News & Opinion

by Dorian Cundick Our friends in marketing have been conducting observational research for years, and now leading communicators are following suit. Think of it as a tactical adaptation bred of a Darwinian necessity—it’s a messaging jungle out there, and if we are to survive we must be ruthlessly in touch with our stakeholders’ realities so we can somehow influence them with our words and images. ? Why mingling with the people is essential. Let’s run down your listening checklist. Social media monitoring? Focus groups? Polls? Surveys? All of these are informative and essential ways to listen. It’s also important to be aware of what we may not be getting from these channels. Surveys and polls are limited by what we thought to ask people, how we asked it and how they interpreted it, by the means available to them to express what they were truly thinking. Focus groups likewise are very controlled and confined by what we are asking and how. And they are generally composed of a sample group—a bunch of people who don’t know each other and are therefore a little less open. Social media monitoring is critical and brings in more information than ever before—with more and more context, as the technology and possibly our monitoring budget catch up. But, as with other channels, the voices coming through social media carry bias—self-selecting for people who frequent those spaces and are inclined to speak up—and choose to represent themselves a certain way, while we just have to take their word for it. Observational learning can fill in a lot of gaps and provide a reality check to help make sense of all this other data we have coming in. ? How do your practice observational learning? Observational learning is simply watching your stakeholders in their natural environment. That may be following a customer around for a day to see how her or she interacts with your products and services at home, or how they travel or go to the bank. It may be hanging out with employees at work and listening to them on the phone, watching them interact with clients or observing how they actually interact with colleagues to get their work done. You can do focus group-reminiscent activities as well, but with a spin—pull together people who already know each other into and just get them talking. Ask some provocative questions, then sit back and listen. Set a camcorder on a shelf and just let it roll so that you have compelling evidence to share with your team and business partners later on. And it will be compelling, because people who know each other well and are given room to run will talk. And talk and talk and complain and opine and make associations we hadn’t anticipated and use all the layman words we would never dream of using as an official, self-respecting corporation. Try getting that from a survey. So loiter in the break room at one of your manufacturing facilities or have some key investors who know each other meet you for dinner at their favorite restaurant. You’ll walk away with insights about their thinking you would not have otherwise, and probably some great vocabulary to flip around and use on them in your messaging. That’s how you cut through the noise and get people to pay attention to what you have to say. I know that you’re thinking about logistics. You are more than welcome to hire a vendor to do this for you, but we’ve heard from several teams who do this successfully that they do this on their own and on a shoestring budget. Designate two team members to go on a few listening visits, or maybe team up with a few marketing colleagues and simply take turns taking a day out of the office. What’s more fun than that?

WHO:              Residents in Westchester, Playa Del Rey and surrounding areas along with all NBA fans WHAT:           Want to test your shooting skills against four-time NBA All-Star Pau Gasol? Now’s your chance. Gasol will be at the Westchester Recreation Center on Dec. 11 at 4 p.m. challenging a few lucky fans to a game of S-P-R-I-N-T (a.k.a. H-O-R-S-E). If you can't make the shooting contest, don’t worry; Gasol will be at the Sprint store in the Grand Ladera Shopping Center (5381 Centinela Ave., Los Angeles, 90045) at 6 p.m. signing hero cards for fans. The event is free and the public is invited to attend. WHEN:          Wednesday, Dec. 11 (4-7 p.m.) 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. – Westchester Recreation Center – Game of S-P-R-I-N-T 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. – Sprint Store – Autograph Signing WHERE:         Westchester Recreation Center                              Sprint Store 7000 W Manchester Ave                                            5381 Centinela Ave Los Angeles, CA 90045                                             Grand Ladera Shopping Ctr. Los Angeles, CA 90045 WHY:              As Sprint continues to build out its all-new 3G and 4G LTE network, and in the spirit of the holidays, Sprint is giving back to the community by hosting two events featuring NBA All-Star Pau Gasol. Sprint launched 4G LTE in Los Angeles earlier this year and recently in Santa Ana and Anaheim. Sprint currently provides LTE services in 230 cities nationwide and expects to cover 200 million people by the end of 2013.  For the most up-to-date details on Sprint’s 4G LTE portfolio and rollout, visit www.sprint.com/4GLTE.

By Jessica Lawlor Want a glimpse into the future of what's hot in PR, marketing, and social media for 2014? I'll let you in on a little secret: The future is already here, and brands must get on board now. In the past few weeks, I've had the privilege of attending two fantastic conferences that left me feeling inspired, engaged, and ready to take action. First, I attended the Public Relations Society of America International Conference in Philadelphia. Then I traveled to Huntsville, Ala., for the Social Media Tourism Symposium (#SoMeT13US). At these conferences, I heard from big-name speakers including Brian Solis, Jay Baer, and Mack Collier, along with PR and social media professionals down in the trenches at agencies and tourism offices. A few major themes emerged from both conferences. Here's what you must know about the top five PR and social media trends for 2014: 1. Let your brand's superfans help do your marketing/selling for you. Who better to promote your product/service/destination than the people who are already head over heels in love with it? A brand's superfans — the people who talk about them online, advocate for their products, and spread the word however they can — are a powerful marketing and selling tool. As Mack Collier, the founder of #BlogChat and author of "Think Like A Rockstar," said in his Social Media Tourism Symposium keynote, "You're marketing to the wrong people…the real money is in connecting with your biggest fans. Your fans will go out and acquire new customers for you." Collier encouraged the brands at the conference to love those fans right back. Connecting with your superfans, giving them the tools to best help you, and treating them like gold go a long way. There are a few brands I am completely loyal to that I write about often on my blog. (Dunkin' Donuts,Temple University, and FatCow immediately come to mind.) I genuinely love all three of these brands and am happy to spread the word about them on my blog and social media accounts because I love their products, am a fan of their online and offline strategy, and appreciate the ways they connect with me as a consumer. 2. Give up control of your brand. Mack Collier went on to explain that brands must give up control to get control. Kind of scary, right? As communication professionals, our job is to protect the brands we represent, so the idea of giving up control can make a marketer feel a little uneasy. It's an important concept and one we must accept and embrace if we want our brands and companies to succeed. A trending topic at both conferences was the idea that your fans and community own your brand just as much as you do. Fans now have the ability to create their own content (videos, tweets, posts, etc.) about your brand. The key here is to really take a hard look at your strategy for working with your brand's superfans (see point No. 1 above). If you create content geared specifically toward those fans (key word: fans, not customers) and give them the tools to promote you, they will do it in a way that reflects on your brand positively. Remember, it's all about trust and giving up a little bit of control. Coincidentally, Mack wrote a post about this very topic after attending the Social Media Tourism Symposium, so head over to his blog to learn more about this idea. 3. Think about content more strategically, and plan for the long term. After attending a session on how content is developed, curated, and promoted at #SoMeT13US, I was inspired by two tourism organizations that have an incredible content strategy. Presenters from Travel Oregon andMiles, on behalf of the Louisiana Office of Tourism, showcased their incredibly organized content calendars, all the way from big themes for the year down to the nitty-gritty daily Facebook posts and tweets. What I took away from this session was the idea that in order to make the most impact, we must be more strategic and think ahead for the long term. We must have a content plan. But more than having a plan for what content we want our brand to share, we must have a plan for which platformsthe content will be posted and shared on. One of the presenters, Theresa Overby, shared her smart "rule of three": If you create a piece of content, you must use it on at least three different platforms/channels. In terms of how to create all that content especially if your team is not big enough to be churn out tons of original content on a daily basis? The presenters suggested finding a balance between original and curated content. Again, we go back to No. 1 and No. 2 above about using those superfans or brand ambassadors and allowing them to create content for your brand. 4. We have to be smarter about using data. There's a running joke among PR pros that we got into communication because we're bad at math. In general, many of us are fonder of words than of numbers — but that's changing. A major theme at the PRSA Conference this year was that as PR pros, we must learn to love numbers and understand how and why using data can be an extremely powerful tool. As my friend, author of The Future Buzz and Googler Adam Singer said during the session, "Data is sexy…because data equals more money." Numbers can help tell a story when working with the media, and numbers can justify a larger budget and more staff/resources at an organization. Instead of shying away from analytics, statistics, and numbers, we must insert ourselves into those conversations and gain access to the tools to help us better understand the data driving the success of our organizations. 5. Just be useful. This tip is simple and timeless. In boosting our brands, we must just be useful to our customers and fans. Jay Baer delivered the opening keynote at #SoMeT13US and explained the concept behind his bookYoutility. He said, "Youtility is marketing so useful, people would pay for it." He gave an awesome example of Youtility by showing us his Facebook newsfeed. As he scrolled, he showed the audience a message from a company, followed by a status update from a friend, followed by another company, then an update from his wife, another friend, and another company. His point here was that everything is blended now. Messages from brands we love are mixed in with messages from our family and friends. If you're useful and provide information that your customers are looking for, they will respect you and, ideally, purchase from you. He urged marketers to use their online tools to provide utility first and to promote themselves second.    

By Tam Henderson What’s the first thing you did when outsourcing your PR? Did you Google “PR agencies”? Perhaps you visited a couple of slick websites, looked up their credentials, felt impressed by the big-name clients, then shortlisted a few based on first impressions? Then, seduced by sleek offices and sharp-suited PR directors, you reached for your checkbook, reassured by the aroma of expensive Italian coffee and leather boardroom chairs. Because PR is expensive right? Having worked for top agencies for many years before moving in-house, I’ve seen both sides of the coin. That’s why I believe many small to mid-size companies are hiring above and beyond their requirements. PR is a reputation-based industry like no other. You can’t beat a clever, slick website and swank offices to get new clients excited. But herein lies the point: We are the masters of spin. So business owners and entrepreneurs are often lulled into a false sense of security, ending up with a limited PR service that costs them dearly. Here’s why: 1. The obvious: cash flow.  Why pay through the nose for all that plush agency overhead? Hand-engraved business cards do not column inches make, nor is a posh ZIP code a journalist’s friend. If PR for you means being wined and dined, then by all means, go for it. If, however, you run a tight ship, downsizing to a one-man band or boutique agency will get you more bang for your buck. Plus, you can afford a hell of a lot more of that bang while you’re at it. More time equals better results. Which leads me to my next point—quality versus quantity: Why choose? 2. The honeymoon period.  Are you suffering from an itchy case of “pitch and switch”? A common affliction: A client is charmed by senior management, only to find itself relegated later to a separate team (often with vastly different experience). Suddenly you’re no longer the best thing since sliced bread, and you’re paying high-end fees for a box-fresh college graduate to handle your account. Independent PR pros are often seasoned professionals doing 100 percent of the legwork, from developing the idea to grabbing the headline—seamless implementation delivered with real-world aplomb. 3. Blood, sweat, and tears.  Freelancers are only as good as their last project. Media relations is their meal ticket. As they are 100 percent accountable for every outcome, there is nowhere to hide. Most will fight tooth, nail, and bone to get your name where it counts, and without a 9-to-5 mentality, they’re always looking for new opportunities to get an edge over the competition. The PR world is fickle. Reputation is everything. 4. Lightning-fast reaction times  Death by committee. Groupthink. Treacle like hierarchical decision-making. These and other things are reasons why a smaller PR resource can outperform a bigger one. PR is opportunistic. It’s about keeping your eyes, ears, and nose to the ground, spotting opportunities and jumping on them to maximize the chances of positive exposure for your brand. Freelancers have an always-on mentality. You’ll get lightning reactions and, yes, we’ll probably answer the phone at midnight. 5. Make a friend  The plethora of small PR companies means you have more choice than ever to find someone who matches not only your company’s objectives but also your personal ones. Trust and good relationships are crucial, so here is your opportunity to find someone you enjoy working with. The more positive the relationship, the more motivated the team and the more fruitful the collaboration—ergo, the better for your business. This is obvious, but it’s often overlooked. Next time you’re reviewing your PR, ask yourself whether you enjoy working with your agency. Did you inherit the relationship, or did it come as part of a package? Is the agency delivering on its promises and offering value for money? Go wild: Support independents, and find out why cutting back your PR could enhance your business.

by Richard Brownell PR professionals send out countless emails to journalists in the hope of garnering interest in their brand's story, often to hear nothing in return. Newsrooms are understaffed, media outlets are increasingly particular about the types of stories they run and reporters have hectic schedules. Generating attention for a story under these conditions requires an email pitch that leaps out of the pile and calls for action. At PR News’ recent Writing Boot Camp in Chicago, Katie Durkin, senior VP, lead media at Weber Shandwick, spoke about how to craft an email pitch that rises above the hundreds of messages that journalists receive. It all starts—and often ends—with the subject line. It needs to have a hook that grabs attention, and it must be free of fluff. Items that will keep a reporter from hitting the delete button straight away include mentioning an event, an interview with a major stakeholder or opinion leader, new data or the promise of exclusive information. The body of the email must begin with a lead sentence that has its own hook. "If a reporter isn’t intrigued by the end of the first sentence, you’ve lost them," Durkin told attendees at the boot camp. Make them care enough to read the rest of the message, but don’t give all the details up front. Make them curious enough to respond to you directly to learn more. "You should make the pitch as short as you possibly can," Durkin said. "Then, make it even shorter." The email pitch should focus on the story, not the brand. Avoid using all capital letters, and don’t send attachments or large files. It’s also important to remember that email pitches are only part of an overall pitching strategy. Reach out via social media and traditional means; try to establish a conversation with a journalist that can develop into a working relationship. Then garnering attention for your stories will get a little easier.

Jeanne Meister, author of The 2020 Workplace, provides executive education to HR leaders and high-potential managers to build the skills and capabilities needed for success in the workplace of the future. Her Generational IQ™ Program helps human resource professionals gain new insights into how working with multiple generations impacts their organization, their team and themselves. In this exclusive interview she tells Eric Schwartzman why social media policies aren’t necessarily the answer to spurring adoption and winning compliance, how social media is changing the human resources business and why social media literacy is the real goal organizations should be focused on. Eric:  How is social media changing human resources? Jeanne:  In the book “The 2020 Workplace” I look at 20 predictions for the workplace of the future. Prediction number 19, in no particular order, was that social medial literacy will be as common and ethics training and diversity training by the year 2020 and actually that there’s a momentum that’s really being surpassed by that prediction. When we made that prediction the book was launched at the end of 2010. Early on we’ve seen that the technology companies were the first to really think about social media literacy as a new skill set that their employees needed, so the Dell’s and the Zapoos’s and Intel’s were really first on with this. What I’ve seen over the last two and a half years is interest among consumer packaging companies as well as healthcare companies. I think human resources directors, the chief human resource officer now is recognizing that not only do employees need to build these skills, but, many of the individuals leading the human resource functions in Fortune 500 companies need to develop these skills for themselves. Eric:  Do they have those skills? Jeanne:  Often they don’t. Often they are lagging in really being social medial literate and understanding the impact of developing these skills to drive business results. It’s all about driving business results. I think the heads of HR are more focused on risk aversion, on compliance. What they and everybody else needs to focus on is “How can we teach our employees to use these new sites, to use internal social networks like Yammer and Jive and Chatter as well as external sites like LinkedIn to really drive social media and business results.” Eric:  What is social media literacy? Jeanne: I think of it as understanding how to use the tools in social media, both inside and outside the organization, in a safe and secure way to improve one’s performance on the job. Eric:  Given the very public nature of communications on social networks, if you’re steering and encouraging employees to do their jobs on public social networks, how do you manage those risks? Jeanne:  I think that the first step, what I’ve seen, is social media training around the organization’s social media policy or guidelines. I’m actually hearing that a lot of companies who formerly had a social media policy are steering away from that for a whole host of potential legal reasons, but they need to give employees some guardrails about what is safe to share, how to share, and, importantly, role model how to share to drive some business results. I’m reminded of the program that PepsiCo has had which has been somewhat controversial, in that they’ve trained people to use social media but really are looking for their employees to be social ambassadors for the Pepsi brand and really guiding them on how they can be ambassadors on external sights. You can see that employees may give you some push back, but with a company the size of Pepsi that’s 300,000 employees and let’s say each employee has at least, for this purpose, 250 friends on Facebook, wouldn’t it be great if you could make it easy for employee to share coupons, to share news about product launches with their friends? Eric:  I want to follow up on something you said earlier. You said a lot of companies were steering away from instituting social media policies. Can you talk a bit more about that? Jeanne:  What I’ve seen is that companies are questioning with their legal counsel, “Do we need a separate policy on social media, or do we have some guidelines for employees on how to use these internal and external sites in a safe manner? Really, we’re going to hire and fire employees based on our individual code of conduct. Do we really need something special on social media?” I think it’s just bubbling up as a series of questions that a chief communication officer, an HR officer, and a legal counsel are beginning to have. Do we need another formal policy where someone objects to it, or are we good enough to go with what we have in our code of conduct but then provide some guardrails on social media usage? Eric:  The code of conduct stuff is the easy stuff. The hard stuff is, “How do you discourage bulk posting? How do discourage paid links? How do you discourage paid endorsements?” Aren’t these are all things that are specific to digital and social media? Jeanne:  That’s part of your social media guidelines. It may be splitting hairs, but I think what I’m seeing, the undercurrent, is people just stepping away from calling it a policy to calling it something a little looser while still providing very detailed guidance on what you should or shouldn’t do. I think overall there’s unanimous agreement that we’re in the Wild West in a bit if we don’t provide our employees guidance. Let’s face it. Whether your company has a social media policy or not or whether your company even allows you to go on YouTube from your work computer, it’s irrelevant in these days of bring your own devices. Companies really need to understand and provide the guidance of what you can and what you can’t do in some form. Eric:  In your book you cover the fact that there’s going to be five generations in the workplace in 2020. Given that you’ve got these five generations all of whom have different levels of digital literacy, how do you develop a multigenerational training program that really allows you to effectively introduce all these different employees to the power of social media? Jeanne:  I think that one has to assume that the younger millennials are probably going to be more literate. One way to bring them into the process is to consider them the power users and think of them as the ambassadors for developing a social media literacy training program. They’re going to be the ones. Often, we see in the work we talk about, the growth in reverse mentoring programs, where millennials will actually mentor older senior executives. Often, the topic is around digital literacy or social media usage, or even using the latest cloud to improve one’s productivity, or the latest apps. For anyone out there listening, think of your millennials as mentors, reverse mentors, for those older traditionalists and Boomers that may not have developed this skill set as robustly as millennials have. Eric:  I love that idea because we’re dealing now with a generation that has grown up with the impulse to share every moment that’s noteworthy in their lives. However, what concerns me is that these folks are new to business and don’t really often understand the reasons decisions get made in the boardroom. They may not have the business maturity to understand what communications left online that never disappear could mean for them in a broader context, or worse yet, taken out of context. I wonder, is it dangerous to trust the millennials to lead us alone into this brave new world? Jeanne:  Assuming that you mean trust them totally, but I think that if you were to put yourself in the position of somebody who may still be working, a senior executive, age 55, relies on their kids when they have a tech?y question. They’re quite receptive to having some one?on?one on the nuts and bolts of finding your way around and using some of these tools. In no way do millennials set the stage here because let’s face it. They are living in a transparent world, but we all are. It drives home the point that millennials can be the reverse mentors, but that doesn’t take the place for an organization’s commitment to build social media literacy training across the enterprise. Think of it as a one?on?one opportunity. In no way it replaces a formal or informal program. One of the interesting companies I interviewed for that was Sprint. They have what they call their Ninja social media training program. What they shared, and what I’m also seeing with these other companies, is that it’s not enough to just have a one?time program. You really have to have an ongoing online community. There needs to be a place where people can go when they have those tough questions. They’re usually at a point in their workflow where they have a social media issue. They may have taken a program six months ago or six weeks ago, but they have that question now. I see this as a very robust area, which should live with not only formal programs, but informal ways to get quick knowledge. Eric:  Is there a role for social media in internal corporate communications? Jeanne:  Well, first of all, companies that are successful in having brought internal collaboration platforms, like Yammer and SAP, say a couple of things about their success in doing so. The first thing they often say is for these internal collaboration platforms to be successful, you must think that they are part of the workflow. These internal platforms are not another place to go. They are not another password to remember. They should be built into the way people view their jobs. That’s number one. The second is when they’re inside the organization, how can they have a business impact on some of the critical processes and use cases that executives care about? For example, on?boarding and recruiting, how can we use these collaboration platforms to speed up the time to competency for new hires? The second is how do we make key jobs, key roles, more productive faster, like allowing salespeople to share proposals faster, or allowing [indecipherable 16:43] a way to share best practices faster? There are some key use cases that we have to identify and understand. Figure out how those are aligned to our strategy and really focus on driving collaboration with those key processes. Those are just two. They’re certainly focusing on key roles that drive revenue, like sales, focusing on increasing time to competency in recruiting and on?boarding. Then a third one that often comes up is one in increasing the speed to innovation, getting those great ideas out there and acted upon faster. Overall, the overarching goal is we’ve got to change the way we work and really build more collaboration, online collaboration, into how we work and do our jobs in order to be successful. Eric:  What about all the new rules and regulations that the government is releasing concerning how organizations can and can’t and how employees can and can’t lawfully use social media professionally? If a company makes a mistake, they could be looking at hundreds of thousand dollars in legal fees alone, not including punitive damages or settlement costs. What’s the best for companies to keep their employees abreast abiding of the changing laws in this area? Jeanne:  What I’ve seen is looking at social media literacy as an annual program that also needs to be where someone gets certified and this social media skill set is also built into all new hire training programs. It’s actually something that Unisys has launched. Every company has a new hire on-boarding program. This is a logical place to put social media training. Why not certify one’s ability in social media literacy? But then we know how many things change and how often they change, so this is also an area that one needs to be recertified in, maybe even as frequently as every six months. Individuals that work for big companies are used to going through ethics training and being certified and complying with that every year. Why shouldn’t social media be doing the same thing? I would add to that that it really needs to happen on a six?month basis and not a year, because there’s too much change. Eric:  Of course, it’s not just the regulatory environment that’s changing. The platforms themselves change. We just got Facebook Graph Search. We just got Instagram video. They’re always changing. While the key concepts are pretty much the same, best practices and the how?to mechanics are in flux. If I’m at a big company where my core competency is not necessarily training or social media, it’s making cars, delivering electronic components, preparing tax returns or whatever it might be, does it make sense for that company to take on the burden of maintaining those trainings themselves internally, or do you think there needs to be some sort of a provider? How do you see that unfolding? Jeanne:  If you think about it, employees definitely come in different segments, especially when it comes to this topic. There is one segment that really needs deep knowledge. Think of them as maybe the brand managers that manage social media platforms for big brands. They really need to know exactly what you said ?? the latest and greatest on Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, and how to leverage these platforms to drive greater revenue and market share for their brand. But then there’s the individual that just wants to stay out of trouble, wants to be sure that they’re sharing things in a safe and responsible way, and wants to understand how to collaborate safely with other team members. Eric:  Where can people connect with you? Jeanne:  You can find me on www.FutureWorkplace.com or email me at Jeanne at FutureWorkplace dot com.

By Scott Signore We started working with a few new (and terrific!) clients in the past couple of months, and early reports indicate that all systems are go and we’re off and running positively. These same reports also indicate that our smart and savvy public relations and social media teams execute in a way that is a welcome change from the process, behavior and lack of results generated from the agencies previously supporting these companies. It’s important to show a new client that you are ready to roll, and here are a few ways for a new PR agency (and specifically, a new team!) to get things started on the right foot: First, embrace the new client/business/category with gusto – and show the client that you are sincerely interested. You should pay close attention to the client’s business objectives – first and foremost – but also key care-abouts of the new client. They may covet one specific blog over a pack of others, and one key message over the organization’s larger story. In any case, taking tactical steps to let the client know you are paying close attention as you ramp-up and get started is key. Second, be responsive. I’m unwavering in my belief that client service continues to be hugely important in our business. It’s essential to a successful working relationship, and equally important at the start of a project or an ongoing program. Be smart and strategic, but respond with enthusiasm so the new client “gets” that they are a priority in your day. Third, be certain you are thoroughly prepared for all of your meetings/calls/etc. Give the new client confidence by being on your game. Have a game plan for the start of the program – in a logical order so the new client knows what to expect. Fourth, work hard to land the big hit – or specific result – early in the working relationship. Identify what that result specifically is, and do what you can to make it happen. Once a new client sees first hand that you can generate results that make a real impact, you’ve strengthened a new relationship and provided a powerful shot of optimism about the team’s abilities! Fifth, start the ball of enthusiasm rolling forward. I’ve seen it happen so many times in my career that partnering with an agency was the catalyst for positive things happening on both sides of the relationship. The communications and product teams were active, engaged and enthusiastic about partnering with the PR and social media team, and all parties worked together for joint success. Be positive in your approach and embrace the new client, category and task at hand, as the positive vibes will go a long way.  

By: Laura Hale Brockway, PR Daily I recently attended a presentation called Maximizing Mental Agility by Dr. Art Markman, a cognitive scientist and author of the book “Smart Thinking.” Markman describes “smart thinking” as the content of what you know and how you use it. This differs from intelligence, which is typically measured by testing abstract reasoning skills, “independent of your specific knowledge.” Markman explains that by developing “smart habits,” you can improve your work performance, decision making, and creativity. An example of a “smart habit” is to avoid multitasking. It seems we do not function optimally when we multitask; the brain is better at time sharing. When you sit down to do your “smart” work—tasks that require focus and concentration, such as writing and editing—eliminate distractions and stop multitasking. Because email is one of the biggest distractions in the modern workplace, one of Markman’s “smart habits” is not answering emails immediately. For example, I am a morning person, and I do my best work when I first arrive at the office. I often put off more complicated editing or writing assignments until the next morning when possible. So, why do I spend the first hour of my morning answering email? Markman advises that during your optimal work time (are you a morning or afternoon person) you triage email, answering only the most important. Then you close your email program and answer all the other email during your non-optimal time. Sounds easy, right? Like most PR Daily readers, I am besieged with email. For years, I’ve been in the habit of answering those emails immediately just so I can clear my inbox. Even worse, I also have my personal email open, so that’s double the distraction. Then there are phone calls, internal and external chat programs—you get the idea. Another issue—and I hope I’m not the only one who does this—I tend to procrastinate when I am not particularly enthused about my writing assignment. Sometimes I use the interruptions as an excusenot to write, secretly hoping I’ll get an email that will take priority over completing my assignment. Putting all this aside, I decided to follow Markman’s advice. I arrived at the office early. I answered my urgent emails, and then I closed Outlook (and Gmail). I started editing an article from a colleague and I was moving through it fairly quickly. After about 20 minutes, my boss appeared at my door and asked, “Laura, did you get that email I just sent you?” Sigh. So it seems the “smarter” habit would be to triage your email and tell your team that you are doing so.

By Suzanne Mannion, PR Daily Marketing and brand managers across all industries have a longer to-do list than ever before. Consider the addition of social media, Web and content marketing, and SEO to their responsibilities—not to mention traditional tasks such as advertising and media relations. Imagine today’s marketing pros as orchestra conductors: How can they choose the right musicians and then manage the talent to create beautiful music? Obviously there’s the option of using an internal team, but often those employees get distracted with internal matters and lose sight of proactive marketing campaigns. Furthermore, you can’t necessarily compile a team with expertise in all relevant areas. (Just imagine the recruiting and payroll needs.) An alternative is enlisting multiple specialized agencies. Small firms are comfortable collaborating with a variety of partners. They don’t structure themselves to be everything to everyone, so small firms frequently team up with other agencies to offer multi-dimensional programs. Brand managers like to keep in mind that this option is far more cost-effective than hiring a large, full-service (often global) firm, not to mention a great way to receive more attention and better service from seasoned executives. Following are five tips for managing and motivating a collaborative cross-agency effort for best results:  • Choose agencies willing to coordinate with others. Though it’s hard to fathom that a small, specialized firm doesn’t already regularly work collaboratively with other agencies, some are better at this than others. When determining which to hire, ask the reps at each firm about their multi-agency success stories. If you already work with one firm, you might want to tap into its existing network of specialists. • Communicate your needs. Give the agencies a brief that outlines clear business objectives, pertinent information about the brand DNA, existing marketing efforts, and goals for each agency. For increased accountability, take the time to define success, including deliverables for each company. • Establish the process. In order to get the most out of each agency, make sure you define a clear process for how you’d like the companies’ teams to work together. You should clarify the roles, expectations, and responsibilities of each agency. Further, you might assign an executive from one agency to lead the team. • Set-up team tools. Nowadays the “cloud” enables multiple agencies to easily coordinate efforts. Tap into Google Docs, Dropbox, Skype meetings, your company’s intranet, and other online resources. Once set up, the team leader should create a timeline outlining deliverables for each participant. • Reward collaboration. Agencies should be rewarded for great work. Bring the team together to celebrate successes. Be sensitive about equally acknowledging the contributions of each agency, assuming all players are doing a great job. The teams should know that their respective piece of the business is protected, and when you present a safety net, also offer a reason to jump higher. As more and more executives leave large agencies to create small, specialized companies, multi-agency collaborations will become even more popular. If you do your due diligence, this approach should not create more work for you; rather, it should result in superior, cost-effective results.