10 ideas on doing investor relations in a bear market

Here are 10 ideas on doing investor relations in a bear market. Nothing unique or magical – a difficult market is by definition, well, difficult – but here are the thoughts of an IR guy who has been through a few market cycles:

… Stay visible (or get out there). Sure, it’s hard to tell a happy story when everyone’s scared to death. But a happy story isn’t the goal. At some point investors, especially professionals who may be keeping their powder dry right now, will be back in the buying mood. They should be getting to know you now.

… Be factual in your tone. The market ascribes credibility to executives who lay out the facts in a pretty blunt way. Presentations and publications should be fact-laden, not flashy, funny or visionary. You’re giving people data to evaluate your company in the midst of a fearful time. Their view of the broader market environment probably will determine when they’re in a buying mood, anyway.

… Don’t be quick to make promises. Suppose the financial turmoil turns into a real recession (as economists, not politicians, define it). Consumer spending could go in the tank and stay there. Business investment may be on hold. Earnings could go worst-case. Guidance based on economic assumptions may go awry – so at least lay out the assumptions for investors, if you’re going to forecast results or major events in the future.

… Do tell the long-term story. In spite of complaining about short-termism in the stock market, many CEOs and CFOs talk to investors as if the latest quarter, or the next, is the biggest deal for shareholders. You should ask, what is the key message? What will drive the value of this company? Odds are, it has to do with business trends that span several years, competitive position, innovative strategy and the like.

… Discuss the balance sheet. When investors are valuing stocks on their growth prospects, it’s about the P&L. But when the issue is survival, people need to understand the size and nature of the assets, and the size and nature of the liabilities. Safety (or lack of it) is found in the balance sheet.

… Give the bad with the good. Nothing erodes the trust of investors as much as management being in denial. Running the “sunshine pump” or trying to gloss over bad results damages a company’s credibility. Acknowledging problems and defining a plan of action builds confidence.

… Refute rumors quickly with the facts. As several ‘collapses’ have shown, rumors can aggravate business problems by undercutting the confidence of customers and investors. More than ever, a bear market is a time to monitor online and market “chatter” – and correct anything erroneous.

… Coordinate investor and media relations. It’s a small world. When a reporter is working on a story, he’ll call analysts and investors (friendly or unfriendly) looking for insight. And investors, in turn, pay attention to what the media says about a company. Companies should speak with one voice, and IR and PR should coordinate daily to plan responses on any issues lurking in the market.

… Polish up your Q&A. The issues are myriad: credit crunch, recession, your industry trend, consumer pullbacks, job cuts, commodity prices, political uncertainty, regulatory changes in the air. Best practices for IR include preparing a document with answers to the market’s most likely questions and concerns, running them through senior management and legal counsel, and distributing these messages to everyone in-house who answers questions from investors and the media.

… The story is the business, not the stock price. For anxious shareholders, the most urgent issue right now may be the amount of money they’re down on their investment. But for the company and more seasoned investors, the question is where the business stands today – and what management is doing for the future. Regardless of the drama in the stock market, for IROs the business is the message.

Facebook’s Plans for the World Wide Web

When you’re the world’s largest social network you find it difficult to let defeat slow you down. Facebook may be autocratic in the way it deals with its membership base and it may want to own the web and all its content but it is also the place where everyone goes to hangout online with their friends and it just keeps on growing.

The curious purchase of Instagram for which Facebook paid a billion makes even less sense now with Facebook rolling out its own version of it, in apparent direct competition, unless of course, we consider the timing.

Instagram was purchased just weeks after it was made open to Android users. It provided Facebook with a plan for mobile in its pre-IPO days and it stopped a rival from gaining a surge of new members. Then with the deal yet to be inked it brought out its own app called Camera in effect competing with itself.

Now you might think that dropping $1 billion on the table just to deny a competitor a measly 33 million members might be a steep price to pay, but not if you plan to fight that competitor at his own game and this is something Facebook might just be starting to think about. I am talking, of course, about search. Whatever you might be doing in social media and marketing search is at the heart of the web because it is how we navigate the web.

The problem is that search is a complex business. Creating a search engine that works well is truly expensive, as Microsoft has found out, and requires the ability to not just index information fast but also assess it properly. In case you have not noticed, in the Facebook environment, Facebook search sucks. It works worse than a third wheel on a bicycle and when it provides results from outside Facebook it has to rely on BING anyway.

Now a Facebook/BING deal is not out of the question, Industry rumours have it that it’s something that has been talked about for some time. A hint that these rumours may be based on truth is given by the very recent interest Facebook has expressed in buying Opera.

Armed with a browser of its own, a search that works and the ever increasing depth of its social graph, Facebook could provide an alternative to search which could also help it make more money from its ad network. Should that happen we will truly have a universe populated by behemoths: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Amazon, each competing for our data and our custom. More than that however we will also have the era of the two webs. The Open Web, where Google is king and the closed, Facebook web where data can come in but can never go out. At that point marketing, complex enough as it is, will become even more complicated.

While all this sounds like a smoothly created grand plan for total web domination it is anything but. Facebook has been struggling with itself for a long time and I have frequently catalogued its errors in articles here. For a concise overview of just what has gone wrong you should check out Prasant Naidu’s piece on How Facebook is Killing Itself.

Having gone public the social network is now under pressure to evolve and succeed. Whether it manages to do just that, or will do what it has done to date which is pull itself in all directions at once remains to be seen. Clearly the year head is going to get even more interesting.

Personal Branding: It All Began With A Picture

There are no shortcuts to building a credible, durable and goal-oriented personal brand that delivers tangible results for your career and your life. As experts and those who have achieved remarkable professional and personal benefits remind us with the full authority of experience, before embarking onto any practical steps to develop our brands we must do our homework and put our house in order. And that will always include a healthy degree of introspection about our motivation and values as much as establishing a workable strategy that takes into account our target client, our objectives and a reasonable calendar to achieve them among other key aspects.

Once the above has taken place, the question immediately arises: which is the first practical step I should take to take charge of my personal brand? (never forget that your personal brand already exists whether you are cognizant of it or not). And the answer almost invariably is: get the best possible photo of yourself. For if logos are quintessential to commercial brands, photos are quintessential to personal ones. Even in the case of people who are already acquainted with you in a personal or professional capacity, pictures – when they display a lucky blend of originality, quality, artistic merit and manage to capture the essence of what you stand for – send a powerful message about you and your brand that colors the perception other parties will have of you across the board. Underestimate the importance of a portrait picture at your own peril.

The importance of taking photographs

This lesson was well understood by one of the forerunners of the modern personal branding movement: the Anglo-Irish dramatist, philosopher, novelist and wit Oscar Wilde. Perhaps no one was as successful as Wilde in developing almost from scratch a highly idiosyncratic and controversial personal brand that allowed his genius to flourish and attracted the attention of the prejudiced and corseted Victorian society he had the misfortune to live in. All the same his achievements are remarkable and have stood the test of time: I can think of no better example of a man who created a niche that nobody else dared to occupy as an art critic, brilliant conversationalist, connoisseur and lecturing aesthete across the English-speaking world. And at the start of it all was the picture displayed above alongside the one taken by the great Napoleon Saroni in New York in knee-breaches that launched Oscar to stardom in the US. (Lesson for personal branders: Want a smashing picture? Get a smashing photographer!).

The purpose of your photograph

Needless to say technology has moved on greatly since the end of the XIXth century and today even home-made pictures can have astounding quality and do the job for us – at least temporarily. If you ask me, however, I would never recommend trusting such a crucial piece of your personal brand to luck and my advice has consistently been to always engage the services of a professional photographer after you’ve made clear what the purpose of the picture is and its place within your overall brand strategy. To maximize the return of your investment bear in mind the following:

- Consistency pays. Even when it is becoming customary to exclude pictures from résumés/C.V.s for certain position in some countries (the same is happening to age, marital status and other irrelevant factors) to avoid unfair discrimination, the truth is that in the social media age almost every social network requires a picture. Using the same picture across the social media and internet sites makes it easy to find and remember you and reinforces the branding attributes you are seeking to emphasize with your image. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but using at least a picture from the same set is usually a good idea.

- Your picture must tell a story. The acme any photo (an indeed any portrait painting) can reach is to encapsulate within itself the art of storytelling and, in effect, tell a story and highlight key concepts inimical to your brand. Are you all about creativity and innovation? Thorough professionalism and time-tested experience? Not afraid to break conventional rules like Oscar Wilde? Let your picture speak for itself.

- Your picture must evolve with your brand. Brands are not static but dynamic, and changing your picture at the very least every three years is an unwritten rule that shows your followers, peers and clients that you are a dynamic as opposed to a static individual. It also offers you the chance to reflect on the passage of time kindly and underscore your accomplishments in the best possible light.

- Remain flexible and do not ignore feedback. Some of us have better judgment than others when it comes to our own image. Regardless, at the end of the day the feedback you get is what will determine whether the picture you have chosen is serving you well or not. Personally I always prefer what I call the ‘a-ha effect‘: time and again people have been pleasantly surprised when they’ve met me in person and told me how I look ‘definitely younger than in the picture’. This is not only a great ice-breaker but helps me start conversations, networking and business dealings in the right frame of mind. Be it as it may, ideally you should never look significantly worse than your picture, which is another reasons why using dated pictures is inadvisable.

A whole treatise could be written on this hot topic but I hope the message by now is clear: getting a good picture is often the first practical step towards the strategic strengthening of your personal brand. Your presentation picture – especially if it will be included in your portfolio and social profiles – deserves your full attention and care and is one of the best investments you can make.

Your photo speaks volumes about you: make sure those volumes are filled in with your hopes, aspirations, personality and talent and not the result of a haphazard occurrence that you have been too careless to display. Your quality picture will pay off big: and the more visible you are, the higher the return. So get ready to collect.

Author:

Oscar Del Santo is a lecturer, consultant, key speaker, blogger and populariser of online reputation and inbound marketing in Spain. He has been extensively featured in the Spanish and Latin American media and is included in the ‘Top Social Media Influencers’ and ‘Best Marketing Tweeters in Spanish’ lists @OscarDS. He is the author of ‘Reputacion Online para Tod@s’ and the co-author of ‘Marketing de Atraccion 2.0’.

10 questions every candidate should be ready to answer

Rep. Rick Berg, a candidate for North Dakota’s open Senate seat, was recently asked a straightforward question: “What’s the state’s minimum wage?” He didn’t know the answer—and he’s far from alone.

The Huffington Post points out that four candidates at a recent Senate debate in Missouri also didn’t know the minimum wage. And that’s surprising, considering that this is a perennial question that trips up candidates in virtually every election cycle.

So today, I’m offering all campaigns and candidates a free prep sheet to help them avoid these obvious errors.

Here are 10 questions you should be prepared to answer during your race:

1. What’s the minimum wage? The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Some states are higher. The full list is here. Candidates should also be able to answer similar questions about their state’s unemployment and home foreclosure rates. Here’s Rep. Berg’s attempt at answering the minimum wage question:



2. What’s the price of milk? Reporters ask these types of questions to gauge how much a candidate understands the struggles of “real” Americans. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a gallon costs $3.50. (A handy list of other product costs is here.)

3. What’s the price of bread? The average price of a loaf of white bread is $1.40.

4. How much Is a gallon of gas? The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular gas is $3.87. That’s up from $3.55 last year, $2.78 in 2010, and $1.95 in 2009. Candidates can accurately say that the price has doubled in the past three years. Also know your state/local gas price averages.

5. Why do you want to be a congressman/senator/governor? You’d be surprised how many people blow this simple question. In fact, that very question derailed Ted Kennedy’s presidential bid in 1980.

6. What mistake(s) have you made, and what have you learned from it (them)? This question is sometimes intended as a “gotcha,” but can be a perfect opportunity for candidates to explain a position change.

7. Who Is your favorite Supreme Court Justice of all time, and why? Candidates should also be able to name a decision they agreed with and one they disagreed with. In recent years, these types of questions have tripped up both Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.

8. When Is the last time the (local sports team) won the championship/pennant/World Series/Stanley Cup? During a Democratic debate for Massachusetts Senate late last year, four candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, couldn’t list the years their beloved Boston Red Sox had won the World Series in this century. Candidates should also have similar answers ready for local college teams, and should be able to name their favorite players, as well.



9. Who is your personal hero? This is a cliché question which typically elicits cliché answers. But unless Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Eleanor Roosevelt are truly your personal heroes, try to come up with something more original and more revealing about who you are and what moves you.

10. What newspapers do you read? After Sarah Palin’s disastrous handling of this question from Katie Couric, other candidates can expect similar questions. Be ready to name your favorite journalists, newspapers, radio stations, news programs, and websites.



Brad Phillips is the author of the Mr. Media Training Blog, where a version of this story first appeared. His firm, Phillips Media Relations, specializes in media and presentation training. He tweets at @MrMediaTraining.

Four Strategies for Staying Relevant

A serious threat facing most brands in dynamic markets is the loss of relevance because the category or subcategory they are serving is declining. Customers are no longer buying what the brand is perceived to make. New categories or subcategories emerge as competitors' innovations create "must haves." This dynamic can happen even if the brand is strong; customers are loyal; and the offering has never been better, thanks to incremental innovations.
Relevance dominates. If a group of customers wants a battery powered car it does not matter how much they love your hybrid brand. It will not be relevant. A newspaper can have the best new coverage and editorial staff, but if readers are diverted to cable news or blogs, relevance will decline. The ultimate tragedy is to achieve brilliant differentiation, winning the preference battle, only to have that effort wasted as its relevance declines.
How does a brand stay relevant? How can a brand avoid the disinvest or milking decision? There are four strategies that can work.
1. Gain parity. The goal is to create a close-enough option to a competitor's "must have." Several of the fast-food brands introduced menus items like salads and fruit smoothies designed to be "good enough" for the the healthy-eating segment. McDonald's, facing a threat from Starbucks to their breakfast and other off-hours business, introduced the McCafe line, close enough with respect to coffee quality to escape exclusion by many customers.
One challenge facing the parity options is that the brand may be perceived to lack credibility in the new area. Another is that that it might be difficult to actually deliver on the promise, given that the culture, assets, and skills of the operation were not designed to support the parity initiative.
2. Leapfrog the innovation. Instead of being satisfied with being relegated to having a parity product, a firm could attempt to take over the new category or subcategory or at least to become a significant player with a substantial or transformational innovation that leapfrogs the competitor. Nike with its Nike + shoes and iPod Sensor allows a runner to hear music plus keep track of each workout. The adidas miCoach also provides a way to monitor and link each workout to a computer but it has an active forum, the ability to create a program design to fit a sport and goals, and even a contact to trainers who can design customized programs. Cisco has frequently filled gaps in its product line with an acquisition. They then added Cisco-driven synergy and systems benefits creating a leapfrog result.
The leapfrog strategy represents a formidable challenge because substantial or transformational innovation is needed and because getting established in a marketplace where a competitor likely has scale and momentum will be difficult.
3. Reposition. Modify and reposition the brand so that its value proposition becomes more relevant given the market dynamics. Madonna has had several transformations through the years to maintain her relevance. L.L. Bean, built on a heritage of hunting, fishing, and camping, repositioned itself as a broader outdoor firm relevant to the interests of outdoor enthusiasts such as hikers, mountain bikers, cross-country skiers, and water-sports enthusiasts. The outdoors was still treated with the same sense of awe, respect, and adventure but from a different perspective.
The challenge is to have enough substance to earn credibility in the new position and to implement the rebranding strategy as well. Madonna and L.L. Bean had to live the new position and provide benefits that were relevant.
4. Stick to your knitting. Rather than adapting, keep pursuing the same strategy with the same value proposition but just do it better, keep improving, and create brand energy. The safety razor, for example, was threatened in the 1930s with the introduction of the electric shaver and its compelling benefits. However, an incredible stream of innovations from Gillette allowed it to beat back the new category and enjoy robust growth. In-N-Out Burger, a chain in the western United States that has developed intense loyalty with a menu of burgers, fries, and shakes, has made no effort to adjust to the healthy trend. It simply continues to deliver the same menu with uncompromising quality, consistency, and service under the assumption that a worthwhile segment has ignored the healthy tread and another will indulge periodically.
The risk of the stick-to-your-knitting strategy is that the new category or subcategory might be based on such a strong trend or such a compelling set of benefits that avoiding it might prove futile and even disastrous.
The selection of the optimal response will be context specific, but it will involve two questions. What is size of the relevance threat and its supporting trend? And what is a realistic judgment about the firm's ability to innovate, add needed capabilities, and be successful in the marketplace? Complexities, interactions, and future uncertainties make them tough questions to answer but a loss of relevance is tougher still.

How to start measuring social media (even if you hate math)

One of the reasons most of us went into communications or journalism is because we don't like numbers. Statistics and calculus and derivatives? No, thank you.

We've always gotten away with "measuring" our results in terms of media impressions, reach, and advertising equivalencies. After all, it's hard to quantify brand awareness, credibility, reputation, and thought leadership. You know whether or not you have it, but you can't really put it in terms of numbers.

And those great big impression numbers? They feel good to a CEO who is looking for some way to show a return on you efforts.

But when the Web disrupted our industry we slowly began to see new and interesting ways to measure our efforts. Early on we looked at using unique URLs in our news releases and different 800 numbers at our events. But that wasn't enough.

The Web has provided a huge opportunity to measure our results directly to business goals, yet most of us still shy away.

Why? Because we don't like numbers.

We'd like you to think about it differently. Call it data or information or goodies or, heck, call it chocolate. Just don't call it numbers.

It's fun to see results from your efforts—and now you have the opportunity to see them every day.

Start small. One of the things we discuss in "Marketing in the Round" is using a benchmark of zero as your first step. Find something—one campaign, one event, one project—and create the benchmarks, the dashboard, and the data points you'll measure. Think beyond traffic, page views, and bounce rate. Think about what the goals are of the business and how you can affect change in those areas.

In a for-profit business, you'll want to look for ways to increase revenues, shorten the sales cycle, or improve margins. If you don't know what all three of those things mean, go make friends with someone in the accounting department and learn it. Quickly.

Let's use Pinterest as an example. It's easy to set up some boards and direct people back to your website or blog. Arment Dietrich has a client—Frank and Eileen—that makes high-end men's and women's shirts. The team created a Pinterest board for the company to test what kinds of results could be achieved by pinning images of some of its shirts.

After only one month, Pinterest is the No. 8 referral source of traffic to the Frank and Eileen site. But remember, we said to worry less about traffic and more on business results. So dig further. Pinterest sent 3 percent new visitors in April. Of that three percent, 83 percent bought a shirt. That represents $2,670 in new revenue for the business.

Other than the 83 percent who bought the shirt, all of the data for that particular test came from Google Analytics (which is free). The client also granted access to the e-commerce site, which provides the information needed to find out how many of the visitors from Pinterest bought a shirt.

This is a simple way to look at measurement, but it gives you a starting point. Once you get this down, you can begin to advance and become more sophisticated in your measurement.

Companies that fully understand how they are being talked about and what levers work online can use this data to inform future marketing decisions. Strategic intelligence gleaned from measurement can help uncover new opportunities for products and services, as well.

Your clients or executive team will be ecstatic to finally have a real return on investment on your efforts.

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communication firm. She also is the founder of the professional development site for PR and marketing pros, Spin Sucks Pro, blogger at Spin Sucks, and co-author of "Marketing in the Round."

Geoff Livingston is an author and marketing strategist, and serves as vice president, strategic partnerships for Razoo. A former journalist, Livingston continues to write, and most recently he co-authored "Marketing in the Round," and authored the social media primer Welcome to the Fifth Estate.

By Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston | Posted: May 13, 2012