Celebrity Endorsements

In the wake of Tiger Woods scandal, there are many lessons to be learned regarding celebrity spokespersons. Although I am not interested in naming names, I will provide this bit of insight based upon my own experience managing celebrity personalities: it is necessary to find out who a celebrity really is and not solely rely on their manager/agent.  There are ways to do this… and we’d be happy to discuss it off-line, as we regularly do with our clients.

As a PR agency CEO who spends a lot of time with both celebrities and brand managers, we are intimately familiar with this world.  Like it or not, the media closely follows celebrities, therefore tremendous opportunities exist in leveraging their fame to maximize public interest for a product/service. Can it be a risk? Yes, but I don’t see celebrity endorsements going away any time soon.  In fact, in today’s economy, the amount of celebrities asking for endorsement deals has increased significantly. We do many deals each month where celebrities hold products or appear at parties in exchange for a check…and this trend will continue.

Entrepreneurial Insight

As someone who thrives when busy, the last 10 days of December are trying. Many are very complacent during the holiday season and it bothers me tremendously. Rightfully, clients still demand work product, and bills still need to be paid, so we as a PR agency continue to put our best foot forward even during the slower months. We continually realize that urgency is the key to our success and we are far from complacent. We are hungry for it and want to win.

During this time period, I make an extra effort to do the little things: go to the gym every single day, thank our clients for their devotion, and our employees for their hard work.  All in all, we at this PR firm are quite pleased to say it has been another profitable year. We are also proud to say that every single employee received a bonus, unlike many of our industry peers.  Our numbers are great, and continue to deliver a consistent and high quality work product.

As we prepare to end the 7th calendar year of 5WPR, we are proud of our accomplishments.  Even though not everyone loves our style we are quite ok with it. In fact, there aren’t many successful people or organizations who don’t have critics and opponents. Jealousy always exists, and its easier to criticize than create. We don’t let that drag us down, and to the contrary, use it as motivation to continue forth.

Onward and upward, we say thank you all the time for the great work and clients we have had over the years.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

I have said it before and I will say it again. It’s October 2009 and for all the talk about social media and how it’s penetrating the world, at the corporate level social media remains largely untapped. While I too have read those stories about how great Jet Blue or Zappos is, they are among just a few companies that actually monitor. Nearly all companies aren’t participating, spending or even monitoring their social media (as I know first hand from complaints against large corporations, like Chase Bank and their inept customer service team, including Marleena Caro.)

I own the 21st largest PR firm in the United States, have over 1,500 friends on Facebook, 1,300 people following me on Twitter, dozens of employees, huge email lists, and on numerous occasions when personal contacts don’t work out, have “shouted out” via social media to no avail. No response from major companies who consider my PR agency and I to be good, bill-paying customers. It’s quite apparent that no one is monitoring or responding.

I also see it on the corporate side: brands continue to talk a lot about social media but won’t pony up and pay for it. There are a number of companies who are spending as they should in this arena, and we have helped many of them own this new form of media. They have made quantified sales and are capturing mind share.

But my guesstimate for the larger market place is that there will be no major changes before 2011.  It’s all still talk, and if you want any indication, take a look at the Top 50 PR agencies and ask: How many blog? How many twitter?

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

I remember as a kid watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a movie about a High School wise guy who cuts school and gets into various teenage adventures around Chicago. A central issue in the movie was trust – between parents and their kids and schools and its students. Clearly in today’s A.D.D. generation, such a thing could never happen as the new media world now allows everyone to serve as “citizen journalists.” Videos and messages, via YouTube and Twitter, would be everywhere before anyone could feign illness at home.

This post came to me after a few simple weekend observations:

Dining alone at a mid-tier Japanese restaurant on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, the woman next to me was served the wrong order twice. She told the servers that she planned to post to the Internet how bad the restaurant was and relay this experience to everyone she knows.  While she was telling the truth, what’s to stop others from spreading lies?

A couple was in line behind me at an amusement park joking about a friend who was fired because someone else posted inappropriate pictures of him smoking marijuana to the Internet on a day he was supposed to be working.  People can “tag” photos without permission.

A close friend is firing an employee today because he discovered the employee twitters and blogs every hour while at work and on his payroll. His reasoning: “Why am I paying someone to twitter instead of work for me?”

Many questions still remain and I believe they will continue to evolve along side these changing forms of communication.

Amazingly, by 10 AM Tuesday post Labor Day we have eight new business leads, all of which have materialized since close of business Friday. While I am far from optimistic that the economy is close to recovery, there has definitely been a slight uptick in people’s interests in marketing and PR programs.

Post-Labor Day, summer is really gone in NYC – Musings from a PR Agency.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

This weekend, I had a scary discussion with a soon-to-be Wharton business school graduate.  He told me that, in his estimate, 50% of his graduating class doesn’t have jobs; while they have to start repaying loans in September, he expects many of them will simply default.  Surely, their parents are making less money and many will have families of their own to support.  There’s never before been a time when a Wharton MBA graduate didn’t have an immediate job opportunity.

Unique times indeed.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Someone who worked for 5WPR for 4 years and left the agency to pursue another career sent me the following note today, which I very much appreciated and wanted to share:

Brain has been racing since 5am. Thinking about my time here and I want to let you know what has meant the most:

What I learned:

Working hard – set a pace and make people keep up with you not the other way around

Be responsive – answer emails quickly no matter how busy

Everything is a learning experience – good or bad decisions ideas etc, get *something* out of everything

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

In the past few hours, videos of several Domino’s employees engaging in disgusting behavior (see: 1 and 2) have circulated through blogs and social media platforms, causing quite an uproar and brand damage to one of the nation’s leading pizza chains.

This is the changing face of PR in the era of social media. While the business of public relations is fast moving and days are unpredictable, social media comes equipped with videos (with brand images connected) and spreads faster than ever before.  Faster than daily newspapers can come out or TV programs can run updates.  Dangerous and scary.

Domino’s, to their credit, responded quickly and with well-delivered wording:  “The ‘challenge’ that comes with the freedom of the internet is that any idiot with a camera and an internet link can do stuff like this – and ruin the reputation of a brand that’s nearly 50 years old, and the reputations of 125,000 hard-working men and women across the nation and in 60 countries around the world.”

While there have always been rumors, and the advent of the Internet created sites to exchange information, today with video and social media, information can spread more quickly than ever before.  Luckily for them , Domino’s caught this very quickly, but they still could not stop brand damage from being done.  

In the age of instant communication, media and social monitoring is more vital than ever.   This story is still being told.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

I clipped an advertisement from a magazine today, and as I was getting ready to dial the number to inquire about the service , I saw the contact said to call a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).  I couldn’t help but think, as a customer, can I get the best deal possible dealing with the CRO or is he only about maximizing revenue (as his title implies)?  And shouldn’t every single employee be all about maximizing revenue?

From a marketing (and sales) perspective I really don’t like the title and would advise against using it.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

This week, I read one of the most absurd articles I have seen in a very long time in The Wall Street Journal.  A quarter of a page was devoted to – stop the presses! – $25,000, the amount that CVS spent on golf outings for its top executives. Using that amount of ink on a non-story like this is simply absurd. If this environment continues, many businesses will simply not be able to function.

Every single day, businesses hold conferences and conventions, entertain clients, and even golf with them. In the year 2009 (and for quite a while before that), business isn’t conducted 9 to 5, and relationships are often built in non-traditional ways. What’s the big deal? Twenty-five thousand dollars? How many deals does that close? Two summers in a row, during different economic times, I rented a luxurious house in the Hamptons (at a significantly larger fee than CVS paid for their bigwigs to golf) to entertain clients, allow employees a getaway, etc. It was good for business and garnered many relationships that had a return well beyond the summer rental fee. I would venture that CVS receives ROI from perks.

The media and the government need to stop this craziness. Sponsorships aren’t bad, marketing isn’t bad, and perks aren’t bad. They are necessary in business, and not allowing them will cause the economy to suffer even further.

Ronn Torossian
5WPR

Two separate postings this Monday on some of my weekend reading:

1: As 5WPR continues to achieve success, we have at times second guessed our policy to not enter any of the awards programs offered by the industry (other than rankings awards which simply require us to submit tax forms – fastest growing, INC, etc.).  While I do understand arguments about recognizing staff for great work, I have always been concerned about revealing our successful, creative initiatives to competitors.  Additionally, these awards are tremendously time consuming and expensive.

We are proud that we have achieved success without having a stand-alone marketing or new business department for 5WPR, so  I found this AdAge article about the tremendous cost of these programs quite interesting.  This survey further validated my decision to not have 5WPR enter these programs.

2:  I also found the Best Life article on one of hip-hop’s greatest entrepreneurs, Jay Z, to be great reading.  The “mainstream” business community often doesn’t recognize the positive attributes that the most successful hip-hop entrepreneurs bring to the business community.  Jay Z’s business principles outlined here are a must read.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Employees today must realize how very difficult it is to run a company, and they must abandon all sense of entitlement.  The only entitlement one can (hopefully) expect these days is a paycheck.  There can be no downtime and no concessions – work must be at maximum intensity. Companies today are driving a car in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm, and concerned with just surviving to the next exit.  It will take incredible focus, determination and sacrifice to get there.

This means more work and no complaining.  Across the board, it’s time to repay your company for all they do.  This crisis is very real, with no end in sight.  Warren Buffett conceded that it is “an economic Pearl Harbour,” and it truly needs to be treated like a war.  With many of the smartest business people I’ve met shedding staff en masse, cutting salaries and withering by the minute, employees across the board need to be much more serving and much less entitled.  From realizing reviews won’t happen on time, to requesting less and doing more, it’s simply time to be thankful you have a job. 

This week’s Shouts & Murmurs column from The New Yorker is meant to be humorous, poking fun at the extreme cost-cutting measures companies have had to adopt, but in many ways, it is scarily accurate.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR