TCC Insights

A Disappointing Finish

 Carolyn Human, Account Manager

This past weekend, three of us at Travers Collins made the trek down the I-90 to run the Cleveland half marathon. Despite the blog title, we did not have a disappointing finish – in fact all three of us earned a PR (personal record) at the race.

However, one company trying to sell a product at the race expo set a PR for the most misleading and disappointing packaging in my book. For those out there trying to get into social media, this is a perfect example of what NOT to do.

Serving Up Some Corporate Responsibility

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager


If you read Brittany Frey’s blog post last week, you know that our Travers Collins word of the month is responsibility. Each month we’re highlighting a word that makes TC a great place to work. To honor our word of the month we’re having a “drink responsibly” happy hour (we’re talking O’Douls and Sparkling Grape Juice) and we started volunteering at a neighborhood soup kitchen.

Lessons Learned While Teaching Grandpa About Facebook

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

When my 86 year old grandfather asked for “Facebook” for Christmas, I couldn’t say no for two reasons. #1: he’s hard to buy for and #2: all it would cost me was some of my time. So, with little effort on my part, on Christmas Eve he opened up a box with a coupon for Facebook lessons. He asked to redeem his coupon on January 1, 2011.  So we sat down together to set up his account.

Changing of the Guard for a small country (and the media coverage)

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

Nearly 6,600 miles from Buffalo, New York is a small country in Central Asia that you’ve probably never heard of called Kyrgyzstan. You may know the country that borders it to the North, Kazakstan, thanks to the Sacha Baron Cohen movie, Borat. Kyrgyzstan is making a name for itself this week with a major uprising and overthrow of the government.

There are a couple of things we can take away from this world event. First of all, you may not realize that the United States has a military base in the capital of the country, Bishkek, which is vital to our operations in Afghanistan. Because of the importance of those operations in the past year, more people have taken notice of the little country.

I would infer that partially because of the military base interest, the media coverage of the events in Kyrgyzstan in the past few days has been incredible. I know this because I’ve been following the “happenings” in Kyrgyzstan since 2004. That’s when my brother was assigned to teach English in a small village called Akman through the Peace Corps and I struggled to find any news updates about the country. One year later there was a revolution and the President was ousted. My family was desperate to find any information on the internet to make sure my brother was in a politically safe area. Our best hope for information was www.eurasianet.org or http://en.ca-news.org/ but we rarely got any pictures and were lucky if the information had been updated every 12 hours.

The Tweet Heard Round Buffalo

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

I just can’t hold it in anymore. I am the first person in our office to admit that I have been obsessed with TO coming to Buffalo since it was announced in March.

In the effort of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I have sent him a “reply message” on Twitter and broke into a full body sweat when he responded to me! Here is that exchange:

newsnerd: @terrellowens81 Can't wait for your first game in a Bills jersey. You've got a lot of people in Buffalo excited about the upcoming season!

terrellowens81: @newsnerd so am i, lookin 4wd 2 it

Taking Advantage of a “Say What?” Moment

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

I couldn’t resist writing a quick follow-up entry to my blog post on Friday, May 1. A co-worker was in Las Vegas this weekend and happened to pick-up a copy of Monday’s USA Today with this full page ad:

         

It says “Mr. Vice President, if you had said it here, no one would have known.” At the bottom is the classic Las Vegas slogan “What happens here, stays here”.

This is a great example of a communications team capitalizing on a current event to further its key message – What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. You need to be looking for creative and out of the box ways to get your message out.

Oh and for your information, I checked with Kathleen Anderson, our resident Media Buyer extraordinaire, and the going rate for a full page black and white ad in the USA Today assuming it runs nationally is $119,600. Think it was worth it?

Say What?

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

One of the most important and crucial aspects of a successful public relations campaign or crisis response is a consistent message. Everyone must be on the same page, singing the same tune or however you want to say it, to minimize or ideally eliminate confusion.

We’ve had a great example this week of why the message is so important. In primetime on Wednesday night, President Obama held a Press Conference to address his first 100 days in office. There is no question that the hot topic right now is the Swine Flu. When asked by a reporter about why the administration wasn’t closing the border to Mexico, the President responded that it wasn’t an effective way to combat the problem. He then gave the following analogy to explain: “It would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out. We have to make sure that we recognize that how we respond – intelligently, systematically, based on science and what public health officials have to say – will determine in large part what happens.”

Fast forward to Thursday morning and Vice President Joe Biden is being interviewed live on The Today Show by Matt Lauer. Matt asks the vice president about the threat of the Swine Flu and if he agrees that the border should stay open.

You can watch the full interview here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/30494440#30494440

Joe Biden responds by agreeing with the analogy that the president gave the night before with the horses. A PR person’s dream. However, it quickly turns into a nightmare when Matt Lauer asked him what he would tell a family member about traveling to Mexico. I’m paraphrasing but Biden responds by saying he wouldn’t recommend they be in any enclosed space that includes an airplane or even a subway! Uh oh. I can just see the PR team choking on their morning coffee. What did he just say on live TV? Moments later, Twitter is afire! Ann Curry sends out this tweet:  @AnnCurry Vice President Biden looked tired this morning.  He may regret what he said on Today today. Then the Today Show sends this out @todayshow "I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now." - Vice President Joe Biden to Matt this am.

You just imagine the flutter of activity in the White House with the press team. Sure enough, just a little while after his live appearance, Vice President Biden’s spokesperson released the following statement to “clarify” what said this morning and tie it back into what the president said last night:

"On the Today Show this morning the Vice President was asked what he would tell a family member who was considering air travel to Mexico this week. The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the Administration is giving to all Americans:  that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico. If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways. This is the advice the Vice President has given family members who are traveling by commercial airline this week. As the President said just last night, every American should take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu:  keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you're sick; and keep your children home from school if they're sick."

Not having a consistent message can cause confusion and create more attention to a problem as evidenced in just a few hours this morning. Luckily for most if us we aren’t making that mistake with millions watching!  So keep it consistent, honest and simple. 

The Pressure to be Witty, Intelligent and Entertaining

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

There’s a lot of pressure these days to keep up with all the social networking tools. Not only is it important to be constantly updating your status of Facebook, sending out Tweets on Twitter or updating your resume on LinkedIn, but what you do needs to be witty, intelligent and entertaining or you’ll lose “followers”. Nobody wants to know that you are heading to the mall or that you just ate a bagel. You need to put some thought into what you are going to write that provokes a conversation.

Here’s a good example of a “status” update where I struggled to provoke a conversation. I was training and fundraising to run my first half marathon in Orlando. There was a lot of excitement building up to the run and I used a lot of social networking tools to get the word out about what I was doing. I’ll save that for another blog post. However, it was important to let everyone know how I did right after the run. I figured a Facebook status update would be the best solution. So I finished the race and immediately started throwing up. I could have posted on Facebook “finished race at 2:19:40”. But instead I turned to a friend and said how do I get more creative with my status. She suggested “just finished my first half marathon in 2:19:40 and threw up at 2:19:41. I love running.” I added the “I love running” part. Sure enough, the responses started coming in immediately.
 
So my point here is that you don’t have to put the pressure on yourself. Ask someone or feel free to “borrow” other peoples tweets or updates.
But there’s a rule here. You need to make sure that you give credit where credit is due. If you are going to re-tweet something make sure you write RT before your post. Here’s an example:

Latest: RT @BuffaloRising BR Post:Gilda's Club WNY - "Mix at 6" event on March 26, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/d6oav2

Buffalo Rising had just posted about an event I was helping to plan so I wanted to repost the link but I needed to make sure I added RT.

A simple rule but it helps take off the pressure of always being witty, intelligent and entertaining.

Now I’m already paranoid – was this blog entry witty, intelligent and entertaining?