by Brian Lustig, Partner

Today I officially join Bluetext as a Partner as Lustig Communications becomes a part of Bluetext.

Joining a communications agency – in any capacity – is in all honesty not something I ever planned to do after founding my own firm six years ago. Even though Lustig Communications has worked closely with Bluetext since its inception and my work with the Bluetext Partners dates as far back as 13 years, this decision should have been much harder than it was. Any individual who has launched his/her own firm can tell you that it becomes your ‘baby’ that you work tirelessly to nurture as it grows.

Greater Washington does not suffer from a lack of talented PR agencies and practitioners, and I’ve had the good fortune to interact with many of them. But in watching the work Bluetext has been doing for organizations since its 2011 launch, I was repeatedly blown away by the creative, high-impact communications campaigns the Bluetext team created and delivered. It is not an accident that the world’s leading brands – ranging from Google, Cisco and Adobe to the USO, Reznick Group and APCO – have turned to the Bluetext team to solve their communications and branding challenges.

The path leading Lustig Communications to Bluetext began nearly 18 years ago. Some people might say that makes me a PR veteran, but to me it just kind of sounds like I’m really old. After spending the early years of my public relations career working on behalf of political campaigns and policy initiatives, I eyed a buzzing technology community in Washington, DC and could not help myself from gravitating towards the energy of the dot com boom. It was August 2000.

Within weeks, of course, the boom busted. It turns out that getting a sock puppet to interview people on the street does not mean that your company has figured out how to sell and deliver pet supplies online. But despite the ups and downs in the tech sector that succeeded the bust, I was hooked on technology…not just technology really, but helping growing companies and entrepreneurs with big ideas.

It was this passion that led me to go off on my own and found Lustig Communications six years ago and to assemble a team focused on working with technology innovators, growing firms and startups. I’ve always felt there is a right way to practice public relations. To me, this meant investing my team in each client fully, challenging clients when a kick in the rear was needed, and ultimately, walking into work each day with a goal of developing a new idea (or ideas) that could help the client succeed.

I could start rattling off the tired old buzzwords you often see when two firms align, how it is about synergies and complementary services and how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. None of that matters, they are just words really. Ultimately, it is about two firms committed to working with any organization, of any size, in any sector, that has a challenge to solve, and figuring out how to help them solve it. And I’d like to think that with this move today, we are better positioned to do just that than we were yesterday.

Sales teams can be very quick on the draw to reach out to potential leads. That is, after all, their business. But sometimes that sales call may be too soon for the customers. When does that outreach look more like nagging and less like effective nurturing during the journey through the sales pipeline? A recent survey by IDG—a technology-focused multimedia company whose publications include Computerworld, NetworkWorld, CIO, and a range of other magazines—offers valuable insight into the process. IDG surveyed more than a thousand IT decision-makers to get their perspective, and some of the findings should provide some guidance.

Two of the more interesting findings show the difficulty in making the judgment call between nagging and nurturing. Nine out of 10 survey respondents said that speaking with a knowledgeable company representative increased their likelihood of making a purchase. However, before you pick up that phone too quickly, only three percent of respondents want to be contacted by a salesperson after receiving just one piece of content related to that purchase. That increases to 34 percent after downloading between two and four pieces of content. But on average, they need to have consumed five pieces of content related to the sale before they are ready to talk with a sales rep.

Those are numbers worth pondering. This research suggests that every campaign should have multiple selections of content that are timed to educate and inform the buyer. Here’s what Bluetext recommends for our clients’ campaigns:

During the early phases of the decision-making process, IT buyers are determining their needs and requirements, and should be served general information including articles about trends and strategies, management and technologies. This is a good place to be seeding case studies and use case examples.

·         As they move through the process and are trying to narrow down potential vendors and evaluating possible solutions, their needs evolve to information more specific to the solutions our clients have to deliver. Test results, product reviews and independent opinions will keep the vendor top-of-mind when the decision-maker creates their short list. More case studies can also bolster the vendor’s standing.

·         In the later stages, IT decision-makers need to make the business case for their decision. At that point, we recommend ROI tools, product demonstration videos and calculators. Our clients need to make it easy for the customer to get buy-in from their own team.

In our next blog post, we’ll discuss how companies can leverage social media to engage with IT decision-makers throughout the process, and will offer other tips for providing customer leads with the information they want when they want it.

In today’s media environment, the goal with public relations is still to get reporters and publications to stand up and take notice when an organization has news it wants to deliver to the market. Our work with HelloWallet proves that good content and a solid strategy can result in widespread attention, and put a company on the map. Many reporters, and especially those with the trade media, are hungry for company news, product launches, and customer case studies to meet their print, broadcast and online demands. Yet HelloWallet demonstrates that if the four ingredients of a successful story are developed and integrated into the strategy, coverage on a national level can be the reward, even for a brand that is still trying to make its mark.

The Backdrop. HelloWallet is a leading provider of behavioral technology applications that help organizations improve the financial stability of their employees through online tools that lead to better financial planning and preparedness. It was founded by Matt Fellowes, a Brookings Institution scholar who wanted to take what he was seeing in the U.S. workforce and offer a solution to the private sector. As researchers by training, Matt and his team analyze vast troves of government data to find trends that illuminate the population’s true behavior and problems, and lead to possible solutions to those problems.

Because there is a lot of attention being paid to 401(k) retirement programs, Matt wanted to take a look at how employees across the spectrum were using these tax-advantaged accounts. Using consumer data from the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Census, he put together a detailed study showing that more than a quarter of participants in these accounts were cashing out or taking loans prior to retirement—with significant tax penalties. In other words, a large amount of the workforce that was supposed to be helped by 401(k) programs were not using it for that purpose, and instead had immediate financial needs that had to be met. This is a serious problem for organizations which are not seeing the results for their large benefits investments, as well as many employees, who would be far better off with adequate emergency savings than funding retirement savings accounts and then “breaching” them to pay pending bills.

Our challenge was to create a strategy that would bring the maximum attention to these findings, and then to execute on the strategy.

Element #1: The topic has to be of significant interest. HelloWallet’s research hit a nerve for several reasons, and these are all important to keep in mind. First, it had to do with the overall financial health of the U.S. workforce, and given the recession and slow economic recovery, this is top of mind. Second, it had to do with saving for retirement, which is also of interest in light of the inadequate savings that Americans have put away for their future.

Element #2. It should challenge the conventional wisdom. Simply telling readers what they already know is never that interesting. Offering insight to a trend that runs counter to that wisdom will get attention. The HelloWallet research found that 401(k)s—the premiere program being used for retirement savings—was actually not as successful as we all thought, and that in fact more than 25 percent of participants were putting the cart before the horse. They really need to establish financial stability for their current needs before locking away savings in a retirement account.

Element #3. The facts of the story must be convincing and beyond question. HelloWallet put forth an academic-style study, complete with footnotes and review, and based its findings on government data. This type of research cannot be readily challenged by competitors or adversaries, and it hasn’t been. Of course, not all stories have this type of research behind them, yet it is important that the information being released to any news outlet be solid.

Element #4. Set a Strategy and Follow It! With HelloWallet, we began in the fall, approaching a broad range of reporters at target publications to introduce ourselves and provide background information to the larger issue in the fall. We let them know that we would be providing some interesting research after the Holidays, and take note of their interest. Next, we contacted a handful of those whose ears perked up the most to give them a heads up several weeks prior to the study’s release. As part of the strategy we offered it to several major publications ahead of time with an embargo date (this included the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Washington Post among others), thereby giving them time to drill deep into the research and prepare for a more in-depth article than if they had less time to consider the study. Finally, as soon as the research was released and published by the Post—on its front page, no less—we did a larger outreach to trade media, larger newspapers, radio and the broadcast networks with a reference to the Post coverage, in order to validate the significance of the research.

While we could never be sure in advance of what the coverage would be (after all, a big storm could easily have sent it to the back pages of oblivion), we nevertheless stuck by our strategy throughout the course of this campaign—precisely because we had confidence that it would give us the best chance of success.

Numbers Do Matter
If the recent election results tell us anything it’s that numbers do matter, at least when it comes to public opinion. Whether one side or the other chooses to believe them, the polls proved to be extremely accurate in predicting the final outcomes. And when read carefully even early on in the campaign cycle, they provided a roadmap to public perception and pointed to the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate’s brand in what was ultimately a dynamic marketplace (remember all of the front-runners in the Republic primaries?).

Companies can learn a lot from the political world. Understanding customer perceptions about their brand and those of their competitors is essential to charting an effective market platform and delivering a winning message to core audiences. That’s why we always recommend gathering research through surveys before launching a new campaign. In our experience, clients may believe they know what their customers’ think of them, but it’s not always accurate. In fact, customers may have an outdated view of a particular brand, or not give it enough credit for strengths with new products and services. Or they may not know the company well-enough at all to respond to existing marketing campaigns and messaging.

What’s perhaps a more interesting lesson from the election is that the traditional way of surveying individuals—by calling their home phones—was the least accurate method used by pollsters, according to Nate Silver who writes the FiveThirtyEight blog for the New York Times. Instead, according to Silver, “some of the most accurate firms were those that conducted their polls online.”  This is a new twist. Traditionally pollsters relied only on reaching people on land lines in order to get a true random sample from which they could draw accurate portraits.

The problem with land lines, of course, is that fewer people have them, especially at the younger end of the age spectrum. In addition, thanks in part to caller ID, fewer individuals answer when they are called. As a result, pollsters relying only on home calls have to project very few responses to a larger population and all its different demographic varieties. Cell phone numbers are hard to get. They typically aren’t published anywhere, and individuals are even less likely to take those calls.

That leaves on-line surveys, which often target “panels” of customers with job responsibilities that map to a target customer profile. For example, for an enterprise technology company, that could be IT professionals with decision-making responsibilities at their job. These panelists often volunteer to take these types of surveys in exchange for compensation such as access to the survey results or even to gift cards. As a result, these types of panels are not as randomly selected as a statistician might prefer, and the margin of error may be higher than would be appropriate for a political poll.

That type of margin, often around five-to-six percent for sample sizes in the 150-200 range, isn’t particularly significant when determining a brand footprint in a market. We’re not trying to predict an election result, but rather just making sure that we understand perceptions and preferences of potential buyers. Using on-line panels, we can deliver useful market survey results as an early step in a campaign without breaking the bank.

One of the survey tools that our clients have found particularly effective is the use of “word clouds” to display important attributes that audiences ascribe to a brand. A word cloud simply enlarges the words used in relation to how frequently they are mentioned in the survey. Here’s an example of a word cloud that we created from a survey of soldiers asked to recall brand names of equipment or products they used while serving in combat zones:

This type of graphic allows companies to quickly assess both recall and the relative strength of that recall when compared to other relevant brands.

Market surveys can effectively remove the blindfolds and allow companies and other organizations to implement a marketing strategy that responds to the perceptions and the needs of their target audiences—and gives them a better chance of meeting their campaign goals.

Now that the election is finally over, Washington officials have to get back to the job of governing, the first crisis on their plate is the mandatory budget cuts that will be enacted if a fiscal deal can’t be reached quickly. If there is a silver lining around the upcoming sequester that’s threatening to hit our shores on January 3, 2013, it’s that there is an actual date for it on the calendar. Unlike a natural disaster or even cyclical economic recession, this one is entirely man-made and there’s even a countdown to it. While that gives government contractors the opportunity to prepare, it’s hard to know exactly what to prepare for, and how to get ready for it. That’s the classic recipe for fear and paralysis across the government contracting ecosystem, and arguably could result in economic consequences for companies as bad as the sequester itself.

What we’ve been counseling our clients in the Federal market may sound counter-intuitive: this is not a time to retrench from your marketing and communications efforts, but rather an opportunity to distinguish yourself from the crowd. The pressures of sequestration will make government customers look for the best solutions from the most nimble contractors at the best value for the agency.

It’s not a time to rely on being the incumbent, or to promote the big contracts that you’ve won. The message that every Government contractor needs to deliver is that we have the right solution to solve your problem efficiently, effectively, creatively, and within your budget constraints. That’s the business strategy that is going to succeed over the next four Federal fiscal quarters, and it requires a solid marketing plan that supports that message.

There’s a lot that businesses can learn from political campaigns in the heat of national elections about how to identify, reach and motivate target audiences. Political campaigns, and in particular Presidential elections, are a hot-bed of on-the-ground strategies, where anything and everything is tested to see what works all with a single goal in mind: to get as many people who will vote for your candidate to the polls on election day as possible. The national political parties spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these efforts, and are at the cutting-edge of these types of behavioral and digital sciences.

If you have any doubt, just look at the Obama 2008 campaign where the announcement of the selection of Joe Biden as the Vice Presidential candidate was not released to the national news media on a Friday evening to maximize news coverage as had been the norm going back decade. Instead, it was broadcast via Twitter to the campaigns millions of followers at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. On that date in August 2008, the traditional news media and its filter of reporters and editors serving watch over the campaign news that it would deliver to citizens officially became irrelevant to the campaigns. The Obama team went directly to supporters with its message unfiltered.

Get-out-the-vote campaigns have a lot in common with the efforts of businesses to reach potential leads and turn them into active customers. With a wide set of tools in their toolbox, ranging from traditional print and broadcast ads to direct mail to digital strategies, executives struggle to know which activities will be most successful. Here’s where they can learn the most from campaigns.

Starting in 1998, a team of political scientists led by Alan Gerber and Donald Green began experimenting with various get-out-the-vote techniques to see which were the most effective. They compared, for example, the effectiveness of calls from a paid call center, a piece of direct mail, and a home visit (this began before the age of digital marketing strategies, of course). The biggest surprise was that having people knocking on doors boosted voter turnout by nine percent—a huge increase in political terms. Least effective were impersonal techniques, such as generic mailings and phone calls from paid, script-reading workers.

What did work? Personalized, inquisitive and engaging communications targeted to the consumer were most effective. Even simple tasks such as thanking a voter for their previous support had a significant impact.

The lessons are clear and shouldn’t be surprising. Developing campaigns that speak directly to a key audience, that is personalized and talks about their particular needs, is the most effective way to reach and motivate customers.

The Republican National Convention has wrapped up in Tampa, Florida, after last night’s big speech by Mitt Romney. And perhaps more than anything else, the week was an attempt by the GOP to shape its own brand and message on its own terms. So how’d they do? For answers, let’s bring in Don Goldberg. He’s a branding and marketing strategist with BlueText in Washington. He says the goal was to attract the women vote and bring in more young people. “What they needed to do was put up a bunch of good spokespeople who could could send those messages to those audiences,” Goldberg says. “That’s the kind of thing that we would tell them to do if they were a company.” He says Sen. Marco Rubio, who was the main person to introduce Mitt Romney, is very charismatic and therefore appealing to young voters. At the same time, there were a lot of mixed messages, he said, especially in actor/director Clint Eastwood’s appearance in which he appeared to be lecturing an empty chair meant to represent President Obama. That didn’t appeal to either of the target audiences, Goldberg says. Hear more details in the audio above.

To PR or Not to PR?

I’ve had a number of client prospects over the last several months ask me to deliver a PR campaign “just like the one we do for Adobe.” Yet, I’ve counseled them that this may not be the best use of their limited budget. Like many agencies across the industry, Bluetext has deep roots in traditional public relations—the time-honored tradition of taking story ideas for our clients to reporters and hoping that they write positive articles that highlight what our clients are doing. But in today’s media market, just how useful is traditional public relations?

Here are some of the challenges:

• There are fewer news outlets to go to.
• There are fewer reporters at each outlet.
• The number of PR firms hasn’t declined, so the competition is tougher.
• People don’t read publications nearly as much as they used to.
• The trend is going away from news outlets.
• There are many more options for reaching the audience directly.

On the other hand, getting an article published has a lot of intrinsic value—it’s validation for your client, it is great for search engine optimization, and is particularly good for social media and other marketing efforts.

On the third hand—if I can have a third hand—traditional public relations is resource intensive, and those resources may often be better spent on more targeted outreach activities.

So, to butcher the Bard a little, to PR or Not to PR? Here is what I tell clients:

• PR is still important. When real news can be made, by all means do so.
• If you are a well-known brand, PR is much easier—every reporter will take your call.
• If you are not a known brand, it is much more difficult, and the results may be disappointing unless you have legitimate news or a real story to tell. Reporters won’t write about your company just because you are there—they need to have a good reason.
• If resources are limited, save the traditional PR for something big, maybe once a quarter. Use the rest of your resources for a non-traditional campaign that will establish your brand.

That can be a clever online landing page design supplemented by banner ads to drive traffic. Or it can be a survey designed to make news, create interest, and generate leads. Develop a social media campaign that reaches audiences directly. Use video to your advantage…or all of the above.

The bottom line is that PR should be only one strategic arrow in your marketing quiver—not your only weapon.

I was recently asked to give some counsel to the International Association of Business Communicators on how companies and organizations should be preparing for crises—especially Scorpio horoscope 2005 advises forgetting about the problems for a while, to think the situation over and study it properly, without taking final decisions and pronouncing sharp judgments. in light of the Susan G. Komen issue as well as the scandal at Penn State.

A founding partner of Bluetext, Don Goldberg has helped many of the largest global corporations achieve their communications goals through public relations, media outreach, digital strategies and integrated marketing campaigns. In his 25-years in Washington, he has led companies and organizations through communications challenges and reputational threats, and helped position clients for success in the commercial, government and policy arenas. Don began his career as an award-winning journalist before serving for more than a decade as a senior staff member on Capitol Hill.  During the Clinton Administration, he was appointed Special Assistant to the President, where he served on the communications team managing investigations and damage control for the White House.

Since leaving politics, Don has become one of the leading crisis communications experts in the nation, and is a frequent guest commentator on CNN, Fox News and other national news networks. His expertise includes helping major brands better position themselves before key audiences, whether government executives, policy makers, business leaders, regulators or consumers.