Public Relations

pr strategy… Case Study in Building Community Trust by Sara Cullin

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Few industries are as misunderstood or outright detested as landfills.

According to the 2009 Saint Index, which measures the politics of land development, landfills hold the top position as the most opposed form of local development. That said, few industries draw as much curiosity.

I work for Rumpke Consolidated Companies which operates eight landfills and six recycling centers. Our communications team is often confronted with misconceptions about the solid waste industry. To address these, we wanted to create a program to develop advocates by harnessing the public’s interest in what happens to their garbage.

Designing a Community Program that Meets Needs and Answers Questions

In 1996, the company began organizing tours of its largest facility. Since then, our communication department has offered prearranged landfill tours every week. A 45-minute bus trip around the site provides a first hand look at landfill operations. Our tour guides share information about the history and future of the landfill, construction and environmental protection, as well as fun and interesting facts about the site.

Obtaining Support for the Program within the Organization

Providing clear expectations for management and operations is often key to gaining support. There is a fear that opening the door to the public is also an invitation for more criticism and scrutiny. By demonstrating the effectiveness of providing the public informative, organized, and consistent information, we have been able to utilize more community relations tactics. Tracking feedback from visitors has been important to demonstrate success.

Monitoring the Program for Effectiveness

Although tours have been offered for several years, we began gathering feedback from participants in March 2009. Within a few days of visiting, we email a link to a brief online survey to whomever scheduled the tour. The survey consists of just seven questions, but it has helped us identify topics that could be emphasized more or are of particular interest to visitors. We are also able to gauge the impact of the tour in motivating visitors to be more conscientious about waste and recycling.

Most of all, the feedback provides confirmation of the effectiveness of having an open door policy with the public. Many of the comments we receive not only in the survey, but also in phone calls, emails, and letters, express appreciation for simply providing the free public service. One-hundred percent of survey respondents indicated they would recommend the landfill tour to someone else.

Expanding Efforts to Build a Supportive Community

Our open communication policy has made our organization a trusted source for many local schools, universities, and community agencies that regularly contact us for tours and presentations. To accommodate the volume of requests, we have produced educational videos, as well as provided virtual tours and activities on our Web sites. We have also expanded our tours to other facilities within the company.

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SARA CULLIN is a corporate communication coordinator for Rumpke Consolidated Companies Inc. in Cincinnati.

social media case study… Using Facebook to Execute the Quick PR Campaign by Janet Krenn

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When California Tortilla won Best Burrito in Washington, DC by Washingtonian Magazine, the California Tortilla marketing team wanted to develop a promotion to get the word out by the beginning of July–and by the way, they only had a couple of weeks to develop, launch, and close said promotion.

To meet their time crunched goal, they turned to social media.

California Tortilla, a Maryland based Mexican food franchise, already had a solid footing in social media. Their Facebook page has more than 3,000 fans, and their Twitter page (caltort) has about 1,800 followers. California Tortilla also has a strong email list, called TacoTalk.

“[Social media] was a good fit for this campaign,” said Stacey Kane, Marketing Director at California Burrito, who notes that the franchise frequently uses social media to run promotions such as coupon give-aways and others. “Our customers are very vocal, and so social media is a good extension, a good way to interact.”

To spread the word about their new “Best Burrito in DC” victory, the company decided on a radio script writing contest. On the California Tortilla Facebook Fan Page (July22), the wall read:

“You know how California Tortilla won Best Burrito in Washingtonian Magazine?? Well we did…and we want to run some radio but we have no budget to pay anyone to write the copy. So we decided we wanted our fans to do it for us. Write a thirty or fifteen second spot saying why we deserved the award and the winner gets $1000 and free burritos for a year…”

In fact, California Tortilla relied nearly exclusively on social media to promote the campaign. But it’s not as if they snubbed traditional media. “We put out traditional PR, but it seemed to only get picked up by the trades, not local media,” said Kane.

Once the contest opened, fans had only 5 days to submit their radio scripts. California Tortilla received nearly 100 entires.

“The entries weren’t just written scripts. Several people actually submitted produced radio pieces,” said Kane.

Kane said she was shocked at the “shear amount of time and passion that people put into [their entries]. The contest closed on July 7th, and by July 8th, people we’re emailing to ask whether we picked a winner.”

They hadn’t. Instead, the company sent all the participants a goody bag of coupons and other swag to tide them over while waiting for the winner to be announced. California Tortilla plans to announce the winner within the next week, when the company launches its new website.

Although Kane said her group did not pick a metric by which to measure the campaigns success, she felt it was a hit. Not only did they get a large response quickly, “The campaign did generate a lot of buzz, and this was reflected in increased sales,” Kane said.

What does Kane recommend for other companies considering launching a similar contest via social media?

  1. “In regard to social media campaigns, stay true to your brand.”
  2. “Make stuff clear and easy for fans to execute.”
  3. “Do what you promise to do; make clear cut rules, and stick to them.”

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JANET A. KRENN is Communication Co-Chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA. If you’re a member of the New Professionals Section, and you’d like to contribute to the New Pros’ blog, email her at janetqs(at)gmail dot com

social media tools… 15 Great Twitter Apps for PR Pros by Janet Krenn

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For a three-year-old toddler, Twitter sure has a lot of toys! Seriously, there are thousands of applications available that you can use to expand your twitter-bilities.

Here are 15 that I think are highly useful for PR professionals.

Get Your PR Message Out

1. Twitterfeed automatically tweets your blog titles, streamlining your online campaigns.

2. Twiddeo allows you to upload video from your phone or computer and posts a short url to your twitter account.

Manage the Timing of Your PR Message

3. Tweetlater  is a handy tool, especially for the PR professional. If you want to post reminders of an upcoming event, schedule them through Tweetlater.

4. Vacatweet can keep you active on the Twitter-sphere by responding to your messages while you’re on vacation.

Monitor Your PR Campaigns

5. Tweetburner not only generates shortened urls, the application will allow your to post the url to your Twitter account and track clicks and re-tweets of your url.

6. StrawPoll lets you put a quick poll on your Twitter page. A great tool if you’re looking for simple feedback.

7. Tweetnews  can track news-related tweets on Twitter.

Show Off your Publications or other Promotional Documents

8. FileSocial allows you to upload documents to their site and post a link to those documents on Twitter.

9. TwitDoc  is similar to FileSocial, with the added bonus of drag-and-drop functionality. But this function is only available for Adobe AIR users!

Meet People, Follow, and Be Followed

10. Twitdir  is one of the many Twitter directories that allows you to search for Twitterers by location, email, and alias.

11. Twitterlocal allows you to find people actively tweeting in an geographic area that you define.

12. Twollo  compares your tweets to other users to try and suggest people you might want to be friends with.

Manage Multiple Accounts

13. Splitweet compiles multiple Twitter accounts, allowing you to easily post to any of your accounts. You can also track keywords.
14. TweetDeck also compiles multiple Twitter accounts, and although I know it is vastly more popular than Splitweet, I’m just not as into it!

15. ??

I know I promised 15, so I’ll ask you: What do you think is another highly useful twitter application for public relations professionals?

JANET A. KRENN is Communication Co-Chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA. If you’re a member of the New Professionals Section, and you’d like to contribute to the New Pros’ blog, email her at janetqs(at)gmail dot com

pr stratgey… Tip Sheets as a Successful PR Tactic by Brian Camen

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The media calls my team because of the relationships we have built, the reputation of my employer, and the sources we can offer. I work for a top-ranked graduate school. Our “clients” are faculty members (around fifty Ph.D.’s), each experts in their field.

Last summer, my team created a media tip sheet for the Olympics. With the help of my director, I took the lead on it, and this tip sheet set off three months during which our team was trying to fulfill multiple inquires per day.

Media tip sheets are under utilized, but really simple to create. If there is a major local, national, or international event occurring and you have multiple experts that can take different angles on the event, why not let the media know that you’re there for them?

Here’s what I recommend if you’d like to create a source-based media tip sheet:

1. Introduction–What news story/event & why is your company qualified to discuss.
2. Multiple Experts-–Be sure to include multiple experts that can comment on different perspectives of the news story/event.
3. Credibility–What makes each expert credible to discuss the topic? No credibility means no media attention.
4. What your expert is prepared to say–-A brief description about what your expert is prepared to say.
5. Contact information–Do you like it when things are made easy for you? Well so does the media. Don’t forget to put direct contact information for your experts.

The tip sheets I prepared featured nine different professors and senior officials who were experts on different business angles of the Olympics. We had representatives who could talk about topics such as China’s government, their environment, the branding of the Olympics, disaster and emergency planning, and more. The tip sheet also featured recent stories in school publications about students who played a role in the Olympics.

As you can guess, the tip sheet paid off. Our expert sources were featured in many local, national, and international print and broadcast outlets. The inquiries came pouring in but didn’t end when the Olympics completed. The media tip sheet created a domino effect. Journalists knew our sources were efficient, reliable, and could be trusted.

All you need to do is create a one-sheet featuring a paragraph about each expert stating why they’re qualified to comment, what they’re prepared to say, and direct contact info. This campaign was so successful because we made it easy for the media.

BRIAN CAMEN is a Public Relations Coordinator at a top-ranked international b-school in Glendale, AZ. Read his blog The PR Practitioner (http://www.theprpractitioner.com). He can be reached at brian.camen@gmail.com or @BrianCamen

what is public relations… Marketing VS Public Relations–The final showdown(?) by Janet Krenn

New Professionals PR Blog 5 Comments

Knowing the difference between marketing and public relations seems like a scholarly exercise… until you consider applying for a PR job under the supervisory umbrella of the marketing department, or you have to write a marketing plan to define how your company will use public relations to achieve marketing goals.

So what is the difference between between public relations and marketing? I’ve looked at several sites to try to come up with an answer.

What’s the difference?

Marketing: Definitions and Partial Definitions

  • “…marketing exists to sense, serve, and satisfy customer needs at a profit.” (from Public Relations: Concepts and Practices, republished)
  • “marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit” (Philip Kotler)
  • “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders” (American Marketing Association)

Public Relations: Definitions and Partial Definitions

  • “Public relations exists to produce goodwill in the company’s various publics so that the publics do not interfere in the firm’s profit-making ability.” (from Public Relations: Concepts and Practices, republished)
  • “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” (Public Relations Society of America)

The Visual Description
Perhaps the most interesting comparison of public relations and marketing come from an older, but still very relevant  post on The Brand-Builder Blog.

What are the Major Differences?

Role within the Organization
In a company, marketing promotes goods and services to consumers. These activities are projected from the company outward. Public relations works to “help the organization and its publics adapt mutually to one another”, according to one professor. PR activities should strive to have a back-and-forth relationship with the world outside the company, by projecting information and working with others. In other words, putting the “relationship” in public relations.

Measures of Success
Because the goal of marketing is sales, the success of their efforts can be measured in profits. The goal of PR is to build positive impressions of their client or company. So publics’ perceptions become the measurement tool in public relations.

Is there Overlap?

Positioning
Jack Trout, a prolific author on the subject, would say that positioning is the process of “owning space in a person’s mind.” For example, what company do you think of when I say the word “happy”? For about 75% of people, Disney comes to mind (Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin). Disney “owns” the word happy.

Marketing and public relations work in tandem to position a company. Marketing does the research to determine what the position of the company is and should be. Public relations promotes the image and position of the company through events and news.

How Do You Think Marketing and PR are Different or Related?

Do you think marketing and PR are more related than different? Do you think I missed some key similarities or differences? Leave comments!

JANET A. KRENN is Communication Co-Chair of the New Professionals Section of PRSA. If you’re a member of the New Professionals Section, and you’d like to contribute to the New Pros’ blog, email her at janetqs(at)gmail dot com