Sam Singer, named Spokesperson of the Year from PRSA and President of Singer Associates, discusses how communicators can effectively address challenges. Recorded at PRSA’s PR People Awards.

Some of Sam’s VlogViews:

“Corporations and individuals are going to have to follow the lead of President-Elect Barack Obama and create larger, visionary pictures for the public and for their audiences and for their employees to follow. To get them on board and have them understand that we’re all on the same team and that there is a larger vision that we are all heading for.”

“I think that corporations are going to have to really change the way they communicate, not just to their employees but to their investors and to their customers as well – by telling people what the big picture is, but also by admitting weaknesses and faults.”

“Content will always be king. And I think what has been missing from the debate from the last eight years during the Bush administration was there wasn’t the content; or if there was content, it was dubious content. I think that that’s the problem that America faces when they look at corporations who need to communicate more accurately and who need to communicate in a more effective and fast manner.”

San Francisco Zoo

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Kriste Goad, Principal for Hall Strategies, discusses her firm’s social media strategies. Recorded at PRSA’s PR People Awards.

Some of Kriste’s VlogViews:

“Our biggest challenge is getting our client as excited about [new media technologies] as we are and help them understand it may not be as important in today’s world to have necessarily the headline in the print paper, not as many people are looking at that.”

“Who’s following whom and who’s blogging about what? So we do a lot of searches of blogs and who is talking about what and then you can see if they’re picking up your stories and when, where and how and then you can push it out to the traditional media.”

“People may feel too comfortable and conversational. Just always be aware that it’s in the public and don’t say anything or have your clients out there saying anything that you wouldn’t want in a traditional newspaper headline or out there as a headline on the web.”  

Hall Strategies 
Hall Strategies Client News Blog

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Ken Makovsky, Founder and President of Makovsky and Co., discusses the changing landscape of public relations and how agencies should respond to those changes.

Some of Ken’s VlogViews:

“The word ‘spin’ is going to disappear from the vocabulary of Americans in the near future… I have always hated that word because it has an implication of falsehoods, it’s misleading, it’s slick. We’re in an era coming out of this economic crisis where trust needs to be rebuilt with out financial institutions, with our government, with many businesses, with our banks.”

“[After this election] we are going to have [environmental] federal regulations. And I don’t think these companies are going to have a choice; so at a minimum, one thing they could be doing at this time is educating their employees about what is going to come and that doesn’t take a lot of money.”

“Everybody’s going green. I think that all client programs or nearly all client programs in some way are going to need to communicate that.”

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Makovsky and Co

Stuart Elliott, Advertising Columnist for The New York Times, discusses the role of PR and advertising in the marketing mix and how to market in a recession.

Some of Stuart’s VlogViews:

“Several times I’ve written about campaigns…and it turns out there’s no advertising agency on record involved. The PR agency is the lead agency; and they’re the ones who are doing the quote-unquote advertising.”

“It’s sort of hard to tell where advertising starts and PR ends, or where the new media come in and where the old media step back. It’s being thought of in a much different way now. A lot of those lines are blurring or being erased completely; and as a result, a lot of agencies, a lot of marketers are scrambling to try to adjust to these realities.”

The shift to an opt-in culture “is a challenge for everybody, because you have people saying, ‘I’m not going to have this commercial wash over me; I’m going to choose when and where I want to be interrupted’…It’s the consumer who decides if he/she wants to engage.”

On the current economic crisis: “The question is whether these particular tough [economic] times are so unique and unusual that some of the traditional rules are not going to be effective in this climate.”

Stuart’s New York Times Page 

Stuart’s Blog
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