PR, Social Media and Economic Growth in Brazil by Pedro Cadina

Note:  Pedro Cadina is founder and CEO of VIANEWS Communication, São Paulo, Brazil. VIANEWS is of three new firms to join as partners in FC's international network -- the PR World Alliance. This guest blog covers the Brazilian business, PR and social media environment.

Despite a smaller growth forecasted for this year, Brazil ends the second semester showing significant recovery and continues to be the focus of several companies that see enormous potential in the “B” of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies.  In many cases, PR agencies represent the first door for companies willing to participate in Brazilian market.

 

The global brands in PR are present in Brazil but it’s the local Brazilian agencies that are the ones showing higher revenues and faster hiring.  Estimates show that there are around 1.200 public relations agencies in Brazil, the majority of them located in the Southeast region of the country where most of them are small and independent agencies. For the current year, the sector should invoice 2 billion reais (around $1 billion USD), representing 15.5% growth over 2011.  Steady growth over the last three years suggests that 2013 agency revenue will be 3 billion reais ($1.5 billion USD).

 

Support for the government market is the fast growing sector of PR in Brazil.  Revenues of Brazilian agencies are strongly generated by media relations (30%), followed by internal communications (30%) and corporate events. Social media (11%) and investors relations are both growing significantly.

 

A few weeks ago in São Paulo, VIANEWS brought together 40 communication specialists in order to discuss Public Relations and Digital Journalism.  The event provided insight on how public relations, media relations and social media should be addressed by the global companies coming to Brazil.  These are some of the highlights of the discussion:

·       Internet and data traffic show impressive figures in the country. Mobile data traffic should increase 19 times in Brazil by 2016, representing a volume equivalent to 717 million text messages per second. The mobile device sector is just beginning and should benefit from the assembling of Apple products in the country.

·       Brazilians love Internet and social networks and this is an important leverage for brand communications. With more than 80 million users connected, Brazil is already ranked amongst the seventh largest audiences, the fifth in  engagement and is the blogs leader (with Score). Following the US, Brazil has the largest number of accounts in Facebook and Twitter. Brazil has the fourth largest Google+ community.
·       Despite recent crisis in Europe and growth difficulties both in Japan and the US, Brazil should grow around 2% this year and recover its 4% growth rate by 2013. Brazilians haven’t been so optimistic for decades
·       This optimism was reflected this year Digital Journalism Study (Oriella). Almost 52% of interviewed Brazilian journalists pointed out that there will be an audience increase for their publications and 25% bet on a publicity increase.
·       Another important discovery in this study was that approximately 83% of journalists rely on public relations agencies to obtain and double check information.  For 18% of journalists, agencies are the first source they use to search for news.
·       It is impressive to observe the growth in the usage of video formats already available in the Brazilian media.  In 2010 and 2011 only 20% said they made use of video formats in their publications. This year, this number jumped to 44%.

 

At the end of the event, one of the participants asked me “What else do you think we should tell CEOs and directors of global companies that are willing to come to Brazil?”  My reply was, “Well, in addition to a strong industry and an increasing consumer market we also have beautiful beaches, sun and football all year round!!”

Cut the Cord-- It's a Wireless World!

Last week, North America's largest wireless industry convention -- International CTIA Wireless -- rolled around to New Orleans. The annual event, organized by CTIA- The Wireless Association, is the second largest wireless conference in the world; the largest is the Mobile World Congress held each February (in recent years exclusively in Barcelona).


How large an industry?  The attendance forecast for this year's event was between 60 - 70,000 persons and it certainly seemed to fill the convention zone...and French Quarter at night.


I arrived Sunday to be in position for two events on Monday.


Our JumpStart Global Advisors partner firm, 151 Advisors, in collaboration with the Enterprise Mobility Foundation, ran an all day educational event on Monday called "APP-solutely Enterprise," a highly interactive, fast-paced learning and networking event bringing together CIOs, IT leaders and corporate decision makers to discover how they can take advantage of the power of mobile applications in their organizations.


Later that day, our mobile security client, Snap Secure (part of Snap MyLife, Inc.) participated in the ShowStoppers private press event at the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel (on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter).  This event, open to media, bloggers and industry analysts, provided the chance for cutting edge wireless technology companies to present their companies, products and services on a one-on-one basis to the press corp.




Michael Subhan (l.) and Robert Kao (r.) of Snap MyLife

Our team consisted of VP of Marketing Michael Subhan and VP of Product Management Robert Kao. We demonstrated the personal privacy protection features of Snap Secure -- over and over again for three hours.
Come 9 p.m., we were ready for a New Orleans feast which we heartedly engaged in at Bourbon House.


On Tuesday, the exhibition floor opened and I was able to walk the floor to view the more than 1,000 exhibitors on display.  You name it -- and it was represented at CTIA: wireless carriers, handset manufacturers, software companies, credit card and mobile banking firms, infrastructure firms, mobile apps, mobile consumer electronics, retail marketing firms, WiFi and mesh companies, accessory firms and more.

Dan Mead, President & CEO, Verizon Wireless

Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint Nextel Corporation

Philipp Humm, CEO & President, T-Mobile USA

Ralph de la Vega, President & CEO, AT&T Mobility

Jim Cramer, host, CNBC's Mad Money

Jim Cramer served as moderator

The highlight for me was the afternoon keynote address which features the CEOs of the four major U.S. carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint and T-Mobile.  Each of the CEOs, on stage individually at first, were given the chance to address the thousands listening in the ballroom and share their vision for the industry, address competitive issues and share their company's positioning. The 'soft sniping' at each other was fun -- for those of us in the room -- it was a game of inside baseball.  The fun part, half way in, was when CNBC's Jim Cramer came out to moderator a discussion with all four CEOs. The questions ranged from mild to ascerbic; the cross-banter captivating.


My takeaway -- as rapid as the growth of wireless has been over the last decade -- we haven't seen ANYTHING YET.  As 4G speeds move from marketing hype into reality, and new handsets and applications are developed to take advantage of them (let alone 5G and 6G), watch your wireless device (phone, tablet, PC) continue to morph and dominate our wireless and connected lifestyle. We will become ever more connected and reliant on our wireless gadgets to establish our identity, pay bills, communicate (voice, data, video conference, etc.), monitor our health, protect ourselves and our families, entertain us and much more.


It's truly time to cut the cord.... and enter the brave new wireless world.

The Tease

It seems like more and more companies want to keep us guessing - whether it’s Apple’s on-again/off-again product releases or GoDaddy’s sexual innuendo-filled ads that force us to the website to “see more” of Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels (um…no thanks!).

Most recently, JC Penney has joined the party by running TV spots of shoppers screaming at sales they’ve missed and being bombarded by coupons and flyers (http://youtu.be/aj3PfcPuauM).  The commercial ends with the tagline, “Enough.Is.Enough.” and teases February 1, 2012 along with a link to JC Penney’s Facebook page.  So, can we assume the company is getting rid of all its couponing?  Is it just a ploy to get people to check out their Facebook page? 

After chatting with a colleague about the commercial (which admittedly is pretty funny), he told me about an article that said JC Penney is getting rid of all promotional sales in their stores. Overall, I think this campaign could be a win for the company – the tease is generating some buzz for both the campaign and the brand…all in anticipation of the “big announcement and full details!”

In the PR, marketing and media world, the “tease” can be both advantageous and disadvantageous to a company or news story.  Think of all the times a news anchor teases us to stay tuned after the commercial for the latest household cleaning product that can KILL US!  The anchor comes back and the news is so far out that we snicker to ourselves and become a little more jaded each time it happens.  As marketers and publicists put more “tease” into their copywriting and campaign elements, are we switching our audiences off by overusing this tactic?

With the Super Bowl (of advertising) less than a week away, let’s see how many brands turn to tease tactics.  I have a feeling that our information overloaded generation will be seeing a lot more of this across mediums (i.e. from TV to Twitter) as companies are doing everything they can to draw us in and keep us coming back.

"Top 10 Secrets to Great Analyst Relations" by Judith M. Rothrock

Industry analyst relations are a critical component of most technology companies' external marketing campaigns. Ignore the analysts and you prospectively lose important third party endorsements, inclusion in RFIs and RFPs, citations in the media and more.

In this guest blog, Judith M. Rothrock, president of JRocket Marketing, an analyst relations and outsourced chief marketing officer organization, offers 20+ years of street smarts on how to effectively engage in analyst relations. JRocket Marketing and Feintuch Communications are strategic partners; Mr. Feintuch has known and worked with Ms. Rothrock in a variety of capacities for nearly 30 years.


Recently I was asked by an industry colleague how JRocket Marketing is able to get even small vendors attention by the technology analyst firms….when the IT market is dominated by billion-dollar behemoths. Here is the JRocket Marketing Tip Sheet:

1. Homework: Know the analyst; pull their bio, note prior companies, schools, etc. Connect the dots and build the relationship off of his or her background. For example, knowing that Mint Jutras www.mintjutras.com principal Cindy Jutras is a math and science whiz from Boston University http://www.bu.edu/ … is going to at least get her to take your call if your brother/sister/aunt/uncle went there and/or you have a penchant for engineering!

2. Competitive P.I.: Super sleuth how your targeted analysts report on your competitors; what they like and don’t like, and get a good grasp of where the biases are going to be. A little private investigating goes a long way towards exploiting opportunities and avoiding pitfalls. For example, if you are in the enterprise solutions space and want to speak about “agility,” you need to know what UNIT4 has said on the topic www.unit4.com.

3. Packaging: Spin works. Net clever messages work. Complex acronyms and boring R&D speak (unless you are talking to an architecture analyst) will put your target analysts to sleep. Be sticky read http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321920765&sr=8-1

4. Powerpoint Simplicity: 50 page powerpoints scream one (or both) of these messages: I’m not sure what’s most important about my company/differentiation; I haven’t done this before so I am going to dump it all on you to figure out. Tight net presentations of 20 slides and one hour are perfect for getting key points across to analysts who are overloaded with sometimes 25+ vendor briefings per week. Skip the highly complex slides that deliver TMI. SYSPRO U.S.’s http://www.syspro.us.com/ ‘Einstein Theory’ received more traction than 60 page powerpoints previously given on the same/similar products.

5. I.V. Drips not Overloads: Analysts are often booked hourly (like lawyers) and three hour (unbillable) meetings and ongoing non-urgent information is going to peg you as a time waster to be avoided. Twice yearly face to face meetings, augmented by 2 additional WebEx’s on launches, acquisitions or other hot topics are plenty for a smaller (non-Microsoft) sized company …but share your key press releases via linked emails and/or twitter. JRocket Marketing’s Grape Escape http://www.jrocketmarketing.com/grape_escape.html is a great example of how to showcase your messaging annually and draw big analyst crowds.

6. Hot Topics: Stay abreast of the industry – what’s hot, what’s not, what’s game changing. They package your messaging to pick up on these trends because that’s what the analysts will be writing about. Check out Gartner’s Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012 http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/gartner-10-key-it-trends-2012

7. Travel Tie-Ins: Get the target analysts travel schedule and dovetail it to ANY locales, happenings or home bases of you or your key executives. Build in a lunch, dinner or airport coffee time to build the face-time relationship. Social media is GREAT, but relationships bond across a meal table.

8. Newbie Knowledge: New analysts (often from the vendor or press community) are feeling their way and grateful for any data you can share about their new assignment. Help them, and they help you! Send a welcome letter, start a file about any personal information they choose to share (spouse, kids/ages, hobbies)…and don’t forget the flowers if they have an illness or major accident because they will never forget YOU for it! Recommendations: for women analysts, nothing says it like a personalized “analyst of the year” Vermont teddy bear http://www.vermontteddybear.com/ or Pro Flowers http://www.proflowers.com/ plant and Mrs. Fields cookie combo … I’ve built 20 year relationships from just doing the “right thing” as we New Yorkers say (and it makes YOU feel great to do it!).

9. Scoops: If your company is the first to do something – bring in your most important analyst under NDA and get them a pre-briefing prior to launch. Some firms will allow a press quote, but even for the larger ones (Gartner http://www.gartner.com/, Forrester http://www.forrester.com/, or IDC http://www.idc.com/) an advance briefing will put them in a position to take a reporter’s call to provide color on the topic.

10. Respect (Both Ways): This is the most challenging tightwire act of analyst relations. Not all analysts treat smaller vendors with the same respect they give “the big boys” and there are quite a few egos. On the flip side, there are dozens of wonderful analysts out there who you can cultivate career-long friendships with. I’ve found that (contrary to what’s staffed at most PR agencies) that AR people who have deep, experienced knowledge of their market, their products and their competitors’ actions get the best shake from analysts. I’ve also found that there are some analysts that, regardless of how earthshaking your IT breakthrough is, will never believe that a small company announcement trumps even mundane news from the giants. Read Brian Sommer’s grid on the types of analysts for a good comedic look at the various analyst “types” in the market http://www.zdnet.com/blog/sommer/humor-the-rosetta-stone-of-it-industry-analysts/1089?tag=content;siu-container.

Visit http://www.jrocketmarketing.com/ for more information or follow Judith Rothrock on twitter @JRocketMarket.