By Rebecca Canan

Last week, I learned a firsthand (and inadvertent) lesson about the new rules of media relations.  Here’s the story timeline:

• Washington DC has a series of blizzards across the week, leaving behind more than 50 inches of snow.
• Mid-blizzard, CEB (parent company of CEC) sends out an email stating that the office would be open regular hours, but to let your manager know if you were unable to come in.
• I laugh in disbelief.
• In aforementioned state of disbelief, I sign on to my personal Twitter account and tweet about it.
• Thursday morning I wake up to find that my seemingly personal and innocuous tweet has been cited in the Washington Post (PRINT AND ONLINE VERSIONS) with the context below—my own emphasis added:

Some Washington businesses that urged employees’ attendance have been getting pounded on washingtonpost.com and Twitter. Employees of Rosslyn-based Corporate Executive Board expressed exasperation that their office was initially open: “bec54″ wrote, “Boycotting CEB’s decision to stay open today by sitting on the couch in my fleece onesie. This snow is INSANE.”

[INSERT PANIC]  Pounded!?!  My fleece ONESIE?!?!  NOOOOooooo! Read More »

For $3 million dollars per 30-second spot, Super Bowl advertisers gave us Betty White, talking babies (again), Danica Patrick (again), a Google wedding, and more late-night wars (why would Leno appear in a competitor’s commercial?), among other sophomoric hijinks. Those were my favorites in an otherwise uninspiring line-up. But even when our marketing brethren aren’t so funny, I see several ways that communicators can help their organizations get more out of any significant investment in advertising: Read More »

As a freshman at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University (in the era just after the introduction of indoor plumbing, but slightly before Twitter), we Comms majors were forced to take the ultra-boring pre-requisite lecture course known as “Intro to Mass Media.” I remember sitting in the back row snarking to my fellow inmates, “Why do they force us to sit through this drone-a-thon? It has no relevance whatsoever!”

Turns out I was right. Not at the time (I rarely was…then) but in 2010, it’s increasingly true that the news media aren’t so “mass” anymore.

The Washington Post reported late last year that U.S. newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers, compared with a year earlier. (For the Post, reporting this story is roughly the equivalent of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn attending their own funeral.)
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By Evelyn Ostrovsky 

If two weeks ago you didn’t know about the American Red Cross’s social media use, you do now. The Red Cross’s innovative fundraising efforts for Haiti relief show that a little social media can go a long way in rallying global support for a common cause.

Given this success, it’s ironic that the Red Cross’s social media manager, Wendy Harman, was initially hired 4 years ago to “make the internet stop.” Red Cross executives were concerned about the volume of negative comments about the organization after Hurricane Katrina, and they wanted to somehow make the criticism go away. (Now, all good communicators out there realize that this is impossible, but can certainly relate to the sentiment.) Instead of staying in combat mode, however, Wendy saw an opportunity to enable advocates to rally around the Red Cross cause. Her journey from “make it stop” to empowering supporters took a few rogue experiments, some excellent listening skills, and the know-how to rein in overzealous business partners.

We’re thrilled to have Wendy share her story at a CEC webinar next Tuesday (February 9 at 11 EST). CEC members can register now for this event; if you’re reading this after the fact, you can check out the event replay here.

Now, let’s hear from you. What did you notice about social media’s role in fundraising for Haiti? What takeaways do you find transferable to the corporate setting?

By Rebecca Canan

Nearly every day, I get to talk to members about CEC’s major research initiative for 2010, and over the course of the past couple months, this has summed up to A LOT of conversations!  I’m asking them about external stakeholder outreach…how the media landscape is changing…how this is tangibly affecting their teams.  Really rich and interesting conversations.  THEN, the conversation turns to media monitoring.  It goes something like this:

Rebecca: So, how do you monitor conversations about your company? How much do you spend?  How do you USE the information?

CEC Member: [Yawn.]  [Then rattles off responses like a robot.]

Now, I’ve got nothing against robots (er, total tangent and perhaps inappropriate, but I actually think robots are HILARIOUS).  That said, I sense that members waste a lot of money on robotic “going through the motions” in this area. To them, monitoring is simply a part of the Communications function.  A box to check off.  Something that has to get done and does not necessarily require much reflection.  It may be the obsessive analytic in me, but I think that (1) communicators typically lack a deliberate and integrated objective for monitoring and that (2) they don’t use the information spit out of their monitoring machines.  Alas! Read More »

By Lisa Schievelbein

I spent my winter break at a yoga retreat in Oahu, Hawaii—a mere 10-minute beach stroll to Barack Obama’s vacation getaway. (Or at least, that’s how long it took to walk to the literal line in the sand drawn by the Secret Service, clad in Hawaiian shirts.) Though I was intent on unplugging from all thoughts of Corporate Communications on this trip, Obama’s brush with crisis communication (re: the airline terror attempt on Christmas Day) did call to mind the many communication challenges that Comms and POTUS share.

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Around this time every year, I get a bit obsessed about one thing: what is the biggest challenge that communicators are wrestling with right now? As Ev mentioned last week, our members have a lot of interest in new media, and they’re especially keen to discuss its impact on traditional PR. There’s one big question underlying these conversations: Is this just an adjustment period or a fundamental shift? There’s definitely evidence on both sides, but I’m currently inclined to think (to paraphrase REM), it could well be the end of the world as we know it.

In this blog, I’ll be looking to share some of the more interesting material we’re discovering in our research process. On that note, I saw some analogous lessons for PR in this HBR blog post about the eroding value of traditional networking (vs. social networking). Here are two important points: Read More »

By Evelyn Ostrovsky 

Every fall, the CEC research team spends nearly every waking minute on one activity: talking with the membership about their biggest concerns for the coming year. In my dozens (and dozens!) of conversations with members across over the last few months, one theme has come up repeatedly: the effect of new media on traditional media.

The week between Christmas and New Years brings much needed quiet to the office, and this year, Rebecca and I decided to explore a less traditional research method—one that actually got us out of our cubes for a change. On Rick’s recommendation, we made out way to D.C.’s own Newseum to learn about the history and changing role of journalism first-hand. Read More »