Make That Two Social Medias To Go... and Hold the "MySpace"

No one would accuse me of being a Luddite. My office “set-up” includes two monitors (one for e-mail; one for my “apps”); a CardScan business card scanner; a webcam; and an add-on sub-woofer and satellite speakers. I pack a Blackberry Torch (and far too many mobile apps); use a Flip Cam; own a Sony DSLR camera and drive a tricked out Mercedes convertible. At our home in Chappaqua, visitors (and even my wife) often ask how to turn on and use our integrated video and audio entertainment centers or how to log onto our private Wi-Fi network.

And yes… I tweet, spend far too many hours on Facebook, am a Power Seller on Ebay, actively manage my LinkedIn profile and just bought a great restaurant coupon deal on Open Table.

My PR career has largely centered on supporting the needs of emerging and established technology organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Over the decades, the tools I’ve used to support clients have grown increasingly more sophisticated – from typewritten press releases, Wang mail merges and early use of the fax to video news releases, satellite media tours, SEO, interactive marketing, email blasts, multimedia press releases and mobile apps.

But when it comes to the topic of social media in public relations, I find the hype maddening. Standalone digital firms have moved into the PR market focusing on social media plan development and implementation. Every month, more and more “traditional PR firms” announce the launch of their own social media or digital practice.

The buzz started slowly enough. As teens lost their lock on the early social networks (e.g. MySpace; Facebook) and the mass market moved in, self-declared social media pundits began doing talks and seminars explaining the new world of social media and encouraging PR and marketing practitioners to jump in and get their feet wet. Soon, a cottage industry of book authors, speech presenters, conference organizations and trade press beat the drum for social media. “If you don’t create a practice, you run the risk of becoming entirely irrelevant and ceding market share to your competitors.”

In our own young firm, born during the rise of the social media era, we all agree that the impact of social media on the PR and marketing mix is profound. But, with all due respect to the late sociologist, scholar and media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the social medium is NOT the message – at least when it comes to the development and implementation of strategic public relations programs.

We believe that too many marketers are focusing on the coolest and most buzzworthy tactics for novelty sake and not due to an underlying marketing strategy. Our firm builds social media elements into client programs as strategically appropriate rather than supporting the P&L of a social media practice that requires the continuous sale of separate projects or expensive add-ons. We look at social media elements as additional channels for reaching targeted audiences not as the desired end product our clients should be invested in.

So today, dear friends, we are proud to announce that we are NOT building a social media practice. We will continue to offer our clients a variety of creative and strategic tools to support their business objectives – including smart blogging, setting up LinkedIn groups and Facebook fan pages, custom developed mobile apps and location-based marketing services – in addition to the old fashioned use of the telephone, word-of-mouth and integrated marketing. Business objectives are the message; wise counsel to our clients and prospects is the deliverable.

Creating a Healthcare and Life Sciences PR Practice

Sometimes you develop elaborate plans and hope to implement them carefully. Other times, stuff happens.

This is an example of the latter.

Now in our second year, our strategic relations firm and PR practice are growing. That's despite the economy... minimal capitalization.. and other challenges of starting up a small business. We've added a significant investor relations partnership with MS-IR, headed up by Miri Segal, and together successfully added several clients. The potential for growing integrated IR/PR business is significant. More on this later.

Our friend and colleague, Steph Johnson, left for a new and exciting opportunity with a UK-based financial technology PR firm. We'll miss her decidely offbeat sensibilities but will continue to collaborate as appropriate. Steph and I have worked together twice; we both feel the threat of a third time looming.

Which takes us to healthcare. It's always been an important sector in the PR industry. And in recent years, the market has expanded aggressively into numerous related segments including medical devices, pharma and life sciences. I've been on the periphery many times -- and worked on many accounts in the space -- but truly never became the domain expert. At my last firm, I watched a significant healthcare/life sciences practice develop and ultimately walk out the door.

At Feintuch Communications, we served an initial client in the category and began incubating and working with several more. Many other leads began to materialize. Opportunity was knocking at our door... and then... serendipity struck in the form of Jules Abraham.

While searching for a healthcare freelancer for a former client, I met Jules -- again.

It turns out that we met briefly several years ago but the timing wasn't right and we each went our separate ways. Now, at age 39 (and sharing my May 3 birthday), and with Jules "between jobs" as so many PR practitioners can lament over the last 18 months, we restarted our conversation.

First and most importantly, Jules is a nice guy. His business credentials are equally impressive. He brings nearly 15 years of healthcare and life sciences public and investor relations experience. He's worked in nearly all aspects of the healthcare and life sciences industry including large and specialty pharmaceutical, biotechnology, clinical diagnostics and medical device companies, as well as small health systems, regional hospitals, managed care organizations, Medicare Part D providers and advocacy groups.

Previously, he helped launch and manage the healthcare public relations division at Lippert/Heilshorn & Associates. He also served in the global healthcare group at GCI Group and held positions at Manning, Selvage & Lee, Zeno Group and GTFH Public Relations.

He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the College of William & Mary and a master's degree in public communications/journalism from Fordham University. He lives in New York with his wife, Dana, son and two cats.

So now, the chance timing of our meeting again was amazingly right. We had clients ready to join the firm but we lacked the expertise to serve them properly. Jules had clients and former clients that wanted to work with him but preferred a more stable agency environment. We talked; we planned; we started to work together over the last few months.

Now, Jules has joined our firm as a vice president and managing director of our healthcare and life sciences practice. We've tied the practice to our investor relations partnership. This allows us to offer an integrated public and investor relations package to companies seeking to go public, or those that are public but are seeking better coordination of their messaging and outreach to Wall Street, Main Street and the media.

The formal press release goes out this week and soon we'll be announcing our initial clients. Wish us luck; send us your referrals; and call/write to meet Jules. In addition to talking healthcare, get him started on his days in the Peace Corps as a volunteer (where he became fluent in Spanish), his songwriting and his work as a "not-so-accomplished" Naam yoga practitioner. If the conversation goes well, he might even offer you a copy of his recent CD of original music for meditation.

Things That Changed PR in the Past Decade (aka: I Always Wanted to Create a List Like This)

Unless you live under a rock, you probably noticed the hundreds of "list" articles over the last two weeks remembering all things 2009 and the past decade from fashion to quotes, to lists of lists, and even some cool videos. As much as we all love these articles, I didn't see anything for my PR/marketing colleagues out there as a reminder of all the things and events that changed our profession. So here's my short list of what I believe changed PR in the past decade:

The Social Media Revolution
We all know what a little thing called social media did for people around the world, but for PR and Marketing pros, it was instrumental in helping us to cut the fat and listen to our audiences. Sites like Facebook and Twitter stress pithiness in our pitches and allow us to geo-target our audiences. In addition, when the FCC called out disclosures for promoting clients and companies on social media sites, we all became a little more interested in the truth. I could go on for ages about how social media has changed PR but I also think it’s very important to note the effect that it had for some agencies and companies in the creation of new job roles and departments. Agencies began hiring social media experts (shiver) and directors. In the end, I think it's crucial that we all know and understand social media. We don’t ask interviewees if they are proficient in newspapers, do we?

The Economic Crisis
In the financial services industry (one of the hardest hit by the crisis), many PR pros coped with limited or no PR budgets. The PR teams that survived were forced to focus on smaller projects that would be sure to show ROI and not just fabulous events and excursions. But even for clients not in financial services, budgets were limited and PR/marketing folks were faced with difficult challenges.

Declining Newsrooms
The start of declining newsrooms happened earlier in the decade with the emergence of online news sites but the effects were felt in 2009 as shrinking newsrooms forced PR pros to look for alternative ways (i.e. pitches via Twitter) to grab the attention of the press. In-person meetings turned into 10-minute phone calls and eventually into email Q and As. But has this made us better story tellers and given us a keener eye? Only time with tell.

The Accidental Entrepreneur
For many people in PR, downsizing led to a growth in freelancers and start-up firms. Smaller firms have the ability to grow with their clients and in my opinion (but I may be biased), work harder to stay ahead of the competition. In addition, I believe PR entrepreneurs understand the challenges and travails of being a start-up and are therefore more in-tune than larger PR firms. Entrepreneurs are the backbone of the rising economy, and together with clients, are rebuilding it one day at a time.

Democratization of Blogs
Its amazing how many mommy bloggers are really out there! Blogging has become so ubiquitous that even my group of foodie girlfriends has a blog talking about what we eat. In PR, blogging is a great way for young and old professionals to hone their writing skills. As communicators we should be reading and writing blogs because they are the ideal medium for sharing instant knowledge, information and experiences with all types of audiences. So blog on pros, blog on!

Death of the Fax Machine
This slow death technically started a while back but the fax seemed to completely fizzle towards the end of the decade cemented by the fact that not many reporters and newsrooms accept faxes any longer. PR pros may use them to get a signed contract every now and then, but with scanners, emails and even the eFax, you can send a document just as quickly and easily.

PR for PR
I’ve noticed over the last few years that more and more PR pros are stepping forward to talk to the press openly about their expertise. Typically, PR firms have little time to think about their own brand when they are busy promoting their clients. However, in a time when personal and company brand image means everything, PR pros are doing what they are good at and promoting their own brands and images to the press and through social media. What good is a PR firm if they can't do PR for themselves anyway!

This ends my list, but FULL DISCLOSURE, my PR career only spans about half of the past decade, so I know I've missed major events that changed PR and marketing like 9/11 and the Dot Com Bust. So, I’d like to encourage everyone to comment on this post by adding on the things I missed. As JFK said: "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

Happy New Decade!