PR 101

A couple of weeks ago, ABC announced it was canceling the soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live. Both had been on the air for more than 40 years.

The cancellation of both shows marks the continuing decline of a once powerful marketing machine. I think social media is doing the same thing to conventional marketing. It won’t happen overnight – and traditional marketing and public relations should still be part of any marketing plan. However, it is going to happen.

What many people don’t know anymore is that soap operas were started in the 1930s on radio by Proctor & Gamble to sell soap and other products – hence the name. According to P&G’s corporate history in 1933 “‘Ma Perkins,’ a radio serial program sponsored by P&G’s Oxydol soap powder, aired nationally. Its popularity leads P&G brands to sponsor numerous new ‘soap operas.’ Faithful listeners become loyal buyers of P&G brands at the grocery.’” The soaps helped P&G get through the Great Depression. When radio gave way to television, the soaps easily made the jump.

The soap operas came to dominate daytime television. Soaps were “once considered the stable revenue generator of the broadcast television model: the consistently popular daytime staples that helped fund primetime experimentation,” Fast Company Expert Blogger Sam Ford said. But not anymore.

There were once a dozen soaps on the air. There are now just four. Ford wrote that many in the television industry feel those four on their last legs. I think the demise is inevitable.

Like medicine shows and Burma Shave Road Signs, soaps apparently just don’t move product anymore. And that is the ultimate aim of most television shows and other marketing mediums. If it doesn’t sell something, it isn’t going to stay around. The audiences went elsewhere for any number of reasons and the advertisers saw that.

In the case of soap operas, “Many may say it’s because the fans abandoned the genre,” Ford wrote. “The story you often hear from fans is that it’s because the shows lost their way and their interest. As soaps tried to battle over the dwindling daytime audience as if ‘soap opera fans’ were all fans of the genre more than fans of the show, little thought was put into a sustained effort to bring lapsed fans back.”

Does this sound familiar? Let’s look at what’s happening to some other mass media.

“The Audit Bureau showed that average weekday circulation at 635 newspapers declined 5 percent compared with the same six months last year,” the New York Times reported last October. “The decline last year was more than twice that, 10.6 percent, as newspapers struggled through the recession and more readers abandoned print copies for the Internet.” (emphasis mine.)

Just like in soap operas, the advertisers are going away. “Newspaper publishers are still laboring to reverse a massive decline in advertising revenue – the Newspaper Association of America reported that total industry ad revenue fell 6% in Q2,” the Reuters blog MediaFile reported in September.

The same thing is happening in television advertising. “Advertisers are losing confidence in the medium,” respondents to the Association of National Advertisers/Forrester study of national advertisers said. The survey respondents said they have “a lack of confidence in TV ad effectiveness. Sixty-two percent of respondents think that TV ads have become less effective in the past two years.”

So, where are these advertisers going? You know the answer – they are heading to the Internet, of which social media is a part. I could fill this blog with the statistics – 740 million Facebook users, 100 million-plus Linkedin members, Flickr now hosts more than five million images and so on.

Mashable predicts that in 2011, $3.08 billion will be spent on social media in the United States.

“That’s a 55% increase over the $1.99 billion U.S. advertisers reportedly spent on social networking sites in 2010, and nearly 11% of what they are expected to spend on all online advertising in the U.S. in 2011, eMarketer says,” Mashable reported. “Worldwide spending on social networks is expected to rise 71.6% to $5.97 billion, approximately 8.7% of the total amount advertisers are predicted to spend online in 2011.”

Online advertising, which includes social media, is starting to snowball, the Economist reported. “Global spending on advertising will grow by 4.5% in 2011, double the rate of the previous year, according to ZenithOptima, an ad agency,” the Economist said. “This will be led by online advertising which will increase by 16%.”

Look at the Economist chart below. Online advertising is the largest, but it’s the fastest growing.

Chart courtesy of The Economist

So like medicine shows, Burma Shave Road Signs and now soap operas, conventional marketing is slowly going away. It will take some time, but just like those other things, it will happen.

So, you get a call from a Fox News producer – Bill O’Reilly wants you to appear on his show. Or you pick up your phone to hear a print reporter ask why your company is dumping toxic waste into the Old Mill Stream. Finally, the worst situation of all, you are watching a television show or reading a magazine story or a blog when you discover your company is the middle of a crisis because some advocacy group painted every company in your industry with the same brush.

In my over two-decade career as a reporter, I made some of those calls. In my somewhat shorter career as a public relations and marketing professional, I have responded to situations where an entire industry was painted with the same brush. In the later case, I was part of a team of three that crafted the first response to the first outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, in a cow in the state of Washington. We successfully showed that our client, Smithfield Beef, was doing everything right to ensure no cow with BSE would ever enter its slaughterhouses.

Incidentally, I just demonstrated the first rule of responding to a hostile situation. Many people called BSE “mad cow.” We never, ever used that term – even during meetings in the office. “Mad cow” conjures up images of some Holstein frothing at the mouth, chasing Old McDonald around the fields. BSE is the scientific term and more accurate. We determined the terms of the battle before it was even joined.

The second rule we demonstrated was we responded within hours of getting the news about the BSE discovery. We didn’t wait to respond to someone else’s announcement. Now, we got one break. The news of the BSE-infected cow broke on the morning of Dec. 24, 2003. Because it was a holiday, most of those who would have attacked the meat producing industry were not in their offices. We essentially had the playing field to ourselves for about 48 hours – we were able to present the issue on our terms. Two news cycles passed before the Chicken Littles got revved up. By then, we had shaped the issue and the debate into what the meat industry was doing right.

Something to remember. An announcement like that of the cow infected with BSE is a neutral event. The government officials who usually release such news generally play it right down the middle. So, it is up to you to tell your side right away.

Another thing to remember – if you have genuinely made a mistake, admit it. Don’t try to spin it. In the case of the cattle and meat packing industries, the discovery of the infected cow showed what was being done right. The cow was found before it got into the system. It showed that the proper checks were in place. We didn’t need to spin anything. We just needed to get our story out before it got buried in the noise.

Trying to spin a mistake just gets you into more trouble. The media and bloggers will usually quickly pick up on your attempts. They will trumpet your efforts to hide what you did. You or your company will end up looking worse than if you had just said, “yeah, we were wrong. We are doing everything we can to correct the error.”

Now, being preemptive works very well when there is an event that could turn out bad. Handling a Sean Hannity or a Bill O’Reilly is done somewhat differently. Remember, you are playing by their rules. This isn’t neutral ground. What you are hoping for here is a draw. Not losing is the same as winning.

First, watch as many of the shows as possible before going on. Make sure you know what the topic is and do your research. These shows have a rhythm. They start out seemingly being neutral and then move into questions designed to do one thing – make the interview subject look bad. Objectivity is not their strong suit.

Here’s the key thing to remember when you find yourself the subject of one of those “interviews:” stay calm. Don’t lose your temper. They want you to get upset. It makes better television. Angry people don’t think and spew out the wrong kind of answer.

What you want to be is calm and boring. Boring makes lousy television. Answer the question, but don’t elaborate. If the interviewer tries to go off on tangent, don’t let it happen. Go back to the main subject and stay there. Give short declarative answers.  Keep it boring.

Finally, you find there is the situation where find your company being criticized in the media and the Internet – and you had no idea it was happening. In this case, the blame is internal. You should have known that you had enemies out there. Most companies monitor conventional news outlets. Where they fall down is monitoring social media outlets – blogs, videos, etc.

Think that’s it’s not important to monitor those sites? Ask United Airlines about the country group Sons of Maxwell and its lead singer Dave Carroll. United baggage handlers broke Carroll’s $3,000 Taylor Guitar. Frustrated that the airline would do nothing to remedy the situation, Carroll recorded and posted a video on YouTube about his experience. As of Sunday, Aug. 16, the video had been viewed just under five million times. Now United did eventually step up and pay for repairing the instrument. It also said it wants to use the video in its employee training.

Still, think about the notoriety United gained from that one video. How many people chose to fly a competitor after watching that video?

United is just one example. Comcast, Proctor & Gamble and several other companies have felt the wrath of angry bloggers.

As I tell clients all of the time: “there is a conversation going on right now about your brand. You should be a part of it and leading it. But no matter what you do, it is going to happen anyway.”

Now, if it does happen, what to do is get involved in the conversation, quickly. Engage with the bloggers, talk to them and find out what the beef is. Proctor & Gamble was initially blind-sided by the Motrin Moms. But within 48-hours, the company had dealt with the problem and ended the furor.

In all these cases, the key is engagement and preparation. Do those things and at least you will never be surprised. And being ready is the most important thing to do.

Note: Check out my company’s new and improved website at JJC Communications.

It is no secret that the recession is deeply affecting marketing, public relations and advertising agencies. In the last two months, at least a dozen marketing communications people I know have lost their jobs. It is nothing they have done or haven’t done. It’s just that clients are just not spending.

I can attest to the recession’s effects on my own small business. Clients have cut spending, gone away completely, or taken longer to make decisions on new marketing efforts. I don’t blame them. There is a lot of fear out there. We have not been through anything like this since the end of World War II. None of us know what to do.

So companies are doing what seems logical. They are retrenching, laying off people, and slashing their marketing budgets. The thinking seems to be that we need to hoard our resources or we won’t survive. Right now, we cannot worry marketing. Besides, the thinking goes, consumers aren’t buying right now anyway. They too are retrenching.

On the surface, that seems like the course to take. Prudence and frugality should rule until the whole thing is over. do. But it’s not the course companies should be taking. and I can prove it. Let’s first consider the cereal giant, Kellogg.

“So, when the Depression hit, no one knew what would happen to consumer demand,” James Surowiecki wrote in the April 20, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. “Post did the predictable thing: it reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies. (Snap, Crackle, and Pop first appeared in the thirties.) By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost thirty per cent and it had become what it remains today: the industry’s dominant player.”

Surowiecki also wrote “… a major study, by the Strategic Planning Institute, of corporate behavior during the past thirty years found that reducing ad spending during recessions did improve companies’ return on capital. It also meant, though, that they grew less quickly in the years following recessions than more free-spending competitors did.”

It is understandable that many executives are scared to gamble on introducing and marketing something new. I think they see themselves as captains of the Titanic. If they go too fast, they risk running into the iceberg. Going slow allows them to miss the obstacles. But remember this about the Titanic: it wasn’t speed that sank it; it was the failure to see the iceberg that did in the ship. Neither lookout had binoculars and didn’t see the massive piece of ice until it was too late.

Fearing that iceberg, executives don’t see the value in stoking the engines up. But, as long as there are good look-outs with the right equipment, the ice can be avoided. Some companies know that. Let’s look at some the products introduced and marketed during economic hard times:

• Kraft introduced Miracle Whip in 1933. Through both radio and newspaper ads, it became the top salad dressing in the United States.

• In 1933, Proctor & Gamble went on the radio with the first soap opera – “Ma Perkins,” sponsored by Oxydol.  P&G was so satisfied with the sales increase, they went on to introduce “Vic and Sadie” for Crisco, “O’Niells” for Ivory Soap and “Forever Young” for Camay.  By 1939 the Cincinnati-based company was sponsoring 21 radio programs. It doubled its radio-advertising budget every two years during the Depression.
• Also during the Depression, General Motors used intensive advertising to pass Ford as the number auto company. I find it interesting that Ford is now gearing up its marketing efforts, while GM sits on the sidelines.
• Apple introduced the IPod in 2001, around the bottom of the last recession. Apple is a master of viral marketing. We all know what happened to the Apple’s profits as a result. In addition, Apple has used the cache built by IPod to increase its market in areas such as laptop computers.

I could on, but the point is, cutting back the wrong thing to do. Of course, it’s a gamble.

As Surowiecki concluded: “The academics Peter Dickson and Joseph Giglierano have argued that companies have to worry about two kinds of failure: “sinking the boat” (wrecking the company by making a bad bet) or “missing the boat” (letting a great opportunity pass). Today, most companies are far more worried about sinking the boat than about missing it. That’s why the opportunity to do what Kellogg did exists. That’s also why it’s so nerve-racking to try it.”

Of course, I have an answer for that – social media. I know I am obnoxious about this, but I firmly believe that social media is going to replace traditional advertising, marketing, and public relations within the not-to-distant future. Think of social media in the same Proctor & Gamble thought of radio in the 1930s. A lot of the company’s shareholders were opposed to using the new medium, especially during The Great Depression.

Think of social media as the new radio. As radio was to P&G, social media could be to a smart company willing to take a chance. A lot of companies are starting to dabble in it, but few have made a total commitment. I think there is both fear and unfamiliarity with the new medium. A survey by the blog überceo found that the majority of CEOs whose companies are on the Fortune 100 are – the blog’s words – social media slackers. They don’t understand it or know how to use it.

That’s where someone like me enters the picture. It is my job to show executives why it is smart to market using social media. Just let any savvy marketer who understands media into the room and we will show why this recession could be the best thing that ever happened to your company.