This Wednesday, April 27, 2011, Sierra Leone will honor its 50th anniversary of independence, and the Bateman Group is requesting your support in helping us celebrate the occasion with our friends at WeOwnTV.

A spinoff of the critically acclaimed documentary film, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, WeOwnTV provides film education and equipment for disenfranchised youth and young adults living in Sierra Leone as well as distribution platforms for their stories to be shared with the world. It was just about two years ago when we helped produce a fundraiser for the then fledgling WeOwnTV project at Citizen Space. A lot has happened since that time.

Shortly after the fundraiser, San Francisco-based filmmaker Banker White and a small North American team ran a storytelling and media production training workshop in Sierra Leone. Many of the workshop participants had their childhoods cut cruelly short by war and as survivors this opportunity to share their stories is not taken lightly. Today, WeOwnTV has grown to become an active collaboration between filmmakers in North America and these talented young media makers in Sierra Leone whose works are now being broadcast around the world.

WeOwnTV is officially launching a new year-long production initiative, ‘Picturing Independence: A Positive Revolution’, to create a group of short films that celebrate the Sierra Leone of yesterday and today. The project has already received the honor of being selected as one of the programs officially endorsed by the Sierra Leone 50th Anniversary Committee but WeOwnTV needs your support making these films a reality.

Can we please count on your support in one or more of the following ways?

• If you have a blog, please consider spotlighting the WeOwnTV project on it. We can arrange interviews with Banker along with the program leaders in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

• Help us socialize the campaign: like it, share it and tweet all about it.

• Take a moment to follow WeOwnTV on Facebook and Twitter if you haven’t already.

• Of course, you can also donate – no amount is too small.

Thanks in advance for your support!

Earlier this week on Tuesday, March 1^st, Bateman Group along with fellow boutique PR agencies Mindshare PR, Kulesa Faul, Page One PR and Borders+Gratehouse co-hosted the third in an ongoing series of professional development events. The events — jointly organized and produced by all participating firms — are informal, intimate learning opportunities designed to encourage authentic interactions and, ultimately, cultivate stronger, mutually beneficial relationships between and among PR professionals and industry influencers we serve.

This most recent panel discussion brought together three of the most prominent names working in IT trade journalism today — Eric Knorr, the editor-in-chief of InfoWorld; Doug Dineley, executive editor of the InfoWorld Test Center; and James Niccolai, deputy news editor for IDG News Service. Yes, all three work for the powerhouse publisher IDG; however the similarities truly end there. Each panelist hailed from a different corner of the IT trade eco-system, including editorial direction and oversight, product testing and reviews; and breaking news. The result was a lively discussion moderated by Bateman Group Managing Director Lisa Melsted and attended by more than 30 PR professionals of all experience levels.

The discussion was successful in preempting the iPad 2 announcement, which took place on March 2^nd, and focused mainly on the changing tech journalism landscape, i.e., what’s driving it, what’s shaping editorial content, what are the hot trends, etc. Without further ado, here are some highlights from the panel:

1. Biggest challenges in the tech media landscape: The first question set the tone for the discussion by addressing how quickly media is evolving. Eric spoke about the shift from print to online that has caused journalists to rethink what content they publish and how they publish it. To the dismay of many of our clients, Eric reiterated that IT journalists are no longer covering product news like they used to, but now tend to focus more on larger trends. James expounded on Eric’s initial thoughts by stating how the need for immediacy has directly affected journalistic accuracy. He also mentioned the need for journalists to develop their own voice while still maintaining impartiality since the advent of blogging has led more journalists to create narratives and styles of their own.
2. Rest assured the Internet still rewards value: Amidst an ϋber-plethora of Facebook, Apple and Groupon articles, many of us in the PR industry have a hard time getting coverage for lesser-known brands. Eric Knorr told us that quality content is still the biggest driver in tech journalism. Doug chimed in saying that the advent of online metrics, such as article page views and organic search rankings, has caused journalists to consider keyword usage in headlines, but the body of the articles remains mostly unchanged. The panel agreed it will be interesting to see how tweets and Facebook “likes” will be measured moving forward.
3. New delivery platforms translate into new rules of engagement: Today’s iPad announcement emphasizes new delivery platforms that are becoming increasingly mobile. Tablets are built on multimedia capabilities, while mobile devices such as smartphones clearly point to a trend of needing information at one’s fingertips. Gone are the days when journalists were only expected to produce compelling content because they are now being expected to expand their capabilities to include podcasts, video production and active tweeting. The promising aspect of this trend is that journalists are learning to deliver relevant content based on the context of their audience, which bodes well for our clients Baynote and CoreMedia.
4. Hot trends in the tech industry: According to the panelists, emerging trends other than cloud computing  and the omnipresent “mobile everything” include “Big Data,” new open source distributed software frameworks such as Hadoop, the consumerization of IT, power efficiency, desktop virtualization and browser-based computing. Eric asked the obvious question, “What’s next for Windows now that its truly losing relevance” due to the shift to web-based services. In an audience of PR professionals, the inevitable question was asked: “What articles drive the most traffic?” The answer: “Best of” and technology awards articles have perennially done well at InfoWorld, and Doug shared that any article on free tools or Open Source were quite popular as well. (As an aside, I have to agree with him–thinking about how that applies to my life, at least 25% of the apps on my iPhone were downloaded after I read a “best iPhone app” article, and probably all of them were free!) Eric mentioned that articles about IT culture were also popular, such as the world’s “dirtiest IT jobs”. The Quora question that asks about the preferred alcoholic beverage among the IT security community would be an interesting one if it ever takes off – I’d have to go with Cosmos as the dark horse here.
5. PR Pet Peeves: After seeing the flaming of an unprofessional PR flack on TechCrunch earlier this week, we had to ask about PR pet peeves. James mentioned ambiguous press releases that leave journalists wondering what they’ve read after they read it. Okay, it’s a “solution” but is it software, hardware, a web service or what? Doug’s pet peeve was being pitched on a technology that he doesn’t cover (read: PR people need to perform their due diligence before pitching targets). It was assuring that all of the panelists actually do read emails from PR professionals, but lack the bandwidth to always reply.

Based on all of this great insight from Eric, Doug and James, it’s no wonder why IDG and their mainstay tech media properties like InfoWorld have not only survived but actually thrived during this difficult transition to digital publishing. They’ve done this by having foresight on those trends expected to dominate industry discussion in the future and being the first to put a stake in the ground on these issues. Case in point: Search for “cloud computing” in Google and you’ll see InfoWorld’s “What cloud computing really means” article from a year ago ranks second in the organic search results. They have also evolved quickly. When InfoWorld moved their entire content model online a few years ago, many assumed it was the end for them, but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. IDG publications have also been early adopters of social media channels like Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic, and are quickly adapting to new user devices like the iPhone and iPads. But what’s most at the heart of their success is that each of their media properties has stayed true to their core audience and brand.

These panels allow us to look at things from the journalist’s point of view, leading to more thoughtful angles and pitches that will ultimately translate into improved media relations. If you’re interested in attending our next panel discussion, please feel free to contact us.

This past Wednesday evening, Dec. 1^st, Bateman Group along with fellow Silicon Valley PR agencies Mindshare PR and PageOne Public Relations hosted a panel discussion on the current state of venture capital and M&A activity within the tech industry and Silicon Valley.  Moderated by our very own Bill Bourdon, the panel was comprised of a number of veteran reporters from the area including J. Bonasia of Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher, Alastair Goldfisher of Reuters and Ben Parr from Mashable.

Surrounded by the backdrop of the sun setting on San Francisco in the penthouse suite of our office building at 1550 Bryant Street, (yes, it’s a gorgeous view and you should all be jealous!), the panel offered up their views on a number of interesting trends they feel will shape both the tech industry and the climate for funding over the next few years.  Here’s a quick summary:

2010 Retrospective: The majority of the panel (J., Tom and Alastair) agreed that 2010 has been defined primarily by the Cloud.  Not only did the companies selling product and services for the Cloud dominate funding news (as well as enterprise M&As), but this was the year it went mainstream (Witness Microsoft’s recent TV commercial with a couple in an airport trying to cure their layover boredom with the rescue mantra “To the Cloud” and the woman exclaiming “Yay, Cloud!” when she connects to their home network. Seriously?!?).

Ben chose to break with the crowd to declare 2010 the year of Apple and Facebook. Between the iPhone and the introduction of the iPad this year, Apple’s stock has skyrocketed and briefly overtook PetroChina as the second-biggest company in the world by market value after Exxon. Facebook, on the other hand, has grown from a place where college students went to vent into a force that even Google now has to reckon with.

Disruption/Convergence: J. (who early in the evening declared “enterprise IT is not dead” — you heard it here first, folks!) later on posed a very interesting theory about how the industry is going through a period of simultaneous disruption and convergence. Cloud, mobile and social media are all disrupting the industry in some way, but they are all also leading to greater convergence at the same time. Cloud provides the infrastructure on the backend, while the user drives the function of the mobile device. Social media is driving real-time collaboration and new ways of organizational functioning, with traditional, hierarchical management structures breaking down. Or, as Flannery O’Connor once put it: “Everything that rises must converge.”

Devices/Platforms: All of the aforementioned discussion trends are leading to another intersection– one where devices and platforms merge. As Tom put it, “Mobile is just the fashion of the day — it’s not about mobile, it’s about the platform and the device.” Connected devices are proliferating rapidly (it’s no longer just your desktop or laptop, but also the smart phone, the iPad, the netbook, etc. that are constantly with you) and, as J. implied, the common denominator between them is the user, who is quickly becoming the server for those client devices. In turn, companies are scrambling to build out the platforms to support those devices and the content/media to support them. Cloud is about platform as a service and, as Ben reminded us, so are players like Facebook and even “traditional” enterprise companies can disrupt the market, such as RedHat, Salesforce.com and VMware, according to J.

The State of the VC Community: Despite recent prognostications to the contrary, our panel agreed that the VC community is not dead. Alastair noted he’s been hearing that prediction for as long as he’s been writing about VCs (7 years) and it hasn’t happened yet. So, what seems to be happening within the sector right now?  The panel agreed that with trends like the cloud, it takes less money to fund start ups these days, so we’re not seeing some of the huge influxes of cash that it has taken to start a company in the past. Fundraising is down, as are IPO bids. Some angel firms are beginning to provide larger starting rounds. Well-known firms will continue to garner coverage for the companies they fund, but smaller firms are beginning to make a splash by doing things differently — such as opting not to take a board seat with the companies they fund or not to expect the high profile, quick turnaround exits and IPOs of the dot com heyday.

What to watch for in 2011: Lastly the panel offered up some insights on trends to watch for both within technology and the world of capital and M&As for 2011. Keep these things in mind over the coming months: Cloud. Curation on the web. The semantic web. Platforms. The rise of public companies and valuations in China.

Behold the Labor Day edition of the Bateman Buzz Meter (technically #5), our semi-regular ranking of recent newsworthy events based on PR and Social Media effectiveness.  As always, please comment on any current news headlines or PR stunts you think are worthy of the Buzz Meter we may have missed.

(Remember to click on the image to view it in full screen)

BP is damned if they do, and doubly damned if they don’t.

According to Reuters, the company has apparently purchased “oil spill” and related search terms from Google and other search engine providers in an effort to drive traffic to its Gulf of Mexico response website. This SEO strategy is a clear attempt by the company to control communications around the worst oil spill in U.S. history and improve sentiment about its brand within the media.

While BP hasn’t disclosed how much it has paid for these search terms, President Obama has criticized the company for spending $50 million on TV ads in an attempt to turn around consumer perception about the company during the crisis. I agree with Obama that TV ads, an old school tactic used by tobacco and oil companies for years, are in really poor taste. Purchasing the search terms; however, is a very new crisis communications tactic worth a closer look.

A spokesman for BP explained to Reuters: “We know people are looking for those terms on our website and we’re just trying to make it easier for them to get directly to those terms.”

This case represents an interesting dilemma for crisis communication strategists. On the one hand, search term strategies like this will certainly help BP to drive traffic to their site, giving the company more control what’s being communicated. On the other, consumers of online news media today are much more sophisticated and many see right through excessive social media marketing. Moreover, they understand the power of broadcasting their distaste about a company virally across their networks when so inclined.

In a press release issued by BP on June 4th, the company’s Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said:

“The Board of BP has been clear from the outset that all resources available to the company should be applied to meeting BP’s responsibilities in addressing these events.”

If this statement is true, then why not invest $50 million to support the response?

Okay, as a communications professional, I admit this question isn’t entirely fair. There are three crucial communication elements to addressing a crisis:

1) Be a resource to media as well to the public

2) Be transparent about the situation; and

3) Be responsive.

All of these things require an investment, although $50 million seems a bit excessive. The company has issued literally dozens of press releases and videos since news about the spill first broke last month: http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=40&contentId=7061813.

I’ve not done a thorough audit of these communiqués, but upon a brief review, I can tell you they overwhelmingly focus on how much oil BP has collected, not how much has been lost, and how much money the company is donating to environmental project XYZ. Not surprisingly, this canned crisis communications statement is a thru-line among most of these announcements:

As part of its commitment to restore the environment and habitats in the Gulf Coast region…

My take: Try as they may, BP’s high volume of outbound communication and savvy social media marketing tactics aren’t the right band aid – nothing is. BP may be committed to fixing the problem now, but they were never 100 percent committed or prepared to prevent it from happening in the first place. If they can definitively prove that the problem could not have been prevented, that could be their silver bullet, but they can’t. As a result, the losses from brand damages alone, which I’d argue are far greater than the billions of dollars they are investing in environmental damages, will take years to recover.

So the question remains…in light of a disaster, when the conversation on the web reaches a fever pitch, should PR pros jump right in or sit back and wait? Personally, I don’t think we can sit back, but I also think that brands are still trying to navigate how to best handle mishaps and disasters in the social world. The one factor that has emerged as a constant, however, is authenticity. Social media allows brands to speak directly to all their various constituents. If they don’t do so honestly and authentically, they are doomed before they hit tweet.

Let us know what you think of the situation and how BP has handled it thus far?

Today’s post is the second in our series introduced in January on Bateman Banter called The New J-School in which we examine the evolving nature of journalism in today’s digital age.

If you at all pay attention to decreasing ad revenue trends, you’ll find yourself in good company in assuming that traditional media are becoming more or less irrelevant, or at least not very profitable. After all, this sentiment is often coming straight from the horse’s mouth itself. Case in point: The Economist’s recent story on Newsweek going up for bid, calling it “bad news in a business that is supposed to be more resistant to technological shock and structural declines in advertising than the newspaper industry.”

You don’t say.

Another prime example? A month or two ago at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, I attended a panel on “How to Save Journalism.” One of the panelists, the publisher of USATODAY.com, was bold enough to suggest the media need to consider breaking down the sacred Berlin Wall between editorial and advertising to keep traditional media relevant. This elicited a number of gasps from the media-heavy audience, who hold that Berlin Wall near, dear and absolutely sacred (and, in my opinion, rightly so).

If the publisher’s words didn’t represent a fundamental shift in traditional media and their growing pains, I don’t know what will.

Still, I understand why a publisher might think this way. With the explosion of online content, media today have endless Web analytic tools to measure value for advertisers right along with reader engagement to ensure that content stays fresh and everyone can keep their jobs. Yet, media simply writing for the almighty click wouldn’t be a good thing for anyone.

Traditional media’s struggles to stay relevant hit home after returning from Austin. I found myself in a meeting with a client who turned to us, the PR team, and asked, “Does traditional media coverage even matter anymore?”

Damn right it does.

Just look at the recent study by Pew Research on the state of news media. If you’re at all interested in media trends, the study is required reading and apt to shift some of your common misconceptions about traditional media.

A few choice nuggets:

• 80 percent of the links on blogs and social media sites lead back to U.S. legacy media
• The vast majority of the top news sites (67 percent) are still tied to legacy media
• While new media are growing, their ranks among the most trafficked sites are still small

A huge part of our job here at Bateman Group is to keep our finger on the pulse of media trends like these and try to stay one or two steps ahead of change. What’s happening is that extremely targeted, thoughtful coverage in the business or trade publications still has the power to move mountains… and then some. We see it happening to our clients every time they receive coverage in their most coveted publications. The calls start coming and the leads pile up. Coverage like this may just be harder to come by these days, which is where a good PR firm that knows the ins and outs of working with traditional media comes in handy.

Of course, the hopeful statistics about traditional media in the Pew study run in parallel with equally gloomy ones, as well as signs pointing to the continued growth of new media voices on the Web. Social media certainly cannot be ignored either.

This leads me to a key question: Given the changing media landscape, how much focus do you think should be given to traditional media vs. social media in PR programs? I certainly have my own opinion (hint: it depends), but eager to hear yours.