Logic+Emotion

Change Happens

Immediately after I wrote my last post about the need to re-invent public relations—I began getting questions/reactions in real time (starting on Twitter). The nature tone of the questions came with a raised brow as if to say "are you on something?" albeit uttered more politely. Immediately I asked myself the same question. "is change really possible—and can it come from the inside out"? Was I being realistic in thinking that the desire I had to see re-invention through was doable?

I'm writing this post several days later from Los Angeles where I am attending an offsite for our US senior leadership. It's 3:20 AM PST. I can't sleep—but I am inspired. Mark Hass our US president and CEO delivered his vision for where he feels the organization needs to go and all I can say is that it dovetails perfectly with what I wrote recently—if I had to choose a word it would be kindred. It wasn't only the content of Mark's vision and the philosophical alignment that got me all fired up, but also the style as well. Mark pulled a clip from the film Lincoln and used the former president and his leadership style to illustrate what "operational vision" is all about. Lincoln didn't simply have a vision for the nation—he was laser focused on operationalizing it and ensuring that action applied to the vision resulted in impact. 

Then the lightbulb went off for me. Change is possible when it comes from both the bottom up and the top down all at once. It's possible when you have a leadership team with a shared vision and the chops to operationalize. Not easy, or even immediate—but possible.

And on that note, I want to end this post with content from a release regarding a recent hire. It's not something I do often— leveraging this space to get the word out on these types of things—however this is important for me as my team and I represent the "bottoms" up change in Edelman and I can directly influence our Chicago digital operation (there are eighty of us now). We've made a few key hires/moves and the most recent is Steve Slivka—a talented creative director who has put in a decade of digital work at Leo Burnett and departed Mullen to become a part of our re-invention. Steve's only one person but his arrival is symbolic, at least in terms of how I view it.

Change happens—especially when it's put in motion at both ends. 

Edelman Digital Appoints Steve Slivka, Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director, Chicago

Slivka to Lead Chicago’s Digital Creative Efforts

Edelman has named Steve Slivka senior vice president, group creative director, Edelman Digital, in its Chicago office. In his new role, Slivka will lead the charge in elevating the digital creative for both content development and digital builds. He will report to David Armano, managing director, Edelman Digital, Chicago.

“Steve will be instrumental in driving our digital strategies as we define and refine our client offerings in converged media, merging social platforms with paid and earned tactics,” said Armano. “The future of digital creative content lies at the root of this overlap, and his leadership is critical to the firm as we evolve to align our clients’ strategies and tactics and craft unified creative campaigns.”

Slivka will work closely with Elizabeth Pigg, senior vice president, director of converged media services, Edelman Digital, a 12-year veteran of the firm who recently returned to the Chicago office for her newly created role. They will work to raise the creative output in digital content generation and innovation for the firm.

“Digital creative today requires a reevaluation of how content is created and delivered,” said Slivka. “Edelman holds such a respected place in PR and social that it seemed a natural fit to bring next-generation creative to life here, and by tapping into Edelman’s strong capabilities in analytics, converged media and strategy, my team will be well-positioned to deliver creative that meets the constant innovation required to exceed clients’ goals.”

Slivka joins Edelman from Mullen, a Boston-based full service integrated advertising agency, where he built the creative social-digital team at the agency’s North Carolina outpost and was responsible for creating content for clients such as Tresemmé, CSX and Honda Jet. Prior to working at Mullen, Slivka spent a decade at Leo Burnett in Chicago and also launched his own boutique agency, Colossal Squid Industries. He attended Columbia College Chicago for music composition and interactive media as well as The American Conservatory of Music.

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It's Time to Re-Invent Public Relations

It's Time to Re-Invent Public Relations

I didn't pick PR—PR picked me. 

Let me take a step back. 

Thinking about my own career path since the beginning, I realized there's a pattern. I've always been drawn to industries in the midst of change and disruption. I landed my first job as a graphic designer because I had entered the workforce with a valuable skill at the time—I had learned the essentials of desktop publishing and the company I went to work for was in the process of overhauling how they produced their marketing materials (migrating from traditional tools to digital). It was a huge change and for those who were resistant to converting their skills to digital desktop publishing—they faced early retirement.

Next, I spent about a year working in cable news—but it was an intense year as I worked with the Fox News Channel team helping launch the 24 hour cable news network. Fast forward over fifteen years later and that network is thriving, having tapped consumer demand in cable news and niche media coverage. I've worked at the Chicago Tribune in digital news media and witnessed first hand the differences in how the "digital" team and the veteran employees viewed their work. I spent nearly six years working for one of the original digital agencies which back then was expected to transform the agency space and now doesn't exist anymore (agency.com)—the remains have been swallowed up by corporate entities.

It was at the tail end of my experience there that I discovered "social", first through the blogosphere and then Twitter and Facebook and I did stints at other digital firms and even a start up—hoping these organizations would lead the way in the transformation from traditional digital to a more connected form of digital communications. Eventually in 2009, I found a home with Edelman because it seemed the culture prioritized and valued everything that was changing because of the emergence and disruptive nature of social media. Back then, it was the PR firms that seemed to understand best what was changing. Today, it's not the same story. 

I believe search, social and mobile are the three most disruptive forces in modern communications and they are working together to wreak havoc on organizations and their agency partners. Because I work for a public relations firm—I feel a sense of urgency to start here and lay out what must evolve. The people (stakeholders) we want to reach move effortlessly across a media landscape often times making no distinction. Increasingly they spend time on mobile devices skimming content in "streams or feeds". The average consumer of media has the attention span of a squirrel on ritalin and getting them to pause to read anything more than paragraph is becoming increasingly difficult. The media industry has been disrupted and thereby public relations is an industry in the midst of change. Here are a few areas I believe PR must aggressively embrace and do differently. 

Creative
Most PR firms will say they have creative talent, but we have to ask ourselves if it's the right creative talent. Can we produce apps that live in Facebook or mobile? Are we working on the next Nike Fuel or are we in position to just do the media outreach for it? My most recent hire is a digital veteran who has spent most of his career at advertising and digital agencies. We aren't going to just get people talking about things—we are going to create the things they talk about.  

Analytics
Analytics in Public Relations has to move beyond just counting "placements" similar to the act of pulling together traditional media clippings. Analytics in public relations has to integrate with the other measurement functions of an organization (like connecting earned to owned properties). It also needs to go beyond measuring and move into data collection and analysis. And analysis needs to evolve beyond merely analyzing into deriving core insights to inform decisions like how to spend media dollars and what the tone of messages should be. I'm currently hiring a senior analytics lead for my team and I describe the ideal candidate as part measurement wonk and part digital planner.    

Converged Media
Public relations was built on the notion of "earned media" which differentiated it from advertising. Today, it's all just content as part of the vast quantity we are able to digest on a given day thanks to the deluge we are subjected to. It was Google that began infusing ways to "pay" to help raise visibility with the search engine. It is Facebook that has introduced to the mainstream a convergence of media through things like the promoted post—and it is the media itself that is offering more ways than ever to make advertising feel like it's a part of the editorial universe. This convergence defies both traditional advertising, marketing and public relations constructs—yet poses great opportunity for any of the disciplines who are nimble enough to master. 

This brings us to today and tomorrow. Here's what I am seeing in the industry: PR got a head start on social but it's been rapidly eroding. Companies who value customer service have moved beyond how many PR professionals think about social and are gradually evolving how they service customers. The advertising industry which has always held "creative" in high regard no longer sees social, digital or mobile as add ons but rather core to their business. They are bent on not just talking about the digital world but rather they want to help build it—and they also understand how to leverage creative communication to get people's attention. The partners who handle media transactions do so in bulk, but increasingly it will need to be done in real time. In short, it is the marketing and communications industry that is being disrupted and for those of us on the "PR" side—we must act quickly and decisively to re-invent ourselves in a way that looks more like the future and less like the past. 

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Facebook Is Just Getting Started

About the author: Ekaterina Walter is a social media innovator at Intel, a speaker, and an author of the book “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg”. Walter was named among 25 Women Who Rock Social Media in 2012. She sits on a Board of Directors of Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). You can find her on Twitter: @Ekaterina and her blog www.ekaterinawalter.com. 

With over one billion users, Facebook is the king of social networking. But it was a slow starter: MySpace and Friendster were already established when Facebook was still a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye. How did Facebook leapfrog the competition to become a daily habit for more than half its users? What led Mark Zuckerberg to such unprecedented success? And what’s next for the web giant?

I discuss the answers to these questions in my new book “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg.” I reveal the simple five-part formula the upstart Facebook CEO used to change the world-and how any business leader can apply it to his/her own company: Passion, Purpose, People, Product, Partnerships. In this post, however, I would like to take a quick look at Facebook’s journey and where it might be going. 

Early innovations

Right from the start, Facebook proved that it was different from other social networks. While MySpace allowed multiple accounts and anonymous usernames, Facebook has always strived for dependability, deleting phony profiles and duplicate accounts. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity,” Zuck believes. Zuck’s passion for openness and transparency is at the root of this, and it has given Facebook a sense of genuineness that proved popular with users looking for a communication tool rather than a popularity contest.

Striding ahead

Zuckerberg’s passion for connectivity pushed some of Facebook’s most radical – and initially unpopular – innovations. The Newsfeed, introduced in 2006, was a controversial feature when it launched. People were unnerved to see their updates amalgamated into one location visible to their network, but once they were used to the idea it became second nature to log in to see a summary of friends’ activity. Membership soared, and soon checking your Newsfeed became a daily habit for millions of people.

It was the introduction of photo tagging that really set Facebook apart from the competition, even specialist photo sharing websites. Facebook was becoming more than just a utility; it was becoming people’s social graph. “Watching the growth of tagging,” said Matt Cohler, Facebook’s former Vice President of Product “was the first ‘aha’ for us about how the social graph could be used as a distribution system. The mechanism of distribution was the relationships between people.”

Web integration

More than any other social network, Facebook has become part of our wider web experience. A recent study by website monitoring service Pingdom found that almost 25% of the top 10,000 websites in the world now have some form of official Facebook integration on their homepage, and almost 50% have regular links to Facebook. Facebook’s social login feature means that we can use our Facebook identity on the wider web to stay logged in to sites and share information easily across profiles. It has become natural to share photos, videos, news articles, and even purchasing information effortlessly with our networks.

For the first time in history brands are building global communities on Facebook on a scale never heard of before. Coke, Starbucks, Red Bull and many others are getting more visibility and engagement within their Facebook communities than they were ever able to harness on their other forums. Intel’s community around the world, for example, exceeds 23 million fans spanning over 50 countries, and it is a privilege to touch so many of our consumers every day.

The future

Zuckerberg has always been passionate about openness on the web. At one time on his personal Facebook page, he listed his personal interest as “openness, making things that help people connect and share what’s important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism.” He has achieved all of those things and more, and as more and more sites activate their sites socially that flow of information is only going to increase. Facebook has led the way in the way we share and connect with our networks; what was unthinkable only a few years ago is now natural for hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. The future holds an even greater level of openness and sharing as Zuckerberg and his team continue to revolutionize the way we connect with each other and the wider web.

Everything about Facebook’s incredible eight-year journey tells us one thing: not to second-guess Mark Zuckerberg. His passion for his product, his long term vision and his apparent lack of interest in a quick buck are good signs for users. Facebook have introduced unexpected features before and while some have quickly disappeared, others have only made the site more popular. The teams behind Facebook are smart and dedicated. They have a wealth of social data available to them and are capable of coming up with innovative solutions to increase profits without ruining the user experience.

But as Facebook marches forward, the company will definitely face some challenges. Some of them are: expansion into mobile, striking a fine balance between user satisfaction and integration of new types of ads, appealing to generation Z and their digital habits. Facebook will also have to achieve a reasonable balance between its constantly changing product features and brand’s expectations as they are building their large communities on the network. Achieving smooth strategic partnerships with brands has never been company’s strongest suit.

There are things to work on, but I don’t see the company slowing down any time soon. There is a speculation about Facebook achieving its peak in 2012. I don’t believe that’s the case. But as company grows and expands there is a danger of stagnation. Now more than ever Facebook will have to rely on its hacker culture to keep them moving and the vision of its leader to keep them innovating and evolving.

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2013: The Year Everything Converged

From a media perspective—marketers like to align strategies and tactics along the lines of how things are done at scale. The popular framework goes something like: Paid (advertising), Earned (Word of Mouth), Owned (Corporate) and everything else falls in a somewhat more grey area and from my perspective this is where the action will be for 2013 and beyond. As outlined above, Altimeter calls this area of overlap "converged media" because it's a convergence of different media dynamics coming together. If you ask me—from a marketing perspective this is the future of what, to this point we've called "social".

You see an image in your Facebook news-feed shared by a friend. The image was generated by a brand. You saw it because your friend shared it. They shared it because they liked it. They liked it because the content resonated (and they saw it). They saw it because the brand paid Facebook to promote it.

Paid?
Earned?
Owned? 

All of the above. A social platform merely powers the engine and the above could have all been done in a mobile context. I'm doing a lot of thinking in this area as I build out my team because I don't believe that anyone has the "converged" part completely figured out yet. From a talent perspective I've already begun importing folks from the ad agency side of the house who get both social, digital and content. Mentally, I've been thinking about the dynamics of how different teams function:

Traditional:


A television centric marketing approach is still fueled primarily by the dynamic duo of a creative team composed of an art director and copywriter supported by an infrastructure of scale which fuels the teams with insights and has a small army of media service individuals who determine how the money gets spent so that the campaign oriented marketing message is seen and heard.

Digital

Similar to the traditional team but digital teams often "build" things (apps, sites, platforms) which add an experiential layer to the marketing initiative. Copy for the digital team is somewhat more complex as the things they build can often contain much more than what can translate through offline marketing tactics and so a comprehensive approach to content is required. 

Social-Digital

The newcomer to the mix. Many brands are now taking the nuts and bolts of social in house—but the above model whether in house or agency side (or blended) is designed to merge the basics of good marketing (valuable content) with the more real time nature of social news-feeds (timely relevant bursts of communication supported with dialogue). Again, looking at teams from a media perspective—a core social-digital team that targets the converged media space must bring creative, community management and a newsroom-like sense of editorial savvy together. 

I think 2013 is going to be the year that things feel like they are all blurring into each other more than ever and is going to create a lot of challenges for both brands and their agency partners as they work together to figure out how to address the overlaps. In addition to bolstering our creative, strategic and measurement capabilities—I've also put someone from my team in charge of thinking about the overlaps between paid, owned and earned and how this all evolves for our clients (a director of converged media services). I think that especially for digital, this is going to be where the action is.  

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Content. Search. Social. We're Talking About the Same Process.