Communication Ammo, by Sean Williams

Two notable and influential people appeared to conclude in a series of Twitter posts today that strategy is not as valuable as execution.  Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) and @BethHarte traded quips this morning:

Where are the tactical folks?! Everyone seems to be an ‘analyst’ or ’strategist.’ Where are the people who actually implement? Not cool? about 4 hours ago via Seesmic (@BethHarte)

@BethHarte Don’t let my focus on strategy (to explain stuff) fool you. Strategy is a dime-a-dozen, and always falls apart anyway. about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck in reply to BethHarte (@thebrandbuilder)

@Note_to_CMO Exactly! So everyone sits around thinking, planning…and then it all falls apart because no on is “doing.” about 3 hours ago via Seesmic in reply to Note_to_CMO (@BethHarte)

You read my mind. Literally. RT @bigwags: Biz strategy like battle plans; they can’t survive contact w/the enemy…or the marketplace about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck

This is not a comprehensive list, nor is it in precise Tweet order – I just want you to get a sense of their thinking (and the others who apparently agree with them.)

Some of the aversion to strategy relies on a paraphrase of a quote from U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and the architect of the Allies’ winning strategy.  He said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” (http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/36892.html) The paraphrase usually reads, “All strategy is useless once the battle has begun.”

Not quite the same.

I don’t disagree that many organizations get into analysis-paralysis — they over study, over plan and over think when action is most critical. We see this in crisis communication all the time. Anyone read about, say, Toyota’s troubles?

But strategy is far from useless, and the ability to help people see a new path is critical (at least I hope it is!) Strategy shouldn’t be a straight-jacket, preventing people from changing direction or reaching for new tools. Good strategy is a destination that allows you to reach your objectives.

Tactics are your road map and your car and your hands and feet and eyes. But even the best of those essential things won’t help you if you don’t know where you’re going.

The ability to execute in business is certainly important — Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan wrote a great book on it, and so did James Kilts, Robert Lorber and John Manfredi). But they do not say that strategy never works.

Strategy gives you parameters and focuses your thinking. Strategy helps you better understand your customers and the environment in which you’re operating. It gives you context for decision-making.

It’s not useless at all.

Ever since the financial markets first froze in mid-2007, nearly collapsed in Sept. 2008 and rode a roller coaster in 2009, a tidal wave of anger has washed out rational discourse on the topic. My friend Mindy quipped, “They want heads on pikes. They want to see blood.”

This so-called “populist” anger at banks and “Wall Street” has a familiar tone to it. Fat Cat Banker is a standard phrase. President Franklin Roosevelt blamed the bankers for the Great Depression, and any significant downturn since has rekindled the fires of main street fury, some of it well-deserved.

But I’m troubled by the willingness to apportion the greatest share of blame to banks and bankers. Neither the cause of nor the solution to the financial crisis still gripping the U.S. and the developed world can be understood with examining the role of government.

The U.S. government wants more people to own homes — “The Ownership Society” is one where more people have skin in the game, a vested interest in their domiciles that makes them more stable, more involved citizens.  For many years, government has insisted that banks lend to people at the margins of financial capacity, a legacy of the shameful process of “redlining.” Redlining withdrew banks from lending in a given area, regardless of the potential creditworthiness of borrowers in that area. Add lending policies that were openly racist and you’ve got a problem that needed to be fixed.

The government, however, wasn’t content. It still wanted more people to get loans and buy things, because that’s how our economy has operated during the last 30 years. No consumer spending, no prosperity.  Getting people to buy during a period when their incomes weren’t rising much if at all means they need to borrow — and what better way to borrow than to take advantage of soaring real estate values?

So the government creates programs to shift lending risk — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — so that banks could make loans and get repaid very early, even as they retain the servicing rights to the loans; you’re still writing the check to the bank, but your loan is no longer on the books. Fannie and Freddie then sell blocks of loans to investors, further removing the bank and the agencies from the risk. The investors love the stable returns and hedge their risk by buying insurance — credit default swaps or “derivatives” — to insulate their income stream from the original borrower’s ability to pay.

When the borrower hits hard times, what happens? Who is to blame when the interrelated instruments start to fall apart?

Some blame does go to the banks. They bought the securities and created the derivatives. Some blame goes to the government, for fostering a climate that led to a bubble in real estate and writing laws that led to a wild west risk environment. Some needs to go to borrowers who bought too much house with too much debt.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, a story about Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s political travails talks about a frame that makes him — a lifelong public servant — into an apologist for and a tool of Wall Street.  The financial bailout of the banks was a horrible moment, he says, but it worked. It stabilized the financial system, prevented what could have been a disastrous run on the banks (that’s really what put us into the Great Depression” and it’s costing a fraction of the $700 billion budgeted for it. The banks are doing better financially, and they’re paying the money back to the Treasury with interest.

But we live in a “fact-irrelevant” society these days, and in Washington, few seem to care about making good government. The Congress — with its desire for public hangings, preferably of bankers — seems willing to abrogate contracts and violate its own laws in order to put heads on pikes, spinning.  And they’re relying on half-truths, mis-characterizations, and crafted frames to do it.

Our public relations toolkit shouldn’t be used in this fashion. It’s dishonest.

Besides, why invest so much effort in revenge? Confucius said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

Amid the mad whirl that surrounds the new semester (teaching PR Tactics at Kent State), the push to finish a paper on PR theory in social media, and reconnecting with people after the holidays, my online brand seems pretty healthy.  I’ve got a fair posse of followers on Twitter, connections on Linked In, a good history of seeding comments on interesting blogs, and a decent batch of posts of my own on this humble blog.  But 10 months into the “become an entrepreneur” adventure, I’m noting a little dampness on my brow.

It’s flop sweat.

I’m having the “omigosh, is this all going to work in the worst economy in 30 years? What do I do if it doesn’t work? Am I doing all I can to be successful?” blues.

Of course, I also know from past experience that attempting to make life decisions in our northern U.S. winter is generally a bad idea. If it weren’t for a strong aversion to living places where there is no variance in weather, I probably should be in Arizona, or someplace like that.  Still, notwithstanding the seasonal component of the sense of fear and loathing, I’ve taken stock of how I spend my days.

As much as I’d like to be wrong, I’m not sure that at this stage of the development of my company I can rely on my current online activity to build my business. I need to pick up the phone and make more personal connections with my contacts, ask for referrals, buy people coffee and generally expand the more proven business development activity.

Perhaps that’s no news at all for the Social Media intelligentsia. And maybe I’m just not giving enough of the calendar time to pass.  But, the authorities frown on eating your followers (is there an app for that? Don’t answer.)

So, what’s that mean?

I’ve never been a prolific blogger — I think I average about a post a week most times — but I have been the Mad Tweeter on occasion, and have observed that it’s a bloody addictive and seductive tool. I like reading interesting things and commenting on them! I’ve also not been much of a link-baiter, and I haven’t Tweeted my own posts very scientifically.  Probably as a consequence, my blog traffic is quite a bit lower than I’d like, and it’s trended lower throughout the fall of 2009 despite some interesting comment conversations and much appreciated RTs from the aforementioned posse.

Where I’m landing (and where I’d appreciate some different perspectives) is to ease back on the Twitter-traffic and make a more disciplined to-do list every day, reserving roughly half of my current Twitter-time for more analog activities.

Like most people in our profession, I didn’t get into this gig to be a cold-calling sales dude. But Cash Is King, as Goodyear’s strategy reads, and I need to get some.

Talk me out of it?

“It’s just too complicated and difficult.”  So began a conversation with a frustrated colleague, struggling to keep tabs on the myriad communication vehicles sprouting like mushrooms in a damp glade.  I asked, “What’s complicated about having so many choices? Choices are good, right?”  He didn’t think so.

I have to admit, our profession was a little easier to execute back at the beginning of my communication career. As an internal communications specialist, we had a print newsletter that represented 90 percent of our communication activity, followed by VHS videos and a mainframe email bulletin board that no one really used.  Oh, and we got faxes from Corporate, copied them and walked the tower delivering the latest announcements.

Externally, we did news releases and media advisories, called reporters and tried to get a haystack full of clips to demonstrate our superior abilities. Once in a while, we’d do a news conference.  Yes, this was before the Dawn of Time Itself.

These days, you hear someone talking about “The New Twitter Whatever,” and the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Twitter? Is it passè already? Where exactly will this new method of communication fall alongside Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, De.lic.ious, Posterus, Amplify, Yelp, Yammer, YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace, YourSpace, HisSpace, HerSpace GLBTSpace, and all the other stuff?

The answer (write this down now) is: Use the method that fits the objectives for your audience.

Think about the end result — the objectives of your communication — and walk through the strengths and weaknesses of these different methods.

• Outcome – Increased enrollment in 401(k) plan
• Method – Newsletter article, intranet quiz, reprint of magazine piece, video explanation from CEO, in-person meeting with representative

In the scenario above, which method is likely to work best? You may choose more than one, but if you could only choose one, which would it be?

• Outcome – More qualified prospects
• Method – TV news piece, trade publication story, customer referral request, Twitter campaign, CEO blog

I’m oversimplifying the issue.  There are a number of intermediate steps between more generalized communication activities and the outcome we see here.

There is no doubt that the ever-increasing modes of communication are making PR people’s lives more challenging. But the thought process, considering each method through the prism of the desired outcome is the path to choosing well.

The debate over how best to measure the effectiveness of media relations has encompassed multiple streams of thought, moving from saying “it’s impossible,” all the way to saying, “it’s quantifiable.” Unfortunately, advertising value equivalency (AVE) became a popular means of applying dollar figures to unpaid media. You take the number of column inches in print, time of mention in broadcast, or space on a Web page occupied by the mention of the company or organization in question, and ask, “How much would we have had to pay to take out an ad of equivalent size/time?”

The AVE practice has been under attack by some of us, poorly understood by others, but more widely used in PR agencies than many would like to think. It even was formally condemned by the Institute for PR Measurement Commission this fall.

AVE has major flaws — measurement experts (including one notable, even famous one) have decried the practice and detailed why frequently. I’ll not repeat the argument here. This paper provides those details in part. Instead, I’ll merely say that even with substantial adjustments to methodology, it never represented a business outcome, was based on an assumption of equivalent understanding on the part of the receiver, and was wholly unsuited to describing success in social media. That alone was a huge problem for me.

The thing is, there is substantive research that supports the idea that editorial content about a product and an ad are perceived similarly by receivers.  A paper by Dr. Don Stacks and Dr. David Michaelson (albeit based on one experiment) found ads and editorial to be equally effective in generating interest in a new product. If that’s so, evaluating the PR placement in comparison to ad cost makes sense. PR costs orders of magnitude less than advertising.

Two papers by Angela Jeffrey, Dr. Stacks and Dr. Michaelson explored the linkages between volume of media coverage and share of media coverage and business outcomes (such as unit sales, tickets sold, etc.) and included media cost data in calculations.  This set the stage for a controversial finding: Media costs improved correlations, significantly.

Now, Jeffrey, vice president of research for VMS, and Dr. Brad Rawlins, Brigham Young University, and Bruce Jeffries-Fox of Jeffries-Fox Associates, have written a brilliant paper further detailing the relationship between cost and outcomes, with four case studies.  The “Weighted Media Cost” has a strong effect.  From the paper:

…if we’re getting better results with costs for purchasing media space and time data, should we…set new parameters for its proper use?”

Emphatically, yes. The paper, written in a very approachable and intuitive style, makes a compelling case.

Read the paper if you care at all about measurement in our profession.