admin, Author at Change Communications

Why Writing Is the Most Important Skill in PR

There are many skills attributed to good PR practitioners (including the ability to wear many, many hats) but the most important skill that never gets enough mention is writing.

With the evolution of PR, the skills that used to take you far (being good in a room, smooth-talking on the phone) have been de-emphasized. They’re still important, but when everyone (including and especially media) are communicating over text, your ability to quickly pitch a bored reporter over the phone becomes your least relevant skill.

The style of PR writing has also evolved.”PR writing” is no longer translated to “lame, boring, jargon-filled press release that no one cares about.” PR writing now means tweets, blog posts, Facebook updates, Instagram one-liners, Vine clips, Pinterest boards.

If you can’t communicate via the written word – whether in email pitches, 140-character tweets, or interesting Facebook status updates – you might as well be riding your dinosaur to work. The ability to compel the public, and reporters, with a few short words has become paramount.

The social media posts that tell the most succinct, brand-relevant stories are what’s setting companies apart, and what will help the next generation of PR professionals succeed. Brevity is the soul of (social media) wit.

It all comes down to storytelling, and if you can’t tell a story in an age where “Vine celebrities” are a thing (a huge, multi-million dollar thing), you’ll be left standing with a fax in your hand, wondering who to send your 3-page press release to.

Can’t write? Well, you’re not hopeless. Practice makes perfect. Read read read. Read every blog, every website, every magazine and every book you can get your hands on. Read Stephen King’s brilliant “On Writing” and savor the art of storytelling. It’s also the art of PR. Now get writing.

You can start by sending us a tweet @ChangePR or posting on our Facebook

Union Square SF hosts 2nd Food + Art June 4

The only thing that we like more than food and art is FREE food and art. Our client, Union Square SF, is hosting its second showcase of the popular neighborhood’s exciting food and art scene on Thursday, June 4 from 5-8pm. And yes, it’s free. You just have to RSVP to get a wristband.

So here’s what you have to do to take advantage of Union Square’s generosity.

– RSVP on EventBrite

– Check out the lineup here and make a note of which places you want to hit up

– Read about the event on Hoodline and listen to Union Square rep Jeani Hunt-Gibbon chat with the always entertaining Joel Riddell on Dining Around (Union Square segment comes around the 9:18 mark but listen to the whole segment because Joel’s awesome).

– Grab your best pair of eating and drinking shoes.

– Show up at 5pm at Emporio Rulli on Union Square and get your wristband and map. You’ll also get the opportunity to enter to win a Union Square gift basket.

Emporio Rulli on Union Square - Official headquarter for Food + Art 2015 — Emporio Rulli on Union Square – Official headquarter for Food + Art 2015

– Use hashtag #SFFoodArt to document your exploits

– HAVE A GREAT TIME!

We’ll see you there.

If you’re a reporter/blogger and want a media badge, shoot an email to katy(at)bethechangepr.com

The Must List: The 5 Best Articles We Read This Week

We read stuf gud and below are the 5 articles we want to share with you, our dear reader and/or spambot:

As “Mean Girls” fans, we admit that we love this article’s URL the most but we swear, it’s also a good read on why Mic Wright at The Next Web thinks that mobile livestreaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat are bound to go the way of Ello. Or, I s’pose, the way of fetch.

We really liked the TV show “Constantine,” and so did many other Twitter users, but not a whole lot of TV viewers agreed. The DC Comics-based show was canceled, despite a strong Twitter campaign. The A/V Club posits that social media campaigns alone can’t save TV shows, a theory that the makers of “Sharknado” will likely ignore.

Does this mean Twitter social media campaigns aren’t powerful and compelling? Not necessarily. It just means that NBC hates their fans and ignores their desperate pleas (just kidding! We love you, NBC. Now will you please take our pitch meeting request?).

Screen Shot 2015-05-15 at 2.57.14 PM — See you in hell, Constantine, or at least on Twitter

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: we’re reaching peak pot startups. This local FOX segment focuses on these dashing marijuana entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, including mobile delivery app Nugg, and how they’re able to skirt that pesky thing called the law. We’re pretty bullish ourselves on medicinal marijuana-based companies but now it’s time for the real compelling companies to step up and separate from the very crowded pack.

Read Fast Company’s list of the most creative people doing the most interesting things in business and feel bad about that “Judge Judy” marathon you binge-watched yesterday. These entrepreneurs, dreamers and innovators are so talented, they can likely make fetch happen.

Last but not least, this week, Verizon shelled out a couple billion to buy AOL. It’s not because they were nostalgic to hear “You’ve Got Mail” a hundred times. One of the biggest assets they’ll receive in the acquisition are several online media outlets that were owned by AOL, including the hugely popular Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget.

What does it mean when a telecom company owns media outlets? Some of the precedent set by the likes of CBS (when they made their CNET cast out rival Dish Networks) is definitely cause for concern. Business Insider sheds some light on the troubling implications, especially with the Net Neutrality debate raging.

The Must List: The 5 Best Articles We Read This Week

We read a lot of things. So many things that sometimes our eyes bleed. Here’s our roundup of the 5 most interesting articles (for various reasons) we read this week.

This Larry Kim dude really knows of what he speaks. And while we hate using the term “hack” for everything (everyone, especially us annoying PR people, sprinkle it liberally just to make their event sound cool), in this article on SearchEngineLand, Kim presents a PR hack and it’s a damn good one.

Wildfang is a Portland-based clothing brand that we not only admire but wear. The story of how these two former Nike executives built a brand that celebrities and influencers have flocked to is a classic success story. They found a viable market that was in need of sweet threads and filled it. That’s how companies should be built.

Wildfang's wildly popular "Tomboy" t-shirts as sold on their website — Wildfang’s wildly popular “Tomboy” t-shirts as sold on their website

While you might debate whether or not Clorox was in the wrong for their clueless emoji/bleach tweet, their blunder is the perfect example of why you can’t just shoehorn your brand into the latest cultural trend and shove out content for content’s sake.

In San Francisco where the housing market is so outrageous, people are willing to pay more than $1k to live in closets (literally), Airbnb has divided residents on its benefits. Local blog SFist takes a critical look at Airbnb’s latest PR campaign.

On the heels of this excellent Gawker takedown of the Food Babe blogger, another health blogger has been exposed as a social media-constructed sham. Can you trust health bloggers anymore?

Change Communications Turns 5

According to numerology, the number 5 is a dynamic force that is always in motion, and symbolizes change. Which makes sense – because Change Communications just turned the ripe age of five.

To us, our 5 year anniversary means it’s a good time to look back, reflect and refresh. Five years represents a renewed energy to recharge our brand and be relevant for our current and potential clients. We might be getting older but we don’t want to be aging.

We’ve always believed that change is a healthy thing, a step forward, a way to embrace the new, while taking the good from the old. To celebrate, we decided to rebrand our logo and update our website.

When we launched 5 years ago, our logo represented our difference. When others would go down, we went up. We chose red to reflect our bold, aggressive approach.

We certainly loved our logo and were proud of how it represented our brand and vision but we also recognized that five years in the most rapidly shifting landscape that we’ve ever been a part of can use a new jolt of visual energy.

So we’re proud to show this bad boy off:

The “A” in Change has two meanings: one is meant to reflect taking your brand up; the other is meant to visualize the delta symbol for change.

We decided a fresh and clean new look would be the best way to show that we’re keeping with the times, and passionate in taking our clients to the next level, whether that means getting them brand awareness through Twitter and Facebook or having them see their name on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be taking the cover off our new website and posting a lot of our learnings since setting up shop, warts and all.

Come join us in seeing where year 5 and beyond takes us.

How To Fix Bad Press In 3 Easy Steps

We’ve all been in a situation where an employee delivered terrible customer service or your CEO blurted a stupid comment to the press. What separates the brands that survive and the ones that don’t is their response to bad press, especially in this fast-paced digital/social media age where 24 hours can make or break you. How do you put a lock on the situation to keep the public trust and your brand credibility (and resulting profits) from crumbling further?

Own Up To Your Mistakes Publicly

Back in 2009, two Domino’s Pizza employees thought it would be a hilarious idea to film themselves sticking cheese up their nose before putting it on a sandwich, spitting in food, and doing other unsanitary acts. Two days after it was posted on YouTube, it garnered more than a million views, and references to the video were in five out of 12 results on the first page of a Google search to Domino’s.

Twitter blew up on the incident and Domino’s was left wondering how they could gain back their customers’ trust. First, they posted an apology on their corporate website, and asked employees with Twitter accounts to link to it. Next, they created an official Twitter account @dpzinfo to reassure the public that the video was an isolated incident. They even had their USA president, Patrick Doyle apologize on YouTube.

Acknowledge What You Do Stand For

Domino’s Pizza USA President Patrick Doyle immediately thanked the online community for finding the video and tracking the store and its culprits down. He outlined steps about how they repaired the situation: firing the miscreants, sanitizing the store, and reexamining their hiring practices. He reaffirmed that Domino’s cares about food safety, clean stores, and producing high quality food.

Have An Emergency Plan

When a crisis happens, you definitely want to respond quickly. Domino’s took 48 hours to issue an official response on social media, although they had been alerted of the situation much earlier. Always be prepared with social media monitoring to gather positive press, but more importantly, to hunt down and respond to any negative feedback surrounding your brand. Have a crisis communications team work with your executives to identify and troubleshoot negative situations.

People can forgive a brand that will own up to their mistakes, take public steps to fix the situation (and improve it), and show that they really do care about their customers. If you ignore the situation, minimize it, or seem inauthentic (e.g. doing the ole “sorry you were offended” rather than “I’m sorry, this is wrong”), the haters of your brand will multiply, and your credibility will fade.

Written by Courtney Lee

Need help with your crisis communications plan? Contact us.

The Must List: The 5 Best Articles We Read This Week

Every day, we learn something new, gain insight, question the status quo or have a nice chuckle, thanks to so many articles out there on the Interwebz and beyond. Here’s our 5 favorite, must-read articles of the week:

SearchEngineLand founder Danny Sullivan posted this thoughtful analysis of Gigaom’s unfortunate demise with little hand-wringing or absurd speculation (like in a recent horrid Forbes bylined article that we won’t click to, but that claimed Gigaom failed because it was too ethical).

Nitasha Tiku is one of the best writers on Silicon Valley happenings (and we miss her at Valleywag). Of course she’d have a great piece on the Ellen Pao/Kleiner Perkins sexual harassment trial that has everyone in Silicon Valley at attention.

Want to know how to piss off a bunch of rich, powerful men? Just be Kevin Roose and write a fascinating article on why venture capital firms investing in their own startups is unethical! Whether you agree with Roose or not, he raises interesting questions and fuels a conversation that the tech industry should be having.

How do you get someone to read your article or blog post? Inc’s Larry Kim has the ultimate guide to writing click-worthy titles.

And finally, how could we not include Advertising Age’s Tim Peterson’s article on the acquisition of our client, Threshold Interactive, by Zealot Networks? Sure, we’re biased but it’s a mighty fine article that showcases Zealot’s bold vision.

Today Is A Good Day: Threshold Interactive Acquired by Zealot Networks

Our reaction to today's news — Our reaction to today’s news

Change Communications proudly congratulates our client Threshold Interactive on being acquired by former Maker Studios co-founder Danny Zappin’s Zealot Networks! Threshold has been recognized for their kickass work for brands including Butterfinger and Hot Pockets, and their creativity clearly caught Zealot’s eye. Just watch their hilarious video for Hot Pockets with Kate Upton and Snoop Dogg for further evidence.

As a small powerhouse, Threshold’s goal has been to grow, and this acquisition achieves that. However, Threshold has not forgotten what makes them so dynamic. Threshold’s CEO John Montgomery told AdAge “The first thing I tell clients is Threshold’s not changing, what this does is it makes us a much more powerful marketing partner for them. Now we’re plugged into the Zealot network, and our level of relationships [and] the tools and talent that we have to plug into from Zealot is a perfect complement to what we already do very well.”

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Threshold since 2012, and we’ve seen them earn success and recognition for their talent, including winning the AdAge Small Agency of the Year award in 2013, and cross their ten-year anniversary milestone last year. We look forward to toasting the next ten years with Threshold and Zealot. Read the rest of today’s news on AdAge.

Influencer Marketing 101

Influencer marketing has become a ubiquitous tactic that most brands want integrated into their PR or marketing strategy. It sounds simple enough – go after influential people in your brand’s industry and get them to spout niceties about your brand. Easy, right? Not quite. It takes a lot more than “hey, let’s get Ariana Grande to tweet about our blackhead remover!” in a brainstorm session.

Show Me the Money

Before you even start the brainstorming, make sure you have the budget (either for sponsorships or free product) to offer influencers. Relationships are based on mutual exchange. Respect an influencer’s social network by offering them something of value, like diapers/formula to a mommy blogger or free makeup samples to a beauty vlogger. You can’t get something for nothing.

Who Are You Selling To?

The next step is to know who your target audience is. If you sell adult diapers, Kim Kardashian isn’t going to be the right influencer for you. Don’t just shoe-horn in the most popular celebrity, and don’t just target celebrities. Once you’ve identified your target audience, find out where they live online. Is it Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram? A quick search on those platforms targeting your brand’s keywords should tell you who the best influencers are. There are also plenty of paid services and networks that operate like talent agencies that can connect your brand to the right influencers so this is assuming that this experiment is a micro-budgeted DIY operation.

Now What Did I Get For All Of That?

Influencer marketing, like all things social media, is difficult to measure. If an influencer tweets about your business, and that tweet gets 5,000 retweets and 10,000 favorites, but you don’t see a spike in your business in the next month or two, how successful was that tweet for you? It all depends on what your goal is. If it’s brand awareness, then you’ve achieved that. If it’s a spike in sales, then re-strategize and investigate why that tweet didn’t generate what you wanted. Compare your social media metrics to your web traffic, and measure whether anything actionable is happening. It’s important to understand that influencer marketing is just one part of brand building and it all takes time to build toward the desirable outcome.

Don’t Forget Who Butters Your Bread

Your best influencers already exist – they are your customers. A customer’s stunningly ecstatic or depressingly negative endorsement of your product can lead to a domino effect among their connections. Make sure that you’re responsive in terms of social media engagement with your customers, and you’re treating your customers right.

Don’t Let The Numbers Fool You

Often, there’s far too much premium placed on the number of followers someone has. Let’s not forget that followers can easily be bought (which we wrote about here). Aim for true impact and engagement rather than the person with 10,000 (bot) followers. There’s too many services out there that lets you buy followers, and too many early adopters of platforms who quickly amassed followers.

Say “Thank You”

Reward your influencers- thank them, retweet them, promote what they’re promoting, scratch their back. The key to influencer marketing is to maintain that influencer relationship, and show them that you care. When you have happy influencers/customers, they’ll be overjoyed to share their enthusiasm about your product and brand. Case in point: Zappos, who has gotten rave reviews on their exceptional customer service and overnight delivery. As the saying goes, “happy wife equals happy life.” Keep your key influencers happy, and they’ll be sure to tell their connections that you’re a brand worth their money, energy and time.

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Warby Parker’s Fashionable Rise to Fame

If you’ve found yourself dreaming of gazing into Ryan Gosling’s beautiful eyes (and really, who hasn’t?), you’ll likely have to do it through his Warby Parker glasses. Warby Parker, the latest “IT” eyeglass brand, has perched its affordable yet fashion-forward specs on the noses of hipsters, value seekers and celebrities alike.

However, success didn’t happen overnight. How did Warby Parker transform from being a Wharton MBA class project to being named Fast Company’s #1 Most Innovative companies of 2015, usurping perennial favorites Google and Apple?

The cofounders of Warby Parker strategically spent money on only three things: 1) building out a website that they hired an external developer for, 2) the original set of inventory, 3) public relations. In Dave Gilboa’s (co-founder of Warby Parker) own words, “and the third was hiring a fashion publicist who was able to get us the meetings with the right people at GQ and Vogue. So we went in to pitch to them and got these great editorial features we really wanted – and a stamp of approval. GQ called us the ‘Netflix of eyewear.’ And we just started getting orders pouring in.” These orders grew so large that they had to create a waitlist functionality within the first day, and ended up having a 20,000 person waitlist that took them nine months to work through.

Besides having an obviously unique product, what did Warby Parker do right in terms of its marketing? Being bootstrapped for cash, they strategically used their marketing dollars for public relations, hiring someone who was able to get them an audience in front of top fashion influencers who loved their eyeglasses. Numbers don’t lie, especially a 20,000 person waitlist of people desperate to get their hands on Warby Parker eyeglasses.

When you’re a brand new startup, and need to get your brand in the eyes and mouths of your niche audience, spend money on public relations. It’ll get you farther than just listing your company and phone number on a blimp or a television spot. Having a great product plus the right marketing strategy equals growth for your startup.

By Courtney Lee