How Green Can a PR Firm Be?
We’ve been in business since 1989 as a virtual agency serving clients in North America and Europe with a focus on delivering top quality work most efficiently. We were on what we used call the “Information Highway” well before most people had discovered the Internet. Thus, our 10 to 12 associates usually were able to avoid routine commutes on the gas hogging Interstates around Washington and other major hubs for 20 years.
In that same time period we have consumed far less paper and each of us only needed to reserve a room in our homes that was going to be heated or cooled anyway. While we have always kept current with technology, we have recycled computers by donating them to charitable organizations or passed them to our children for their school work.
We were doing what was good for the environment long before there was a social push for this. But that is just part of our culture. We’re a PR agency that is frequently acting in ways that are only noted in the news as trends much later. That’s pretty green. What about you?
Are you a digital native or digital immigrant?
I heard an interesting description today for people who grew up in the digital era….”digital natives.” That makes me a “digital immigrant,” one who is still trying to learn the language, the culture, and new rules of engagement. I hope eventually to feel like I really belong and will be accepted by the “natives.” At a luncheon conference today on “social media” we arrived to a meeting room prepared with the biggest screen ever filling up almost an entire wall, and the screen was the Windows desktop I see on my various computers. My internal reaction was that I was comforted by this–that I anticipated the presentation would involve looking around on the Web with our Web- savvy presenters. The experts–from DOD’s interactive communications division–were impressive, but they wasted too much time trying to get a Power Point presentation to work, rather than just going online and giving us a tour of where they go to interact online. I did appreciate that they took time for our questions and that they genuinely shared what they thought about the possibilities for applying social online networking tools in our businesses. The greatest take-away for me was the notion of being a digital immigrant. The term gives me something to talk about with my immigrant friends in my real life networking where I am just as comfortable talking to real people, having a refreshment with them, listening, laughing and letting it all disappear into thin air while my Blackberry is off–or at least on vibrate, and the conversation ends there.
Recession-proof your business through PR
Today’s headlines are dominated by the ‘R’ word—recession. While pundits disagree about whether we’re already in a recession or on the verge, the time has never been better to recession-proof your brand and market share through more targeted and strategic promotion.
In today’s economic environment, market research in the form of customer surveys, focus groups, and Internet surveys is more critical than ever to ensure that campaigns are well aligned with audience interests and priorities—and marketing dollars are wisely spent.
It’s also a good time to step back and evaluate your Web site to see how it can be more engaging. The Web continues to be a prime marketing tool, but only when sites are dynamic, interactive, and continually refreshed. More and more, online communities, social media, and Web 2.0 tools—from blogs to user groups—are key to promoting customer relationships, building brand awareness, and reinforcing the perceived value of your products and services.
Try Video
The cost of video production has diminished as the availability and affordability of cameras has increased. When You Tube became a go-to place on the web, a new communications trend emerged. However, as was the case during the desktop publishing trend of the 1980s, everyone will try it, but only some will last. A good production still requires professional writing, design, narration, quality shoots, lighting and professional production. Our sample is only the beginning of what we can do, but it reflects the new casual shoot, edit and upload ability the You Tube generation brings to our arsenal of communication tools. In a studio, with professional broadcasters and a well developed script, a high quality production can help our clients take their web sites to the next level and for a fraction of the cost once required to employ broadcasting in campaigns. See video clip as sample of first cut.
New Media Downside
I usually look at the glass half full, but something about new media’s potential effect on American society leaves me feeling more empty.
I find myself seeking out the NBC network news at 7 with Brian Williams, or the BBC or national public television …looking for that feeling of belonging that I had watching Walter Cronkite when I was a kid. He was speaking to all of us as a united nation with common interests and desires for our common good. While I love the creativity that new media unleashes, and the opportunity it gives for expression of all kinds from anyone, anywhere, I hope that some avenues of professional journalistic reporting remain to bring us together for messages we may not want to hear but need to hear. Where will the objective reporting coming from?
Paul Saffo said it best in a recent Economist.com article…. a futurologist described as “one of the world’s most enthusiastic technophiles,” said that on the downside, “Each of us can create our own personal-media walled garden that surrounds us with comforting, confirming information and utterly shuts out anything that conflicts with our world view,” he says. “This is social dynamite” and could lead to “the erosion of the intellectual commons holding society together…We risk huddling into tribes defined by shared prejudices.”
Aren’t we doing this already? What do you think?