The Future of Media Round Up features the top articles and blogs curated by Bateman Group on issues and events related to the convergence of technology, media and communications.

Here’s our take on the most disruptive news, commentary and insights about PR and media from the months of November and December 2011. Please share links to other must-read articles in the comments below if you think we missed anything.

Required Reading:

Redefining Public Relations in the Age of Social Media, The New York Times – From Nov.21 to Dec. 2, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) sought submissions from public relations professionals, academics, and students and the public to help redefine what “public relations” means. The role of public relations has been significantly transformed by the Internet and social media. PR is no longer about solely managing the message. It has evolved to focus on facilitating the conversation between entities and their audiences. This why PRSA’s “Public Relations Defined” effort is calling for a “modern definition for the new era of public relations.” The last time PRSA updated its definition was in 1982. Interested folks can visit prdefinition.prsa.org to share their definitions.

Social Media Help Bosses Tell Their Story, Financial Times – More than three-quarters of the leaders of the 100 biggest US corporations do not have a Facebook page and only two CEOs use Twitter. But among twenty-something entrepreneurs running online companies, 100 percent are fully involved in the scene. The pros and cons aside, a strong reason to use social media is that can be the ideal platform for disclosing compelling stories that aren’t readily accessible to the public. “More practitioners in business should be out there describing their experiences and giving their opinions. It might help correct some of the misinformation promulgated by anti-capitalists, and the general skepticism about wealth creators expressed by much of the media.”

Occupy Movement Pushes CSR to the Tipping Point, CSRHub – The Occupy Movement is forcing banks to examine whether current  Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts like philanthropy are enough. Facing the movement’s disastrous effects on client and employee loyalty as well as recruitment, financial firms are being pushed to seriously reconsider going beyond old-school deeds to show true leadership in “doing well by doing the right thing.”

Public Relations Won’t Fix Penn State’s Crisis, PRSAY (PRSA) – The multilayered Penn state crisis has raised a lot of questions and challenges around the university’s reputation. From a PR standpoint, “one thing public relations professionals cannot help people understand, and should never have to, are an organization’s moral and legal failings.”  PRSA’s own Keith Trivitt and Arthur Yann give their PR perspectives on the crisis and make the distinction that the crisis is a management issue and not a public relations issue.

Charlie Miller’s Punishment by Apple Tests a Complex Relationship, Huffington Post – Earlier in November, white hat hacker Charlie Miller’s relationship with Apple was damaged when the company said he violated the terms of his agreement after disguising an app to reveal a security flaw in Apple’s App Store. This incident reflects the tension in the partnership between companies and their security experts. Should flaws be disclosed privately to developers or publically? Bruce Schneier, a security expert, thinks that “if researchers don’t go public, things don’t get fixed…Companies don’t see it as a security problem; they see it as a PR problem. And if there’s no PR problem, it’ll never be a priority.”

Follow @BatemanGroupPR for more opinions on breaking news and issues.

There’s no doubt Twitter has grown to become a legitimate communications channel, serving a wide variety of audiences and interests. I find myself spending an ever increasing amount of time Twitter mostly because it allows you to stay on top of on such a disparate range of subject matter. Where else can you follow trends in the tech industry, check in on how @charliesheen is #winning and make dinner plans with friends? One other unique attribute of Twitter I’ve grown to enjoy is a good Twitter parody account in my feed.

On a trip to San Jose to watch the San Jose Sharks play the Washington Capitals in February, I learned a good friend ran a parody account for Alexander Semin, Russian hockey player extraordinaire. As of March 15, 2011 @alexsemin had amassed 4,727 followers, no small feat, and was also being followed and referenced by prominent hockey bloggers such as Puck Daddy, Yahoo’s leading hockey blogger.

Here’s a sampling of a few of @alexsemin’s tweet gems:

• Ready for a fastball, Caps fans? I’m slated to replace @charliesheen on 2.5 Men. Setting a Guinness record for Russians on sitcoms. #WINNING
• Nicky signs a contract and he gives us iPads. When I re-sign, I buy the guys McNuggets. http://twitpic.com/3txpwu @Adam_KOL @PuckBuddys
• I hope Ovie’s upper body gets better soon. I hate going easy on him in the bedroom. Our new buckwheat hull pillows won’t swing themselves.

My friend comprises one half of the @alexsemin brain trust, both of whom recently agreed to participate in a Q&A with me for Bateman Banter focused on how they built their Twitter following and how they keep their fans happy. Both asked to remain anonymous. Here’s what they had to say:

Bateman Banter: How did you come up with the idea of creating a parody Twitter account? And why Alexander Semin?

@alexsemin: During the 2008-2009 season, parody hockey twitter accounts were starting to become popular. Someone created one for Wayne Gretzky that got closed right away, but the best was one pretended to be Brian Burke, the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs (and still probably the best parody account to date in our opinion).

We decided that Alexander Semin, also known by his Russian name Sasha, was the perfect candidate for an account because he’s so enigmatic and mysterious — on top of being an incredibly skilled player and probably the Caps’ best pure scorer — and we thought people would like to have an opportunity to hear his “voice.” He’s often been criticized for not communicating with the public or with reporters in English, despite having played several years now in the NHL, but we think this adds to his mystique.  He’s also attacked for not playing hard on the ice, but we think this is because he makes everything look effortless. Twitter gives us an opportunity to, in a way, defend our favorite player, and to talk about the Caps, hockey, and current events in a creative way. And since Semin never tells the world what he thinks, our thoughts might as well be his.

BB: When did you open the Twitter account? Initially, was it hard to gain traction?

Most of our @messages and personal messages are from women. Semin’s a good looking dude, so women fawn over him.

@as: We started the parody account in February 2009. We’re two good friends and huge Caps fans, and Semin totally fascinates us. At the beginning, we didn’t really have a vision, and when most of our early followers found out this was a fake account, they were actually upset about it. But we didn’t have too much trouble gaining followers — especially those who thought it really was Alex Semin (and some people still do). We toyed with a lot of different Semin personas, and one of our favorites is the idea that Semin is actually a very skilled, articulate English speakers who gives talks at universities on literature (if you look at his early tweets, you’ll see that his English has improved a lot since then). He’s also very enthusiastic and excited on Twitter which is not what you expect from the very reserved, quiet, and relaxed vibe he often gives off in interviews and on the ice.

BB: What was your strategy behind building your Twitter following? Did you conduct a lot of research prior to opening the account? Was it mostly trial and error?

@as: Mostly trial and error. We poke fun at Semin a lot but also tease lots of other people ranging from hockey players to pop culture celebrities. At the start, we stuck with hockey but every now and then pick on other people, from college football star Cam Newton to new social media guru Charlie Sheen. Research wasn’t really necessary, because there is so little out there about him, and everyone who knows anything about Semin knows everything about him. A couple years ago, he was most famous for having said that Sidney Crosby, widely considered the best player in the NHL, wasn’t a “special” player, so we made sure that we worked that angle.

We’ve also had a lot of fun creating “guest tweets,” fake contributions from other people. It’s a parody within a parody, like the guest tweet from Kanye West: “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you. But Semin has had one of the best seasons of all time! Vote 4 him!”

And sometimes, our “real” views will surface in tweets (for example, one of us is really critical of Caps teammate Alex Ovechkin’s defense), but Twitter probably isn’t the best platform for us to air our personal views. We think most people look to us for comedy.

BB: What have been your keys to your Twitter success?

@as: One key is to ride momentum as far as it’ll take you. We tweeted a lot during the 2010 Winter Olympics when Team Russia was embarrassed by Team Canada, and this season we’ve tweeted about his success on the ice leading the league in hat tricks as well as his well documented history of injuries. We also took advantage of all the publicity the Caps got during the outstanding HBO 24/7 series in December.

BB: What was your most successful Twitter campaign? What was the best Tweet that’s you’ve received?

@as: Our most sustained campaign was the one we created to write Semin into the All-Star game (#WriteinSemin). Our campaign motto was “Alex Semin 2010: Curl-and-drags we can believe in!”  He was left off the ballot–perhaps the biggest snub–and so we tried to rally people to write him in onto the online ballot. We’re not sure how much impact we had, but many devoted fans wrote us to say that they had voted multiple times. We had lots of fun with the campaign and tried to keep it up even when an injury in December derailed his All-Star hopes.

Although, technically our most “successful” campaign was the recent “#DontTrade28,” when we asked Caps’ fans to tweet reasons the Caps should keep Semin before this year’s February 28^th trade deadline. We’ve joked for a while that Sasha would probably get traded to the Red Wings or sign with them next year, and many Caps fans are actually frustrated with Semin’s seemingly inconsistent play and want him to get traded. To be honest, we worry that Semin will move on to another team in the near future, which is a real possibility.

BB: Through the creation of this account, have you been able to meet the man behind the myth? If not, what do you think he would say to you?

@as: We’ve never met Semin, but we continue to admire him from afar. We can’t be sure what his reaction to our parody account would be, but he seems cool enough to probably think it’s pretty funny. Based on the interviews we’ve seen, he would probably say something like this: “If you guys want to make a fake Twitter account about me, who am I to stop you? Why are you so interested in me that you made a Twitter account? My only goal is to win.”

In the few extended interviews Semin has given since joining the Caps, he usually comes across as introspective and serious. But even if it offended him and he punched us in the face, I think it would be worth it — but that will never happen because he can’t fight!

BB: Any exciting plans for the future?

@as: You can’t plan too far ahead with parody accounts because they depend so much on current events. So for now, the only plan is to keep doing it, even if he gets traded and we go into mourning for a month.

If you’d like to receive regular updates from Sasha, please follow @alexsemin.

Part 1: A Historical Perspective

When I started out in this industry 20 years ago, I loved to hear the senior staff trade anecdotes about the PR agency workplace prior to the PC era. They would have me and my fellow “Generation Xers” in stitches with war stories about press releases written on old fashioned typewriters and mishaps involving poorly applied white out (or “liquid paper”). Or how press releases were sent back and forth to clients via snail mail, so approvals would often take several weeks until the arrival of FedEx reduced this process to a mere 3 or 4 days (still one of the most “disruptive” business services ever launched, IMHO).

Fast forward to 2010 and I find myself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of sharing my own war stories about the PR industry before the arrival of email and the Internet. The “millennials” recoil in horror at my tales of standing at a fax machine for 16 hours straight on the day of a product launch. They laugh when I attempt to convey the pure joy that accompanied the arrival of our first plain paper fax machine, ending years of frustration with chalky, filmy thermal fax paper rolls.

One way back memory members of Generation Y have a hard time believing is this: THE BUSINESS PRESS REGULARLY COVERED NEW PRODUCT NEWS!  It’s true. In early-to-mid-90s, I worked with several product divisions of Digital Equipment Corp  and we could almost guarantee coverage in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, et al for just about every single product launch ─ even for complex technologies like microprocessors. How was this possible?

Prior to the Internet, coverage of the technology industry was dominated by two dozen or so companies. Among them were familiar names like IBM, H-P, Intel, Texas Instruments, Oracle, Dell, Cisco and Sun Microsystems along with fading brands such as Digital Equipment Corp., Silicon Graphics, Data General, Wang and Informix. The media’s obsession with entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley start-up culture had yet to materialize.

With less companies to cover and lots of print pages to fill, it was common for business media to agree to pre-briefings on product news on Friday and hold it over the weekend under verbal embargo until Monday morning. That’s when the coverage would literally pour in from all the trades and business media. We would average about one new product launch each month, which allowed all of us to amass impressive clipbooks ─ not to mention forge genuine relationships with the members of the business media. I took this all for granted for a long time and boy I sure do miss this pre-Internet phenomenon.

Obviously, today things are much different. Not only in terms of how embargoes are received, but in the kinds of news items that capture a writer’s attention. Just a few years ago, product news still held some allure in the trades. News coverage relied on a steady stream of products and their new capabilities and enhancements. Since 2007; however, there’s been a slow shift with fewer journalists covering product launches. Three reasons for this change are abundantly clear:

1) Shortened News Cycles: The Internet has reduced news cycles from days to seconds.

2) Page View Journalism: The rise of digital media and its ability to measure page views is providing journalists and bloggers with insight into what readers actually want to read about. Concurrently, publishers are increasingly focused on driving more traffic and page views to appeal to advertisers.

3) Increased Noise Level: Unless you’re a closely watched brand like Apple, Google or Facebook spending millions on a product launch event or a pedigreed start-up with tier one investors and well-known entrepreneurs at the helm, a story on your product launch is unlikely to cut through the clutter.

So, the question remains… Is the product launch dead?

Whether or not we like it, things are changing fast. I don’t believe product launches or embargoes are dead just yet, but they are going by the wayside, slowly but surely. Whether you have an embargo in place or not, the quality of the content, the media strategy and, once again, the content, is what will get you maximum results. We as PR professionals need to adapt and evolve our strategies for the product launch. In part two of this series, we’ll be sharing some of our newly formed best practices and recent successes helping clients launch new products into this new environment.

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)

Today’s guest post is authored by Katrina Dene, the Bateman Group’s summer intern and a third-year journalism student at the University of Oregon. Katrina looks at how the use of technology and recent emergence of social media have impacted both the practice and study of PR in equally significant ways.

As I enter my third year of college and take my first steps toward a career in public relations, one thing became abundantly clear to me during my summer internship at the Bateman Group — technology has had equally a profound impact on the study of PR as it has on the practice of PR. The senior PR practitioners at the Bateman Group were quick to point out when they were in college; the majority of academic programs geared towards the study of PR were woefully out of touch with what was being practiced in the field. They were genuinely surprised when I informed them that the classroom experience has evolved dramatically in 20 years. To say it’s taken a quantum leap since the members of Generation X were college students would be a huge understatement. Gone are the days when students showed up to class with just a pen and a notebook, furiously taking hand-written notes as the professor lectured or worked the chalkboard. Today, I still show up to a lecture with my pen and notebook, but also with my laptop, BlackBerry and, of course, my i>Clicker.

i>Clicker Remote

The University of Oregon, along with many other schools, has implemented the i>Clicker system in quite a few of its lectures. For those unfamiliar, an i>Clicker is a remote control-driven auto responder device that allows professors to ask multiple choice questions and instantly present a graph of the results. Amazing what technology can do, right? It’s an instant progress report for the teacher to determine if they’re getting their message across by quizzing the students in real time.

As far as student/teacher relations go; however, this is actually a little troublesome. I am no longer Katrina Dene, third-year student. I am now a serial number with 89% accuracy for in-class pop quizzes. I become an arbitrary number on an arbitrary scale. While this new use of technology has its advantages, particularly within large classes of 100+ students, professors should not lose site of the importance of building true relationships with their student and finding new ways to engage them both on- and off-line. Interestingly, the emergence of social media has helped.

In another one of my classes, the structure of our lectures was impacted directly by social media, perhaps to an extreme. Instead of the traditional lecture, questions and response format, our class added video chat and instant message via Skype along with Twitter micro-blogging to the mix. As an alternative to listening to lectures on the PR trade, we “Skyped” with real-world professionals, other professors, graduate students and government officials who relayed their personal experiences for us to learn by example. Furthermore, students were not only encouraged to raise their hands to ask questions, but also Tweet the inquires to our class hash tag on Twitter. In turn, our graduate teaching fellows were hard at work monitoring the hash tag activity and answering questions for the 160-person class.

So what does this say about the future of communications in the teaching of communications? Well, social media has allowed us to build and maintain a network of relationships both inside and outside of the university like never before possible. Using video chat enabled us to learn from industry experts and working professionals from all over the world. But has this shift damaged the treasured teacher/student relationship? I ponder this while remembering one basic principal: One strong relationship is more powerful than ten weak ones. More traditionally: Quantity does not necessarily ensure quality.

Yes, the integration of technology with the college classroom has made the experience much more automated and a bit less personal.  On the flip side, social media has made the opportunity to take a more active role in one’s own education easier than ever before.  The members of Generation Y have grown to accept two-way communication between student and teacher to be the norm. The classroom has evolved from a place of simply consuming information and reciting it back to one where students have become active participants in the creation of content and the learning experience itself. What better way to prepare us for an economy where successful entry requires you to do much more than just intern. You must also cultivate a personal network of influencers, seek out mentors, take time to volunteer, keep up on current events, follow the stock market, maintain a personal blog and basically do whatever it takes to stick out in today’s uber-competitive job market. Learning today is much different than learning yesterday, the key is to adapt and apply each change in a way that allows you to be better equipped for tomorrow.

The May issue of Fast Company Magazine features a great article by Ben Paynter on the proliferation of social media tools and how major consumer brands are using them to build customer loyalty. The article, entitled “Five Steps for Consumer Brands to Earn Social Currency”, is also very applicable to non-consumer brands, including many of the B2B technology companies we work with at the Bateman Group.

The impetus of the story was a new study by Vivaldi Partners and Lightspeed Research examining how companies create true value from social media and online community. Not surprisingly, the study revealed that many brands are still using social media to drive buzz, often too fixated on the numbers, i.e., “We’re up to 100,000 Facebook fans now, how cool are we?”

The study offers great insight and real-world cases on what works. Even better, Fast Company’s Paynter did an excellent job dissecting the study for the best five lessons. If you haven’t abandoned this post yet to go read the full article, you should! If you’re too lazy or pressed for time, here’s the Cliff Notes version:

It Ain’t All About the Numbers – Just look at Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. The former has 80% fewer Facebook and Twitter followers than Starbucks. Yet Dunkin’ Donuts fans are 35% more likely to recommend the brand, according to the study. This is because Dunkin’ takes a more advocacy-driven approach. Their create-the-next-doughnut contest drew nearly 300,000 different entries this year and has become an annual event.

Context is King – Beer drinkers don’t give a rat’s ass if their beer tastes great or is less filling. At least they don’t talk about it with their drinking buddies. This means bottle packaging holds little relevance and that the bonding or “social context” during consumption is what’s most important, according to the study. Anheuser-Busch’s bud.tv encouraged being a solitary Web potato and failed. On the other hand, Bud’s attempt to brand “fan cans” in collegiate colors for tailgating was on the right track. Unfortunately for Bud, it was foiled by college administrators who viewed the campaign as condoning underage drinking.

Not All Brands Need a Facebook Page – Mass-market utility brands such as Gillette aren’t likely to see much upside in social currency, says the study. Gillette has loyal users: 96% of respondents in the study touted its good quality and reliability. Yet Gillette jumped on the social media bandwagon, producing a series of YouTube videos giving tips on how to “manscape” down below. One video shouts, “When there’s no underbrush, the tree looks taller”. Really, Gillette? Really?

Social Tools are Just That: Tools – Axe definitely pushes the envelope with its racy ads and viral videos on CollegeHumor. But does the body spray product really help guys close the deal? Because Axe’s social media strategy is pure goofball, the study concludes that it doesn’t translate as strongly compared with a more serious brand such as Clinique. Clinique’s educational YouTube how-to tutorials on applying makeup have earned it stronger social currency in the end.

Social Media Stunts are for the Birds – Two social media campaigns launched by Wendy’s and Burger King prove this point. Wendy’s “You Know When It’s Real” campaign featured commercial spots, online games, and contests about how it’s never-frozen patties are cooked to order. Burger King’s much buzzed “Whopper Sacrifice” asked fans to drop 10 friends on Facebook to get a free hamburger. Today, BK’s fans have moved on, but customers trust Wendy’s products much more, concluded the study.

To download the full report, visit: http://www.vivaldipartners.com/pdfs/Vivaldi_Partners_Social_Currency_US_Report_2010WEB.pdf.

For those of you social media pros in the know or brand marketers with good common sense, none of these lessons should come as a big surprise. What they all remind us is that any social media initiative needs to be authentic to the brand’s identity and engage its audience in the way they expect and want to be engaged with. If you’re an irreverent brand, it’s fine to perhaps push the limits a bit further. Just be mindful that all the buzz (Facebook fans, YouTube views, etc.) might not translate into more engaged, brand advocates in the end.