Steve Jobs for those of us in the PR & marketing business is the ultimate Hall of Fame PR legend.  Who else could have adults sleeping on the street and clamoring for their products.  As the LA Times stated today “I wonder if Steve Jobs is reading all the news about himself right now, and if he’s thinking: This is what it must be like to die and still get to watch the reaction.” So wanted to share some fabulous quotes which reflect the greatness of Steve Jobs.

• Silicon Valley insider Om Malik: “Steve is responsible for a whole generation of entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs for thinking a certain way. I think that is his true legacy. Not only did he make the customers very happy. His true legacy is that he makes a lot of us think differently about how we treat our customers and users. That is his profound legacy.”
• Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg: “Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Mr. Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology and media in multiple ways on multiple occasions. And that changed the way people live.”
• International Business Times: “Arguably, more than any other person, Steve Jobs led the way to the mobile age…”
• Nick Schulz, National Review Online “He gave us what we didn’t know we wanted. Jobs is a great entrepreneur for another reason. Lots of ninnies can give customers products they want. Jobs gave people products they didn’t know they wanted, and then made those products indispensable to their lives.
• San Jose Mercury News: “He created a model for entrepreneurial leadership – Jobs’ departure from the top job at Apple is a loss for Silicon Valley. But it’s also a loss for the nation, which is in desperate need of entrepreneurial leadership to get us out of this economic slump.
• · Andrew Leonard, Salon “He proved that life is what you make of it…Thanks Steve, not for the Apple or the Macintosh or the iPod or the iPhone or the iPad. Thanks for setting a great example. The world is what you make it.”

This PR firm owner says hats off to marketing legend Steve Jobs.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

The annual “State of the News Media” by the Pew Project for excellence in journalism was released yesterday. Amongst other findings in the study, was the rise of tablets and mobile devices has expedited the rise of online news, to the point where the online audience has finally surpassed print.

Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the study, said “People are just becoming accustomed to having the Internet available in their pockets on phones or small tablets. In December, 41 percent of Americans said they got most of their news about national and international issues on the Internet, more than double the 17 percent who said that a year earlier. Everything is now mobile, and information is everywhere.”

It’s really now all about instant gratification – and the once daily deadlines, have now become hourly ones… It wouldn’t surprise me to see a 24/7 PR Agency very soon… The PEW study also stated that in January, seven percent of Americans owned electronic tablets; nearly double what it was three months earlier. This is the fastest growing technology ever, even ahead of cell phones when they first started to appear.

As information and news media are changing, so is Public Relations – Information is everywhere and digital media is here to stay.  The development continues today as people get their news from all over – Successful Public Relation firms are the ones that understand the changing landscape and craft their strategies to deal with it on a proactive basis.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Just last month, Google celebrated its 12^th year as the giant who changed the world, and today is the largest media company on the planet.  Without overstating it, Google has transformed the personal and professional life of everyone as we know it. Now it’s “the result” that should make us aware of how we come up on Google search.

Until 12 years ago, only public figures actually had a reputation to manage. Individuals used narrower channels such as mouth-to-ear to make an early impression. Public politicians, businesses and celebrities were all deeply engaged in managing the ways and places their names came up. This included monitoring and maintaining a good placement of their name in the proper correlation and association. All others simply did not have any public reputation to manage.

Today employers, potential partners, colleagues, teachers, and others are all able to check up names and reputations simply on how they appear on Google and with that association. You’d better come up positively!

“Googling” a phrase or a name has turned into a global practice, serving multiple goals and reasons. Each of your online ‘entities’ and activities are well documented, and at the end of the day, represent your overall brand and public face. In terms of reputation management, everyone needs to realize that today’s “new” media is everywhere – If the opposing teams coach wants to blog about how bad you are, he can, and days, months and years from now everyone will read it (true or not). If you are a job seeker, your past and recent online expressions are visible to all, and can serve you in the opposite direction of where you aim to go and want to be. Social media presence is synchronized with Google’s search engines and your profiles (pictures, posts, and friends) are available to the general seeker.

If that’s not enough, those who avoided participating in social media to prevent potential public embarrassment may not be better off down the road, as the first few Google entries are best “controlled” by you if you are an active participant in social media. Ultimately, today everyone has become their own online reputation managers, and needs to conduct “Public Relations campaigns” for themselves.

The way to properly manage your reputation today goes through link building, content generation, and a well-managed synchronization between all channels that represent you.

A few initial do it yourself thoughts:

1.  Create Content: Make sure to express your thoughts and opinions on a proper and legitimized blog. Don’t be afraid to run one yourself, using any of the existing user-friendly platforms like Blogger or WordPress. Your posts reflect your thoughts, ideas and insights and will appear on Page One of many google searches. quality content as possible on blogs, your social channels or as reactions to other peoples’ content.  This virtually guarantees that by searching your name a Google user gets exposed to the relevant expressions that you have shared and which promotes your name and professional reputation correctly.

2. Hyperlink:  Create links, discussion and chatter about positive content that exist.  Make all positive content ‘hyperlinked’ to other sources and channels that you own. This will lead to good synchronization between those posts and your social media entity.

3.  Monitor:  Be aware of what shows up on google regularly and don’t be troubled to motor your online reputation. Create a Google alert for your name or your company which will be sent to you as soon as it’s posted. This way you will be the first to know what’s new with your reputation as it appears online.

Google is no longer just a search engine – it is the 1^st lens through which the world views you. Realize today’s “media” allows anyone to be an authority and to affect your Google rankings.

Ronn Torossian

5W Public Relations

Much different than BP, Toyota, Mel Gibson, Tiger Woods and Dell, Apple can better weather negative media and afford a PR crisis (if such a thing is possible).  Let’s keep things in perspective for Apple – The brand is so hot that there are waiting lists for their products, and they won’t even take your money in their stores.  Even with a massive, high-probability record-recall, Apple still will emerge unscathed in the big picture.  They have made so many right moves for so many years that one misstep was to be expected.

In exploring the world of branding and marketing, people tend to lean on the mass marketing concepts taught in schools of business. They teach about power branding, co-branding, differentiation and loyal consumers following their brand preferences. As these are all valid concepts, it is a natural negligence of the power of the brand stemming from media coverage and public awareness. If not for Public Relations management and buzz around innovation, none Apple’s inventions of the last decade would have been as successful as they currently are.

Were people agitated by Dell only since its batteries burst into flames while working on your laptop? No, the batteries were one additional negative aspect of the brand stemming from the late 90s’ caused by reckless communication management instead of quality service. As for the recent Mel Gibson fiasco, are the newly released tapes the only reason the public is asking to end his career? No, there is a recent history with poorly-considered statements and very unfortunate timing. This also applies to BP with the oil spill and the public opinion of corporate ‘Greed,’ goes alongside the jealousy and anger towards Tiger Woods’ glamorous career, and concludes with Toyota, which simply wouldn’t admit to mistakes and playing with peoples lives.  They all paid the price and will continue to for miscommunication.

Apple has been innovating and determining the way consumers of all walks of life live, do business, and interact. It is a brand that applies to all industries and it reinvents itself all the time while dominating the markets of Telecom, Tech, and mass consumption. Just as Fed-ex defined overnight travel, how many people are walking around with “walkmans” these days? No one, now it’s the iPod, stupid. Apple has amazing products, but all of them would mean nothing had Apple neglected the communications around its activity.

If IBM’s Thomas Watson of the 50’s is known for his pathetic statement, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers“, then Apple is known for the exact opposite. The bi-annual Apple extravaganza in San Francisco is an unprecedented attraction of media attention. It is as if every single year Apple will and should introduce us to a new way to make life easier. Its CEO is a brand power that is reenergized by his quiet, almost “simple” character that lacks colorful dimensions. The products enjoy a pre-sale rate that shows a blindly-directed consumer market, overachieving substitutes.

Today, Apple can afford the iPhone 4 recall because – from the public’s view – they are almost vital to our “existence.” The awareness this brand gained and maintained in the minds of the masses stands as a symbol of technological modernity. It defined mobility.  It reads portability and integration. It defines social interaction through its apps. As a business, it acts as a generator of income for app developers and social media marketers, and let’s not forget how it revolutionized the music industry through iTunes.

What Apple did that no other brand could do is integrate and harmonize all its sub-brands as leverage for a major awareness-building stunt – known to us as “Apple”. In contrast to Toyota, people will return the device and impatiently await its replacement, because Apple doesn’t have peers, whereas a Toyota driver can easily drive a Honda, instead. In addition, Apple lures customers to the next innovation – be it iPad 3, iPod 5 or Shuffle 8. When Toyota cars were returned, it was a ‘Goodbye’ wave from former drivers. The recovery for Toyota will require a regained credibility and loyalty on the consumer’s end. On the other hand, the Apple case is so strong that loyalty remains intact.

The strength of Apple stems from its Public Relations and brand awareness. The probable recall reinforces the public opinion of Apple that displays it as a highly-crucial piece of equipment in our daily lives. Apple described the possible recall as a “sign of its commitment to consumer quality devices,” and that shows how well the PR machine works for Apple. For any other brand this would mean a disastrous outcome and a possible end to periodical success.

For Apple, it’s a re-run of the suspense and sleeping bag phenomenon seen outside Apple stores worldwide. If they sold 3 million devices now, I’m thinking they will sell 5 million by the end of this epic.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR

Through the years, we have represented a slew of celebrities, ranging from Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube, to Pamela Anderson, hall of fame athletes, and others. Whether or a major mega-star, or up and coming celebrity, universally celebrity PR campaigns are very demanding, time consuming and hard work, for many reasons.  (And of course that’s before the “colorful” (and I can tell a ton of stories, but wont am sworn to secrecy).

Adrian Grenier’s recent comments to the WSJ that celebrities wont need Public Relations representatives in the future: “I don’t have a publicist and never have.  I’m no stranger to self promotion. I find it first of all more authentic when you put a bit of your creative touch to what you’re trying to share.”

Public Relations is more than self-promotion for celebrities, its shaping and positioning a brand, its filtering requests, and many other responsibilities.  I agree with a comment I read made by a CEO of a PR agency “Dollar for dollar publicity is one of the great bargains left in Hollywood. If a celebrity makes $6 million a year, for example, they probably pay a publicist give or take $5,000 or $6,000 a month, or one percent of their net. When you compare the hours a publicist puts in to the ten percent a manager or agent gets…I don’t think agents or managers are overpaid, but I think publicists are underpaid.” As he further stated, a good publicist will drive their client to be themselves.

I am just returning to work today from a week in the gorgeous French Riveria (visited Monaco, Nice, Cannes and other areas), and the amount of wealth and high profile people there was amazing.  Who would handle the many celebrity mistakes made in places like this, or false sightings which are reported ?

Nearly all CEO’s have Public Relations pros, or PR agencies handling their needs, and so too should celebrities. Celebrities need PR specialists, much as they need lawyers, accountants, doctors and others who know their fields the best way.

Ronn Torossian

5WPR