Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

The recent news about Johnson & Johnson appointing Michael Sneed as vice president of global corporate affairs, overseeing global marketing and public relations, stands as yet another indication that brand and reputation continue to converge and create the need for joining forces.

There is usually a fairly vitriolic response from PR professionals to the notion that PR should be part of the marketing department or report to the CMO. But get ready: this will happen more and more as organizations’ brands and reputations merge. Some organizations already are making the most of a blended approach to marketing and PR, including GE, IBM, P&G, Nissan and Xerox.

Of course, one of the more fluid aspects in the shuffle to restructure is social media and who owns it. But can any one function truly “own” social media? Organizations need the balance in perspective, engagement approach and story-telling aspects that the PR discipline brings, but they also require the sort of visual content curation and analytics that the marketing team offers. The latter is key: marketing departments typically have the deep pockets that can buy-in the sort of robust metrics required to go to market in the most informed way.

Continue reading " #PRin2012: Convergence Continues "

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from former Hill & Knowlton U.S. Chairman MaryLee Sachs. She previously reported for PRSAY from the 2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. She will be giving a free PRSA webinar at 3 p.m. EDT July 14, on how organizations are making the most of a blended approach to communications and marketing.

The recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was an important reminder to me that the marketing and communications lines are blurring. Even the Festival organizers changed the name of this year’s Festival to “Creativity” from “Advertising,” which was its moniker for its first 57 years.

With a record-breaking 28,800 competition entries from 90 countries, the festival attracted more than 9,000 delegates this year, and client-side attendance was up some 20 percent over 2010. The key themes that seemed to prevail and resonate across the marketing spectrum were engagement and conversation as well as “doing good.”

From an executional point of view, social media and in particular story telling, mobile channels and applications were highly popular topics, too.

One of the best tweets from the Festival was “Tell me I will forget, show me and I might understand, engage me and I will remember” as reported by M&M Magazine — a telling direction of the new marketing discipline.

So an easy question to ask is just how are organizations making the most of a blended approach to communications and marketing? In my new book, “The Changing MO of the CMO” (which I wrote about previously for PRSAY), I spoke with 10 chief marketing officers from significant brands and organizations — both B2C and B2B — to determine how they are changing their structures and talent base in order to take a more holistic approach.

In all cases, these marketers are inclusive of public relations because they understand how reputation is affecting brand performance and ultimately sales. And they are mindful that they need to be engaged with all of their organization’s audiences, not just their customers and their employees.

Continue reading " A Blended Approach to Comms and Marketing "

Editor’s note: Former Hill & Knowlton U.S. Chairman MaryLee Sachs reports from the 2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. She previously wrote for PRSAY about the changing role of chief communications officers (CCOs) in an increasingly integrated marketing environment.

The 2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

It was a jam-packed week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and I’ve taken in as much as humanly possible, picking and choosing the most interesting speakers and topics to me. The best way to provide a round-up is to impart one key factoid, quote or provocation from each of the presentations I really enjoyed:

• British newspaper The Guardian sponsored a seminar with Dr. Edward de Bono, famous for his “six hats of creative thinking,” and he introduced a new word – ebne – which means “excellent but not enough.” I’m sure we can all think of times to use that one.

• Publicis and Contagious introduced the concept of “the 5% club,” suggesting that we put a percentage of our budget, profit or whatever into taking our thinking beyond the traditional confines, explaining that putting a specific number on it, makes it harder to ignore.

• The obsession with being first makes it harder to profit from the idea according to Malcolm Gladwell, who was brought to Cannes by Kraft Foods. Better to be a “tweaker” and add value to the original idea, or an “implementor” where a larger go-to-market scope is executed.

• And yet UK-based marketing firm and publisher Contagious advocated to be first: “Sieze the first movement advantage – if you don’t, someone else will.”

• What makes a good story? According to Robert Redford, who was brought to Cannes by Yahoo!, it’s “sex.” OK then …

• Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said we should try to say “yes” more often. Think about it.

Continue reading " Cannes Recap: PR Makes Strides But Ad Firms Still Take the Spotlight "

Could Chief Communication Officers (CCOs) become CMOs? Would they want to be CMOs?

Many already have. They are few and far between but those who have made the transition are thriving in a world of silo-busting integration. We all know who some of them are: Jon Iwata of IBM; Beth Comstock of GE; Christa Carone of Xerox; and Anne Finucane of Bank of America. But some are less celebrated.

When Simon Sproule was promoted from director of communications at the Renault-Nissan Alliance to corporate vice president of global marketing communications, effectively the CMO, of Nissan, he was interviewed by a PR trade in the UK that shall go unnamed. This publication also interviewed a few PR people on Sproule’s new role and the comments were almost universally negative.

I asked Sproule about this, and he said that, “They felt that PR needs to be independent; that PR is different to marketing.” He continued, “I talked to the reporter afterwards and said that this is the classic kind of silo mentality that we don’t need. I suggested that they ring up each one of those skeptics and ask them the basic question that if the CEO walked into their office and said I want you to become the head of marketing and PR for my company, will you do it?”

Continue reading " The Changing MO of CCOs and CMOs "