Spinning out your expenses - how to handle a PR crisis

Most of us are, of course, scandalised by the revelations surrounding MPs' expenses claims. Finding out that our elected representatives are troughing away at tax-payers expense to feather their already gilded nests has hit at the very heart of our trust and confidence in the political system.

The news has temporarily eased the failure of individual banks and the financial crisis in general out of the headlines, but the one thing that both issues have in common is that they are nightmare scenarios for the PR teams of the companies and institutions involved. Rarely the recipients of sympathy, one can only imagine the head-in-hands feeling that these people are suffering as they think how to salvage the reputations of their hapless charges.

We have seen an evolution in the tactics adopted by PRs in recent weeks, undoubtedly determined by the magnitude or sheer indefensibility of the circumstances they find themselves in. At one time, the standard reaction to a crisis was to deny that one existed and then swiftly follow it up with an attack on the accuser's credibility. One thinks backs to the handling of the infamous dossier used by the Blair government as justification for declaring war on Iraq.

More recently, denial has given way to attempts at justification (or even laughable claims of "I'm the victim in this") and then gushing apologies and requests for forgiveness.

The contrast between the banks' approach to the banking crisis and that being taken now by Parliament is marked.

RBS struggled to throw off its institutionalised arrogance when the scale of the crisis in the bank first emerged. Head of PR, Carolyn McAdam, doggedly issued 'no comment' responses on behalf of her bosses to the frustration of the media and the public alike. Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Tom McKillop then did little to engender public sympathy with their forced apologies in front of the Treasury Select Committee. Only under new management has RBS shown contrition, which is now being rewarded by public acceptance and early signs of progress.

In Parliament, we have seen a much more rapid journey from denial through to apology. Last month, Home Secretary, Jacquie Smith, denied any wrong doing over her husband's late-night viewing choices. Since then, once it became apparent that the collective hand had been well and truly caught in the cookie jar, the tactics have changed. MP's have been forced in front of the media, apologies issued, jobs lost and statements of corrective action made. In no way, does this defend the indefensible (or pass comment on the sincerity of the apologies), but it does show how, when faced with a PR crisis, quickly choosing the right response is vital to mitigating the damage.

Knowing how to handle a PR crisis should form part of the disaster planning in any organisation. With new media, such as Facebook and Twitter, crisis situations, not always founded on reliable facts, can occur very rapidly and it is important to be able to react quickly and appropriately.

The lessons from the events of 2009 so far are to:

• Respond promptly and address the public as quickly as possible. Failure to do so only fuels the rumour mill


• Maintain honesty. Lying or attempting to cover up will be discovered and make a bad situation worse


• Be informative. If there is a sense that there is more to come out, the story will run and run


• Be sympathetic to the victims of the crisis. Take whatever steps you can to relieve any loss or anxiety


• Maintain relationships with the media. A team that is seen to be helping the media will generally receive more favourable treatment, than one that blocks it with a terse 'no comment'.

A crisis communications plan doesn't have to be a weighty tome, it can be a simple set of guidelines that first considers the types of crises that could occur and then walks through the main steps for dealing with them. Like any form of insurance, to leave such things for another day is tempting, but dangerous. Temporarily diverting PR efforts away from new press releases to writing and fine-tuning a crisis communications plan could prove a valuable investment in the long run.

Do you have any experience or advice in how to manage a PR crisis? We are particularly interested in hearing opinions from professional PRs on how the current MPs' expenses crisis is being handled.

Reasons to be Cheerful - Part 1

'Tis a brave man indeed that calls the bottom of the market.

Surfing through the week's headlines we have seen:

Rate of decline in UK commercial property values slowing

Construction activity rises to a 7 month high

Battle for mortgage business begins

Economists say green shoots are visible

Services and retailing lift hopes that worst of recession is over

Add to this that base rate has been held at 0.5% for a second month, the FTSE100 is up 21% since the start of the year and RBS has managed to only lose £897m in the last 3 months (bonuses all round), it would be a glass-half-empty reaction indeed not to feel the smallest glimmer of hope.

Of course, it's not all good news:

Haulage business down 12%

Toyota records record loss and predicts worse to come

A lot of this so called 'good news' is based on slowing rates of decline rather than a return to growth, but could we at least say that we are bumping along a rather stony bottom?

Like many of the small businesses that we meet, we are not experiencing a catastrophic downturn. The decision making process remains protracted, but the enormous fear that has prevailed since last October is subsiding.

'Tis a brave man indeed that calls the bottom of the market.

Let's do business.

12 tips for trade shows

We were at the Federation of Small Business Expo in East Sussex this week, which prompts us to share a few thoughts on what we learned while there. Here are our 12 top-tips on making the most of a trade show.

1. Advertise your presence
Your leverage of the event should start from the moment you make the commitment to go. Arguably it is the role of the organisers to promote the event, but it does no harm to give them a hand where you can. We told our contacts that we were exhibiting and also made announcements on Twitter and Facebook.

2. Don't skimp on the stand size
We took the second smallest stand available and frankly wish we had gone bigger. The extra cost for a larger stand deterred us at the time of booking, but would only have been a relatively small increase on the total cost of attending. Give yourself enough space to operate and make the biggest impression you can.

3. Invest in your stand
We invested appropriately in large panel graphics for the stand as well as a flat screen TV to create a moving display of our work.

Many other exhibitors failed to do anything like this. A trade show is a shop window and yet many businesses' stands looked more like a car boot sale than a boutique.

Plan in advance and be creative: you will be surprised how little it costs to make a stand look good. Whatever you spend on hiring the stand space, we recommend budgeting at least as much again on furnishing the stand itself. This is your brand and first impressions count.

4. Arrive early
Arriving early (even the night before if possible), means you can get the stand set-up calmly and deal with any of the last minute hitches that inevitably occur. This also gives you the opportunity to network with the other exhibitors, who could all be valid prospects (they certainly are for us). There is a camaraderie amongst exhibitors, which normally makes them receptive to approaches. The time not to try selling to them is when they are promoting their own services to delegates - you will be deservedly ejected from the stand if you do!

5. Take a team
Working on a stand is physically and mentally draining and, no matter how strong you are, you will need a break at some point. There is nothing worse than an un-manned stand, so make sure you have some cover. A rest will re-energise you and having somebody else on the stand is good for maintaining the motivation.

6. Brief the team
We had a team briefing just before the doors opened to go through our pitch and generally remind ourselves of why we were there. The money we had spent on being at the show was made known to everybody, as was what we needed to achieve to make a return on the investment.

7. Work out your pitch in advance
Once the doors are open and people start coming past your stand, the time you get to put your pitch across is tiny, so you need to be ready and confident with what you are going to say. Savvy B2B marketers wrote a very timely blog post on the elevator pitch, which we used to structure our own approach. We have provided a link at the end of this post.

8. Don't be afraid to approach people
Hiding timidly in the back of the stand isn't going to get you very far. Talking to people is why you are there.

The need to approach people is another reason to have a good opening line worked out in advance. The IT support business on the stand next door to us simply said 'Do you have a PC at home or in the office?' The answer was invariably 'yes', which set up the opportunity for a longer conversation.

9. Celebrate success
When somebody on the stand gets a lead, celebrate it. Everybody likes a pat on the back and success breeds success.

10. Stay until the end
Have you ever watched how many people leave a football match 5 minutes before the end? Why do they do this? Is beating the traffic more important than the money they have spent to be there? And how many times is there some amazing action in the dying seconds?

The same principle applies at a trade show. Always stay until the end, even if it seems all the action has passed. We got our best lead at a previous show right at the end of the day when everybody else was packing up. You have committed the time and the money to be there, so use every minute. Getting home early could be more costly than you will ever know.

11. Review the results immediately
Despite the fact that everybody was exhausted at the end of the day, we didn't go home until we had been through all of the leads and reminded ourselves of the potential of each one. Memory fades, even overnight, and staring at a pile of business cards and hastily filled out lead forms in the morning can be a confusing and frustrating experience.

Going through the results was another chance to show everybody how well we had done and to thank people for their efforts.

12. Follow-up
The whole exercise is wasted if you don't follow-up on your leads...and quickly. Going through the results the night before allowed us to prioritise who we needed to contact straightaway, who we should diarise for contact across the course of the next few days and who we should simply be adding to our email data-base (no contact is ever wasted).

Prompt follow-up is polite, professional and another reflection of the efficiency of your business.

Our results
We identified 8 'hot' leads on the day, 7 warm leads and a number of additional contacts that might prove useful in the future. Inevitably there were a number of non-starters, including people who approached our stand with services that had no relevance to our needs.

By lunch time on the following day, we had been in touch with all of the 8 'hot' leads, had 4 firm appointments in the diary and an agreed way forward on the others. The other leads had all been appropriately followed-up by the weekend. The ball is now firmly in our court to turn these leads into clients and achieve our target ROI.


If you have any tips on how to make the most of a trade show, please comment. We're happy to share them and learn.

Links
The perfect elevator pitch - Savvy B2B Marketers
Exhibition support services employed by The Marketing Eye - PR Exhibitions

Budget marketing

With the week dominated by the Budget in the UK, this week's post is a case study on the marketing activities undertaken by our clients, Creaseys, a 10 partner firm of Accountants based in Tunbridge Wells, to leverage this important financial event.

The temperature always rises in Creaseys as Budget Day approaches! The desire to absorb the detail of the announcements and serve clients consumes the firm. Accountants don't often find themselves in the spotlight and when they do it is important to maximise the opportunity. We agreed the objectives for this year's Budget to be:

1. To consolidate and deepen relationships with existing clients


2. To maintain and grow the respect of peers


3. To start the communication process with identified new prospects


4. To create a platform for positive PR.

A range of activities was designed to deliver the objectives: not all of them original, but each shaped with the objectives in mind.

Budget commentary

With so much commentary available, there is a valid debate over whether it is necessary to produce a technical analysis for clients. We discussed this at length in Creaseys. Creaseys has many professional services contacts that refer complex cases to the firm and with maintaining the respect of peers being an agreed objective, we concluded that the overnight report was justified.

A 6,500 word analysis was sent by email to 1,900 clients, contacts and prospects by 9.00 the following morning and achieved a 30% read rate by close of business. The analysis has been uploaded to the website and produced in print PDF form for use in reception where a rolling PowerPoint loop is also on display.

In the spirit of inter-firm co-operation and to help spread the PR message more widely, the analysis was shared with a fellow IGAF member firm for distribution to its own clients.

We will be conducting a survey next week to get more detailed feedback on the analysis from all recipients.

Tax cards

Tax cards containing details of all the prevailing tax rates are a popular collateral item in many Accountancy firms. This year, Creaseys purchased tax cards from specialist suppliers, Mercia Group. Full artwork (rather than just a logo) was provided to Mercia Group to allow the cards to be made totally bespoke to the firm and the result is very good: a far more cost effective and time saving solution than Creaseys producing cards of its own.

The Tax cards will go to all clients, contacts and prospects over the next few months, piggy-backing other communications to spread the cost.

Budget Breakfast

The Budget Breakfast is the flagship event in the hospitality calendar and has been run by Creaseys for the past few years. The aim this year was to take the event and hence the brand to a new level.

The invitation and registration process started early and was run on-line for the first time. This allowed us to brand the event from the beginning and made the monitoring of responses much easier. The availability of real-time response information also allowed us to target the follow-up approach more accurately.

More than 240 guests attended the event. Local MP and opposition front-bencher, Greg Clark, gave a political perspective and the 3 tax partners covered the most important changes to personal taxation, business taxation, international tax and VAT. The MP's contribution added a worthwhile and entertaining dimension for the audience and will help with PR coverage.

Members of the local press were in attendance and press releases will be sent to all remaining local media next week.

Extensive use was made of branding at the venue. Large display graphics, branded stationery and innovative use of branding on existing installations were used to reinforce the visual brand at every opportunity: we even carefully selected the entrance and background music to create the right ambiance. A clean and contemporary slide template was used for all presentations and the content was closely managed to brand guidelines.

117 people completed a detailed exit questionnaire and we will be analysing the results next week. A prima-facie check shows the feedback to be very positive.

Limited success was achieved in getting new prospects to the event. We overlayed the email invitations with telemarketing to make personal contact with identified names and succeeded in getting 2 new prospects to attend. Nevertheless, the invitation process has established the first contact with many more and is something the firm can build on. There is a law which says that 7 contacts have to be made with a prospect to get to proposal stage and we now have 1 or 2 of these contacts under our belts.

Social Media

Introducing social media into the firm is part of the marketing plan for 2009 and the Budget provided a platform for a first foray. We used Twitter to feed information into the firm on the announcements (e.g. from the Big 4 accountancy firms, the news channels and ICAEW), but decided not to enter into the process of tweeting the announcements ourselves, primarily because Creaseys only had a handful of followers at the time. Followers are starting to accumulate and we will develop an information led 'tweeting' strategy going forward.

The Budget Breakfast was videoed, largely as an experiment, and gives us material to trial on the website and YouTube. We will also use the videos to support press releases. Despite it being experimental, we employed a professional filming service to maintain brand standards.

Results to date

From the Chancellor sitting down at 1.30pm on 22nd April to the last person leaving the Budget Breakfast at 11.30am on 24th April, we helped the firm achieve face-to-face contact with 240 clients and introducers; email engagement with another 570; first contact with 56 brand new prospects and a platform for off-line and on-line PR in the days and weeks ahead. A full debriefing will take place in the firm next week, when we will look at the results of the formal measures. The results and key-findings will be posted in a further update.

Services provided by The Marketing Eye
Campaign planning
Event management
New prospect identification
Telemarketing (outsourced)
Proof reading
E-mail design and distribution (distribution outsourced)
Design and artwork for all collateral
Press releases
Video production (outsourced)
Social media management

Links
Creaseys
Creaseys' Budget Analysis 2009
Follow Creaseys on Twitter
Mercia Group
The rule of 7

An innocent (and logical) decision

Last week we learned that Innocent Drinks has agreed to sell a 20% stake in the business to Coca-Cola for £30m.

The news has parallels with the sale of Ben & Jerry's to Unilever in 2000 and the more recent sale of Green & Black's to Cadbury. Loyal fans say the spirit of the brand will die and many say they will desert.

So, is the investment a mistake by the owners and a misjudgment by Coca-Cola? Of course not.

Innocent is an excellent case study in why a business should build a brand: it is precisely because Innocent has built such an extensive and loyal following that the owners have attracted a business the size of Coca-Cola to take a minority stake for such a huge sum.

Why else does anybody try to build a business if it is not at some point to reap the rewards? (And the rewards here are said to be a platform for further growth, not yachts for the founders). This might be anathema to the hippies to whom profit is a dirty word, but this is the real world in which somebody has to do the work and create the wealth.

Those that accuse Messrs Reed, Balon and Wright of selling out overlook the fact that Innocent had probably gone as far as it could with its existing resources. The investment has brought vast increases in marketing capability and buying power: it has also secured jobs. Innocent was facing having to make 20% of its workforce redundant in response to falling sales and can now avoid this. No doubt more jobs will be created in time. What can be more socially responsible than saving and creating jobs at a time of economic slow-down?

The question for many is whether the spirit of the brand can be maintained and, if it can't, will it have a net detrimental effect on the performance of the product.

While business values can't be manufactured, a brand personality can. A brand is an inanimate object that can be made into whatever the owner wants it to be. There is no reason why the personality of the brand can't be maintained with its quirky packaging, jolly blogs and grass liveried vehicles. This will require some careful and dedicated brand management, but it is feasible. McDonalds has achieved it with Pret-a-Manger and we should credit Coke with the intelligence to achieve it with Innocent.

The brand is likely to lose some of its cottage-industry feel, as the earlier examples have, but it will still appeal to a mass audience and the stronger control of the 5 marketing forces will make it a better and more profitable business overall.

Links

Innocent Drinks - customer comments

Porters' 5 Marketing Forces

B2B vs B2C - more than just a letter

A friend asked me in the week to explain the difference between marketing to businesses and marketing to consumers. Unprepared, I fumbled my way to an answer, but soon realised it was a deeper question than it first seemed.

There is, of course, a plethora of theoretical responses. B2C is traditionally said to be:

• Product driven



• Aimed at maximizing the value of the transaction



• Mass-market



• A single step buying process and a shorter sales cycle



• A creator of brand loyalty through repetition and imagery



• Reliant on merchandising and point of purchase activities



• The leverage of emotional buying decisions based on status, desire, or price

Whereas B2B:

• Is relationship driven



• Aims to maximize the value of the relationship



• Has a small, focused target market



• Involves a multi-step buying process and longer sales cycle



• Creates brand loyalty through personal relationships



• Uses educational and awareness building activities



• Leverages rational buying decisions based on business value

A useful analysis, but not uniformly true by any means.

The eminent Professor Malcolm McDonald says that 'the central ideas of marketing are universal' and it therefore makes no difference whether you are marketing vacuum cleaners or power furnaces. This seems overly simplistic too.

The principle that all marketing has the basic aim of satisfying the customer is, of course, incontrovertible, but the important follow-on questions are: 'who is the customer?' and 'what is my product?'

We can say that consumers are, on the whole, more impulsive in their decision making than business buyers, because the financial risk is often so much smaller. This means B2C marketers can focus less on the rational basis for a purchase, and more on the emotional appeal. B2C marketing is often geared towards catching the wave or, better still, creating the wave in the first place.

To say, however, that B2C marketing isn't relationship driven is a mistake. Any retailer, from a supermarket monolith to the local corner shop, needs to form a relationship with its customers to build loyalty and drive repeat business. Retailers are merely intermediaries in the value chain between the manufacturer and the buyer. Manufacturers themselves would also be mis-advised not to consider the relationship - Sony wants loyalty over Panasonic as does BMW over Mercedes. A charity will want a relationship with a donor to encourage repeat donations.

And what of professional services firms? They want life-time relationships with both business and private clients, which means that the marketing must be entirely geared towards the principles that are outlined in the traditional analysis of B2B.

In B2B marketing, the pure number of people involved in a purchase tends to have the effect of suppressing the emotion and bringing everything back to the business case. A good B2B campaign has to be brimming with promises of increased profitability, reduced costs or enhanced productivity. This is not to say that there is no room for the emotional influence of the brand. The old adage that 'nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM' still holds true in many quarters and familiarity breeds comfort in the board room. There is a clear need to build the brand with air cover from advertising, sponsorship and pr.

The conclusion is that the biggest drivers of the marketing approach are not whether it is B2B or B2C, but in the size of the financial risk, the nature of the relationship and the complexity of the decision making process for the customer. If we understand this then we are likely to make the right decisions. Perhaps we should do away with the distinction and simply call it Business to Customer - which is probably the point Professor McDonald was making.

Links

Source of Theoretical differences between B2B and B2C: Vista Consulting

Professor Malcolm McDonald

I'll scream and scream and scream

This week I went to a Chartered Institute of Marketing event to hear the results of a study on the role of marketing in large organisations. Carried out with Accenture, the very title of the study: 'In search of a strategic role for marketing' hints at desperation.

Marketing can be divided into two main parts: tactical (management of the marketing plan; brand management; lead generation) and strategic (customer insight; development of the value proposition; strategic planning). In most organisations the role of the marketing department is tactical, which leads to predictable wailing that marketers are misunderstood and undervalued.

But hang on a minute, let's look at this more closely. A business needs a marketing department to design and deliver the tactical activity. This is what provides the measurable revenues and there is nothing wrong or devaluing about it. A well designed marketing plan is firmly rooted in a detailed appreciation of the strategy of the business and the most successful marketing directors have the ability to turn business objectives into effective and actionable tactical plans.

The trouble with Marketing, though, is that it can't be satisfied with this role and wants to run the whole company. By the time we have been through the 8P's of product, price, place, promotion, process, people, physical evidence and positioning there is very little left for anybody else.

Many marketers thump the desk and demand a position for marketing on the board, refusing to believe that any business can properly function without it. These people are failing to draw a distinction between marketing as a concept and the individual abilities of the people in the marketing department. The remit is simply too broad and too important to be the exclusive domain of one person or one area of the business: it is the role of the board as a whole to set the strategic direction and the role of marketing to provide the insights and framework.

If individually marketers have the talent, they will rightfully earn a place on the board of the businesses within which they work. No business, however, can afford to offer board appointments on the basis of job title alone and the challenge for many marketers is to develop a sufficiently rounded level of experience to merit their promotion.