Tweet Dreams!

Tweeting may be all the rage among certain elements, especially journalists, technocrats and marketing execs focused on B to C.  But Twitter is neither much used nor viewed to be of much use in the B-to-B sector.  That's my conclusion from comments by several executives. 

Here's what two said in reply to my email request that they retweet a Twitter post:

• I don't tweet - don't know how to - don't really have the time to figure it out or stay on top of it. I have trouble keeping up with my regular media requirements .... Sorry about that. -a principal in the wealth management division of a financial advisory firm

• Was going to check out the tweets before responding, but have lost my password to twitter....and I am so lame in the twitter department. -a director of communications at a securities rating agency

Here also is how two more responded to four questions about how they and their companies used Twitter:

• No to all four questions, Jeff. I guess I am a fossil, but I have not Tweeted yet - president of a New York area public relations agency with financial services clients, responding to the following: 

1. Do you now or have you ever tweeted?
2. Do you regularly or have you ever accessed Twitter to read tweets? 
3. Is Twitter an effective means of communicating for clients with end audiences and/or with journalists?
4. Do your clients or potential clients ask you whether to communicate via Twitter?  If so, what do you tell them?

• De minimus or slight, insignificant use-That's my interpretation of the following reply received from the marketing director of a law firm with a Tier 1 (highest) ranking in the 2013 edition of U.S. News & World Report's "Best Law Firms."
  

1.  
   1. Do you now or have you ever tweeted for yourself or for your firm?  For myself, but rarely.
   2. Do you regularly or have you ever accessed Twitter to read tweets?  I do not tweet regularly and rarely access it to read tweets
   3. Is Twitter an effective means of communicating for your company with end audiences and/or with journalists?  We don't use it much, so I can't say if it would be effective.
   4. Have your firm's attorneys shown interest to you about communicating via Twitter in connection with practice development?  If so, what do you tell them?  Only one.  He has been tweeting for a while (well over a year) and doesn't find it helps his practice grow.

Admittedly that's a small sampling.  But the comments suggest there is still a lot of proselytizing for Twitter advocates to do.  In the meantime, Tweet Dreams!

-- Jeff Bogart 

This 'n That:
Why there's a future in public transportation

Overheard today at a Westfair business conference: Millennials prefer public transportation to private. Driving cars distracts them from texting.

-- Jeff Bogart 

From the trenches

On reporters and editors:

Reporter:

Here's the item as it ran, not quite the way I wrote it...

PR Guy:

Thanks, . . . Didn't Dante's Paradise Lost reserve a special place for editors?

Reporter:

You clearly have been a reporter ....

-- Jeff Bogart 

The real truth about market research? 

Here it is, in this dismissal of the validity of market research, from Denis Forman, British TV innovator who won an Emmy as executive producer of “The Jewel in the Crown”:  “It doesn’t tell you what people are going to like.  It tells you what they already like.”  Or perhaps not--market researchers may beg to differ. 

Can't market research be designed to accurately predict the future?  What about election polls?

-- Jeff Bogart 

How Well Do Companies Understand Tomorrow's Consumer?

A recent issue of McKinsey Quarterly has an excellent article about the rewards that "emerging-market cities" hold for companies willing to understand the needs of consumers in those locales and how to market to them.  (See "Unlocking the potential of emerging-market cities," Sept. 2012).  It reminds me of another McKinsey Quarterly article over a year ago that envisioned the possibility of a reduced role for equities in emerging markets because investors in emerging markets currently favor other asset classes.  "How the role of equities may shrink" (12/10/11).  In reacting to the earlier article, I blogged as follows:   

"Although there would seem to be no single, monolithic 'emerging market household,' it will be interesting to see whether and how observers come up with overarching similarities and then differentiate among various national economies and social groups when it comes to spending and psychographic categories."

I also noted: 

"Marketers and other social scientists may soon be spending as much time analyzing the habits of a new group of consumers as they did America's baby boomers.  The new group is the consumers of emerging nations--huge in size, huge in its potential expenditures on goods and services, and huge in its potential influence on societal values.  This group will take on increasing importance as the American baby boomers decline in numbers, the subsequent generations decline in wealth, and the American economy matures and wanes in relative importance."  

The current McKinsey article, by highlighting the desirability of understanding consumers in emerging-market cities, suggests that such focused analysis is now occurring--a burgeoning new market for market research.  See This ‘n That archives or click on http://www.bogart.cc/2011.12.01_arch.html . 

-- Jeff Bogart 

Understanding Modern Media

One of the nicest overviews of how today’s media are structured is to be found at the bottom of the Institutional Investor website.  It distinguishes between content channels (aka “topics”) and media formats (aka “modes”).  It features them equally with publications/events (grouped together) and with advertising.  Of course, its publications/events are really brands or product categories; otherwise they would logically be placed under the Media Format category.  Events are joined with publications, because these days every publication or brand worth its salt is linked with a conference or other events, not only to provide visibility in support of marketing but also to generate additional revenue.  That’s because today’s Media Masters understand that media is about creating “community” among various audiences.   

All of the below categories and subcategories suggest touch points for public relations professionals (and reporters and journalists) seeking to engage (or in yesterday’s jargon “liaise” or “interact” or “intermediate” or “report”) .  That’s because today’s publisher (used here in the broadest sense to encompass every form of expression employing words, graphics, audiovisual, performance, and the rest of the senses) is much more than just a creator and distributor of print.  And of course as that implies, today’s media is much more than just news media.  And much more than the mass media (aka “traditional” or “mainstream media”) that is struggling to hold onto its audience and revenue stream).   Below are the main categories and some subcategories in the Institutional Investor setup.  Go to Institutional Investor for the rest.

-- Jeff Bogart 

Crisis Communications Lesson From Hurricane Sandy

Crisis communications and social media executives may be interested in a recent New York Times story that contrasts how two government organizations used social media during a disaster to communicate with their publics.  One boosted its communications; the other apparently minimized or failed to engage in them actively enough, suggests the story "Social Media Strategy Was Crucial as Transit Agencies Coped With Hurricane."

The disaster was Hurricane Sandy, and the two entities were the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority's Long Island Rail Road (L.I.R.R.) and--across the Hudson River from Manhattan--New Jersey Transit.  The former runs commuter trains connecting communities throughout Long Island, including Brooklyn and Queens, with Manhattan.  The latter runs commuter, light rail and bus systems, with operations in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York State.  The former upped its communications; the latter, apparently, did not.

See below to find which of the two agencies scored better with the public.

Keeping the public informed-and frequently-during a crisis is applicable not just to large, government authorities but to smaller, private organizations as well.  A tennis club with hundreds of members in the New York suburbs, badly damaged by Sandy, serves as a second case in point.  After the storm caused the facility to depressurize its tennis bubbles and flooded its clubhouse, its customers--including those who had booked seasonal court time and others who had prepaid for tennis lessons-fretted about whether they would get back the money they had paid many months in advance. They also wondered whether or not the facility had the financial resources to re-open and whether they now needed to find a new club at which to play. 

It took almost three weeks after the disaster before the facility's management  emailed members to assure them that they would receive refunds for missed time and, in subsequent emails, to set a specific target date for re-opening.  These emails also described the damage and the steps management had needed to take to assess the damage, plus the steps management would have to take before the club house and courts would be restored.  The description helped give the members some understanding of the extent of the problem and most likely built some sympathy for management.  However, after this flurry of emails, management again fell silent, leaving members again to wonder what was happening and whether management's timetable was being met.  Then as if to rub salt in sore wounds, members began receiving emails from another club suggesting that they should consider playing there and offering free court time the first time they played. 

"If there is one lesson transit officials have learned from Hurricane Sandy," says The Times' report, "it is that in the Internet era, keeping riders up to date is just as important as tracks and rolling stock."

That same lesson applies to private organizations, as well.  Disaster opens the door to the competition.  Lack of communication during the crisis and its aftermath opens it even wider. 

PS-It was the L.I.R.R. that did the better job, according to the article inThe Times.

-- Jeff Bogart 

Can Zero-Based Models Restore America's Auto Industry?

"The Great Cadillac Hope" reports today's New York Times is General Motors' newly introduced ATS model, described as a completely new, from-the-ground-up engineering effort as opposed to the redesign of an existing model.  The subhead says that "a Smaller Model Aspires to Be a World Contender."  Interesting, because this morning after I played tennis at a Westchester country club, I looked at the different makes of the 11 cars in the parking lot.  Only one was made by an American company, and that car was a Ford.  The others were by Cooper, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Hyundai, and BMW.  Not a single Cadillac in what might once have been a sweet spot for America's preeminent brand.  Perhaps zero-based engineering is what GM, and other U.S. car companies, need.

-- Jeff Bogart 

Might Crowd Sourcing Help Media Companies? 

"Sikorsky hosting second entrepreneurial contest," reports the Fairfield County Business Journal in its recently begun "News at Noon" digital edition.  Although the news story doesn't indicate, the first must have been successful, since Sikorsky is following through with its second crowd sourcing event. So, how come troubled newspaper and other media companies don't hold entrepreneurial contests of their own, and on both the editorial and advertising sides?  Perhaps crowd sourcing might help the media industry find some new ideas for escaping their continuing predicament.  

-- Jeff Bogart 

Can You Believe the Cost to Rent a Manhattan Apartment?

Manhattanites are paying average yearly apartment rent of over $41,000, based on average rentals for May reported by Crain's New York Business, citing brokerage firm Citi Habitat data.

That makes current mortgage payments--before property taxes--on a single family home in the suburbs seem almost insubstantial.

Here's how the yearly apartment rent breaks down by number of bedrooms:

"For studios, as well as for two- and three-bedroom units, rents in May rose 4% to $2,065, $3,920, and $5,246, respectively," says the article. That translates into annual rents of $24,780, $47,040, and $62,952.

"Rent for one bedrooms gained even more, 5%, to hit $2,810," notes the article.  That's the equivalent of $33,720. 

The average annual rent, based on the average monthly amount for May reported in the article, totals $41,256.

And Manhattan apartment dwellers don't get to deduct part of their monthly housing payment from their income taxes.  Wow!

-- Jeff Bogart

Will the Columbia-Stanford Announcement Start a Bi-coastal Trend?

Today’s announcement that editor and author Helen Gurley Brown is spending $30 million to establish a Media Innovation Institute linking Stanford Engineering with Columbia Journalism is interesting in several ways
   

1. Stanford and Columbia each lost out to Cornell, which teamed with an Israeli school, in the recent contest to build a high caliber engineering campus in New York City.  Should Stanford and Columbia have teamed in an effort to outbid Cornell? 
2. In the announcement, Helen Gurley Brown says, “It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.” How much bi-coastal cooperation now exists among major universities?  Will that be a future trend?
3. Both Helen and David were publishing types, with David being a Columbia J-School grad.  What and/or who stimulated the Brown’s interest in journalism about engineering?  Or is this more about the engineering of journalism?  

For more about the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, see the joint Columbia-Stanford announcement.

-- Jeff Bogart

Are "Emerging-Market Households" Replacing America's "Baby Boomers" ?

Marketers and other social scientists may soon be spending as much time analyzing the habits of a new group of consumers as they did America's baby boomers.  The new group is the consumers of emerging nations--huge in size, huge in its potential expenditures on goods and services, and huge in its potential influence on societal values.  This group will take on increasing importance as the American baby boomers decline in numbers, the subsequent generations decline in wealth, and the American economy matures and wanes in relative importance.

That proposition results from my having read an interesting recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly on "How the role of equities may shrink."  It is subtitled "A powerful new class of investors in emerging markets prefers other kinds of assets."  The article, reporting on a new McKinsey Global Institute study, says:

As emerging-market households attain a level of income that enables them to purchase financial assets, they are becoming a powerful new investor class, whose choices will help determine global demand for different asset classes. The actions of these new investors will, in turn, shape how businesses obtain the capital they need to grow, how other investors around the world fare, and how stable and resilient economies will be.

The same approach apparently used in this study-identifying and analyzing a spending category-seems applicable to facets other than the investment preferences of consumers in emerging markets.  Although there would seem to be no single, monolithic "emerging market household," it will be interesting to see whether and how observers come up with overarching similarities and then differentiate among various national economies and social groups when it comes to spending and psychographic categories. 

-- Jeff Bogart

About Photography

Charlie, a professional photographer I play tennis with, tells me that these days it costs as much as $10 to have an 8x10 inch black and white print made from film by a custom lab, whereas it costs only about $3 for a color print.  Wow!  What a reversal.  I remember when it used to cost $3 for an 8x10 black and white print at places like Modern Age and Image in New York City, whereas it cost about $10 for a color print from Kodak.  But, maybe black and white should always have been more expensive.  After all, a black and white photo, carefully composed and with equisite tonalities, has greater expressive power than does a color photo.  Right?

-- Jeff Bogart

Remembering Al

On a weekend visit to the Berkshires last month, I learned that Al Schwartz had died in September.  I hadn’t seen him in years, but I was saddened by the news.  His legacy, as recounted in local tributes, was to have revived the Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington as a performing stage.  But I knew Al in the 1970s when he first came to the Berkshires, a University of Hawaii grad who had exited early from a business career in New York’s garment district.  He rented 10-acres on Route 22 in Hillsdale, N.Y., and tried to make a go of it as a tenant farmer.  In summers he rented out shares in the two-story farmhouse, which is how I met him and Tyler, his Weimaraner dog, aka affectionately by Al as  “the hound.”  Al’s farming included, among other things, rabbits, sheep, purple beans, and grapes (from which he produced home-made wine that made you appreciate the real thing). 

 

Al introduced me to the Berkshires, including places like Morandi’s Restaurant and smokehouse in Hillsdale where you could get such delicacies as center cut pork chops, corn relish and smoked cheese.  We would also hit several singles bars, including one on Route 23 near Catamount and one on Railroad Street in Great Barrington before the street’s transformation into shops and eating places.  And there was also the Great Barrington Fair, where you could get ears of local corn plucked from large vats of boiling water, look at local livestock brought for judging, and lean against a white railing and watch as horses raced by.  I introduced him to Aston Magna when the early music festival and school first got going, located at that time in a magnificent home on a hill overlooking the surrounding countryside.  

It was probably in the late 1970s that Al began working as the manager of the Mahaiwe, which was then a worn out movie theater.  He gave me a back-stage tour and described his vision of bringing back live performances.  He noted how difficult it was to get distributors to give him really good films to show but added that he was not going to stop trying. 

 

Photos of Al posted on the web after his death showed that he had put on weight since his farming days, but he still seemed to have the same boyish face and enthusiasm.  If you want to know more about Al, you can find a tribute and photos by clicking here . 

My memories of the Berkshires won’t be the same without him. 

-- Jeff Bogart

 

A Rose in Bloom

The New York Times reported earlier this month that interviewer Charlie Rose, a mainstay of public television, will become an anchor of CBS' "Early" Show.  The story left me wondering, What are the different demands made by hosting an interview show and hosting a morning news show?  Have other people made the transition successfully?  How do people who have tried making the transition, whether successfully or not, describe the difference?  PerhapsThe Times will run a follow-up story. 

-- Jeff Bogart

Where Should IROs Come From?

Here's my response to an item in Inside Investor Relations about a survey finding that "the majority of top IROs [investor relations officers] have a financial background," that "three quarters of leading IROs worked in finance, accountancy or as an analyst before taking up a role in IR" and that "just 10 percent arrived via a position in corporate communications."

The finding that IROs come from finance etc. is not surprising.  It's been the trend for decades, and it makes plenty of sense, given the technical nature of the position.  What CFO wants to have to train a new hire to read financials and to understand securities laws, markets, the structure of the investment community, and the fundamentals of securities analysis?  

In addition, if the IRO position includes establishing rapport with professional investors, a background in the securities industry can be helpful.  The situation is similar to what appears to be developing in social marketing in the high tech industry-techies are being hired instead of marketing or PR types.  The situation is also reminiscent of the problem faced by editors when hiring reporters-should they opt for the candidate with extensive credentials in the subject to be covered, or should they opt instead for the candidate who lacks some or all knowledge of the subject but is a highly experienced researcher and exquisite writer? 

In the case of the IRO position, it would be great, of course,  if the IRO candidate had experience not only in finance and the securities industry but also in marketing or communications.  There probably aren't, however, many of those individuals in the job market.  Also, companies should be on the look-out for IRO candidates who-while lacking formal financial credentials such as an MBA degree, Street experience, etc.-nevertheless have an extensive IR track record.  It is not impossible, after all, for a communicator, attorney or other smart, focused executive to have learned the technical skills needed for the IRO position.  And not every IRO position need be a stepping stone to the CFO  job.

You can find my response posted on the publication's web site:  Inside Investor Relations .

-- Jeff Bogart

Social Media Releases Continue a Long-time Trend

My previous posting noted that the term "news release" is not an apt synonym for "social media release.  Here's another insight about social media releases:  they are a continuation of a long-standing trend in corporate relations-communicating directly with the end audience instead of through a reporter and the reporter's newspaper, broadcast or cable outlet.  Exemplifying the trend is the distribution of financial news releases written for professional investors such as security analysts and fund managers and distributed directly to them rather relying on business journalists to report the news.  In other words, social media releases, although designed for use by journalists, continue the disintermediation of traditional mainstream media that began as early as the mid 1900s.

-- Jeff Bogart

Social Media Releases Aren’t News Releases 

Recently, I’ve been spending time analyzing social media.  My interest is an outgrowth of interviews I conducted for a client with executives of advertising and public relations firms about the impact that digital has had on the marketing services industry.   One insight I’ve gained concerns the use of the phrase “social media release.”  At first I thought the phrase needed tweaking because it omitted the word “news.”  I thought it ought to be altered to become “social media news release.”  But then it dawned on me that “social media release” is a different concept.  It refers to communications directed to an audience much broader, qualitatively and quantitatively, than the news media, and it refers to content that is not just news.  I realized that the term “social media release” signifies content distributed or posted online for receipt directly by the end reader or for use by intermediaries in addition to or other than the traditional news media.  The content of the social release might not traditionally be considered “news.”   The difference between these terms--"social media release" and "news release" may be just a nuance . . . . or it may be a fundamental distinction on which to build.  We’ll see.  

-- Jeff Bogart

More About the Murdoch Fiasco:

Let's assume, for the moment, that the Murdochs and their top editor for News of the World did not know about the phone-mail hacking fiasco and alleged bribery of police officials by their employees.  Let's also momentarily assume that they did not know of their company's out-of-court settlements-worth millions of dollars-with phone-hacking victims.  (See below from a New York Times story on July 20, 2011).  Then consider these questions: 

Does that not attest to their inability as managers? 

Or does it simply suggest that companies can grow to large for even the ablest of managers? 

Or does it -another possibility-- highlight  a fundamental weakness in how large corporate businesses operate:  conglomerates patched together by investors who may get involved in deal-making and some aspects of policy but not in the nitty-gritty of running the business and so who are surprised when the authorities-and the public-seek to hold them accountable for the questionable conduct and misdeeds of their operating companies.  Absent gross misconduct on their part, our legal system tends not to hold them responsible for acts committed by the employees of the organizations they have set up.  And courts may be reluctant to break up the companies because they distinguish between rogue employees and the corporate entity-if only to save jobs of the many other, unimplicated employees.  All of which means, does it not, that there are really only limited consequences for today's mammoth enterprises and conglomerators. 

If such fundamental weakness does exist, then do we really need these large-scale networks, whether in the media industry or automotive industry?  Isn't there a point at which corporate size exceeds the manager's grasp and at which questionable corporate activities emerge that are attributable to diseconomies of scale?

What would Teddy Roosevelt do?

______________________

Murdochs Deny That They Knew of Illegal Acts
NYT 7/20/11, p. A1 at p. 10

(Also at  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/world/europe/20hacking.html?pagewanted=1&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/index.jsonp  as of 7/20/11)

"While the elder Mr. Murdoch has long had the reputation of being a hands-on manager, pressing for and savoring the scoops scored by the newspapers he had always felt were the soul of his media empire, he said in his testimony that in the case of The News of the World, he had no knowledge of the specifics of what was going on.

"He did not know, for example, that his company had paid confidential out-of-court settlements of £600,000 and £1 million to two victims of phone hacking. Nor, he said, did he know that the company was paying the legal fees of Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator under contract to The News of the World who was convicted in 2007 of hacking into the phones of staff members of the royal family.

"James Murdoch said he had not known about paying Mr. Mulcaire's legal fees either, and was ‘as surprised as you are that some of these arrangements had been made.'"

-0-

"Rupert Murdoch said that as the head of a company with 53,000 employees around the world, he could not have been expected to follow every decision made at The News of the World or even at News International, the News Corporation's British newspaper division.

"He said that he generally called the editor of The News of the World once a month to ask ‘what's doing?'  He tends to call the editor of The Sunday Times ‘nearly every Saturday,' he said, but ‘not to influence what he has to say.'

"He added: ‘If there's an editor I'm most in touch with, it's the editor of The Wall Street Journal, because we're in the same building.'"

-- Jeff Bogart

Too large to manage?  At what point does an organization, especially a fast-growing one, become too large and intricate to manage?  In the Murdoch/News Corporation voice-mail hacking and alleged bribery fiasco, the heads of News International and of Scotland Yard said they were unaware of their subordinates' conduct (see, for example, NYT, 7/18/11, p. 1).  Leaders  of other organizations accused of misdeeds, such as Enron, have made similar statements.  When does size become a governance obstacle?   Should Scotland Yard and News Corp. each be broken into a series of separate enterprises?

-- Jeff Bogart