In order to conduct a successful PR campaign, one must understand the need for strategic targeting. Since Day 1, we have been very successful at identifying different categories of influencers, as they suit our clients’ needs. The goal of such an undertaking is to reach the ‘influencers’ in a given field, who will help to broadcast your message. This concept of an “influencer” is relevant for every business – Whether a VC for a tech brand seeking funding, the right celebrity for a consumer brand, or an analyst for a publicly traded company.  Owing a PR agency, I know that any of these can move a company’s sales, alter public perception, or change their future.

This morning I came across a very interesting post on social influencers at  and while I am not sure I agree with it all (All numbers aren’t strategic… because many people don’t really “know” their “social” friends)… but nevertheless there are some wise comments here, and I recommend reading it.

Over 2 years ago, I wrote this post on influencers, and I think in many ways the social media influencers of today are as relevant as some of these folks were a few years ago (and in many ways, continue to be).

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

Yesterday, I spoke with a group of 40 MBA students visiting from France who came to my office.  As we spoke about job opportunities in the new market, the similarities between the new financial realities of the U.S. and the socialist system of France became readily apparent, as Newsweek in fact recently noted.  While I don’t usually blog on politics, I can’t resist the opportunity to refer to this brilliant letter on how the current political system is adversely affecting entrepreneurs, which has been making the rounds on the Internet and which a number of entrepreneur clients have forwarded to me.  I absolutely agree with the sentiments of it, and I think we are living in tremendously unique financial times. 

As I remarked a few months ago in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the era of trust in the U.S. simply doesn’t exist these days.  As the era of lies and liars emerges – Bernie Madoff, Bear Sterns, A-Rod – brands that can manage to communicate authentically can win in a major way.  I believe marketing in the short term is best done on a personal basis with niche marketing or hand-to-hand combat. Targeted strategic communications and PR plans will win a lot better in the short term.  It’s a sniper rather than a machine gun (and yes, this economy remains a war). 
 

It’s remarkable that things are so bad these days in the newspaper business that shares in the New York Times Co. on Friday slumped to a low of $3.99, less than the price of the Sunday paper. 
 

While many people often speak about the value of social media, there are also dangers that we must be aware of.  A competitor recently “friended” me on facebook, and then contacted nearly all of my friends in an attempt to send them information on his agency.  Similarly, LinkedIn and other networks are dreams come true for recruiters, competitors and the like.  So be careful with your public contacts.  Risks and reward should both be considered when participating in new social media platforms.
 

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

The definition of Public Relations is rapidly changing to mean many things to many different folks: media relations, marketing, social media and many other things.  I spoke at a great event to a few hundred people at The Princeton Club this week on the power of networking, and naturally, on-line networking came up.  The question arose of how to meet people, deal with people you meet online, etc.

I don’t believe that people (particularly successful people and executives) maintain enough privacy on Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Often times, internal staffers and friends ask me detailed questions about blog postings.  It’s information I often can’t and won’t share, because PR for me is not an academic exercise but a profession.  I have to keep secrets, and as I have said before, my blog is biased toward my clients, my interests, etc.

I don’t post personal information on social network sites, because I don’t believe my staff or clients should know if I am out till 4 AM.  My “friends” online are contacts – not necessarily people I share intimate thoughts with.  First and foremost, people are concerned about their interests.  If I am out at 4 AM, and G-d forbid, the next day at 9 AM we lose a client, may my staff see a connection?

I write this as another PR firm learned a painful lesson: one of their senior executives twittered insulting a client’s home city.  He got blasted en masse by the client (who cc’ed both the PR agency management team and internal management).

While Twitter is about honesty, a PR agency shouldn’t forget clients pay the bills.

Ronn Torossian
5WPR

This op-ed was published today in the BullDog Reporter:  
 
COMMUNICATIONS OF AN A.D.D GENERATION
By Ronn Torossian, CEO, 5W Public Relations

Yesterday, from 5 PM until 8 AM the following morning, I couldn’t reach one of my closest family members; someone I communicate with multiple times a day via email, SMS, and less often, by phone.  Contemplating a breaking and entering to her home after five of each, emails, texts and unanswered phone messages, and after a sleepless, worried night, she called and woke me with a simple explanation – “I didn’t feel well and turned off my phone at 5 PM to rest;”  simple and instant.  Yet in today’s age of communications within an Attention Deficit Disorder generation, untypical and scary.

Growing up in the Bronx in the mid-1980’s, there was a corner public phone bank adjacent to the park where all of the local kids took turns manning the phones as our parents would call and demand us home for dinner, or our friends would call to see who was there and what was up.  These calls were often our only communication for hours at a time.  Today, walk into restaurants, meetings, movie theaters or otherwise, and people are typing away, blackberries in hand, on chatting on their cell phones, too often oblivious to the person in front of them with whom they can communicate without the technology.

Owning a PR agency, I am perhaps more cognizant of, and surely guilty of the instant communication bug.  I often explain and even offer semi apologies to potential clients and new friends.  I carry my blackberry and like an addiction, must check it every few minutes; not to do so can mean missed media opportunities, or worse, a newswire quote which reads “couldn’t be reached for comment,” - which occurred recently when I didn’t call a reporter back within an hour.  The journalist also expected instant gratification, and when I finally did call back, it had already appeared on more than 80 websites.  Is this indeed life today?

People update their Facebook or Myspace statuses countless times a day instead of sitting face to face with actual friends.  We create identities online and befriend people who in reality we may not actually want to sit with, chat up or share anything with.  Is this authentic or flawed communications?

Similarly, as much of today’s news originates from the blogosphere, much of what we see on blogs today is biased rant.  The bloggers who make headlines are the ones who fancy themselves as progressive journalists, unbound from the conventions of traditional journalism, such as checked facts and arms-length objectivity.  This has become acceptable only because of this A.D.D. communication generation.  This communications generation now jumps so fast, fearful of being scooped or being behind the times; they accept the blogs, often devoid of facts, but indeed instant.

Along with those marketing-savvy bloggers come what is usually a small host of commentators who use pseudonyms, anonymous posts and the like without accountability in the comments section of these blogs. Some of these “followers” are not followers at all, but actually the hosts themselves, or shills planted by the host to say the things that, coming from the host, would damage his or her credibility. Yes, indeed it’s instant; but accurate or ideal? No!  However, that’s not required for an A.D.D. generation.

In this Attention-Deficient world, it is much harder to validate or check identifies.  The guilt is shared, whether it is the New York Times which last week ran a Letter to the Editor falsely blasting Carolyn Kennedy by someone thought to be the Mayor of Paris, or the teenager who killed herself because her teenage rivals’ mom mocked her endlessly pretending to be a cute teenage boy.   While today’s instant communications of email, SMS, Facebook and the like is instant, I believe it’s not authentic.  It’s raw but it’s not real, on so many levels.  It could be a husband texting a wife a quick answer to a simple question, or a client annoyed at an agency that doesn’t instantly reply to an email.

In the earlier days of professional communications, or PR, mail forced people to plan ahead with care.  It required thought, strategy and planning, something which today often is not available. Today it is hard to plan even a day, or an hour in advance, for if you don’t reply instantly there can be mass panic.  Instant gratification has become a double edged sword; what we do believing to be cutting edge, can also dull the sharpest blades.

One of my earliest bosses taught me to use the draft box for email when I was upset “Wait an hour or a day before you send that message” – I try to use that advice as much as I can.  Perhaps one of the lessons of the current recession is to be wary of the uber-quick – There will be many false messiahs in times such as this – Just as one cannot “get rich quick”, perhaps we should all try and slow down and be wary of anyone who requires instant communications. While instant communication can seem great, we must too be wary of only relying on instant rather than building longer, real bonds.  Face-to-face, or extensive real phone calls are much more real and valuable than blog commentating and Facebook profiles.

Of course, had I heeded that message, or considered for that someone else might be heeding it, I may have slept last night.  For tonight, I will only check my Blackberry two times during dinner instead of every five minutes – and dinner will hopefully last longer than ten minutes.

I read a thought provoking article today in Ad Age entitled “P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook.”  It’s an interesting discussion about whether it’s possible to “monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend.”  While the article’s scope deals mostly with Facebook banner ads, applications, and the like, the potential of Facebook is not merely limited to pay-per-click ads and kitschy games.  These social media networks are helping us find organic ways to communicate messages to target audiences.  But the possibilities raise many questions.

As an agency owner, I’m concerned about not only what is possible with social networks, but also who is responsible, both internally and externally.   (i.e. Who has overview and responsibility for the budget, and who will eventually own the space – PR agencies or ad agencies ? Neither? A mixture of the above?)

At 5WPR, we spend a considerable amount of time debating, internally, with consultants and with clients, about how to best maximize a client’s brand via social media. While I am not vested in advertising, this P & G expert is certainly raising some interesting points on where Facebook and other brands go.  A few things I am sure of:  there are few agencies with a real strategy to help brands monetize online, and even fewer companies out there with real fluent plans to succeed online.  Surely that will change in the near future.

Ronn Torossian

5W PR

I have always been a tremendous believer in niche marketing, both vis a vis building my business and day to day client work.

Last night I attended a religious event that reminded me of this fact.   The crème de la crème of young, wealthy Hebrew speakers in the US came out for an intimate 8-hour dinner last night, followed by a 5 hour ceremony today.  Meeting very successful people who believe in similar ideas and come from similar backgrounds as me, I felt the credence and value of niche marketing.

My firm develops a significant portion of business among niches.  For example, we are the only top 50 PR agency owned by anyone under the age of 45, so we focus on 45-and-under business owners.  We have grown quickly by becoming expert in many unique niches, whether the urban marketplace, a targeted mom and baby division, our extensive representation of physicians, a cache of beverage brands, or Israeli-owned businesses.  Of course, we also do a ton of generic business, but often times, winning accounts is about knowing about which niche of brands (or business owners) you can win, and positioning yourself as the leading expert in that niche.

While they may be smaller in comparison to the mainstream marketplace, many different niches taken together add up quickly.  Even without the benefits of economy of scale, profit margins can be higher.

Ronn Torossian

5W PR

So, had a lunch with a handful of staff members today.  We had an interesting discussion about social media and how they use it: 

Someone made a very wise comment about using Twitter and the value of passively reading comments and thoughts of reporters and writers. He said, “If you had the chance to sit at a bar and silently listen to 100 Reporters talking, would you? That’s Twitter.”

Also we had a discussion on using Facebook to research Reporters’ personal interests and other issues to better tailor pitches and approach.  Facebook, seemingly, can help break down barriers and stereotypes that reporters may have about PR people, as people with common interests are more likely to easily relate to one another.

People do business with people they like. Reporters are easier to pitch when better understood.In essence, there are many ways one can utilize social media today to become a better PR pro.

Food for thought.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Last night I had a fascinating dinner at an NYC hotspot with a very close, successful friend and two of his business colleagues, both CEOs who run major corporations (corporation names anyone would recognize).  Throughout a very fun, fascinating two hour discussion on China’s impressive opening ceremony of the Olympics, we attracted many different people to our table.

As this incredibly networked restaurant, we made a few very important contacts each of us hadn’t known previously.  From the owner of a major NYC retail chain to a celebrity’s right hand man to a major tech CEO – between the four of us we racked up a ton of contacts.  All by being in a certain restaurant at a certain time, we ended up expanding networks, enjoying and ultimately building businesses.

The instance reminded me of a recent discussion with the CEO of a publicly traded company, who spoke of a certain place he dined for breakfast anytime he visited NYC.  He said his stock rose or fell depending on whom he was seen having breakfast with.  His stock literally would move depending on how he greeted certain analysts, or bigwigs.

I often speak to young professionals and college students, and one of the most important messages I can impart is to surround yourself with the people you want to be.  Put yourself in the line of fire.  Surround your personal and professional being with people who are successful and well-connected, and it will benefit you in many ways.

I host a series of different networking events every month for clients, colleagues, and friends.  My tagline is always “Put smart successful people in a room together, and they will figure out a way to make money.”

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Consumer brands, branded entertainment and technology are merging like never before. The days of getting something for nothing are over. Brands (including musicians) are demanding greater control over their destinies, and they are harnessing the power of technology to achieve it.

In the latest branding development, musicians have begun customizing social networking sites dedicated to their brand. Why? For a larger influence, a tailored message and a way to control the information their fans give them. And the added advertising revenue doesn’t hurt.

More and more acts, from Kylie Minogue to Ludacris to the Pussycat Dolls, are launching their own social networks, which are becoming a sort of next-generation version of artist Web sites.

“(Artists) think about MySpace and Facebook as funnels for their own social networks,” says Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, a company that provides social networking tools for Thisis50, Sara Bareilles and others. “They take and use services where they don’t know the users, don’t have access and don’t have full control, and funnel those fans to something they do control.”

- Billboard: Musicians Take Social Networking into Their Own Hands http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080329/en_nm/social_dc

The above article is a necessary read and one of many continued brand invigorations in today’s changing environment.

Ronn Torossian

5W PR