Remembering Jody

Sheila Tate

Jody Powell passed away one year ago today.

His middle initial was “L” and to me it stood for loyalty. Intense loyalty.

In simple terms, his loyalty was his legacy to Powell Tate. Jody never forgot the folks who helped him through life. He was a loyal son of the South – nobody knew more Civil War Confederate history than Jody – and the loyal and loving son of his parents. He was a loyal husband to his one-and-only wife, Nan. He was a fiercely loyal father and even fiercer grandfather. Jimmy Carter gave Jody his professional life, and he repaid his debt to the president every chance he could. His loyalty never flagged.

Here at Powell Tate, his loyalty was equally intense. If you worked at Powell Tate, he was your friend, your mentor, your defender.

In the early days, unencumbered by much bureaucracy, Jody broke our HR rules regularly. He sent an employee to an alcohol treatment center, he lent money to more than one strapped employee, he encouraged folks with serious personal problems to take whatever extra time off they needed. No need to write it down on any time sheet.

Jody worked hard but seldom before 10 a.m. He worked late, often still at his desk at 8 p.m. or later, wondering where everyone else was. He believed in office attire, hated summer casual and fought it as long as he could. Ditto voice mail. He did not like talking to a machine.

He disappeared for long stretches of time during duck hunting season. That’s when we returned his loyalty and regularly covered for him.

Jody liked his “libations” and his cigarettes. You knew he was in the office when you walked down the hall between our offices — it was a distinctively perfumed hallway in spite of the heavy duty fumigation system we installed. Because he knew how concerned we were about his health, he tried multiple times to quit. Sadly, he was just too loyal to tobacco.

Jody always let you know when he thought you’d done a great job but he truly detested the formal review process. He once told an executive vice president when she entered his office for her review “I ain’t got no complaints.” That was the extent of her review. She didn’t really need one, truth be told.

More than anything Jody wanted the young people at Powell Tate to know he was their loyal supporter — they could approach him and count on him. He set up get-togethers with interns and new hires that evolved into storytelling and whiskey-sipping for hours at the end of the work day.

And did I mention he was a brilliant PR practitioner? Not a bad legacy.

Food companies and advertising to children

Sally Squires

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week made good on its long-promised announcement to subpoena  the marketing records of 48 major food companies. The subpoenas will require companies to assess their advertising and communications to children, aged two to 17 years, on everything from in-school activities to online games The goal: for the FTC to gauge how well food companies have adhered to their self-imposed guidelines to limit food marketing to children.

So how are food companies doing? A 2009 analysis  of the nutritional quality of products marketed by members of the Children’s Food and Beverage Initiative found that 83 percent of ads were for foods with nutrients or food groups that often are in short supply in children’s diets. More than a third of ads promoted products with at least eight grams of whole grains, more than a quarter promoted apples and milk, 12 percent were for yogurt products and seven percent for vegetables.

Congress is not convinced these steps at self-policing go far enough. A year ago, it formed the Interagency Working Group (IWG) made up of representatives from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FTC. The IWG is tasked with writing new recommendations on food marketing to children. The recommendations were due to be released in July but have not yet been issued. Once published, they are not expected to be binding.

Find more about the steps leading up to last week’s FTC subpoenas on the Powell Tate food policy practice page  as well as a report  from an FTC meeting on Food Marketing to Children.

 

Crowd sourcing for online giving?

Paul Massey

Crowdrise, a social networking site that generated some good buzz in May when it was launched by Edward Norton and three partners, was the subject of an interesting article in Sunday’s New York Times.

Crowdwise makes it easy for people to create pages in support of causes they believe in and rally people to join their teams, showing support through small dollar donations. It’s also a way to organize people around volunteer projects.

For nonprofit organizations, it’s an appealing new option for recruiting supporters – and inviting them to energize their networks in support of a cause. The site distinguishes itself with a healthy sense of irreverence (always good), and opportunities for participants to earn points, and ultimately, prizes. It’s not the only platform of its kind (see: Facebook Causes or Change.org), but it stands apart with its lively personality, clear focus on engagement and a fun mix of celebrity participants.

As we head into the last quarter of the year, a season of many fundraising requests, I’m curious to see how organizations integrate Crowdrise into their outreach in creative ways, as well as how people (just like you and me) use the platform to draw attention to causes they’re passionate about. Ultimately, that’s what’s most appealing about the site – how easily it can help people become fundraisers. That, and of course, Crowdrise’s tagline: “If you don't give back no one will like you.”‬‬

National Food Policy Conference

Sally Squires

The nation’s capital is a city where political parties, ideas and people ebb and flow. It can also be a place of great dissension. For the past 33 years, the National Food Policy Conference has shown that sharing ideas among those who feel passionate about a topic can help move the ball forward, even when there’s disagreement.

Coordinated by the Consumer Federation of America in cooperation with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the conference is an example of consumer advocacy and industry collaboration at its best. Several hundred people attend annually. They come from the White House, the federal government, Capitol Hill, advocacy groups, the corporate world, trade associations, academia and the media. They talk, learn, and yes, sometimes debate, about nutrition and food policies.

This year’s conference focuses on improving child nutrition and health. It’s a topic that’s been elevated to the national dialogue by both the on-going obesity epidemic and the First Lady’s strong interest in battling childhood obesity through her Let’s Move program. As in past years, I’ll be at the conference along with other Powell Tate colleagues to exchange ideas and learn with food policy thought leaders. You can also find me moderating a panel on the upcoming 2010 Dietary Guidelines, slated to be released in December. I’ll be the one asking an expert panel how we can use these new guidelines to help consumers put into practice the advice to live healthier lives.

Among the other topics on this year’s agenda:

• Meeting the HealthierUS School Challenge—a gold standard set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that just 650 school districts have managed to meet. That number falls short of the doubling of participation that the Obama administration has set as a goal for the year. To help bridge the gap, the conference will highlight programs that have met the challenge with the hope of increasing school participation.

• New opportunities in the SNAP program. Formerly known as Food Stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves 28 million low-income Americans who are “food insecure” and often don’t know where their next meal will come from. New incentive and education programs are being piloted to help increase participation in SNAP. For example, just 32 percent of eligible seniors now participate in SNAP. The conference will examine how to measure the impact of SNAP activities and what the program should like in the future.

• Food innovation. Food companies are working to cut calories, added sugar, salt and unhealthy types of fat in their products as well as to increase nutritious ingredients including whole grains, fruit, vegetables, fiber and healthy fat. In March, the First Lady challenged the food industry to go even farther. But what are the hurdles to reformulation? And how are consumers responding to the changes? That, as the saying goes, is the $64,000 question.

Read the full agenda and register for the conference here.

Powell Taters Give Back

Katie Kunec

For nearly two years, Powell Tate and KRC Research have partnered with Ludlow-Taylor Elementary in Washington, D.C., to enhance the school community through donations of time and supplies. Our volunteers provide hands-on assistance in and around the school and participate in an annual Holiday Giving Tree through which we help fulfill the holiday wishes of students in need.

During our last activity with Ludlow-Taylor, we assisted with cleaning out classrooms that were being used for storage and transforming the area into a welcoming space that will be used to accommodate the school’s growing enrollment. We look forward to more projects to come!

Location, Location, Location!

Lindsey Ellerson

The old real estate adage, “location, location, location” has taken on new meaning in the digital landscape, given the projections that smartphones will soon overtake conventional low-end mobile phones as the standard communications device for Americans. With the proliferation of smartphones, mobile users are driving a new movement toward location-based technology.

At the Mashable Summer Tour earlier this month in Washington, D.C., Powell Tate talked with the team who runs Mashable.com, the popular social media news site, about their thoughts on the emerging geo-location trend.

“Even last year, smartphones were just for geeks and for business people, now everybody has an Android or an iPhone, it’s a common place thing,” Mashable Chief Operations Officer Adam Hirsh told us.

As rumors are building that Facebook is poised to join the ranks of other location-based providers including the popular Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite, the mobile conversation is only growing louder. The question is how will these companies distinguish themselves? Mashable Community Manager Vadim Lavruski says the ultimate winner will be the company most invested in the consumer experience.

“You’re sort of already starting to see the market at play. I think one will eventually sort of dominate and it’s going to be interesting to see how that happens,” said Lavruski. “All of them offer something unique, but not all of them meet all the needs of a user that’s using location-based technology. So being able to sort of combine some of these elements into one platform is really I think what users are looking for.”

While the landscape is nascent, the current demand seems to be dominated by slightly more male users than female. Additionally, the demographics skew toward Hispanic and Asian-American use, which according to Nielsen tracks with adoption rates of other mobile data services.

For further insight from the Mashable team on the latest trends in the social media landscape, watch our video.

Note: Powell Tate | Weber Shandwick was a Mashable Summer Tour sponsor.

Emergencies and Social Media

Kristin Gossel

Before joining Powell Tate, I ran the Department of Homeland Security’s Ready Campaign, so I am familiar with emergency preparedness and response at a professional level – but last week it got personal for me when my neighborhood was hit by a powerful thunderstorm.

As I posted photos on my Facebook page, sent text messages to friends and family and submitted a question to an online chat with Dominion Virginia Power officials, I realized just how much communication has changed since Ready was launched in 2003.

When the national campaign to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies was developed, social media as we know it did not exist. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had not been invented and the number of text messages and emails sent were a fraction of what they are today. Online communication was more or less a one-way street.

Today, in our highly connected society, we use digital communications tools to interact with each other online in virtually every situation, including emergencies.

A survey released yesterday by the American Red Cross found that Americans use social media not only to send and receive information about emergencies, but to seek help. If they needed help and couldn’t reach 911, one in five said they would try to contact first responders using digital communications. When asked if they would use social media to request help for others, 44 percent said they would ask individuals in their social network to contact authorities; and 63 percent said they would request help from a first response agency directly using Facebook or Twitter.

Are first responders ready and prepared for this new communications reality? According to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post , “90 percent of first responders said they don't have the staffing to monitor incoming messages and respond rapidly.”

The Red Cross and others are working to address this problem and hosted an Emergency Social Data Summit this week in Washington with that goal in mind. As the key players discuss better ways to handle digital communications during emergencies, I hope they find some real solutions that will allow today’s communications landscape to enhance our ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies.

When science speaks….

Last month I was invited to speak at the American Meteorological Society's Annual Policy Fellows Summit here in Washington as part of a session about communicating science to the public. My presentation was part of a larger discussion about the role that science communications plays within different sectors, and I spoke about the ways that academic scientists can help the private sector learn more about issues such as climate change, biotechnology and other timely—potentially controversial—topics.

The scientists seated in the room were eager to learn but largely unfamiliar with the roles they could play in helping to build awareness and understanding for particular issues. Most were reticent about communicating to the public but recognized the importance of doing so. The Pew Center and others have reported on the public’s trust in scientists which, according to their last report, rated pretty high.

How can scientists help communicate the message? One example is meteorologists. They have an important role to play in communicating climate change due to their high visibility with the general public and they must also answer to their scientific peers by making sure accurate information is conveyed. The AMS includes a large cadre of broadcast meteorologists who report on weather patterns and the impact they have on lives around the world. While many people joke around that you can never count on the weather report, the fact remains that most of us continue to follow the weather report on a daily basis.

As communications professionals, our job is to work with clients find the right message and messenger. Scientists and academics provide a credible, independent third-party voice, have deep knowledge and expertise and can speak passionately to relevant issues.

Organizations and corporations should consider the value that scientists and academics bring to communications efforts. They bring not only significant knowledge and expertise but also an opportunity to help amplify your message.

 

The Role of the Media in the Age of WikiLeaks

Colin Moffett

The current controversy around the leaking of secret documents about the war in Afghanistan at first glance seems like a replay of every other national security leak story that dogged past administrations.

However, this one is different.

Not because of the scale of the leak (92,000 documents in total) but because it demonstrated the mainstream media’s evolving role in our lives. We don’t rely on the MSM as much for the leaks themselves (a website called WikiLeaks gets the credit/blame for that), but their continued role in providing context is now more important than ever.

Since 2007, WikiLeaks has been publishing classified military documents from the U.S. military and other sources. For the most part, these leaks did not get a lot of attention and seep into the American public discourse. Indeed, as recently as last week most people had never heard of WikiLeaks.

Here’s what makes the latest round of leaks different: Wikileaks jointly published them with the New York Times, London Guardian and German Der Spiegel.

The three newspapers are taking some heat from, among others, the White House for being “irresponsible” by providing information about the U.S. war efforts. But as Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz points out, WikiLeaks was going to post the secret documents with or without them. That is, it’s hard to blame the newspapers for “uncovering” information that was already made public by WikiLeaks.

By being part of the leaks, the newspapers certainly helped provide the magnitude needed to make it a big story but more importantly they helped provide context to help us understand it.

This fits true to form with what we are seeing across the entire media landscape right now. Most of us get a large percentage of our news from across our social networks (our friends and family on Facebook, for instance), but that doesn’t make Facebook a news organization.

Instead, Facebook provides the mechanism for learning what news our friends and family have curated for us — and in fact most of the shared links take us to mainstream media sites.

The lesson here is that we need both the MSM and independent websites for information just as we need social networks to help us share news and stay connected.

 

Success by design

Amy Leonardi

After 20 years of working in the creative industry, I’ve learned that the interaction between client or account team and designer can hugely impact the outcome of a project. For both parties, the collaborative process of developing design can be an exhilarating, creative experience. However, the process can be filled with miscommunication, frustration and disappointment.

So how can you increase your chances for success? As the client, the type of information provided to your designer —and the way in which it’s given—can make a huge difference in the creativity and overall success of the final product.

The type of information you give (and don’t give) to your creative team can determine a project’s success. Here are some tips to making the most of your next creative project:

• Tell your designers who you are. It’s important that your creative team has as much information as possible about who you are as an organization. This goes beyond what can be learned from your website. Give them a feel of your organization’s personality, your people and structure, your decision-makers and stakeholders, your culture, your accomplishments and your big-picture goals. The more we know about you, the better we can design for you. And it’s important to provide a clear understanding of any relevant brand guidelines that will impact the particular project.

• Who is your audience? It’s critical that you articulate who your audience is for a specific project. Your audience might be very specific, or it might be very broad. In either case, as much as we can identify and prioritize your key audiences, the more likely our design will be on target to communicate your messages effectively.

• Make your objectives clear, but not how to achieve them. I think it’s a huge mistake for clients to offer too many specifics on what they want their project to look like. In other words, clients should not be art directing (after all, that’s why they’ve hired designers). Instead of telling your designer how you want something to look, tell them what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s a designer’s job to come up with visual solutions to achieve those objectives. A good designer should be fluent in translating concepts and messages into a visual solution. Don’t limit the creative process by trying to translate for them.

• It’s ok to tell (and show) your designer what you like. Sharing other comparable pieces that have an overall look that aligns with your aesthetic can open the lines of communication regarding what would or would not work for your project. In addition, it is a way to make sure that everyone’s thinking is aligned as we move into design development.

• A creative brief will put everyone on the same page. Getting key information down on paper is a great start to avoiding miscommunication during the design process. The creative brief should contain information on audience and objectives, key elements to include, timing and any other information pertinent to the specific assignment.

In the trendy world of design, styles will come and go. But smart design transcends the latest typeface, media format or color. Good design boils down to old fashioned, clear communication that leads to a winning outcome.

The value of being on-site for clients

Greg McCarthy

Working on-site with a client can offer significant advantages, such as tightly integrated work teams and well-coordinated communications and decision-making. In an article for PR Week, I wrote about the value of working on-site for “creating greater efficiency and quality in communications.”

News shaped by the audience

John Files

Conversations with former colleagues – newspaper reporters and editors – have revealed that the path forward for news is being shaped, and even dictated, by the audience.

News organizations are seeking to serve a variety of news consumers on multiple platforms and tailoring content to those vehicles. In doing so, journalists are grappling with a strategy – audience segmentation – that is essential to successful communications campaigns and achieving business goals. But this has not been a traditional focus of “news” people (they have generally left such matters to “the business side”).

A core shift is underway as journalists recognize the need to consider the bottom line in their day-to-day endeavors. Understanding, engaging and developing distinct audiences is central to the preservation of a news organization’s business model — it’s not just about producing quality journalism anymore.

Indeed, a newspaper editor told me: “We are all accountable for building an audience.”

Some journalists are leading the way by leveraging a connection with their niche audiences. Consider the success of Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times — they are platform agnostic and grow their audience through their newspaper articles, blog posts, e-newsletters, television appearances, Facebook and Twitter. They are shaping their brands.

This sharp focus on the audience is not all about business, though. Jack Fuller, who won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing and was editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, contends that it also underpins the very ideals of journalism. In a piece for Nieman Reports, a publication of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, he writes: “The audience will determine the future of news. Serious journalists must understand to the very essence the minds that make up this audience in order to know how to persuade people to assimilate the significant and demand the accurate. Anything less is the neglect of our most important social responsibility.”




 

Successful Federal Marketing: Beyond Advertising

Greg McCarthy

With more than $500 billion spent each year by the federal government on private sector contracts, it is no surprise to find companies trying to reach decision-makers with advertising. As the Washington Post discussed last month, military hardware ads often market themselves like they are pushing “soft drinks and cell phones.”

Our experience is that to be successful in the federal sector, advertising is only one part of a comprehensive strategy. Make sure you’re also thinking about these elements:

1. Create a presence in Washington: Business in the nation’s capital is personal — make certain your business has a face and a hand to shake in Washington. Build a relationship with your customer for the long-term.

2. Turn members of Congress into advocates: Educate members of Congress and their staff about the potential impact of the contract on jobs, businesses and the economy in their districts.

3. Get to know key media: Provide briefings with key Washington journalists who can influence decision-makers. Be prepared to counter negative accusations from competitors and critics.

4. Establish coalitions and partnerships: Identify companies, groups and individuals who will share in the success of your contract bid. Leverage their reputations and communication networks to increase the reach of your proposal.

5. Go digital: Integrate social media into your communications plan in order to engage grassroots support for your contract bid among employees, partners, vendors and civic leaders. Political will is important and individual voices matter. Share your story directly through blogs, video testimonials and be creative in delivering your message through targeted social media channels.

The end of an era?

Kristin Gossel

There’s no doubt that the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) left a lasting impact on West Virginia and the U.S. Senate. However, the congressional appropriations process, with which the senator had become synonymous, may change drastically.

A recent article in The Hill by Kevin Bogardus notes that Byrd is but one of the “forceful defenders of the congressional ‘power of the purse’” who will no longer serve on the House and Senate Appropriations committees. The death of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Rep. David Obey’s (D-Wis.) retirement and Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-Pa.) loss are but three examples of the changes in committee membership in store for the 112th Congress.

As Bogardus points out, it is more than just new faces — it is a change in climate that could make the days of earmarks and pork barrel projects a thing of the past. The global financial crisis and ballooning national debt have voters questioning a process that provides billions to projects “back home” as well as government spending itself. This has government contractors, state and local governments and their lobbyists facing a very uncertain future.

It is hard to say if it really is the end of an era. But just in case, those seeking to influence the fiscal year 2012 appropriations process might want to start thinking now about new ways to do so.

 

Protect your principals … from themselves

Fred Lindeberg

Edited on Aug. 2, 2010

Verbal gaffes, thoughtless indiscretions and live microphone moments of CEOs and other public figures can exact terrible tolls on careers and organizations. While the rest of the world either laughs or winces, there is usually a PR person somewhere who dies a little with every blunder, knowing the boss is his or her own worst enemy.

Under admittedly tough circumstances, BP CEO Tony Hayward has not helped his company respond to the environmental tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico. When he needed to be seen as an empathic, competent and confident leader, he gaffed his way into a laughingstock.

In the waning days of the recent British general election, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown created a firestorm by trashing a supporter while wearing a live microphone. In California, Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was recently caught making an unkind comment about her political opponent’s hairstyle — while sitting in a TV news studio.

Public figures are people too, and they make mistakes for the same reasons the rest of us do: occasional lack of preparation and lack of discipline.

More than ever, PR professionals have to be vigilant in protecting their principals from going off-message or being careless in their public role. This is especially so in an increasingly digital world. When it seems every phone is both a camera and a video recorder, there are endless opportunities for public figures to be caught in unguarded moments, and to misjudge the public for the private.

Although it might be tempting for some of our corporate and political leaders to become media-phobic shut-ins, it is their proper role to be available to the public, to say things to gain attention and to be engaging communicators.

Even the most experienced spokesperson needs to practice his or her key messages, and the gentle — and sometimes not so gentle — reminder to zip it until the microphone is off. Occasional PR coaching can help every public person be a better steward of their own reputation and safeguard the organizations and brands they represent more effectively.


 

Greg McCarthy

Senior Vice President

Bob Brody

Senior Vice President

Lance Morgan

Chief Communications Strategist