Digital Perspective Blog

We’ve changed things up a bit with our About B-M profile– this month’s profile will feature a video interview!  Learn more about Burson-Marsteller’s healthcare practice with US Chair for Healthcare, Chris Foster, as he explains the influence healthcare reform has had on the communications industry and the healthcare practices’ recent success stories. 

To coincide with the Digital Newsletter’s “Green” theme, I recently interviewed Eric Biel, Manging Director of Corporate Responsibility in DC, about Burson-Marsteller’s own efforts to go green.  To see past About B-M interviews, view the archives.

Digital Perspective: What role do you see promoting eco-friendly efforts and sustainability playing in the marketing communications industry this year?

Eric Biel: Working with our clients to help them communicate their “green” efforts has become a significant piece of our work at B-M – cutting across practice areas and geographies.  As the Managing Director for Corporate Responsibility, I’ve had the chance to work with terrific colleagues in the Issues and Crisis Group (where our CSR practice is housed), as well as Media, Public Affairs, Corporate, Advertising, Digital, Technology, and other areas.  What that illustrates is the many facets of what clients are looking for from us – and our competitors, of course – when it comes to communicating about their environmental programs and platforms.

But the truth is that it’s about more than “just” communications.  Companies are looking to us to help identify what they should be doing in the “green” space – what kind of projects, what forms of reporting and disclosure, as well as to tell them more about what their competitors are doing, industry “best practices,” who the key stakeholders are and what they care about, and so on.  We’re often working with them at the intersection of policy and communications, which makes it that much more interesting.  Sometimes they just want us to help them understand what “sustainability” is all about – given that it’s a word with a lot of different interpretations and that cuts across environment, social, and economic performance.

Although we’re busy promoting “green” to the press and other audiences, it’s actually a lot more than that.  It cuts across a wide range of companies and industries as well.  We’ve worked with a leading chemicals company on its first-ever corporate sustainability report.  We’ve helped two of our largest clients – neither of which has a huge “carbon footprint,” but both of which face growing pressures to step up on environmental performance from their own employees, clients, and others – with their own sustainability reporting in various ways.  At the same time, we’ve done a lot of promoting of different clients in the renewable energy space – where B-M has a tremendous amount of expertise and is doing cutting-edge work for leaders in biofuels, solar, wind, and other technologies.  So it’s a huge area for us, and across the PR and communications industry – and we’re always looking for new opportunities to grow our business globally.

DP: Are there specific types of ‘green’ campaigns that are seeing greater ROIs in an economy like this?

EB: That’s a challenging question, and you might get different answers depending on who you talk to across B-M.  As a general matter, though, I think the companies that are able to tie their “green” efforts and activities to their core business – those that are able to demonstrate that “green” matters in the C-Suite and is a key organizational priority.  I think of some of the “classic” campaigns like those launched – some still going strong – by GE, BP, Toyota, and others that really created some distance from their competitors.

These days, it’s especially important to be able to demonstrate that “being green” is good for the financial bottom line as well – it’s not a costly luxury, but actually adds to economic return.  I think of a company like SAP, which has strong programs of its own but also is an “enabler” through its products and services for how others can take on green initiatives more efficiently and at lower cost.  I also think of Growth Energy – a group that has helped reshape the battle in Washington and beyond about bio-fuels, after the industry was put on the defensive last year just a short time after it was flying high.  It has a powerful message about green technologies but also green jobs – including in some areas that had been hit hard by the recession.  And finally, I think of the terrific B-M work on the Clear2Go roll out earlier this year – highlighting how an innovative new product enables users to protect the environment while saving money at the same time.

DP: Can you share any other success stories where B-M has involved going green?

EB: In addition to the ones I’ve already highlighted in my previous responses – from working with big global firms to launching a great new product like Clear2Go,  another “success story” in my view is our work with one of our largest clients over the past 2-3 years.  We’ve had the opportunity to help them ramp up their efforts across the board on the environment – from helping craft their first written environmental policy statement to framing employee initiatives to greatly expanding more detailed reporting and disclosure.

And that brings me to B-M itself.  These days, you have to “walk the walk” because current clients, new prospects, suppliers, and others increasingly are choosing to do business with companies that are committed to being green.  The good news is that we’ve taken some significant steps to reduce our own carbon footprint – cutting energy use, increasing our recycling, and so on.   We’ve seen real progress across geographies – and we’re continuing to get pushed to do more by our parent company, WPP, which of course is a good thing.  And here in the U.S., we had the chance to bring these efforts together back in April through “Green Week” – which highlighted both some of our successes to date and how much more we all still can do to make B-M an even greener place.

I recently chatted with Erin Byrne, Burson-Marsteller Chief Digital Strategist, about the introduction of Burson Digital. To see past About B-M interviews, view the archives view the archives.

Digital Perspective Blog: What is Burson Digital?

Erin Byrne: Burson Digital is Burson-Marsteller’s in-house digital media capability. We are a global team with digital strategists available to every office in our network and a full team of designers, programmers available through regional hubs. The team focuses on four core product and service areas to help clients meet their needs. They are:

Digital Reputation Management – given so much information is gleaned online, it is critical that company’s manage their online reputation. We provide digital check-ups, blog monitoring and influence assessment, blogger and social media outreach, search marketing, and online dialogue development, among other digital reputation management services.

Interactive Experience Design – this is all about creating experiences that deliver desired messages and drive to measurable business actions and includes website design, online advertising, online video, Flash animations, digital advocacy tools, and CRM to name a few.

Social Media and Community Development – it is critical that organizations participate with their constituents in online communities. We work with clients to contribute to their communities and do social media monitoring, applications development, community management and content development.

Mobile Marketing – mobile allows an opportunity to have a persistent presence with stakeholders and we facilitate that through text messaging programs, mobile advertising, mobile application development, and promotions/mobile events.

DP: Why a digital practice?

EB: Communications have dramatically changed and the way people get information has shifted to digital media. From major decisions like who to vote for to simpler buying options, people seek out information online, often through interactions with other people. Mark Penn’s recent InfoShopper study [WSJ article and PDF study] showed that as many as 23% of people even research which shampoo to buy online! Digital media also helps clients reach key audiences with important messages more cost effectively than every before possible. For both the reasons (and many more), we believe that every successful communications program must have a significant digital component. We have made a significant investment over the last three years in ongoing digital competency training and are proud that all of our employees are delivering value for clients via digital media. But, there are still specialty areas where have people who are digital experts and work in the space all day every day is critical. These people live in Burson Digital and partner with colleagues in all of our other practices to help clients generate business results.

DP: What is unique about the new practice and Digital as a whole?

EB: Burson-Marsteller in general is differentiated by our global footprint as well as our integrated approach to client problems, especially given our sister firms including Penn, Schoen & Berland for research, Direct Impact for grassroots, BKSH for lobbying and Marsteller for advertising and print design. Having a global team and broad expertise to draw on lets us bring perspective to digital strategies that make the recommendations more meaningful and ultimately more successful. Also, we are an agency of hard working, hands on executives. We are comfortable with complexity. Organizations today face difficult challenges and we have strategic bench strength in Mark Penn, Karen Hughes, Don Baer, Gary Koops, Josh Gottheimer, Pat Ford and others (I could go on and on!) that is unrivaled. Lastly, we truly believe in education as a platform to meet client needs and grow our business. Digital media is so frequently changing that providing clients with ongoing digital education is critical to their success and ours.

DP: Can you share any plans for Burson Digital in 2009?

EB: We have big plans for this year that are already well under way. We will be launching several new products and services and will introduce new partnerships as well. You’ll have to stay tuned to hear more. In the meantime, you can check out a recent project we unveiled tracking, aggregating and visualizing Twitter discussions for the European Elections. Stephanie has more information on TweetElect09.

National elections usually generate a lot of debate, but what about European Elections? And has Europe started to adopt social media tactics when it comes to campaigning and mobilizing voters? We thought it would be interesting to see how Twitter reflects these developments so we have created TweetElect09.eu, a website that tracks and analyses discussions about the upcoming European Elections on Twitter in 14 languages.

Tweets are filtered by country, political party and by number of times different candidates are mentioned. News will also be streamed on election night by news channels for example France24, alongside the Twitter stream.

TweetElect09 has already analyzed more than 13,000 tweets referring to the election and France is the most active country followed by Sweden in second place and Germany in third. Please join the discussion and have tweets appear on TweetElect09 by using the #eu09 hashtag when tweeting.

You can also place the widget on your blog.

I recently chatted with JP McCaffrey, who has spearheaded development of a mobile capability at Burson-Marsteller, about the role of mobile in today’s economy and what he sees as key next steps for adoption and growth in 2009 and beyond. To see past About B-M interviews, view the archives view the archives.

Digital Perspective Blog: What role do you see mobile playing in the marketing communications industry this year?

JP McCaffrey: Mobile should become more of a connector between multiple communication channels and not just a stand-alone application or campaign.  Although a mobile campaign can survive on its own, I think it’s exciting to consider integrating it into a larger communication mix.  We know consumers carry their mobile devices 90% of the day so consistent message delivery becomes a huge benefit to our clients in conjunction with the other ways they are receiving information.  This is especially important for businesses or brands whom are seeking innovative and cost-effective methods for increasing revenue and raising brand awareness.

DP: Are there specific types of campaigns that are seeing greater ROIs in an economy like this?

JP: Consumers are getting more a more comfortable with digital consumption, especially on their mobile devices. With approximately 2.4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, the timing is right for most businesses to go mobile, even in a down economy.  In fact, if we’ve learned anything from our most recent election, President Obama built and maintained his reputation through a heavy amount of digital programs.  He delivered messages that motivated people to act or respond – via web and mobile.

Almost 70% of mobile phone users have responded to a marketing driven text message, whether it is a direct response or redemption driven SMS campaign.  The most successful campaigns, in my opinion, utilize point-of-purchase, on-packaging, or other marketing programs to encourage consumers to opt-in for SMS promotions along the lines of coupons, prizes or simple product updates.

DP: Can you share any success stories where B-M has involved mobile?

JP: I am hopeful that everyone at BM has texted GoGreen to 484848 at this point! The Clear2Go SMS campaign was truly a connector to all facets of the launch program the Burson pulled together for Applica to build awareness of the impact that bottled water has on the environment.  Consumers were able to and still are able to add their individual pledge to help reduce disposable bottle use. We are providing weekly updates on goals attained and are also using the platform to send product updates as appropriate to keep raising awareness of the Clear2Go brand.

This is the first in a series of monthly interviews about Burson-Marsteller, its employees and its practices. I recently chatted with Paul Gallagher and Karen Doyne, co-chairs of the Crisis Practice and the Issue & Crisis Group about the role of digital in their practice and in a tough economy.

Digital Perspective Blog: What have you seen in the Issues & Crisis Group since the onset of the financial crisis?

Paul and Karen: Of course every company and association is under budget pressure these days. Interestingly, though, we’re seeing continued — and even increased — commitment of resources to crisis and issues management.  When there’s a make-or-break situation, or the threat of one, a company must take the necessary steps to communicate effectively with its stakeholders, now more than ever.  We are also doing a lot of crisis preparedness work, which has long been one of our strengths. You might expect crisis planning and readiness to be seen as expendable in a bad economy, but to the contrary, clients understand crisis planning is the only way to be sure they avoid missteps or delays in crisis response — and in today’s environment there’s no margin for error.

DP: What do you think is the most important digital element when managing a crisis?

PK: It has to start with the company’s own web presence.  Their website is the face they’re showing the public, and it’s increasingly the first stop for all stakeholders, including traditional media, bloggers, employees, consumers, and regulatory and legislative staff.  Especially in a crisis situation, you want to drive traffic to a website because that’s the most efficient way to deliver information, so those who go to the site have to be satisfied with what they find there. The first issue is the right level of visibility and accessibility: Should this be something on the company’s existing website or on a separate site? That’s why virtually all of our crisis plans for companies include creation of standby dark sites for use in a crisis situation. If it’s on the regular company site, should it be on the home page or in the media or consumer FAQ area?  And we need to be sure the site provides the right information — or links to others that will provide it — and that the language and tone are appropriate.  We’ve found that getting the website issues right, and very quickly, can make an enormous difference in the ability to manage and contain a crisis situation.

All that said, it is also very important that clients monitor blogs and social media and conduct outreach to ensure that a company’s point of view is reflected in content published. This can be a critical mechanism for driving traffic to a website and is key to ensuring that company’s influence conversations to reflect their side of the story.

DP: Can you share any success stories where you have involved digital?

PK: Most of our crisis work is kept confidential to avoid perpetuating any issues the company was facing, but we have seen many examples of digital playing a significant role in helping a client manage issues and crisis situations. For example, we used a secure workspace to help a government entity manage potential issues to ensure they didn’t escalate to crisis situations. We helped another client in the consumer packaged goods industry use digital media to sway public opinion around a frivolous lawsuit. And we recently used blog and social media monitoring to understand perceptions of stakeholders as we developed messaging for a large financial institution.

We’re excited to introduce new spaces online for you to connect and interact with Burson-Marsteller. In addition to daily tweets from our Twitter handle (@bmdigital), videos on YouTube, photos on Flickr, a community on Facebook as well as posts from this blog, the Digital team will be showcasing more media across various channels in the coming weeks and months.

• FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/bmdigital
  
• social|median: http://www.socialmedian.com/bmdigital
  
• Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/bmdigital
  
• Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/bursonmarsteller
  
• Qik: http://qik.com/bmdigital
• Ustream TV: http://www.ustream.tv/bmdigital

The global digital leadership team met two weeks ago in Palm Harbor, Florida (right outside Tampa) to discuss strategy for 2009. Each year, the digital team gathers to review past initiatives and plan for the upcoming year. I was happy to see friendly faces from around the network again: Charlie Pownall, B-M’s Lead Digital Strategist for Asia-Pacific, Desiree Collier and Stephanie Bonnet, Co-Lead Digital Strategists for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Felix Leander, Lead Digital Strategist for Latin America and a new face, William Kemp, Lead Digital Strategist for the United States.

Over the course of three days, our regional strategists presented current market findings, potential areas of growth and possibilities for integrating new products and services. We reflected on successful internal campaigns of 2008, most notably Digital in Action, the company’s hyper-targeted digital training program which was rolled out in nine markets (and counting), and Digital Week, showcasing our digital thinking and our new mobile capability. As we move into 2009, and in light of the economy, digital continues to show its full potential in the marketing communications field. Burson-Marsteller’s digital perspective truly revolves around educating our clients on how digital can improve their brand, why investing in relationships with the client’s stakeholders is more important than a singular transaction, placing the impetus on participating and lastly, creating a persistent presence at anywhere and anytime.

I look forward to traveling to our offices worldwide next year and focus on enhancing our global digital capability, ranging from innovative and relative products for Burson-Marsteller and its clients to demonstrating our wide-array of digital expertise in the ever-evolving market.

What are your plans for 2009?

As Samuel mentioned in the previous post, we had the opportunity to attend WPP’s second annual “unconference” in Athens, Greece called Stream. As I was fortunate to receive a return invitation following last year’s inaugural program, I was really looking forward to connecting with some of the Internet industry’s smartest minds and sitting in on some fascinating discussions. Now, there was only one problem I: trying to attend every interesting session was physically impossible as my laptop, notepad, pen, BlackBerry and digital camera could only go so far. The “Big Boards,” as they were called at the unconference, dictated which presentations were available during Friday, October 3 and Saturday, October 4. I wanted to attend every discussion but needed a figure out a way to do so.

What was I to do?

Like Erin, as I’m essentially connected all the time, I feared the digital jitters. Yet, I put down my laptop, Blackberry, camera and realized: “Now’s the time to go analog and social network with real and not virtual Tweeple.” In order to maximize my time at Stream while meeting participants during the two days, I followed two rules: (1) Meet as many people as possible and (2) write your thoughts in your Moleskine. I met attendees from some of the largest Internet companies in the world to those venture capitalists who were bullish on the current economy. I even had the chance to ask Jason Calacanis why he and Michael Arrington chose Footnote, a social network for the deceased, as a TechCrunch50 Finalist (something I’ve been dying to know since I saw Footnote present a few months ago). His answer: “We wanted to see the crowd’s reaction,” and what a reaction the crowd gave!

As I met more Stream participants, the pages in my Moleskine started to get filled with scribblings of their respective interests: monetizing social media, cultivating innovation, helping European entrepreneurs, the future in 2010, or reducing our carbon footprint with the help of technology. By the end of Stream, I had a sizable amount of notes to review on my plane ride back to New York City. After looking over my notes, I achieved my goal: hyper-multi-tasking and networking with just a pen/paper. “Wow,” I thought, “I don’t have to be connected all the time.”

I was right. In hindsight, I learned and absorbed much more information than I could have while working on my laptop or BlackBerry, always pinging with new emails to distract my thought process. I’d suggest stepping away from email for a few hours and just use a pen and paper to capture your work. You’d be surprised how much you can get done!

For more information about this year’s awesome Stream unconference, browse the Twitter time line.

Following is a guest post from Samuel Degremont, Manager in the Digital Practice in our Paris office. Samuel advises clients on corporate and marketing digital strategy, blogs and social media actions, online buzz creation and crisis management as well as online community management. You can follow his up-to-the minute thoughts on Twitter or read his commentary on the Burson-Marsteller Paris Blog (in French). For other guest posts on the Digital Perspective blog, see here.

I’m back from Stream 2008, where I met WPP’s top digital minds as well as a lot of interesting people including Tim O’Reilly, Jason Calacanis and Yossi Vardi – a lot of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, tech and media participants.

Focusing on how our Digital industry would evolve in the coming years, the “unconference” allowed everyone to participate in discussions related, one way or another, to Digital. See below for a few examples.

Adaptation in Africa

Google’s Anil Hansjee explained the business development logic of the company within developing countries, particularly West Africa (see an introduction to the discussion here). Africa is viewed by Google as a “huge long-term market,” in other words, the infrastructure and usage does not allow Google to market their already successful advertising solutions and productivity tools (including GMail).

For instance, in Kenya, infrastructure in terms of Internet connectivity is rather poor, and equipment rate (computers, Internet access, Internet cafes) is relatively low and lack a presence. Internet business is split among a lot of small players (about 20 ISP with an average of 3000 users). Local content production (which would be searchable, indexable, and of value to local Internet users) is not produced in mass.

Kenyans, however, do connect together with low-end devices such as inexpensive cell phones. From what Anil mentioned, there are more SMS messages exchanged in Nairobi per day than in NYC.

In this difficult local market, Google sees a lot of potential and adapts its global strategy to more practical tasks than “organizing the local content”. Rather, Google empowers local users with tools that allow the development of local use and content.

Google therefore invests time and money with local partners to build a more robust technical infrastructure (for Internet access) and partners with local Telcos to work on mobile (SMS) based solutions: weather forecasts for agricultural needs, SMS banking systems, Classifieds etc.

It’s a sound strategy (relying on local partners and leveraging their local knowledge) which will probably benefit Google in the long term, both commercially and in terms of brand loyalty.

Adaptation in India

Back from Stream, I gave some thought to the SMS solutions available to developing countries, and I found the example of India of interest.

The situation in India (not discussed during Anil’s presentation) is slightly different than what happens in Africa. The subcontinent has a much better infrastructure in terms of mobile carriers, with an estimated 300 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of 2008. Internet use is not much developed, with an estimated 40 million users (2006).

Local players (see below) have adapted to this situation, and offer therefore services for SMS users that allow effective reach and advertising distribution.

• SMS Gushup: This Indian startup allows users to create groups to which they can send SMS updates. As compared to the web-based Twitter micro-messaging service with an estimated daily exchange of about 3 millions messages per day, SMS Gushup sends about 10+ million SMS per day to its groups of users. The “Rockstar” group on SMS Gushup has 99627 members, top groups appear to have 50k members on average…which is enormous. The business model is based on advertising, where every single SMS sent to the group contains a small ad link, which pays for the service. Premium groups are ad-free but require a monthly subscription.
• Google: Finding a more developed infrastructure in India than in Kenya, Google released an equivalent to SMS Gushup called Google SMS Channel, which you can access once logged into your Google Account. The service was just released earlier this month so the number of group members is still low (in the 2000 figure), but it shows how Google adapts to the local markets it operates into.

Adapt, or Perish?

In fact, global models distributed the same way across the world don’t work. It’s the case for cars, it’s the case for a lot of consumers goods. It’s also the case for web-based models, which definitely need adaptation to the technology and uses at work in each country. When there’s not much use, help build it. When usage is different from your primary target countries, adapt to it, or fail.

And its also the case for leading PR and Media companies around the globe.

First, companies have adapted to the growing, exponential Internet use by hiring Digital specialists and allowing resources to internal training (as we do regularly at Burson-Marsteller – see here) – and if they did not follow this adaptation path, they’ll probably be considered less and less pertinent by their clients.

Second, companies need to constantly adapt to their local markets. They’ve done this in in traditional PR and Advertising for decades, and they need to have the same approach towards Digital campaign conception and implementation.

Because every country looks about the same in terms of Internet use at a macro level, it’s tempting for companies to go for global Digital campaigns. However, on a micro level, usage and maturity of the audience are so different from one country to another that adaptation – at least – is mandatory, but it’s even better to have a co-creation with the local Digital specialists.

That’s what we’re trying to build at Burson-Marsteller, with Digital Strategists in charge of coordinating different market areas where our clients operate. The Strategists ensure that a global Digital vision is implemented with an adaptation to local Internet needs and usage.