Corina’s Concerns Be lowly wise, think only what concerns thee and thy being.– John Milton, Paradise Lost

Definition: Conversational blindness is a phenomenon whereby listeners fail to notice when speakers respond to a different question than the one they are asked.

So why is this important? Because as spokespeople for an organization, as well as private individuals, we are incessantly faced with questions that we do not want to answer, and would much rather avoid. In such situations, we can use what authors Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School (whose paper I am quoting above), call the “artful sidestep”, i.e. answering the wrong question so compellingly that we cause the listener to forget we have not, in fact, responded to the original question.

The fascinating finding is that the majority of people prefer an authoritative answer to the wrong question, rather than a poorly phrased one to the right question.

How to be successful at it? Here’s what I inferred from the research:

- Answer a question that is similar in tenor to the one actually asked

- Phrase your answer well, and deliver it convincingly (poor answers, even to the right question are, as I said, ill-received)

- Make sure these answers to the wrong questions are positioned in the middle of teh conversation, and not before breaks or lulls (the more time people have to process your answer before the next remark, the easier it is to realize you’re off the mark)

- Do answer some questions well and forthrightly, otherwise the lack of substance of your other responses will not be adequately concealed.

- Beware of TVs that use the crawl or display to highlight the question being answered: this heightens people’s awareness of the actual question, and diminishes conversational blindness.

- Read the research paper.

Posted under PRealities, Reading Pack

Seth Godin writes about the difference between PR and publicity, in a week old post that has somehow escaped my notice until now. His style, always incisive, sharply divides the two, classifying publicity as the process of getting media coverage, and PR as the art of crafting the message (story) of the organization.

Some of his brief comments on the strategic role of PR have an echo in my own beliefs.

Many companies, especially in Romania, believe that PR is merely publicity (or what we call media relations here). Those more advanced understand that PR is more than a layer applied to the organization’s activities for inspection purposes, being in fact integral, rather than external, to the business goals. Still, they see PR as a support function, a tool, which, just like IT, or HR, enables to organization to succeed, by making its communications run smoothly, within and without, and making sure that interactions with the stakeholders generate trust and goodwill (various forms of CSR are often involved).

I have long held that PR should be, and should consequently be perceived, as more than that. PR should advise the organization in defining itself, in improving its activities and processes to better respond to public expectations. For example, PR should be able to influence the organization in becoming green, rather than either promoting the company’s new green products to the media (product PR, a.k.a publicity), or sponsoring green CSOs (a.k.a. traditional understanding of PR). PR pros should be able to stand up in a board meeting and recommend that the company truly embrace green, because that is the stakeholder’s wish rather than recommend a communication plan based on green values, and when they do that, their word should carry as much weight as that of the Operations guy, or finance director, and be given the same consideration.

I’ve yet to learn of a company that does that.

Then I’ll apply there

Posted under PRealities

As my Twitter followers know, I’ve been reading hundreds of resumes lately, since I’m recruiting for a marketing specialist position in my department. Based on this recent experience, here’s my rant about things that I never want to read or see in a marketing CV again:

1. “I think I can do a good job in marketing (or PR) because I am sociable/communicative and I like people”. I see this in 9 out of 10 resumes and it puzzles me that people who are supposed to be good at crafting messages can be so ingenuous when it comes to selling themselves to a potential employer. Simply liking something or somebody is no guarantee of your fitness for the profession (or knowledge thereof). I adore dogs and cats, but you don’t want to have me tend to your sick pet, as I’d have no idea how to help them. You’re better off with a vet.

2. “I’m attentive to detail” followed by a glaring typo. No, you’re not. And if you’re not paying attention to details in a CV, which is prepared in advance, and can be proofread, and adjusted, what will you do when sending a press release or editing a brochure under time pressure? All of us make mistakes, but it’s best if you’re not contradicting your own assertions quite so obviously and so early in the selection process.

3. Bad grammar. This is valid in general, regardless of the language, but a special place is reserved for bad grammar and inappropriate word usage in English, coupled with a self-assessment of “advanced” under English, in the Language skills section.

What gives away your real level? Incorrect verb tenses, particularly in the past tense (sended instead of sent, etc.), mixing up adverbs and adjectives (I work professional instead of I work professionally or My work is professional, and similar), and anglicized Romanian words.

There are many more “peeves”, but these are my top three. Candidates, beware

Posted under Careerwise

Two things converged to create this post: a weekend course in “Managing Intangible Assets” and the ongoing debate about rate-card equivalency at www.strategic.ro (that I’ll read only after I write this post, to keep my ideas untainted by those of others).

The one thing that most intangibles (whether they are human capital, brand, or reputation) have in common is the difficulty in measurement (and, not incidentally, valuation). And since the end product is difficult to measure, the organizational functions used to generate these, similarly struggle with determining their own ROI. But because measurement and metrics are the mantras of the modern management milieu (hey, this is a fun involuntary alliteration), various metrics must be created, some recording transactions, some based on surveys or evaluations, and some based on benchmarking.

PR is in a particularly precarious position (yet another involuntary alliteration) because most of its activity is related to generating and managing intangibles (trust, reputation, goodwill). In times of crisis, these apparently “fuzzy”, hard-to-monetize activities are most threatened by budget cuts or redundancies.

The defense is measurement, and one of the metrics PR uses for that purpose is the ad value equivalency, or AVE. It is applied to the print, TV or radio editorial coverage, whose value is estimated using a combination of the costs of purchasing advertising of a similar size, positioning or length.

It has some positive aspects:

- compares PR output with a type of cost that is intelligible upper management
- it’s valuable when doing comparative analysis with your competition, because instead of comparing different outlets and different sizes of coverage, you compare the overall value of their and your earned news

But here are the negatives:

- the impact of news and stories is demonstrably higher than that of paid advertising (hence the rise of the advertorial)
- dilution or distortion of the message occurs in PR, while advertising guarantees the accuracy, because it does not change your message for publication purposes
- the rate card is used to estimate the value of the PR coverage, while in real circumstances advertisers would seldom pay rate-card values. Thus it appears that PR grants higher values, whereas in fact, it does not.
- AVEs treat all media equally, regardless of the prominence and credibility of one outlet over another (for Romanians, think being disussed on OTV, rather than ProTV), and also regardless of the preference of your audience (you may get high AVE values, but on publications that your target group doesn’t read).
- There is no repetition. The impact of advertising is amplified by frequency and spread, and indeed that is part of how a media plan is designed. For earned news, even syndicated, there is no frequency amplification. Using a measurement designed for a tool that builds explicit awareness over a limited time, for a tool that generates implicit trust on the long-term is confusing, rather than helpful.
- there’s no measure for lack of coverage, meaning problems that aren’t exposed, difficulties that aren’t covered, in other words, what the PR has managed to keep out of the press for the good of the company.

I don’t think AVEs are thoroughly wrong. When you balance PR investment with advertising investments, there is the need for a tool that allows you to decide or allocate between the two. But advertisers themselves don’t measure solely the cost of inserting an ad, but instead the sales resulting from it, the leads, the comments etc. so PR needs to find a measurement that treats earned editorial coverage similarly.  And yes, they can borrow some of these metrics from marketing.

Now I’m going to read the debate on Strategic, and see if others agree with me. I suggest you do the same

Posted under PRealities

Briefly put, there are two main schools of thought in terms of managing a company in times of recession: survivalism and forethought.

Survivalism means steering the company through the recession with a steel hand on costs, and a focus on keeping the company afloat despite the economic troubles.

Forethought entails management with a post-recession goal in mind. The company assumes survival and focuses on keeping the level of resources and assets (mostly intangible) constant throughout the recession, so it can leverage its superior position at the end of the downturn.

With respect to marketing, the survivalist company will retrench: cut marketing budgets (and staff), refocus what little money remains from branding campaigns to purchase incentive campaigns, price promotions, and other tactics that impact the bottom line more directly and immediately. Survivalists switch to predominantly push, vs. pull strategies and hope to weather the storm with as little investment in marketing as possible. (Even to the point of none)

Foretought recognizes the value of the brand, understands that once out of a customer’s evoked set of products or brands, reentry is amazingly hard, and that without maintaining it, the efforts invested in the past will be largely eclipsed, because the brand equity will erode and at the end of the recession, the brand will be in a weak competitive position.

At a first glance, the second strategy seems more intelligent, and indeed, many marketing thinkers (e.g. Laura Ries) recommended it. However, the survivalists also have a point: what if at the end of the recession, you still have brand recognition, but no company, or no people to deliver on the values of the brand?

The key, then, is to strike a balance. And that’s where the real work of the marketer begins.

Posted under Marketing vibes