Of the 703 senior executives polled a whopping 100% of CEOs admit to frequently thinking about their company’s reputation–although only 38% of executives seem to care about their personal reputation. Clearly they’ve not heard that 87% of us tie a CEO’s reputation to that of the company (source: Hill & Knowlton).

It also appears that the higher-up the totem pole an executive is, the less threats he or she sees against their company’s reputation. At the CEO level only 56% see a "High/Moderate" threat to the company reputation, while those below the chief executive see a 67% threat. Of course, both camps are being a little too hopeful, what with previous studies showing 83% of companies will face a reputation crisis in the next five years that devalues them by 20-30% (source: Oxford-Metrica).

Lastly, a staggering 87% of global executives admit they’ve sent out (or received) at least one email, text, or Tweet, that could have led to a reputation-suicide.

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YouTube Strikes a Deal with the BBC

After highly publicized breakdowns in negotiations with CBS and Viacom, it looks like Google and YouTube have finally managed to court a suitor into the video-sharing fold, avoiding any potential copyright snares that might ensue with current BBC content on the site.

The BBC

There were people from Sun, Cisco, Text 100, Fleishman Hillard, Weber Shandwick (well, me), Stowe Boyd, Brian Solis, Podtech, Andy Lark, Jory Des Jardins / Blogher that were in attendance (plus others), and Jeremiah Owyang from Podtech helped germinate the idea and Daniela Barbosa from Factiva ran with it – and, in a way, yes it was a Factiva focus group.

The measurement of social media – how is the best way to figure this out, and Factiva reached out to figure out how to measure such social media the best way.

Do you want a centralized algorithmic or a localized, emergence type data. Is it just about interesting data points or simple data points – but since there is money being moved, you need to figure out what people are asking for, and what data they need to bring back to the bosses. In deploying social media, you need to figure out how to best measure the results.

What needs to be measured: relevance, influence, reach, audience …. What is the high influence, what is the audience measurement? Niche blogs might not have a high audience, but they are reaching the right people.

Relavence, influence and reach all have to do with the goal – what might be influential for one person and / or company might not be for other groups. It’s the metrics (a la Nielsen Netratings) versus goals and objectives (what the company is looking for as an end-result is probably most important). A community activation – a call-to-action from the blog or post. A conversion rate, a download of a PDF or maybe a podcast.

But is there a difference between reach and influence? Someone might not have reach but is influencing the right people. It’s the attributes of the audience. And participation – social media platform via comments, post a blog ….

How is traditional marketing transitioning into social media and marketing. Can you measure the same way? Is it possible to measure?

Should we even call it consumer generated media, or social media – or for that point, is it new media? Not everyone is necessarily a consumer (according to Stowe) – but I disagree. We are a consumer society, dammit. When you participate, there is no consumption but more production – it’s a wrong, silly term (Stowe again). But, he has a nice hat on today (see photo).

We broke out into brain storm sessions – here are those notes.

Beyond metrics – there needs to be a standard on how they are produced out there. Statistics are radically different – if there was a standard set, a consistency, there is an issue in reliability that needs to be addressed. A working standard on social media – getting people to adhere is hard to do to begin with.

Click-thrus, who are we reaching is the important question. How do we define this in social media. Podcasting – who is watching, how long they watching, what’s the dropoff rate? What’s the engagement there within Podcasts – a “lurk” index, in a way.

Very basic web metrics tools – if you have those – you apply it to a blog, you get nothing truly valuable. To connect the domain name to a user behavior or a company would be great – like the top 500 people that you want to reach.

Should CGM be measured and is it important?

For us, yes, of course we want to be able to measure it.

Who is creating social media? What are they creating? And is the “who” more important than the “what”?

Blogs, wikis for how-to sites, newsgroups, message boards – all to help each other use products. Have to consider who the company – there are 100′s of millions of people that are probably creating the content that is just for family, that is just being done for fun. Do you mean relevant to commerce and business, or who is just creating social media? You have to figure out and distinguish the relevance versus the cabin blogging person who no one is currently reading. How do you find those bloggers that you want …. So, tagging does become an important role. Isolate who is relevant discussions – by being involved that does help.

Somehow create a filter to tag the blogs, in a way of importance. Media itself is very structured. Quantity does not necessarily equal quality – specific influence.

If you are producing social media as part of your PR marketing plan, how do you measure ROI? Answered above.

Do you think that social media needs structured, mutually agreed upon measurement techniques and metics (eg MSM’s ad value equivalenceand article impressions) to make monitoring a more serious practice?

What kind of standards – transparency. How are stats created in a clear way … a level of confidence that this information is confident – the executives can pull it apart, and it still stands – it needs to be digestable . Start creating advanced statistics, such as reach, media signal (prominence, etc). What are the metrics, creating of algorithms. There needs to be some structure – but there is a softer side of measurement, some guidelines … flexibility, adapted by …. There is that pie-chart desirability, but is it possible. Resistance and uncertainty from advertising to PR, as the money switches hands. There are a ton of companies that are getting into measurement of social media, but needs to be an understanding. It depends on what you are doing – from the PR side, we are the first adopters bc it is lower risk and just part of outreach. Influencers is what PR is trying to figure out. CYA metrics – that’s what the corporate side also. The idea metrics – it’s a PR thing that wants.

So … what should be measured and how do you want it to be delivered?

In a simple way that can be modified for each companies / corporates needs. And, RSS to cut and paste into an email.

Thoughts from other breakout groups:

The metaphor that matters – a blogger is a blogger, even if he is a journalist.

ROI – no metrics, beyond engagement. None for new acquisitions, call to action, click throughs. Is there importance for these metrics, or is anecdotal information yet. Next year (prediction) is when company’s get over it – they are all looking for a decent metric, and page views is not the one. There has to be some better measurement, and 2007 is where it is going to likely going to come from. Engage or die.

Does ROI even matter – no one is going to ask for ROI on email or IM.

Who and what varies on the situation. Nothing is equal, not everything is quantified the same way, depending on the needs and interpretations.

Salesforce dashboards – the next board meeting, where you explain how many days it took to sell what and why. Should we measure – it depends, and why comes into play.

Open networks – open source metrics – the metrics to be embraced by them all. Need standardization, in order for there to be success. Paying for measurement is for the rich and the famous (it costs cash).

One of the who’s – it’s not about big far reaching community, but about narrow, gated community around the “who” more so than the “what” and vice versa.

There was a final overview at the end – see photo – that capsulated the whole thought about measurement and tracking, which is important in social media. It is something we all talk about, but are not thinking about solutions. Hopefully, there will be better than anecdotal solutions.

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Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

The supporters list now shows the names of 32 people who have signed up to publicly support this grassroots campaign, intended to throw a spotlight on an insidious practice that is the opposite of transparency yet is dressed up as such.

Those 32 names are communicators who are bloggers, academics, practitioners and students. It includes two highly influential names – David Weinberger and Seth Godin.

The list also includes the names of four PR agencies who have publicly stated their commitment to the campaign statement – Altyris, Jackson Wells Morris, Flatiron Communications LLC, and Voce Communications.

Kudos to these four.

Conspicuously absent, however, is any of the big-name PR firms.

Perhaps Keith Jackson of Jackson Wells Morris may embarrass some of them into publicly stating their support for anti-astroturfing and this campaign.

He’s started spotlighting some of these firms by posting extracts from their vision/mission/here’s how we behave statements that convey those firms’ positions on ethics in PR, and issued a challenge to each of them to publicly support the anti-astroturfing campaign.

Keith has challenged two firms so far – Weber Shandwick Worldwide and Fleishman-Hillard Inc. More to come, he says.

One PR agency who might have a problem publicly supporting the campaign is DCI Group if reports on how they allegedly were behind the Al Gore’s Penguin Army (supposedly) viral video on YouTube turn out to be true.

Then again, here’s a great opportunity for DCI to set their ethics record straight.

I’d like to see our professional associations also getting openly involved with this. IABC, CIPR, PRSA, for example. Why wouldn’t they?

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

I took the other side, saying that Weber’s brand is strong enough to cover both types of grills (plus, as Marianne points out, their grilling utensils and restaurant.) At last count, over 20 people have contributed to the debate; the comments are worth a read.

As is often the case when smart people are polarized on an issue, I start thinking of the middle ground. How can we all be right? I often agree with Laura when she talks about focus, yet there are very successful brands that don’t fit that mold (I’m thinking of GE, IBM and Apple, for starters.) The issue of focus versus flexibility in a brand can depend on a couple factors:

1) How new is the brand? Here’s where I completely agree with Laura: new brands should tightly focus. Pick one problem that needs solving and build a reputation for solving it. Netflix solved convenient movie rental. Google solved fast, accurate search. Apple offered a cool new way to compute.

As the brand becomes well-known, it may earn the right to extend its products and services. Sometimes age translates into trust; older brands are familiar and usually within our comfort zone (we assume that if they’re still around, they must have done something right.) IBM could move into IT services because of its long history in computing, and GE could successfully move into financial services… although that was a real stretch; I wouldn’t have recommended that one. Regardless, if a company develops a strong reputation that transcends their original product (ie. convenience or trust or safety or cool) then it can consider product/service expansion within the scope of that reputation.

Is expansion always recommended? Not at all. But building a brand is a dynamic, ongoing activity… not something you do once and check off your list. Brands are living entities, and their continued existence largely depends on the environment in which they operate. If markets and consumer preferences change over time, brand flexibility and adaptibility becomes important. Some might say that changing times require a new brand; in most cases, I’d disagree. Companies pour a lot of money into building a brand over the years; if it executes well and earns trust, then there’s a big bank account called ‘brand equity’ that would be foolish to discard. Which leads me to #2…

2) How much trust has the brand earned? To use an analogy, let’s say I hired an assistant to help me coordinate projects. Would I trust her to take on strategy work, or customer interviews, or client interaction? No…. at least not at first. If she’s not a great project manager, I’ll let her go. If she’s good at project management but doesn’t show an aptitude for anything else, I’ll keep her as a project manager. But if she earns my trust and shows a willingness to learn, I’d be quite open to testing her out in other areas… and pretty soon she might be running with projects of her own. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Customers “hire” a company/product/service to fill a certain role. After building up a set of perceptions about that company, they know to either replace it, keep it for the specified role, or expand their relationship with it based on earned trust.

In my analogy, the assistant’s ‘brand’ is not based on being a project manager. If I trust her with other tasks, it’s because she’s built a personal brand on how she works, not what she does. In the “focus” philosophy, that person must stay a project manager her entire life; in the “flexible” philosophy, she can extend into other areas as long as she proves that she can build on her strengths and that the new role fits her strengths.

So Apple should not confined to being a computer brand because its reputation is not based on what it does (computers) but how it does it (cool). The Apple brand easily encompasses a broader range of products as long as they all deliver on Apple’s cool reputation. Conversely, Comcast (in my personal experience) should stop trying to get into telephony and internet access until it’s earned a solid reputation as a cable provider. If I have continued problems with my cable service, why should I trust them with other services? By spreading themselves too thinly, they end up not doing anything well.

So as you build your brand, think both about your core offering (what you do) and what you want to be known for (how you do it). The latter part — which is ultimately your reputation — provides the flexibility for your brand to transcend your initial product or service offering if it makes sense. And yes, there is a point where too much flexibility completely dilutes your brand. Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules in this business; we can debate this issue for weeks, and everyone can provide examples to prove their respective points. But at the end of the day, every brand must consider a multitude of factors that go into this decision. Like people, brands are highly personal and individual. What is right for one is not necessarily right for all.

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Jennifer Rice is the founder of Mantra Brand Communication. She has extensive experience in brand/marketing strategy, market/customer research, integrated marketing communications and channel support.

Jennifer also writes theWhat’s Your Brand Mantra? blog which offers musings on branding, marketing and the ecology of business.

Laura says:

Trying to cover all the new emerging categories with one brand name will weaken your brand in the mind of the consumer as new brands are launched by specialists. Keep Weber as a “charcoal” brand, period. And launch the gas grills with a new brand name. Maybe even a new name for the portable gas grills…

After you build a leading iconic brand, the last thing you want to do is undermine it with a line extension that goes against the core belief of the brand… You build brands by being first. Weber was the first covered-kettle grill.

OK… so following that logic, the railroads were actually smart to think of themselves as being in the railroad business instead of the transportation business. And IBM was definitely wrong in putting the IBM name on PCs and services when mainframes became obsolete. And McDonald’s was wrong to add salads to its menu because it goes against their “hamburger” positioning. Following this logic, there is no reason to launch line extensions and new products under the same brand name, regardless of changes in the market. Hmmm.

I guess I see things a bit differently. When you position your brand on what you do (charcoal, hamburgers, computers), it can only lead to extinction. Rather, base your positioning on how you do it (ie. a higher-level benefit), which allows you more flexibility over time. Google’s brand position isn’t search, it’s organizing the world’s information. Nike isn’t shoes, it’s passion. McDonald’s isn’t hamburgers, it’s convenience.

And back to Weber. A quick search shows that while the grill industry is flat, shipments of charcoal grills are down 32% while gas grills are up 83%. The article states:

“Right now, grillers and barbecuers are looking for more convenience, more safety and more versatility. Because they are easier to use, LP gas grills have shown steady growth in sales over the past few years. Most grill owners (55%) say their next purchase will be a gas grill as opposed to 29% who plan to buy charcoal grills.”

So in a nutshell, Laura is suggesting that the Weber brand should just die out with charcoal grills.

The Weber brand is far bigger than charcoal. A more flexible position that’s loaded with emotional attachment is tied to backyards and barbeques. As Laura noted, Weber’s been around since 1952; there are a lot of collective backyard memories tied to Weber. That’s where the brand equity lies… not in a lifeless piece of charcoal.

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Jennifer Rice is the founder of Mantra Brand Communication. She has extensive experience in brand/marketing strategy, market/customer research, integrated marketing communications and channel support.

Jennifer also writes theWhat’s Your Brand Mantra? blog which offers musings on branding, marketing and the ecology of business.

And what a tale! Starting from a rude personal assault on Allan Jenkins in an article by David Murray, it has quickly led to the birth of a new organization, a blog, a podcast and even an online store.

This is the same David Murray, incidentally, who rapped me over the knuckles in December 2004 with similar rudery in an article for the Ragan Report newsletter. Fifteen months and so many developments later, Murray is still clueless about social media. At least his rudeness is as consistent as is his decline in credibility.

Murray undoubtedly has no idea of what he has now wrought!

The result is I’m nobody who are you?, the official blog of the “International Association of Nobodies.” And if this body counts nobodies such as Allan Jenkins, Eric Eggertson, Andrea Werckerle, Ike Pigott, Linda Zimmer, Gary Goldhammer, Lee Hopkins, Shel Holtz, Henriette Weber Andersen, and Jeffrey Treem among its membership, then that’s a group I’d be proud to be associated with.

Onwards, nobodies!

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

According to, GASP!, the news release “Pepper will serve as group manager in Weber Shandwick’s San Francisco office, working closely with agency clients including Agilent, BEA Systems, Cisco and Hitachi to develop and drive online communications strategies.”

Thankfully Pepper will continue writing his POP! PR Jots blog while working on the Northern California-based team. To the East, he’ll be joined by Weber Shandwick blogger Robert Ricci. Both of you guys need to box Brandon Smulyan’s ears, or send him to the Bad Pitch blog. Then again, I suspect he’s more than learned his lesson.

So we assume this moves Pepper from Scottsdale to San Francisco? Will he have to adapt from running his own shop to joining a large firm? Perhaps, but we’re sure he’ll be fine. My advice to his new co-workers? Take him with a grain of salt. >rimshot<

Hat tip to Shel and Neville at For Immediate Release (Show # 107).

Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.

Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.

Six months have passed since the first Syndicāte conference in New York, and conference chair Doc Searls has noted the tremendous growth in social media in that short time frame. In a statement, Searls said syndication has rapidly changed several fields like publishing, advertising, and corporate communications.

Searls will be among the many speakers at the San Francisco conference, which runs today through December 14th. Sun Microsystems president Jonathan Schwartz and W2 Group chairman/CEO Larry Weber will deliver keynotes at the conference. Search engine competitors Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have speakers scheduled for the event as well.

The conference covers four topic tracks. The Syndicated Media Environment examines how syndication and the availability of content have affected old and new media. Syndicated Company & Product Environments touches on why content syndication brings businesses of all sizes closer to their customers.

Syndicated Technologies & Trends provides all the buzzwords any techie could want, as it features tagging, wikis, blogging, and new syndication technologies. And, Syndicated Public Relations shows how companies have taken podcasting, blogs, and RSS feeds and are using them in ways a typical press release could never accomplish.

WebProNews will provide conference updates, as publisher Rich Ord keeps track of the various hot topics and companies at Syndicāte this week.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

[...] As a non-scientific research project, I asked our research geek Jason Preston to identify the top PR firms websites and using Google’s “search within” ability, log how many times Google detects the word “blog” within the site of each firm.

At left is the Top 13 – name of firm and how many times Google found the word ‘blog’ on their websites.

The other 37 firms in Steve’s list (included in his post) have zero mentions.

What’s the conclusion from all this? Steve asks the same question, in fact. While I don’t think you can draw any meaningful conclusions from this, it’s good to speculate a bit on what any PR firm may or may not be doing regarding blogs. It does illustrate that 13 of them are talking about blogs. At least, on their websites.

Interesting to see the leading role Edelman has in numbers of mentions on their website. If you go to the Edelman site and do a search there on the word ‘blog’, the results will show you the context in which the word is mentioned. That’s the important thing to pay attention to in all these cases – context of mention.

Is there any significance if a well-known PR firm doesn’t mention the word ‘blog’ anywhere on their website? Fleishman-Hillard, Text 100, Waggener Edstrom or Weber Shandwick, to pick some names at random – each of these firms has a zero count in Steve’s list.

Well, at the least it might indicate to a visitor that this is a topic which the agency either isn’t interested in or doesn’t know about. If blogs as communication channels are part of the PR mix, then I’d expect them to be at least referenced or mentioned somewhere on an agency’s website. In the right context.

(Hat tip: Silicon Valley Watcher)

Links:
Blog Business Summit
posted a list of 51 PR firms

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.