Two ways for small organizations to keep marketing themselves when money is tight

Small to mid-size businesses and not-for-profit organizations affected by the recession need more than ever to strategically market themselves. But just like it seems counter intuitive to many people that the federal government has stepped-up spending during the hard times our country now faces, many leaders of small organizations feel it’s more logical at this time to save by cutting-back on their marketing expenditures. They have a point. They can actually go out of business if they spend too much during lean times. Unlike the federal government, they can’t simply print more money and delay paying off debt until way into the future.

On the other hand, if small organizations don’t do anything to stimulate the support of their prospective and existing clients and funders, their current situation will only get worse and, when times get better, they will emerge from the recession in a weakened state vis a vis their competition and they may not be able to survive after all.

What’s the answer? In my opinion, when times are tough small organizations should minimize what they spend on buying traditional print or broadcast advertising, direct mail promotions and printed marketing support materials. Instead, they should maximize their efforts both to gain free exposure in the media and to utilize the Internet.

Developing and executing a public relations strategy either in-house or with an outside counselor requires only a fraction of the investment it takes to develop an advertising campaign. It can give an organization a distinctive persona by presenting its key messages through media outlets such as radio, TV, magazines, newspapers and journals. Public relations’ biggest advantage is that it can establish or add to an organization’s credibility with the public by telling its story through the media outlets that the public already knows and relies on for information.

Exploiting the free aspects of the Internet is another cost-effective way to market an organization. It can be accomplished by simply maximizing the public exposure of an organization’s Web site (on search engines and on all organizational communications), by enhancing the user-friendliness of the organization’s Web site, by creating an e-newsletter, by developing an online community through blogs and other social media tools, and by creating new interactive functions for making sales, accepting donations, conducting surveys, or registering people to participate in organizational events.

PR and Internet marketing are two ways to keep an organization’s name and key attributes in front of its target audiences that don’t have to break the bank. Of course, nothing is completely free. Each endeavor requires the time and effort of either in-house staff or outside consultants – - but this cost can be recouped many times over with a well-planned and carefully executed communications strategy.

All the world is a stage

Last Thursday night I watched the widely varied reactions that people interviewed on the news shows had to President Obama’s Cairo speech. On Saturday, I attended “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway. They were remarkably similar experiences for me.

In each instance, the happiness or unhappiness of the people interviewed on the evening news and of the characters in the play depended less on what they heard (from Obama or the other characters in the play) than on how they responded to what they heard. And, in many cases, how they responded made little sense to me.

The reactions to Obama’s speech ran the gambit from paranoia to skepticism and cynicism all the way to optimism. Some people from around the world and the U.S. were disappointed and disturbed by what the President had to say while others were happy and hopeful. Personally, I thought the speech eloquently conveyed an appropriate message about shared responsibility for the past and about the need going forward to look at things through a lens of mutual interest and mutual respect in order to improve Muslim-U.S relations and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I fully expected that to be the dominate opinion of others and was surprised to learn that more than just a few felt quite the opposite.

In “Waiting for Godot,” the characters’ perceptions of what they saw and heard were all over the place and left me with the unsettled feeling that reality resides all too often only in the eye of the beholder and that it’s near impossible to be certain about what’s universally real – - and, since we can’t be certain about much, we don’t usually say and do meaningful things.

Why what unfolds on stage in “Waiting for Godot” and how people reacted to Obama’s speech struck a similar chord in me has to do with the fact that they both illustrate innate flaws in the way we humans perceive situations – - especially conflict-ridden situations like Muslim-U.S. and Israeli-Palestinian relations. Uncertainty about how these conflicts will be resolved is discomfiting and elicits a wide ranging set of fears and hopes.

Obama’s speech may have accomplished all that can be done at this point. It compelled people on both sides to respond to his overall message that all sides share responsibility for current conditions because they perceived and reacted to reality in inherently flawed ways. With this unassailable fact so publicly stated and acknowledged on the “world stage,” the time is right to multilaterally act swiftly with concrete steps, no matter how small, that begin to address the most obvious imperfections in existing policies and practices. Otherwise we’ll just continue to wait for some unimaginable resolution along with Estragon and Vladimir.

Neither one extreme nor the other

Are you getting tired of news interviews with public figures who, rather than directly address the questions they’re asked, respond to questions with their own talking points? I know I am – - even though I’ve advised many of my clients over the years to do just that.

I’m not sure what has altered my thinking but it may have something to do with the rise of the news-as-entertainment business. These shows filter the issues of the day through either a conservative or liberal lens and attract audiences by highlighting conflict and extreme points of view. Rush Limbaugh pits Colin Powell against Dick Cheney and FOX network commentators suggest that government intervention in the financial crisis and the health care system mark the first steps toward socialism. Liberal media outlets deify President Obama as shamelessly as the conservative media attack him and his policies. I believe that the proliferation of the type of media that’s specifically for liberals or specifically for conservatives has been harmful to the public dialogue and exacerbates the problem of unproductive partisanship in our government. It encourages the formation of extreme positions.

We face serious problems on the domestic and international fronts that require the country’s conservative and liberal leaders to grow up and put their heads together to come up with solutions we all can live with. I think the time has come to forget about staying on message and start addressing the big issues from the broadest possible perspectives and answering the tough questions thoughtfully and honestly.

This is what I now advise my clients to do instead of simply recommending that they only answer questions from the perspective of their special interests. I encourage them to try to answer the question (unless it’s hypothetical) first before getting to their talking points. This is what I believe the public wants and what puts my clients’ messages in a framework that comes across as responsive, unbiased and not as self-interested as many of the interviewees seem to be nowadays.

Communicating during a crisis

In the best of all possible worlds, everything written or spoken about your organization would be positive. But, let’s face it, mistakes occur, accidents happen and crises can strike out of the blue. And there’s not much your organization can do to change this reality.

But organizational leaders can change how they react to bad situations. That’s where having a good grasp of some basic crisis communications guidelines becomes important. It can make the difference between upholding and even bolstering an organization’s reputation or damaging it.

Be prepared: The odds of minimizing the ongoing effects of a crisis are a lot better if you have a crisis communications plan in place. I am not talking about a huge binder of information but rather a short outline that can be used as an easy-to-follow reference guide. To be actionable, all it needs to include is a list of people to be contacted in the event of an emergency; a list of key issues that would require specific actions (e.g., health, safety, or resource issues); a description of the most likely crisis scenarios for your specific line of work; and samples of public statements and key messages related to each scenario.

Be there: Make sure the most appropriate member of your organization is on the scene and available to speak to the public during emergencies. The more serious the emergency, the more sense it makes to have the CEO be the lead spokesperson. For instance, if it’s a financial crisis, your CFO might be the best choice. If it’s a life and death situation like a plane crash, then the CEO should be there to demonstrate his or her personal concern and involvement.

Speak up: Crises generally do not destroy organizations but lying to or stonewalling reporters could. Even when legal considerations prevent you from speaking, never cut the media off with “no comment.” If you at least explain why you can’t go into detail, reporters can then present some part of the picture so the public can understand your predicament. If you say nothing, you’re not going to get a fair shake and the public will think the worst.

Just the facts: Continuously state the facts as they unfold and don’t withhold bad news. Focus on the who, what, when, where, and how aspects of the crisis. Don’t speculate on the why since this could be construed as an admission of fault and possibly lead to litigation.

Control your message: To ensure that your organization presents a clear and consistent position during a crisis you need to:

• Speak with one voice. Appoint an official spokesperson and media contact person.
• Maintain a good filing system. Easy access to up-to-date information on your organization will help you furnish the media with accurate and timely background material.
• Think like a reporter. Ask yourself all the difficult questions that the most inquisitive of journalists would and practice how to calmly and most effectively answer them.
• Develop official statements. Use these statements during press conferences and media interviews. With written copies of the salient facts in hand, the media is less likely to misquote you.

Don’t forget about your other constituencies: During a crisis, it’s easy to become so wrapped up in responding to media inquiries or addressing the situation that you forget about your customers/clients and your employees. Your employees are your organization’s public face and therefore need to be kept abreast of the facts and to understand their implications.

Tips on handling interviews with the media

There are two kinds of interviews – ones you can prepare for ahead of time and ones that occur when a reporter calls you for a story he or she is working on at the moment.

In the case of a scheduled interview, ask the reporter upfront what the story is about and what kind of questions you will be asked. This will help you prepare and gather any facts and examples that might be helpful in supporting the points you might want to make. It’s a good idea to try to anticipate any thorny questions you might be asked and to run through a mock interview with a colleague or friend.

Even if a reporter who is working on deadline calls you for some information or for a quote, it’s a good idea to try to buy some thinking time. Ask about the deadline and what they’d like to know and tell the reporter that you will get back with a response well before the deadline.

Here are a few tried and true interview tips:

• State your key points first. Be concise and get to the point.
• Try to use colorful language with bold, short, catchy statements. Cite human-interest examples.
• Don’t assume that the reporter knows the topic and don’t hesitate to restate key points for emphasis.
• Volunteer important information without necessarily waiting for the reporter to ask the right questions. Reporters actually like to have information that adds to their story and prompts other questions.
• If an interview is on television, look at the reporter and not the camera.
• Take all calls from reporters. When you don’t, reporters won’t call in the future.
• Make sure you know the reporter’s audience and that you provide the information you want his or her audience to know.
• Don’t answer “what if” questions. They often lead to responses that you don’t want the public to hear.
• Avoid saying no comment, because reporters often think this means you have something to hide. You should simply explain why you can’t directly respond to certain questions.
• Avoid humor. It often backfires on nonprofessional humorists.
• Instead of thanking a reporter for a story (the media uses your story ideas because they’re newsworthy, not as a favor to you), you should simply compliment the reporter on how the story was handled – and it’s not a bad idea to send the reporter’s boss a note, copying the reporter, saying how professionally the issue was covered.
• Don’t ask to see a story before it’s printed or aired. Generally, media people don’t want anyone outside the newsroom to see stories before they appear for the public. It is reasonable to invite the reporter to call you back before the story goes public if clarification is needed on any quotes or key points.

The times they are a changing

One of the responsibilities of a public relations consultant is to keep clients apprised of important trends that may affect their organizations. And the trend now underway that in my view will have the most profound impact on American society is the cultural shift that’s being ushered in by the public’s outrage over the AIG bonuses. It’s not the bonuses themselves but what they symbolize – - the vast differences in income between the majority of working people in America and those like the AIG executives.

As the public gains more insight into the causes of our economic crisis and into how our under-regulated financial system has operated for the past 20-30 years, there will be an increasing demand for a fairer, more balanced economy. Similar to the 1960s when Bobby Dylan sang that “the times they are a changing,” a new spirit is emerging under the leadership of President Obama as more and more of the public understands that our country is facing a deep-seated economic emergency. The public is starting to recognize the need to change our institutions – especially the ones that govern our failed financial system.

The civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s and 70s were a protest against the stultifying social and cultural conservatism of the post-war years as well as an effort to close the gap between public sentiment and public policy. Public sentiment clamored against a resistant power structure for more liberal social and political institutions. This has occurred at other key moments in our nation’s history when either the conservative or liberal sphere of influence gained too much power and control over the other. Typically, conservative movements gain momentum during times of economic growth when the public sentiment seeks stability, security and is mostly concerned about the preservation of existing institutions. Liberal momentum gains force when public sentiment rebels against the status quo and demands changes that will improve conditions for those who don’t possess wealth and power.

The political scientist Samuel Huntington viewed conservatism as the essential defender of what now exists (i.e., the existing power structure) and liberalism as the defender of universal principles (i.e., personal freedom, fairness, opportunity). At various points in history, each has played a dominant role.

I believe liberal ideas and values will hold sway for the foreseeable future. We are at a point in time where the semanticist S.I. Hayakawa would say we need to “adjust our ways of thinking and acting so that institutional adjustment may be made realistically and rapidly, with a minimum of human suffering and a maximum of general benefits.”

In order to ride this on-coming wave of change to their advantage, organizations of all kinds should begin to think how to communicate in ways that meaningfully convey their understanding of which way the wind is blowing and that demonstrates their responsiveness to it. Organizations will need to operate transparently, be more responsive to the needs of their employees, and be held accountable for delivering high value products and services to their customers or clients.

Widespread concern over the outrageous consolidation of wealth and power symbolized by the AIG bonuses is in my opinion going to be a public rallying cry for public policies and private sector practices to be more responsive to the needs of moderate income workers and their families. Underway already, this trend is likely to continue to gain force and last well into the future.

A more coordinated communications effort makes even more sense in tough economic times

In tough economic times, smart organizations need to develop more synergy from their individual communications efforts by carefully coordinating their print, broadcast and online communications.

This is something that even the smallest business and nonprofit organizations must do. Ironically, smaller organizations often have the most fragmented communications. There are many understandable reasons for this but the biggest one boils down to a lack of resources.

Many small to mid-size organizations lack communications professionals on staff and when they engage outside support they frequently do it on a project-by-project, piece meal basis. For instance, one designer may be asked to create the logo and graphic identity and another to work on the printed materials and another to design a Web site. The same kind of approach is often also used for copywriting with the copy often created without collaboration between the writer and designer. These approaches generally result in a lack of strategic cohesiveness and stylistic consistency as well as in a failure to maximize the bang of an organization’s communications bucks.

To overcome this trap, many small to mid-size businesses and nonprofit organizations are forming strategic alliances with outside communications teams that can coordinate and integrate all of their communications functions. There are a growing number of communications groups such as Salius Communications that have the in-depth professional experience to help small to mid-size organizations communicate with their target audiences much more cost-effectively than they can by building an in-house staff, by hiring freelancers on an ad-hoc basis, or by using traditional ad agencies and PR firms.

Veteran professionals manage and implement every client engagement

Salius Communications assembles teams made-up exclusively of senior professionals who have the experience the client needs to solve specific problems. There are no junior staffers or interns with a long learning curve and no attempts to keep staffers employed – - even if they are not suited to the client’s immediate needs.

The primary benefits to smaller businesses and nonprofits of working on an ongoing basis with a communications group such as ours is that they can avoid the fixed costs of building an in-house capability and gain more communications consistency than they could from using individual freelancers. Custom-tailored communications groups that operate like Salius Communications also can provide small to mid-size clients with greater flexibility, more personal attention from senior people, and top-level quality for less money than traditional advertising agencies and PR firms need to charge.

Clients pay only for the products and services they need. I personally provide strategic communications planning, creative direction and project management services to ensure that all our clients’ messages and materials consistently align with and advance their organizational goals. As needed, I build teams of professionals with whom I have long-standing working relationships and who are well-suited to the specific needs of our individual clients.

A team of expert designers, new media specialists and PR training pros

For instance, in recent months more and more clients are turning to electronic media in an effort to communicate more economically through blogs, Web sites and e-mail newsletters. In response, we formed a team that has helped several small organizations to enhance their online exposure in ways that build upon their existing brand identities without breaking their marketing communication budgets. Besides me, the team includes Caresse Amenta of CLA design (graphic designer) and Suzanne Mamet of ThreeTree (new media technical specialist).

Other clients of ours want to handle their media relations in-house to save money. To help train them to do this effectively and consistently, my colleague Dick Pirozzolo, a public relations pro from the Boston area, and I have started the Public Relations Training Board (www.publicrelationstraining.org). The team of trainers we’ve assembled gives our client organizations the skills they need to generate positive newspaper, TV, magazine, and blog coverage without the high cost of hiring a big PR agency or a senior PR executive.

The bottom line is that smaller organizations need to continue to reach their target audiences regardless of the economic climate. And when times are tough, they need more than ever to take a coordinated approach to keep costs down and to maximize the impact of their individual communications efforts. Working with a custom-tailored communications team is one way to make this happen.

Fighting the public relations war together

None of the country’s Republican or Democratic leaders have yet asked for my public relations advice on how to gain public acceptance and support during the current financial crisis. When they do, I will tell them to start by demonstrating an authentic effort to cooperate with each other. The financial problems affecting the American public are too urgent, too widespread and too complex to handle like a typical political debate in Washington. The public wants and needs a national agenda – not a political agenda – that our Democratic and Republican leaders support with their words and actions. New, unprecedented and impactful legislative and executive initiatives need to be jointly designed and promoted.
The public is afraid and in no mood for the petty political differences that are impeding bold action from our leaders. Republicans have to stop their just-say-no approach. And the President and Congressional Democrats have to do more than just call for bipartisanship. They have to make it happen.
I think it’s great that the President is going to meet weekly with Pelosi and Reid. I think it’d be even better if Boehner and McConnell were included in these sessions. And I agree with what Tom Friedman hoped for in his column yesterday. He wanted to read the following news in his morning paper: “President Obama announced today that he had invited the country’s 20 leading bankers, 20 leading industrialists, 20 top market economists and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate to join him and his team at Camp David. ‘We will not come down from the mountain until we have forged a common, transparent strategy for getting us out of this banking crisis,’ the president said…”
This would create public confidence. As I said in an earlier posting, good public relations begin with cooperation. Unresolved conflict results in bad public relations. If both Republicans and Democrats hope to emerge from the financial crisis with a respectable share of public favor, they need to be able to point to how they worked together to solve the serious problems we’re facing. The parties need to stop worrying about who wins the individual battles and to start jointly concentrating on winning the big war for financial stability and public confidence.

Good communications, productive collaborations

Partnerships, joint ventures and collaborations make more sense today than ever. The majority of businesses and not-for-profit organizations are struggling to accomplish their missions with diminished financial resources. Joining forces with other organizations can be a cost-effective way to leverage assets, increase income, reduce expenses, improve efficiency, or to operate on a broader scale and scope than an organization can achieve on its own. It can also be a waste of valuable time and effort if communications between and among the participating entities is not open, honest, clear, frequent, and credible.

Here are five basic steps to take that foster good communications and cooperation and help avoid the type of inter-personal and inter-organizational conflict that can derail a promising joint effort:

1. Schedule mandatory regular meetings.
2. Define what results the group effort will achieve in the short term and over time and how the results will be measured. It’s important to write this down and frequently re-visit it to ensure that all parties remain committed.
3. Identify at each meeting what specifically needs to be done next by whom and by when.
4. Require each member organization to report on its activities since the last meeting.
5. Produce and distribute a written progress report before each meeting that flags problems and opportunities, summarizes the previous meeting and includes an agenda for the next meeting.

Collaborations that diligently follow these relatively obvious and easy-to-implement steps tend to stay together and achieve their desired results while minimizing conflict and misdirection.

The time is right for communications that stress our commonalities

Supposedly, F. Scott Fitzgerald once told Ernest Hemingway that, “The rich are different from you and me” and Hemingway famously responded by saying, “Yeah, they have more money.” This exchange has come to my mind several times in recent years as I provided communications support to philanthropic organizations and public programs that address issues related to poverty. I’ve come to recognize that the greatest communications challenge in generating widespread and sustained public support for the effort to alleviate poverty is changing the public perception that the poor are different from the rest of society.

Until the majority of the middle and upper income American public rejects the kind of mystique surrounding the poor that Fitzgerald applied to the rich, there’s little chance of significantly reducing poverty in our country. To re-phrase Hemingway, the poor are different simply because they have less money. And they have less money because they have fewer opportunities to acquire it through proper education and supportive social systems. The many worthy poverty-fighting programs, practices and policies of our leading philanthropies and government entities are not going to bring about the degree of change that is needed without a huge wave of public identification with the plight of the poor.

With our current deep recession, I believe that we are at a point in time that presents an opportunity unprecedented since the Great Depression to tell the stories of the poor in ways that reinforce our common humanity and that generate the public and political will to meaningfully address the many issues surrounding poverty in our country. Maybe in the 1980s we could snicker when Michael Douglas’s character in the movie Wall Street says “Greed is good.” In 2009, we see all too clearly the ill effects of greed on our lives and on the lives of our families, friends and neighbors as well as on our entire financial system. Our retirement investments are taking nose dives while people we know and care about are losing their jobs, their homes and facing realities that the poor have always faced – - fear and insecurity.

From a communications perspective, the current economic conditions make the time right for a national dialogue about both the rich and the poor in America – - and about what can realistically be done to close the gap between these groups that has grown so dangerously large in recent years. The public is listening more attentively than ever. Our institutions need to seize the moment and communicate messages that accentuate the connections between the lives of the haves and the have-nots with the goal of trying to reverse the national mindset of the past several years where the rich were unduly venerated and the poor were unjustifiably ignored.