazy!

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