Bateman Group has started off 2012 with a bang!  Today we kicked off our new partnership with a company called Adchemy based in Foster City, Calif. and led by CEO and Founder Murthy Nukala, a veteran leader of innovative, technology-driven businesses.

Adchemy’s mission is to help advertisers leverage consumer intent to create more effective digital advertising experiences. The company is backed by Accenture, August Capital, Mayfield Fund and Microsoft and in 2010 was listed by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top 50 venture-backed companies in the U.S.

Adchemy is a wonderful new addition to our digital advertising and marketing technologies practice. The account will be run by a spectacular team consisting of practice lead and Senior Vice President Bill Bourdon, Vice President Lisa Melsted, Account Manager Shannon Hutto and Senior Associate Kathleen Stuart. I feel confident this will be a long and fruitful partnership for both our organizations. Please join me in welcoming them to the Bateman Group family.

Lo and behold the return of the Bateman Buzz Meter, our 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.

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As the year comes to a close and we reflect back, there’s no denying 2011 has been an incredible year for Bateman Group. The surge we experienced in the fourth quarter; however, has truly been unprecedented. Today, we publicly announced our selection as agency of record by three exceptional companies. These recent additions to our client roster include:

Qualys — Based in Redwood Shores, Calif., Qualys is the leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) IT security risk and compliance management solutions. Qualys solutions are deployed in a matter of hours anywhere in the world, providing customers an immediate and continuous view of their security and compliance postures.

Antenna Software — Based in Jersey City, N.J., Antenna provides mobile business solutions that enable enterprises to build, deploy and manage applications, websites and content across myriad devices for employees, customers and partners.

Sociable Labs — Based in San Mateo, Calif., Sociable Labs provides on-site social commerce solutions for online retailers to maximize social sharing, referral traffic and conversions.

We’ve worked hard over the years to maintain a client roster notable for its diversity — particularly in terms of geography and market position. These recent wins only enhance this by adding an early-stage startup and two fast-growing market leaders that hail from Redwood City all the way to Jersey City. At the same time, Qualys, Antenna and Sociable Labs will strengthen our sector knowledge in IT security, mobility and social commerce markets, respectively. Today we took another big step in our journey to national prominence.

A warm welcome to all three!

To say that 2011 was a big year for the media, technology and PR industries would be a huge understatement. We saw LinkedIn’s IPO, the firing of Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, the firing of Carol Bartz from Yahoo!, the launch of Google+, the unfortunate passing of Steve Jobs and much, much more.

Here are some predictions from several Bateman Group staffers, including yours truly, on the biggest trends and events we believe will unfold in the coming year.

Tyler Perry, Vice President

The Continuation of Page-Driven Journalism — Media properties are fighting for eyeballs, so we will continue to see ridiculous headlines and extensive coverage of the same five brands.

A Backlash on Daily Deals/Group Buying — Many brands are using this as a marketing tactic, but the increasing deal fatigue will make this less of an effective strategy. The incentive must be attached with other value.

More Companies “Doing Well by Doing Good” — Using the digital medium or gaming techniques to help people live better and help solve some of the global issues we are facing, but paralyzed to solve from a government leadership standpoint.

The Mobilization of Business Will Change the World of Journalism — It has already shifted the game with advertising, marketing, e-commerce and collaboration. Now that people are consuming more and more content on smartphones and tablets, will journalism shrink its content accordingly?

 

Lisa Melsted, Vice President

Corporate social media responsibilities will continue to fall on PR…but not forever — Social media responsibilities are increasingly being placed on PR firms and outside teams.  As companies try to figure out what their roles should be regarding social media and struggle with internal bandwidth for implementing these programs, those responsibilities will increasingly fall to their PR teams. This trend will likely be short lived however.  Much like the website building capabilities that fell onto PR and advertising firms with the advent of corporate websites in the late 90s and early 2000s, these responsibilities will likely be pulled back in-house over the next 3-5 years as more people build up expertise in social media and the responsibilities for corporate blogging, Tweeting, etc., become full-time jobs (much like website management). PR and ad firms will lead the way for now and should take advantage of this climate for the time being, but should not count on these programs (and revenue from them) to be within the purview of the outside firms forever.

Siri Will Disrupt the Way We Communicate — Apple’s voice recognition/search technology will begin with a slow build and then skyrocket and totally change the way we interact with our phones once again.

 

Rod McLeod, Senior Associate

TechCrunch takes a status hit, becomes a better publication — TechCrunch and ValleyWag were probably the first two tech blogs that I read when I began working in the tech industry. I always found TechCrunch offered a pretty high level of quality and kept me up to date with trends I found interesting. And after a month of reading ValleyWag, I lost interest after I read a few too many articles that were written in poor taste.

I’m sure everyone has been keeping track of the recent CrunchFund debacle and the exodus of top brass like Michael Arrington, Paul Carr, MG Siegler and now Sarah Lacy, but I think that this will usher in a new era at TechCrunch. I never worked with any of the previous editors, but I’ve certainly heard stories of the rage of Michael Arrington from other PR colleagues (see the comment section on a previous Bateman Banter post for yourself), as well as first-hand stories from friends who work at top-tier startups. However, I have worked with a few of the younger writers in TechCrunch’s stable, and I only have positive things to say about them.

I think that TechCrunch will begin to take a more journalistic approach in 2012 and beyond. I’m talking embargos, no more blackmail or “revenge” and FULL disclosure – yes, I said the “D” word. While this won’t reverse the site’s horrid redesign, it will improve the quality of an already highly-regarded publication, and also make it easier to develop and foster real relationships with TechCrunch writers.

 

Amy Ziari, Senior Associate

Competition will increase over “Celebrity” reporters — Jolie O’Dell goes to VentureBeat. Josh Constine and Sarah Perez to TechCrunch. Robert McMillan to WIRED. Ashlee Vance (an author of one of my favorite books about Silicon Valley) to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Blogs and news outlets are in a feverish race to add reporters that come with their own loyal audience – and personal panache – into their fold. Expect to see more of this in 2012 as competition heats up among the top technology, business and venture news outlets to acquire the same “celebrity” writing talent. It’s not just about the words anymore.

Bill Bourdon, Senior Vice President

Creating a Google+ Business Strategy Will Not Be a Top Priority — Google recently launched Google+ brand pages, which generated a good amount of fanfare and positive reviews in true Google fashion. But here’s the rub: investing time and resources in Google+ will not be a big priority for businesses in 2012.  At least it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t matter if Google+ is better or even if the SEO value of Google+ brand pages is superior to Facebook. It ultimately boils down to market share, and Google was just too late to the consumer social media game to engage a critical mass of users, let alone the early adopters. I don’t think Google+ will be shut down next year – there’s too much at stake. But the service will definitely need to reinvent itself to become viable. Robert Scoble and others are predicting Google will extend its social software to enterprises that can use it to network and collaborate internally, akin to Yammer and Salesforce Chatter. Seems like a reasonable move to capitalize on their investment to me.

 

Elissa Ehrlich, Director

As Social Media Matures and Shakes Off Some of the Hype, PR Will Get Back to Basics — With the explosion of web content and social media engagement, PR has been increasingly viewed as the more valuable and strategic marketing function when compared to advertising. Indeed, PR is owning more and more the content companies push out to their audiences. Why? I feel its because we’re already engaged in a conversation with these constituencies and can communicate more authentically than our friends on the advertising side. The PR industry has been forced to reinvent itself in recent years and I think we’re almost done with the transformation. I do know this - PR pros are once again in high demand. We can’t find people fast enough and we’re turning down great new business leads due to lack of staff!  This is proof that the approach that many agencies are taking is working, and companies are finding value in the work that we do.

Social Media Fatigue Sets In – Already, it’s the same people on your Facebook news stream posting mundane updates, and no one cares all that much about Google+.  While social media will continue to be important for many brands, perhaps in 2012, we’ll get back to the basics and return our attention to securing quality media coverage in highly credibly publications, establishing our clients as true thought leaders in their industry sectors, and other “old fashioned” PR programs like placing keynote speaking engagements and pursuing awards.

Fred Bateman, CEO and Founder

Facebook will be bigger than Google — Facebook will go public and eclipse Google in market capitalization — perhaps permanently

Silicon Valley Will Be the Next Madison Avenue — Just as technology talent is finding its way to New York City, the reverse will also happen.  As Facebook and Twitter start generating more revenue, advertising and marketing talent will start heading West to cash in.

Cloud Computing Will Continue to Reinvigorate the Software Market — Business applications and data are moving to the cloud at a rapid pace and it’s not going to stop there. The day will come when companies outsource not only their software, but network infrastructure as well. The main beneficiaries will be the SaaS companies with the foresight and agility to go where the market is heading, not where it is today. Just as we’ve seen Salesforce, SuccessFactors, Qualys, Zuora, Taleo, NetSuite, Box and Workday grow into successful companies seemingly overnight, I predict there will be others to emerge to join this group, benefiting all of us who make our living from the tech sector, either directly or indirectly.

Consumerization of IT Will Continue to Impact All Corners of Technology — Soon, it will be standard across the software industry for all vendors, regardless of sector, to offer freemium or very low-end products as a point of entry for individuals or small businesses, including mobility, security and virtualization.

In Part 1, we learned about the takeaways one could derive from working at a café, a summer camp, a haughty swim club and a Ryder Inc. rental center. Part 2 will focus on the men of the Bateman Group – Christmas calendar coming soon.

This is Part 2 of 3 profiling the most interesting summer jobs of the Bateman Group inspired by the AdAge article “Guess Which Adman Used to Be the Kool-Aid Man.”

The ever stylish Fred

Fred Bateman

CEO and Founder

Job: Wendy’s Food Server

Lesson Learned: Get the support of your peers

I worked for about three months at a Wendy’s very close to where I grew up in Revere, Massachusetts, a city located just five miles from Downtown Boston and adjacent to Logan Airport. Revere does not enjoy the best reputation and never has. Its inhabitants are best known for being working class, of Italian-American descent (with a smattering of Irish, like my family) and for having very strong Boston accents. Emotions in Revere tend to run high about, well, just about everything.

Revere could be a scary place to grow up – especially if you failed to recognize who sat atop the social hierarchy. It wasn’t the monosyllabic, steroid-filled meatheads who had abs in the third grade and could barely squeeze their enormous frames in their new Chevy IROC Camaros. Not even close. In Revere, it was the girls everyone feared.

Against this colorful backdrop, my summer job at Wendy’s began on a good note. Once the manager realized I could do rudimentary math in my head and could speak to customers in full sentences, I was quickly moved off the food assembly line and on to the cash register full time. This move by the manager; however, did not make me popular with my co-workers, which included four of the toughest, most notoriously violent girls in town – Stacy, Heidi, Kim and her sister Antoinette.

Just how tough were they?  Well, one time Heidi and Kim had a falling out over a guy. Kim “flipped the bird” to Heidi while driving by the restaurant in the passenger seat of the guy’s new IROC Camaro convertible. Heidi, never one to tolerate such a show of disrespect, exacted her revenge by dragging her now former friend Kim into Wendy’s the following night (literally by her hair) and breaking her middle finger in front of all of us. Snap! It was the first and only time I’ve heard the sound of breaking bone.

So, needless to say, it was critical I repair my relationship with these girls and fast. The manager wasn’t helping matters as he continued to give me special treatment, including more flexible shifts. To keep in the girls’ good graces, I would often volunteer to take the trash out even when it wasn’t my turn as well as cover shifts for the girls when emergencies arose – which was frequent. I can’t say we become close friends, but I learned that while it’s important to impress the boss, you also need the support of your peers to actually get the job done and be successful. That, and having all ten digits in working order at the end of the day is an added bonus.

Young William

Bill Bourdon

Senior Vice President

Job: Painter

Lesson Learned: It’s all in the prep work

The summer after I graduated from college, several friends and I started a house painting business to save up enough money to move out of our parents’ houses and venture off into the real world. While I gained a lot of valuable lessons from the business side of this experience – like managing teams, budget forecasting and client service – my biggest take away came from a cardinal rule of the manual labor. It all comes down to the quality of your prep work.

In house painting, prep work is the less glamorous part of the job, including scraping, sanding, priming and caulking. It’s everything you do before the painting begins, and if you want your paint job to stick for many years over – the prep needs to be flawless. Taking shortcuts on prep means a quicker path to seeing that shiny newly painted house. Unfortunately, it also means the paint will prematurely peal off within a year or two. Quality prep and planning is the foundation of any successful communications program. If the message isn’t well crafted or targeted to the most appropriate audience, then the results will always suffer.

I didn't always have long, luxurious hair

Rod McLeod

Senior Associate

Job: Painter

Lesson Learned: Missed details can detract from a stellar job

Bill and I actually listed the same job, the same lesson learned and basically the same narrative, so here’s a different take on the thrilling life of a painter. During the summer after my sophomore year of high school, one of my crew coaches offered me a job to work with him as a painter. He was willing to pay me $9 an hour (San Francisco minimum wage was around $5.75 at the time), and the work was consistent. I thought why not, painting can’t be that hard.

I did everything from landscaping to carpentry to painting, and when it came to the actual painting, it really wasn’t that hard. But like Bill, I soon found out that meticulous prep work was the key to doing a good job, and to go one step further, it was the cleanup that ultimately determined client satisfaction. I could’ve painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but if I left specks of paint on the window and caulk on the floor the client would remember the lack of cleanup, as opposed to the amazing job that I did overall. Paying attention to details applies to every aspect of business, and I’m sure everyone can remember a time when a senior level executive walked away remembering a typo in an email that you sent, instead of the amazing results that your project yielded.

Side note: I would’ve done the gold leafing in Sharon Stone’s house if I didn’t have to quit for water polo pre-season. She has a pretty awesome pad in Sea Cliff.

Max lives a hard life

Max Bourdon

Gentleman of Leisure/Official Office Dog

Job: On-command Recycler

Lesson Learned: A life of leisure is good, but a life of purpose is great

This is my second summer spent as the Official Office Dog of the Bateman Group. In that time, I’ve made friends with the mailmen (except the one whose wedding ring I ate!), splayed my manly belly on every inch of the office and have tasted just about everyone’s used tissues, much to my Dad’s dismay.

But lately, I’ve really been applying myself. You see, the Bateman Group works with a great company called Recyclebank, and while it may be fun as hell to tear up paper and leave it splattered across the agency’s carpets, it’s neither nice nor sustainable! So this summer, I’ve been working on living greener and doing my part to make the world a better place.

But don’t just take my word for it, humanoids. Look at me in action!

Office Dog Max Recycles for Love from Bateman Group on Vimeo.

Today we publicly announced our selection as agency of record by NatureBridge, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco and the largest residential environmental education partner of the National Park Service. NatureBridge currently operates four campuses in Yosemite National Park, Olympic National Park in Washington State, Golden Gate National Park and Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and each year serves more than 40,000 participants through field science, youth leadership and teacher training programs.

Environmental education is a pre-requisite for a sustainable planet, yet it continues to be misunderstood, underfunded and even ignored. This is especially true in our public schools where, much like the music programs our client Little Kids Rock aims to protect, hands-on nature and science courses taught out in the field are among the first to be cut. In response, NatureBridge has set ambitious goals to expand the program nationwide and inspire even more students in more places to become advocates for the planet.

This win is a key addition to our Green/Sustainability practice formed on Oct. 25, 2010 made up of companies, both for profit and nonprofit, offering products and services designed to protect natural resources and embrace the concepts of environmental integrity and social responsibility. The bi-coastal account team, consisting of myself, Tyler Perry, Shannon Hutto and Kathleen Stuart, will work closely with our fantastic internal contacts Susan Larson and Brea Jones along with a soon to be hired new PR director.

We feel very fortunate to be able to compete for and win accounts where the organization’s mission so closely aligns with causes and issues we as an agency (and individuals) feel so strongly about, namely managing climate change, living a more sustainable lifestyle and protecting the planet for future generations. Welcome aboard NatureBridge!