By Linda Forrest
This past week, Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about global warming. No recount was necessary.
The blogosphere’s response, as is often the media’s reaction to anything pertaining to Mr. Gore, ranges from adulation to vitriol.
We have had the pleasure of doing some work to promote local presentations of Mr. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth slide show about global warming, as presented by the Delphi Group’s president and CEO, Mike Gerbis. The Delphi Group is a strategic consulting firm operating within the spheres of health and the environment, clean energy, climate change, environmental technologies and organizational sustainability.
Mr. Gerbis was one of 1,000 people and one of just a few Canadians who were selected to train personally with Mr. Gore as part of the Climate Project and is officially sanctioned to give his slideshow presentation as seen in the Academy Award-winning film.
Mr. Gore, who sits on the board of directors for Apple, has had more than his fair share of trouble with the media, but that hasn’t stopped him from spearheading a novel approach to television with Current, a web site that has for the past several years accepted submissions from professional videographers and as of Monday now asks viewers to submit content in order to create broadcast news. Read more here.
While it appears that the site incorporates some elements of other popular video sites, the real distinction is that the best of the online content runs on Current TV, a cable and satellite TV network that according to the site airs in 52 million homes around the world. As with YouTube and Joost, content will determine the success of the site itself but if Current can bridge the gap between video on the Internet and content on the television, Mr. Gore will have another winner on his hands.
By Danny Sullivan
It probably depends who you ask, doesn’t it? Still, at this week’s BioPartnering Europe conference in London, there were definitely some positive signs for those companies striving for success in this battered market.
The conference was thick with representatives from big pharma – many senior executives were present and there appeared to be a renewed appetite for the acquisition of new technology.
One pleasantly surprised delegate was Rainer Engelhardt, CEO of GangaGen, which develops bacteriophage-based treatments for infectious disease.
“I have definitely noticed a sense of optimism and enthusiasm for the future,” said Engelhardt.” The presence of big pharma is very encouraging, and there are signs that they are beginning to take an interest in infectious disease again, which is good news for GangaGen.”
It’s still early days, of course, and from a PR firm’s perspective, it’s a long way from being an ideal market. But there were enough positive rumblings from some of the executives we met to justify this company’s continued interest in the sector.
Many smaller biotech companies view PR as a non-essential function that can be handled by someone internally, as and when the need arises. And to a certain degree, this is probably true, but the benefit of taking a more strategic approach to the area of one’s business cannot be underestimated. Rather than simply making sporadic announcements about company and product developments, PR can also be an effective tool to help support the drive towards business goals such as financing, partnerships, licensing deals and so on, as well as simply helping to keep awareness up during the periods between news events.
Of course, strategic PR requires a budget, so here’s hoping this positive attitude at BioPartnering is a sign of what is still to come.
By Danny Sullivan
In today’s noisy technology markets, the media invariably seek ways to separate the most useful stories from the rest. As a result, the ability to deliver a customer perspective has become a significant barrier to entry for getting quality vendor ink.
And this presents one of the greatest challenges for technology vendors in virtually every sector. Time and again I encounter companies that claim to deliver tremendous business value to their customers, but that their customers aren’t willing to have this story told in public. The main reason for this lack of enthusiasm is often simply that the customer in question does not have anything to gain from doing so.
Unfortunately, there is no magic password that you can whisper in the ear of your customer to transform them into the glowing PR resource you want them to be (and if there were, you can be assured I wouldn’t be revealing it here!). But there is a different way of approaching the issue that may help improve the value of what you manage to get out of them.
The key point is to try not to approach the issue holistically. Many vendors will try to include a line in the contract with a new customer stating that they agree to do “joint public relations activities” or something similar. This is still a good tactic, as it at least raises the issue, but it is invariably one of the first things crossed out by the customer upon review.
And who can blame them. “Public relations activities” could cover a whole multitude of sins, and might mean having them be involved in everything from news releases and glossy case studies to tradeshows and speaking slots.
Sure, if you can get them to agree to all of the above, then great, but getting their agreement to sign-off on a four page case study, or to provide a quote in a news release, can still often be a tedious and sometimes fruitless exercise.
The reality of what is required from customers is much more simple. The media are usually far more interested to have access to information that is not publicly available. So, without wishing to detract from their value in other areas like marketing and sales, polished case studies and quotes in news releases are often of little real use to your PR program.
The most useful participation of all is a simple agreement to take a few calls from some relevant media over a certain period of time. With this arrow in your PR firm’s quiver, they will be able to achieve more than with any pre-approved quote or material.
Achieving this agreement is all about the management of your customer. Finding the right person to raise the question with, and broaching it in the right way. The idea of taking a phone call from an individual can feel a lot less significant than signing off on a news release that will be distributed to the world at large.
And involve your PR firm in the process. They are (hopefully) experts in the field and should be able to help both you and your customer understand what is required. Working together with our clients, we regularly craft other creative ways to circumvent the approvals barriers customers usually erect in this area.
Ultimately, unless you are one of those very lucky companies whose customers want to shout about the great things they are doing with technology, it’s never going to be easy to get your customers to talk. But you can at least focus on getting the most valuable participation out of them when they do.
By Linda Forrest
Sometimes, it can be challenging to draw the connection between technological advancements and one’s personal life. Such is definitely not the case with a recent media launch that we did for a new client.
Earlier this year, inmedia had the incredible experience of being responsible for the worldwide media launch of Touch Bionics’ i-LIMB Hand, the world’s first commercially available bionic hand. I completely understand the life-changing potential of this product because of personal experience.
My wonderful mother has always been able to do anything she put her mind to and has never let the fact that she was born with an abnormal left hand slow her down. Throughout my life, if people would ask about what happened to her hand, I would wonder why they were asking as she is so adept and resourceful that I would often forget that she had anything different about her hand.
At birth, her hand was misshapen due to a birth defect. As it was the early 1940s and medical science wasn’t nearly where it is today, the doctors made the poor decision to give her hand massive doses of radiation, resulting in severe radiation burns. Her parents were left with the choice between amputation and a “hook” to act as her hand or doctors could attempt to save her hand and lower arm with groundbreaking plastic surgery techniques developed on burn victims from WW2. They opted for the latter.
The many plastic surgeries and surgeons’ best efforts resulted in a patchwork of various skin grafts and immobile fingers that by her early 60s have poor circulation and have caused her near constant pain. At the onset of these problems, one of my mother’s great fears was that she would have to have her hand amputated. In fact, her situation had worsened in the past year and she had her baby finger amputated in February.
As I started to learn about Touch Bionics and the i-LIMB Hand, I kept her informed, sent her to the company’s web site and our whole family marveled at the technology and what it means not only to the prosthetics, science and medical communities at large and to amputees, but to us personally.
Although she does not currently have a requirement for the i-LIMB Hand, this development has truly made her feel more comfortable with the idea that should she need the remainder of her hand amputated at some point, there is a viable option for a replacement.
Near the launch, she said to me, “This is all so fantastic. I no longer need to be afraid I’ll lose my left hand as FINALLY a really amazing option is available. I’ve only waited my whole life for this!!!”
Thank you to Touch Bionics for the piece of mind that you’ve given my family and others like us. Your work is truly making an important difference.
By Danny Sullivan
More from Call Centre Expo. I just have to say a big well done to Graham Technology for winning the show’s Best Product award for its customer interaction platform, ciboodle.
I have had the fortune of working with Graham Technology since ciboodle’s launch last year, and the marketing team made achieving this award as a goal ever since. Mission accomplished – great job guys!
