Occupy What?

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of Thinkink, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 11/18/11.

If ever there was a group in America that could benefit from a public relations team — or some PR counsel — it’s the Wall Street protesters and their increasingly global counterparts. Penn State or the recently released Jack Abramoff? I wouldn’t even bother…

The protesters may number in the tens of thousands, cut across demographic, cultural and socioeconomic lines, and are handy fodder in GOP political debates when the talk of 9-9-9 grows old. But when it comes to effectively disseminating what they stand for, millions of Americans throw up their hands in, well, protest, and draw a blank.

Considering their growing clout, that’s not a good sign.

A CNN/ORC International poll released earlier this month revealed a major disconnect between the protesters’ aims and what people think they stand for. They’re having an identity crisis, you say?

Not at all, they simply don’t have one.

Nearly half of those polled (40%) said they had no idea what the movement stood — or stands — for. Another 27% said they had a negative view of the overall cause – even if they were still fuzzy on the specifics. People I know who have taken part in the sit-ins, stand-ins, and protests have become disillusioned with the lack of organization or united message.

As someone who spends her days (and nights) helping companies develop and communicate a united and coherent message, I have to admit that I, too, would have trouble drafting up, say, four or five critical aims the group is trying to accomplish.

I think I know the basics: they are known as the Wall Street protestors or Occupy Wall Street, and spinoff groups or self-identifiers have cropped up  across the globe, from Lower Manhattan to Oakland to Miami, to cities in Europe to as far away as Guam – the island, literally, not the expression. Their aim, or rather, their manifesto “is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations,” according to the group’s website.

But beyond carrying signs saying they represent 99% of the not-so-silent majority, brandishing megaphones, and getting into skirmishes with law enforcement, what exactly are they doing, and what, specifically, has been achieved by the group’s existence?

The truth is, not too much. But asking the above questions is exactly the type of maturing the Occupy Wall Street movement needs if it wants to be taken seriously in the long run. There are too many overnight successes, start-ups and movements that are forgotten as quickly as they rose to (limited) fame.

It’s time for Occupy Wall Street to embrace a modicum of corporate structure and communications strategy, and better disseminate what it hopes to achieve. Ranking second on a Google search is just not enough. If it wants to fight corporate America, it has to put itself in corporate America’s shoes – if only for a few moments, or hours.

Granted, in terms of civil (mostly) non-violence and grassroots organizations, the “occupiers” are babies, and still have a long way to go. For comparison, it’s easy to associate the civil rights movement with the decade of the Sixties, but its stirrings and undercurrents had been set in motion decades and generations before. Even with that slow burn, over time, civil rights moved from restaurant table sit-ins and hard-fought bus seats, to the top of the national agenda. Only then, finally, did meaningful change sweep across the country and flesh out its most discriminatory backwaters.

Whether the Wall Street protestors recognize it or not, the success, durability, and health of our citizen’s democracy has long been able to absorb these types of splinter groups and incorporate their values into the middle class, and through the legislative pen and ballot box, effect meaningful change. The road to that change may begin with street signs and protests, but it continues with a smart, cohesive, well-publicized public relations-honed message.

Here’s hoping that in our instant-gratification society, the Wall Street protesters grow up fast. I’m sure they have a lot to say and can definitely benefit by taking their message – whenever they work out what it is — in multiple directions. Their actions and their words may have a tremendous impact on our future.

So I’m ready to listen, and I think so is the rest of that 99%. Still. For now.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of Thinkink, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 11/18/11.

The Weiner Scandal: A Class in PR Mis-Management

It was the political scandal heard round the country – former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner found himself in the midst of a media hailstorm after posting an inappropriate picture to his public Twitter account. In the resulting onslaught of criticism, Weiner chose to fight a brazen (and perhaps ill-advised) battle to avoid resignation. As the very drawn out process went on, he gathered much more negative publicity and media attention than was necessary. After following the entire scandal in the news, we have to wonder what Weiner was thinking when he made the post-scandal decisions that he did. ThinkInk’s Chief Visibility Officer Vanessa Horwell recently shared her thoughts in an article for MediaPost, which can be read below:

Dirty Men, Double Entendres, Damage Control

by Vanessa Horwell

I almost started this column four weeks ago, just after news broke of Anthony Weiner’s pecker being paraded on Twitter. But I hesitated: what’s the big deal? It’s a harmless pic … pervy men post tasteless photos of their willies all the time. It will blow over.

And blow until last week it did.

Over the following weeks, I watched as Weiner’s story morphed from a computer hack to a misjudgment, to a televised apology à la Tiger, to a string of lies that revealed Anthony Weiner to be not only an insidious liar but a destroyer of progressive ideals and a shatterer of political integrity.

Okay, maybe that’s going a little overboard, but Weiner’s shenanigans demonstrate a trend among male politicians — the crown for which, until recently, was held by Republicans. A trend that highlights how hypocrisy, lies and political sex scandals have become acceptable in our society.

It seems that perviness, narcissism and good old-fashioned idiocy are bipartisan offenders. I won’t go into the “why” here, but how can they think they’ll get away with it? Is the public to blame?

Perhaps.

One rule when being sworn into office is not to lie to your constituents. Another is not to expose your private parts to the universe. Clearly, a lot of men can’t help themselves with the latter, but we’ve tolerated a growing number of sex-related scandals in the past few years (Sen. David Vitter and Mark Sanford’s, for example) that have set a precedent.

So why have we accepted that it’s okay to deceive, deny and lie publicly if you’re a politician? One could argue that when a degree of morally bankrupt behavior gets a pass, it lends a teachable moment to A-listers’ PR factories. Each indiscretion, however miniscule, provides a backdrop for the next literal battle of the bulge, Weiner-style. For social networking scandals, there’s the hacking defense; for extramarital affairs, there’s sex-addiction rehab. Just as our communication options have skyrocketed, so have options for finger-pointing.

There’s no doubt that Weiner’s lack of a PR powerhouse made a difference in how he handled his scandal. The end result of resignation may have been the same, due to the last straw that was wife Huma Abedin’s pregnancy news, but the timeline and details would have been different.

Weiner committed many a foul that could have been squelched by a PR professional. The laundry list includes calling a CNN producer a “jackass” and responding to initial inquiries with a political-brand blend of defensiveness and near sarcasm. Not to mention the bald-faced lying. Backtracking on hacking claims didn’t enhance the sincerity of Weiner’s following press appearances, nor did his lack of a promised “investigation” into the Twitter-centric rumors.

Despite shameful image handling, Weiner knew the importance of having proper PR backup. Gossip powerhouse TMZ published a message from Weiner to former porn star Ginger Lee offering help from a “professional PR type person” and saying that someone from his “team” could call her. It’s not clear whether Weiner was offering use of his congressional staff — another ethical violation right there — but no matter what, Weiner wanted Lee to use his tactics.

“The key is to have a short, thought-out statement that tackles the top-line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: ‘This is silly,’” he allegedly wrote to Lee.

Lee would have been better off consulting someone who wasn’t embroiled in the scandal. Nevertheless, Weiner was right: A plan and a PR pro will get you far.

I can’t say whether or not Weiner’s public would have accepted his lack of resignation, but that’s only because there were — and are — issues competing for our attention. During the week his scandal exploded, there was disheartening job market news, fighting in Libya, a political crisis in Yemen, and a volcanic eruption. Weiner’s scandal was also a distraction from the debt ceiling deadline. We would eventually have to look elsewhere, to decision making that could make a larger difference than Weiner’s resignation, or lack thereof.

While terribly embarrassing for upstanding politicians and the general public, Weiner’s battle to avoid resigning resonated worldwide. By drawing things out, Weiner deepened and extended scandal coverage. Since then, there’s been a political scandal in China (Liu Ning, a district official in Guangzhou, allegedly used social networking to send X-rated pics) and one in Belgium (Prime Minister Yves Leterme purportedly sent over 800 text messages to his mistress).

Considering the scale of Weiner’s downfall, it’s hard to imagine these politicians topping it. One thing is certain, however: they’ve gotten close, however unwittingly. If they’ve learned anything from Weiner, hopefully it’s to suit up with the right representation from the get-go … and to bow out quickly after damage control.

Read the full article.

About Vanessa Horwell

Vanessa Horwell is Chief Visibility Officer at ThinkInk. She works with companies in the U.S., UK and Europe to improve their visibility through strategic public relations and new media channels. Reach her at vanessa@thinkinkpr.com.

ThinkInk’s Vanessa Horwell to Present at LBS LATAM 2011

ThinkInk’s Chief Visibility Officer Vanessa Horwell will be a featured presenter at the 3rd annual LBS LATAM 2011 conference in Miami on June 24.  Hosted by the Location Based Services Association, the event will offer marketers and agencies a forum to learn and network with leading companies in the location based services market.

Vanessa will be discussing how brands can profit from LBS in advertising and marketing, branding strategies and direct marketing, how to take advantage of geolocalization services for branding, and catching the customer at the decision-making time. The discussion will also provide insights into coupons and promotions offers according to consumer profile.

For information about Vanessa’s presentation or to register for the event tickets, please visit the website for LBS LATAM 2011.

Women’s Pay: Equal Or Is Answer Elusive?

By Vanessa Horwell

(Reprinted from MediaPost)

When International Women’s Day rolled around in March, I contemplated the topic of why men make more money doing the same job as women. In the PR industry. Was this the truth, or had I succumbed to a perpetual myth? Or was I dredging up ghosts à la Feminine Mystique? Undeniably, some discrimination within the greater marcomm industry still exists, but is it pervasive enough these days to warrant such a generalization? From my own experience, as employee and employer, I couldn’t see the pay inequality.

Demystifying the pay divide

Statistics, however, skew the results in men’s favor. Spread over all industries, men simply earn more than women because they occupy a higher percentage of the highest-paying jobs. This does not suggest that there’s a blatant discrimination, just that women are still playing catch-up in earning advanced degrees and breaking into the traditional higher-paying fields such as engineering, medicine, and law.

Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap — and What Women Can Do About It,” asserts that women are still more comfortable moving into jobs that promise the more flexible hours required by the primary family caregiver. While this point makes me a bit squeamish, I can see the merit in such a position — not that women are assuming their “traditional” (barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen) roles — but because a good number of women I know do, in fact, plan for a future with children and move toward flexible careers. Which, unfortunately, can preclude them from those that are higher-paying.

Another possibility is simply a chicken versus egg scenario: maybe the more flexible jobs — traditional jobs that women excel at and gravitate toward — have undervalued or pay-discriminated against women for so long that low pay has become standard pay?

Regardless, the answer is elusive.

So what about the PR industry?

In 2010, the marcomm news source Ragan.com reported that women represent about 85% of the PR industry; however, 80% of upper management is still male. Therefore, men make up 80% of the highest-paying positions within the industry. Stay with me…

In 2007, the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) study on the men-to-women pay rate found that men made an average annual salary of $93,494. Women’s average annual salary was reported to be $66,467. In my opinion, given that men make up 80% of the top positions, these numbers (a difference of some $27,000) represent a relative standard difference between upper management and lower-level positions.

So the appropriate “discrimination” question here should not be about the difference in pay between women and men, but about why men command such a huge percentage of upper-level management.

Well, why do they?

For every reason I can think of, I also have a counter-reason. Here are a few that I’ve discussed with colleagues and peers:

Women don’t assert themselves enough when negotiating initial salaries and raises.

While it may sound acceptable at first read, I haven’t found any supporting evidence. This isn’t Betty Friedan’s era and I know a lot of women who are just as, or even more assertive than men. This seems more like a personality bias than a gender bias and there are too many situational factors that can affect salary negotiations. For example, desperation knows no gender: maybe this man or that woman simply cannot afford to negotiate a higher salary, consequently risking being passed over for the job.

And not asserting themselves enough to ask for a raise? That’s just nonsense. Successful women in PR have no problems asserting themselves on a weekly, daily, hourly, minutely basis. Just ask anyone in my office. And just as successful men do, these women know their value to employers and aren’t afraid to ask for a raise if they feel they are being paid below market rate. Notice I used the term “successful” and “value?” If you’re mediocre in performance, you shouldn’t feel assertive in asking for a raise, regardless of gender, in any position or industry.

Sexism

Okay — so I don’t have empirical evidence on this one, either, but I have seen sexism in practice within this industry. And in others. That being said, it has been extremely rare (like two or three times). All powerful, successful women understand that initial barrier: the judgment that exists when you walk into a room, before you utter a word. And let’s not forget that women can be just as hard and critical of each other. So I think we need to steer the conversation from sexism (which seems to be a fallback anyway) to value-creation. Show your worth and value, and you can command your price and your position regardless of gender.

The irony in all this is that in my 15-person PR agency, I have only three male workers. But we’ll save that for another column…

I’ve started working on my own survey of women and men in the communications industry, and would love to include your opinion on pay inequality — does it really exist? If you would like to take part (it will only take a couple of mins, I promise), click here.

Read the full article.

About Vanessa Horwell

Vanessa Horwell is Chief Visibility Officer at ThinkInk. She works with companies in the U.S., UK and Europe to improve their visibility through strategic public relations and new media channels. Reach her at vanessa@thinkinkpr.com.

 

Mind your jargon

ThinkInk’s Chief Visibility Officer Vanessa Horwell was recently featured in an article from The Age about the prevailing trend of using mindless, senseless phrases in business and social media today. Please read an excerpt of the article below, or read the entire article here.

“Mind your jargon” – By Leon Gettler

(Reprinted from The Age)

“Jargon is bad enough in the business world but social media is adding a whole new layer of gobbledygook, and it is sending me around the twist.

My eyes glaze over whenever I hear talk about being on the ‘same page’, about ‘going forward’, ‘key drivers’, stuff that’s ‘mission critical’, taking the ‘viewfinder’ over the ‘mission statement’ and seeing what’s at the end of the ‘digital tunnel’, with the ‘low hanging fruit’ and ‘key drivers’. And the list goes on…

Vanessa Horwell at Media Post has her own list that includes terms like “proactive” (which the dictionary defines as creating a situation or taking control of it, rather than just responding which, when you think about it, is the opposite of sitting around and waiting for things to happen), and sole survivor (the word sole is redundant because a survivor is the one person who survives) and, one of my pet hates, non-essential personnel (which basically dismisses the grunt workers keeping everything going as unimportant).”

We certainly have to agree that useless jargon and business terms have no place in social media – or anywhere else for that matter.

What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts below on terms that should be banned from any business person’s vocabulary!

Read the full article.

What’s In Store for Hotels in the Gogobot Era

By Jennifer Rodrigues

From 4Hoteliers Online.

In recent weeks, many articles have touted that Gogobot, a new social networking-centric online travel agency (OTA) and booking site, is becoming a serious threat to Expedia’s market share.

Gogobot is a new travel site that combines social networking with a sleek user interface and an interesting concept: travel plans based on the opinions and reviews of social networking friends instead of “unknowns.”

While I’m very impressed with what Gogobot (currently in its beta release) has to offer, in my opinion, Expedia is not in any immediate danger… Yet.

While Gogobot will bring the OTA industry firmly into the Web 2.0 era, it will be a long time before the site takes a bite out of Expedia’s market.

Expedia currently commands the online hotel-booking market.  In 2010, Expedia was the overwhelming choice for online hotel booking: over 79 million gross room nights were booked through Expedia, with over 53 million travelers visiting Expedia-branded points of sale per month.

Expedia offers partner hotels access to 13,000 affiliated sites and the firm actively purchases local advertising through a variety of mediums, such as television and outdoor boards.  And in case you were wondering, I’m not providing Expedia with free advertising, I’m just making my point: Expedia’s market share is not in danger anytime in the near future.

That being said, Gogobot stands to revolutionize the way OTA sites use user-generated content (UGC) to drive travelers to book.  Gone will be the days when a potential guest plows through anonymous reviews to get a good sense of the property’s condition and service quality.

The new era will consist of travelers booking rooms based on reviews by people with whom they are either intimately familiar with or somehow tied to through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.  Think of it as “six degrees of separation”—times a million.  This is the new word-of-mouth advertising and it will dramatically affect hotels.  It’s just not 100% certain as to the specific effect that this development will have as of yet.

On the one hand, when it comes to leisure travelers, I have found that many don’t want to admit that they spent a great deal of money for an average/terrible vacation.  This bodes well for hotels, as travelers are less likely to overemphasize less significant negative experiences to their online social sphere.

On the other hand, people tend to view their social network sites, walls and friends lists as their personal property, a fact which could dramatically influence reviews of hotel properties. Comments that might not be posted today on sites such as TripAdvisor, might be posted on Gogobot.

Consumers are more likely to be brutally honest when they know the people to whom they are providing the review and it will be published review material, not simply a posting for friends to see.  I can also almost guarantee negative reviews will be published within minutes of the experience, without time to reflect or calm down, making it a potential hotbed of problems for hotels.

And then there is the business travel segment.  Most business travelers would rather be anywhere else in the first place than living out of a suitcase on another business trip, so any mistake made by a hotel will be magnified a hundred-fold and published – again, within minutes.

Of course, all of this is knowledge already held by seasoned hoteliers dealing with UGC on sites like TripAdvisor today. The only difference with the new site is that the credibility of reviews will be taken up a notch—for better or worse—as friends (and friends of friends, and so forth) will be directly linked to OTA booking engines.

With the launch of Gogobot, consumers’ opinions – whether good or bad – might as well be written directly into the booking path. Now is the time for hotels to recognize the ever-growing importance of user-generated content in distinguishing a hotel from its competition and develop a plan before the site’s reviews become a problem.

Read the full article here.
About Jennifer Rodrigues

Jennifer Rodrigues, Visibility Development Manager with ThinkInk and TravelInk’d, is a seasoned public relations professional with a passion for the hospitality industry, which is expressed in her role at ThinkInk’s travel division, TravelInk’d. At TravelInk’d, she is responsible for developing cost-effective and creative public relations and marketing strategies for clients in the travel and tourism, airline, lodging, cruise and meeting/event sectors. For more information on TravelInk’d, please visit www.travelinkd.com or contact Jennifer at jlr@travelinkd.com. For more news about PR and marketing in the travel industry, follow TravelInk’d on Twitter @TravelInkd and visit the TravelInk’d Facebook Fan Page.

Optimize Your Website to Take Back Your Online Customers

By Jennifer Rodrigues

From Hotel Executive Online.

2011 is the year that hotels start to take back their online customers. The trend today is to drive your customers away from commission-based OTAs and steer them back to a property’s direct site – after all, they’ve been gone far too long.

While there are quite a few ways to bring customers back to booking direct, a hotel must make sure consumers stay “clicked” into their website and booking process. By whatever means a property gets them there, once they do arrive on the virtual doorstep, the website needs to reassure potential customers and sell them on booking with the property.

Accomplish this by optimizing the website to ensure that it’s user-friendly and focused on creating bookers, rather than just lookers. Optimization involves using the best current practices – like the ones included in this article – to maximize user response to the website. Here are some of the best practices of hotel website optimization:

 

Update, Update, Update—Frequently

Some optimization “techniques” are not really techniques at all. These general optimization tips can be applied to virtually any hotel site immediately—they’re simply tried-and-true website fundamentals.

Updating a property’s website frequently to reflect changes in offers, packages, and amenities is of the utmost importance. It may not seem like a technical “optimization,” but giving the website an up-to-date look and feel will assure customers that your property is up-to-date as well. Think of your website as online “décor”: if your foyer was decorated most recently in 1999, customers will make the assumption that 1999 was the last time you changed bedding as well—unfortunate, but true. It’s the same with your website coding and design; 1999 is so 20 years ago!

Update online rates frequently as well, and list the revision date somewhere on the site to demonstrate to site visitors that this is the most up-to-date info possible and make them feel comfortable booking directly. As with updating in general, today’s customer sees online management as a reflection of real world management. Hotels that routinely manage their websites and rates are perceived as superior properties.

Make sure the website is user-friendly. This includes using space to a property’s advantage. If there is way too much going on, the website will be confusing, possibly leading an overwhelmed customer to “click out” to the competition’s site.

 

Call-to-Action Buttons

Size and location matter with call-to-action buttons. List the most important call-to-actions at the top of the page and make them stand out. Include an ample amount of whitespace around the buttons to attract the attention of visitors to the site.

There are two important issues to avoid with call-to-action buttons: 1) “Blind Clicking;” and 2) “Unnecessary Clicking.” Customers are annoyed if they click on a call-to-action button simply to learn more about the offer, but are instead led directly into the booking engine (“Blind Clicking”). On the other hand, they are irritated if there are too many clicks to get to the booking engine (“Unnecessary Clicking”). In both cases, there is a good chance that the customer will become too frustrated to continue onto booking through the site.

To avoid both of these problems, determine if extra details are indeed needed before a direct trip to the booking engine, and always explain to the customer where the call-to-action is going to take them. Briefly explain “the next step” as a subhead on the call-to-action. Some examples of effective explanations that can be used to prep customers for what they can expect when clicking on a call-to-action button are:

 

Headline: “Earn Double Reward Points”
Subhead: “Click for details”
Result: The customer is led to a landing page with the offer details and a subsequent call-to-action button that leads straight to the booking engine.

Headline: “Weekend Rates from $120”
Subhead: “Book It”
Result: The customer is led straight into the booking engine.

A good rule of thumb is the two-click rule: From the initial call-to-action button, to the booking engine, consumers should not have to make more than two clicks of their mouse.

One last thing on call-to-actions – With too many call-to-actions, the result is usually an incoherent mess of copy, links, and images. Again, location is important. Link the most important offers (seasonal offers, special discounts, etc.) on the site’s main page. Bottom-of-page link position tells customers that the call-to-action is not that important. Always ask the question, “If this call-to-action is so important, why am I placing it near the bottom?” Your answer dictates whether you should a) move the call-to-action to a higher-priority position; b) move it to another page; or c) leave it out of your website presentation for now. Any further call-to-actions will most likely warrant a linking page titled “Offers” or “Specials.”

Copy

Website copy (a.k.a. website text) is often overlooked for fancy graphics, videos and pictures but unfortunately, this usually leads to a serious disconnect between relevant images, website links, and offers, as well as the overall flow of the website. Copy plays a vital role in driving the customer to book. Great copy makes the customer understand the benefits of staying at your property. A pretty picture is just the first step; compelling and engaging copy that explains why your customer belongs within that picture seals the deal. Think of copy as the central function of closing the sale. It is important to be precise: coordinate images and call-to-actions with brief, relevant copy.

Pare the words down to the minimum—remember that less is more with copy – because online visitors don’t have time to read lengthy paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Keep it short, sweet and tight, and whenever possible, use bulleted lists to break out large sections of text. Ensure that there is enough white space on each page and don’t overfill any one page with too much text, otherwise consumers will most likely skip over the page completely.

 

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) harnesses the ability of search engines to bring a property’s site to the top of the list of search results. Each meta-search engine (Google, Yahoo!, MetaCrawler, etc.) has a proprietary algorithm that coordinates a site’s keywords to relevant customer searches. There is also a “trust” function to these algorithms: long gone are the days of overusing or embedding keywords within your website titles, copy and pages. Today’s systems will banish a site to the netherworld of search if they detect such practices. To avoid problems and to get the most from website optimization through SEO, it’s best to contact the search operator(s) that will be used to market the site. If you’re unsure about SEO, or are not sure where to start, it’s best to seek out a professional online marketing firm and/or SEO copywriter, as they will be able to provide insight into the best practices that take a site from the bottom to the top of the search listings.

 

Drive Customers to the Booking Engine

The primary goal from the minute customers hit the website, should always be to get them to enter into the booking engine (and then of course, complete the booking through the site). Whether they’re set on booking, or simply checking rates and dates, the chances of booking the customer increase dramatically the second they enter the engine. Of course, this sounds elementary but, I mention it in order to belabor this very important point: always organize the property’s site with this primary goal in mind. Does that call-to-action button at the top of the site draw the customer into the booking engine within at least two clicks? Does the website copy promote the call-to-actions appropriately? For every single website element, questions such as these should come to mind when organizing its layout and functionality.

So follow the direct booking trend in 2011 (and beyond) and get customers back online and booking direct. Not only will that increase sales, but it will also cut back on those hefty OTA commissions – savings can be directed right back into a property’s online marketing strategy.

Read the full article here.

About Jennifer Rodrigues

Jennifer Rodrigues, Visibility Development Manager with ThinkInk and TravelInk’d, is a seasoned public relations professional with a passion for the hospitality industry, which is expressed in her role at ThinkInk’s travel division, TravelInk’d. At TravelInk’d, she is responsible for developing cost-effective and creative public relations and marketing strategies for clients in the travel and tourism, airline, lodging, cruise and meeting/event sectors. For more information on TravelInk’d, please visit www.travelinkd.com or contact Jennifer at jlr@travelinkd.com. For more news about PR and marketing in the travel industry, follow TravelInk’d on Twitter @TravelInkd and visit the TravelInk’d Facebook Fan Page. Ms. Rodrigues can be contacted at jrodrigues@thinkinkpr.com

Repeat Offenders: Word Crimes Revisited

By Vanessa Horwell

Reprinted from MediaPost

Back in November 2010, I wrote a column about Word Crimes: words that have been resigned to corporate jargon, ill-suited for the situation, or overused enough to render their meaning useless.

Unfortunately, these crimes continue and I feel a duty to round up the posse and bring more “offenders” to justice. Here are a few buzzwords of language malfeasance.

Proactive
Proactive is, hands down, one of the most overused words in the world today. Whether it is in politics or business, being proactive, circa 2006, has been thought of as a revolutionary concept. My question is this: In business, why do people need to be constantly told to be proactive? The definition of proactive — or acting in anticipation of future needs/changes — is pretty much the definition of work, or doing business. The opposite of proactive seems to be just sitting around waiting for things to happen, so if you have to tell someone to “be proactive,” maybe you should just say, “go to work.” Proactive is not a selling point folks.

“At the end of the day….”
You know this phrase: it’s always followed by a summation — the situation boiled down into a pithy, already-known conclusion, such as, “At the end of the day, it all comes down to providing our clients with the best service possible.” In all of such summations, is it not the same situation that exists at the start of the day? What profound event, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., has taken place to completely change such an obvious conclusion?

Constructive
Okay, constructive is a good word, but my problem is with the context in which it’s constantly used: people say “constructive” in meetings and memos to somehow imply that “now we’re really going to get somewhere.” What have we been doing up to this point? It should be implied that all of our intentions in business are to be constructive. Much like the word “proactive,” why would you need to tell someone to be constructive? Again, the meaning of the word — to promote improvement or development — is an essential element of doing business itself. Oh, and if you’re simply handing out criticism, without the intention of being “constructive,” you’re just being an arse.

Turnkey
For a while there, I thought this term had gone away (like end-to-end); however, it seems to have begun another crime wave. Although originally meant to be something (a project, construction, design, model –made popular by the IT industry) that is developed and built, then turned over, ready to use by the purchaser, “turnkey” is now used to describe every “solution” under the sun. Somehow along the way, it’s also become known as the speed at which something is done, or to describe a solution that has been figured out along the way, or done impromptu. Personally, if I hear the word “turnkey,” my BS meter is tuned to “maximum sensitivity.”

“Non-Essential Personnel”
I don’t know how to feel about this one: livid at those who coined the phrase, or sorry for the ones that are labeled as “non-essential.” The phrase conjures up more questions than answers: how many non-essential people are necessary during ordinary times? Are there a lot of non-essential, paid-for activities going on day-to-day? Might I suggest changing the term to “Core Operations Personnel Only” when referring to the skeleton crew needed to keep businesses and governments running in times of crisis and financial distress?

“Sole Survivor”
I understand it’s not a business phrase, but it’s one that drives me crazy nonetheless. It’s redundant. “Survivor,” singular, means exactly one person that survives. “Sole” means “the only,” or “one.” Maybe we should play a game of spot the oxymoron next time?

And a few others:

• “Let’s circle the wagons … on Friday” (I choked on my coffee when I heard this one)

• Engagement (offenders, you know who you are)

• Insights (provided by the “new” experts)

Of course, there are many more repeat offenders of word crimes so please be on the lookout for clichés, overused buzzwords, and useless lingo. Send them my way to vanessa@thinkinkpr.com as I compile a 2011 unabridged version of Bullshit Bingo.

Read the entire article here.

About Vanessa Horwell

Vanessa Horwell is Chief Visibility Officer at ThinkInk. She works with companies in the U.S., UK and Europe to improve their visibility through strategic public relations and new media channels. Reach her at vanessa@thinkinkpr.com.

Need PR and Marketing Help? Ask Away! Q& A with Jennifer Rodrigues of TravelInk’d

By Jennifer Rodrigues

Reprinted from EHotelier.

Q: I’ve been hearing a lot about user-generated content. Is that something that I need to leverage when marketing my hotel?

A: In the hotel industry, user-generated content (UGC) generally refers to consumer-generated reviews and comments on travel review sites, online travel agency sites and blogs.  It is important to designate/differentiate between UGC within the hotel industry versus UGC in general, which can mean anything from user graphics, social media, Web 2.0, reviews, comments, videos, pictures, etc.

Q: What is the best way to utilize user-generated content to a hotel’s advantage, given the lack of control of content?

UGC should be used to gain insight into what customers want, the areas in which you might be deficient and to interact and develop relationships with your customers (depending on the venue).  A good rule of thumb for using UGC is monitor, resolve and engage.

Monitor

Keep a close eye primarily on sites that drive your booking.  Look for ways to improve from the reviews: Is there something you’re missing that the customers expect?  Are there common threads to the negative reviews?  For example, does it seem from the reviews that you are behind the competition when it comes to complimentary Wi-Fi, dining or in-room services? Are customers consistently complaining about your décor, front desk or customer service?

Resolve

Work to resolve the issues brought up in the negative reviews.  All of the questions you ask in the “monitor” phase should be addressed in this phase.  Notice I said, “addressed,” not “answered.” Some common complaints simply can’t be resolved due to their cost; however, all complaints should be analyzed and the ones that can be resolved, should be immediately.

Engage

Where and when it is appropriate, use UGC and social media for both pre- and post-sale benefits.  Entice guests with new products and services before their visit.  For example, link Twitter and Facebook to your site, and use them to announce new services (possibly services that stem from the monitor and resolve phases), and to give customers a convenient, constantly monitored “hot line” to your hotel.  Especially in the event of a bad experience, post-sale benefits can smooth tension with customers.  Use review sites to offer a “second chance” to redeem your property to disgruntled customers.

Q: Should I respond to negative comments?

A: Yes, but with caveats.  Only respond if you are offering to improve customer experiences or to make good on a specific customer’s complaint.  Try to establish the nature of the negative review before responding.  If the answer is yes to any of the following, do not respond:

• Is the negative review “irrational?”
• Does the reviewer have a reputation on the site for constant negative reviews?
• Do the other reviewers seem to disregard the negative review?
• Is the negative review the only one of its kind – i.e., is it completely “out of the blue” given your positive reviews, or does it have facts that don’t “add up?”

If you answered yes, don’t respond because your response could do more harm than good by starting an online “he said, she said” war with the reviewer. Never try to refute a guest’s review, even if it is unfair or bogus-this can have more of an adverse effect than the negative review itself, as it implies guilt and stubborn management – both negative traits in the eye of other consumers reading the reviews. Most consumers can recognize someone who is being irrational or overly negative for no reason and they will take that into consideration when booking their upcoming stay.

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Did this information help you?  If you have other questions, I’d love to hear from you – please don’t be shy!  Send an email to jlr@travelinkd.com.

And don’t forget to check back twice a month for more PR and Marketing Q&As.

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About Jennifer Rodrigues

Jennifer Rodrigues, Visibility Development Manager with ThinkInk and TravelInk’d, is a seasoned public relations professional with a passion for the hospitality industry, which is expressed in her role at ThinkInk’s travel division, TravelInk’d. At TravelInk’d, she is responsible for developing cost-effective and creative public relations and marketing strategies for clients in the travel and tourism, airline, lodging, cruise and meeting/event sectors. For more information on TravelInk’d, please visit www.travelinkd.com or contact Jennifer at jlr@travelinkd.com. For more news about PR and marketing in the travel industry, follow TravelInk’d on Twitter @TravelInkd and visit the TravelInk’d Facebook Fan Page.

Why the lackluster mobile giving for Japan’s crises?

By Vanessa Horwell
Reprinted from Luxury Daily

Last year, when Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake, solicitations for donations via SMS were everywhere.

Every Red Cross commercial featured both the Web site and the short code for mobile giving. The 90999 short code was plastered all over the televised benefit concert. The news media – as well as the nonprofit community – was abuzz with this new channel for charitable donations.

Times have changed – slightly.

As the crises surrounding the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan unfold, mobile giving has not been quite as prevalent as it was just a year ago for Haiti.

The Red Cross television commercials no longer trumpet their dedicated short code.

A Google search of news articles relating to SMS donations and Japan turns up only a few pages of results – and none focusing exclusively on mobile giving.

Individuals can still contribute to the relief effort via text, but neither the wireless carriers nor the organizations soliciting donations feel the need to tout their capacity to receive contributions via this channel like they did last year.

The preliminary numbers reflect this trend.

As of March 15, the Red Cross has raised a total of $1.7 million for relief efforts in Japan through text donations, compared with $25 million in the first five days after the Haiti earthquake.

The Center on Philanthropy suggests that the generally lower amount of the average text donation has dragged the total raised by the channel down somewhat.

But more to the point, The Nonprofit Times acknowledges that while mobile giving has “been active after this most recent disaster, it’s not been nearly as viral.”

So what gives? Or this case, what does not give? Why the slowdown in mobile donations? Should not a donation channel that is supposedly well-established, convenient and effective be enjoying more importance, not less?

A number of factors go into answering those questions.

More charities, more short codes
First, it is important to understand that the popularity of mobile giving among nonprofits skyrocketed in the months following Haiti.

Nonprofit organizations across the world made the necessary investments to open up this donation channel for their contributors, and for the general public.

It made sense: mobile is cost-effective, broad, and innovative. It narrows the gap between the urge to give and the act of giving. And it worked exceptionally well post-Haiti.

But the subsequent proliferation then means that now, post-Japan, there is a plethora of organizations equipped to handle text donations.

It also means that potential donors are confronted with a dizzying array of options, which has diminished the clarity of purpose enjoyed by the Red Cross just a year ago.

Verizon Wireless lists no fewer than 11 organizations for subscribers to text a donation. The Mobile Giving Foundation lists eight more.

While it may be too reactionary to say that this spectrum of organizations confuses individuals, it certainly diffuses and, one might argue dilutes, the cumulative effect of mobile giving.

No longer new
Mobile giving is also fighting against its establishment as a legitimate donation channel.

In 2010, mobile was not new, but the possibility of helping victims of the Haiti earthquake by sending a simple text message was new to most people.

Today, that newness has worn off.

Mobile giving is no longer the bleeding-edge method it was a year ago, when it claimed a 14 percent share of all American donations to Haiti, (Pew Research, 2010).

Without this attention-grabbing newness, individuals are turning toward more traditional channels again, such as online.

Concerns about hidden costs
Another factor that may be influencing the wane in text donations this year is a latent concern about where the donations are going and how they are apportioned.

The technological process behind accepting text donations can be beyond some nonprofits’ expertise, and the fees that these organizations pay the technology companies to install this capability can sometimes render the donations themselves less effective.

The Vancouver Sun reported that some Canadian nonprofits are paying 3.9 percent per mobile giving transaction.

Potential donors, particularly those moved by an acute tragedy such as the earthquake in Japan, may bristle at the thought of such a large percentage of their texted contributions being routed to administrative costs.

There is some fallacy in this – administration costs are a fact of life for nonprofits, irrespective of giving channel. Even hand-delivering cash or a check incurs some costs for the nonprofit – but it can help to explain some of the sentiment behind the dip in visibility of mobile giving.

Sign of the times?
At the risk of inferring too much from a phenomenon with too many variables, the decline in prominence of mobile giving this year could reflect a larger trend in the mobile universe, like a move away from the dominant mobile aspects of years past – voice, SMS and applications, chronologically – and toward the mobile Web.

SMS connectivity, once the end-all and be-all of mobile marketing, is on the wane.

The mobile Web, on the other hand, is rising.

Native apps, currently the best practice in terms of mobile marketing, are quickly giving way to apps, devices and Web sites that are optimized for the mobile Web.

So it is possible, then, that charitable donors are making this transition as well, preferring to give through the Web access on their smartphones rather than dialing into the designated short code and having their donations added to their monthly mobile bill.

There is no single reason that mobile giving has faded from prominence in the wake of the Japan disaster and, in fact, there is no guarantee that it will not experience a resurgence as the crisis continues.

But certainly these four factors – the proliferation of charities engaging in mobile donation campaigns, the fact that mobile giving is not the latest trend, ongoing concerns about the cost of mobile giving initiatives to nonprofits and the supervening of the mobile Web over SMS communication – have all contributed to altering the mobile giving landscape.

With the next event that mobilizes the world’s nonprofits, there may be a wholly different channel for contributions to come through. We will not know until it happens.

But at the end of the day, as long as the contributions are coming in and going to aid victims, that is all that truly matters.

Read the entire article here.

About Vanessa Horwell

Vanessa Horwell is Chief Visibility Officer at ThinkInk. She works with companies in the U.S., UK and Europe to improve their visibility through strategic public relations and new media channels. Reach her at vanessa@thinkinkpr.com.