Channeled Thoughts

Another semester has passed and college graduates are taking the dive into the infamous job search pool. Today, technology is embraced at home, school and in the workplace. Why not let technology help you land your dream gig? Many companies seek creative, intelligent and out-of-the-box thinkers, and don’t want to see those attributes simply written down on your resume.

One job searcher has stepped up to the plate in a very creative, yet simple way to get the attention of her potential employer. Harvard Business School graduate, Jeanne Hwang wants to work for the online scrap-boarding sensation, Pinterest. Instead of simply submitting a resume with her six years of work experience at companies like Right Media, Yahoo!, Accenture and Kaixon, she pinned it. That’s right, Hwang created an online resume on her dream company’s website titled, Jeanne for Pinterest, where she not only displays her professional career and accolades, but she also includes fun bits about her life, such as her completion of the New York City Triathlon and her cutie patootie of a pup who loves the office. Hwang sectioned her skills and experience onto different boards and filled them with complementary images. She goes into detail about her passion for Pinterest and why she’d be a great fit on her Tumblr page, which is linked to on each assigned board.

Just as I suggested in a previous blog post, Five Ways To Go From Intern to Employee, if you’re scouting companies to hire you, definitely follow my second point: Don’t be scared. Join the conversation!

It’s so important for your potential employer to know that you have a passion for what they do. Hwang did just that. While she hasn’t heard back from Pinterest just yet, (which I’m sure won’t be too long) she did get a job offer from Francisco Guerrero, founder of Pintics, the Pinterest analytics site.

Take a look at Jeanne’s Pinterest resume (click the image to enlarge).

Is this something you’d feel comfortable doing in your field of interest? What do you think about her leap of creativity?

By Brandon Huether

Click. Click. Click, click-click. Click. If that’s the sound of you designing something at your computer and you are oblivious to things such as kerning, PMS or pathfinder – without thinking of corn, that PMS or a Nissan vehicle – slowly back away from your screen. Just as everyone with a pair of scissors should not be allowed to perform surgery, not everyone with a computer  is fit to design graphics digitally. Businesses not utilizing professional design may end up with designs like the one below (warning: those susceptible to seizures, please cover your eyes).

Here are three easy ways to spot an unprofessional design:

1. Pixelation: The display of a digitized image where the individual pixels are apparent to a viewer. This can happen unintentionally when a low-resolution image designed for an ordinary computer display is projected on a large screen and each pixel becomes separately viewable. (www.whatis.com)
2. Comic Sans font: If the Comic Sans font is being used for something other than a cartoon, the design is generally considered unprofessional. This also applies to the font Papyrus. (www.comicsanscriminal.com)
3. Causes “eye-ADD”: If viewing a design causes your eyes to franticly look about in an unusually chaotic way, the design is considered to be un-viewer friendly.

Clicking away and playing on the computer making designs may be fun for you, but those designs should probably not be used professionally or for your company (or maybe anywhere). In my opinion, designing is a professional field, for design professionals who really have a real purpose which designer Massimo Vignelli sums up bluntly as, “The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.” As a business, utilize design from an established graphic or Web designer and you will be astonished at the results.

To experience the work of a designer, try this little game: http://type.method.ac/.  If you have any thoughts on this subject, please comment below!

With the constant change and growth of social media, come new methods in how people receive breaking news and information.  Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, today’s social media streams are beginning to serve as a direct news source.  Schools.com recently shared an infographic, ‘That’s Old News!’ that visually lays out the impact of social media, breaking news and how people are receiving it.  Nearly half of all Americans get some form of local news on a mobile device and 46 percent of people get their news online at least three times a week ― WHOA! That almost makes you wonder, who’s actually tuning in to the 5 o’clock news?

As a person always on the run, I receive traffic reports and updates via my local news station’s –  @WFAAChannel8 and @NBCDFW – Twitter feeds every morning.  From Whitney Houston to the NBA Playoffs, Twitter and Facebook continue to keep me updated, reporting news faster than my local TV broadcast or print news is able to.

Personally, I enjoy having the news right at my fingertips, but how do you prefer to receive your news?  Do Twitter and Facebook serve as your primary platforms in receiving the latest news? Comment below or tweet me at @btaylor_PR!

Last weekend, I watched the 1996 movie, “Jerry Maguire” which features Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire, a successful sports agent who gets tired of what his profession has become and writes a memo that describes what he hates about the sports agent/marketing industry which ends up getting him fired from his job. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it!

The movie was great and it made me want to locate other movies that center around public relations, marketing and advertising themes. After some research and a few movie-watching sessions at home, I chose four movies that I believe do a great job of showcasing what individuals working in these professions do for a living. Below are my picks.

1. Wag The Dog (1997)

This movie stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro and is centered around a Washington, D.C. political consultant and PR professional who works on the president’s re-election campaign that convinces the public that there is a fake war between America and Albania in an effort to distract the public from the President’s personal scandals. I thought this movie showed how effective communication can be if you know your audience.

2. The Social Network (2010)

I am sure most of us use the very popular social media platform, Facebook to connect with our friends, family and associates. This movie explains how Mark Zuckerberg and a few friends started the social networking website. One cool aspect of the movie is that Mark Zuckerberg, played by actor Jesse Eisenberg, used Harvard University’s The Harvard Crimson newspaper to keep students updated about the website, advertise and garner feature stories about himself.

3. Thank You For Smoking (2005)

Aaron Eckhart plays the role of Nick Naylor, a PR professional and tobacco lobbyist that defends the rights of smokers and presents the tobacco industry in a positive light. Nick and his colleagues develop strategies on how to make the product more appealing to the American public and one of these strategies includes going to Hollywood to get a movie producer to include characters smoking in his latest film. The movie is engaging and a hilarious examination of the Washington lobbyist world.

4. All The President’s Men (1976)

This movie centers on the investigation of President Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal of 1972-1973. If features actors Robert Redford and Dustin Huffman playing the roles of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who investigated a burglary at the White House that later became a political scandal that resulted in the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. The movie also showed how the White House’s PR specialists dealt with crisis communication during that tumultuous time period.

If you have not seen any of the films mentioned above, make sure to check them out and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you, tweet me at @stephenfashoro or comment below.

You’ve probably heard Jay-Z and Alicia Keys talk about their “Empire State of mind” – well, I have an “entrepreneur state of mind.” I may be a young professional, but I have dreams of eventually becoming an entrepreneur and becoming my own boss. As a 23 year-old recent graduate, my current focus is experience. I’m realizing that I have a lot to learn, in addition to the fact that, being an employee of Open Channels Group is just too much of an awesome experience to leave and start my own company.

Something that made me feel more secure in my steps toward entrepreneurship is a recent word that I learned, intrapreneur. What’s that, you ask? I’ll get to that, but first let me ask you a few questions.

1. Do you consider yourself innovative?
2. Are you a thought leader?
3. Are you a risk taker?

If you answered yes to all three and you’re also the type of person to take responsibility for an idea and see to it that it turns into something great, then consider yourself an intrapreneur. If you don’t possess these qualities, why not work on them to be the best employee you can be? Intraprenuer’s get things done, and go above and beyond the expectations of a typical “nine to five” employee. They are easily promoted into leadership roles in their respective companies, because they have an “entrepreneur state of mind.”

Out of three definitions of the word, I found this to be the best definition in explaining what an intraprenuer truly is:

A person within a corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive, risk taking and innovation.

The finished product could be a new department in your company, a new idea added to your company’s ideology, or even a successful relationship built between your company and another, all thanks to you. The sky is the limit to what an intrapreneur can do for his/her company.

I first heard about Pinterest, the virtual pin board and online scrapbooking site, early last year from a good friend who is the quintessential socialmedialite (Did I just make that up?) @iamtaneise.  My response to her at the time was mixed. On one hand, I thought it was a good idea, and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. On the other hand, I cringed because I thought about how overly social and connected I am these days, especially with the amount of time I spend on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the list goes on. So, I put a pin in it for later.

Fast forward to two months ago, the office social media expert @coreylark mentioned Pinterest to me again. This time, I listened to why I should be pinning, the types of things to pin and how to create a following of fellow pinners. I went home that evening and gave it a try. I explored and realized I already had a following of my own, my friends were following me even though I had pinned nothing, wow! I felt the type of shame you feel when your mother-in-law visits unexpectedly, and you haven’t had time to do a proper house cleaning. As if someone had just peeked through my looking glass and I was undressed. And undressed for the occasion is not allowed in my fashionista lifestyle! Therefore, I felt the immediate responsibility to “dress up” my Pinterest page for all of my fellow pinners to see.

With the pressure on, I began to researching what Pinterest was all about. I’m not sure if it was because I was looking for it, but it felt as if all of a sudden Pinterest had begun PR/marketing warfare. Everywhere I turned there were articles, seminars and how-to-guides on Pinterest. I came across one article in particular on the HubSpotBlog, “The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing,” that started the pinwheels in my brain to spin in a different direction. This was the beginning of my change of thought about Pinterest.

It wasn’t until I read the Wall Street Journal article, “Pinterest’s Rite of Web Passage – Huge Traffic, No Revenue,” that I really changed my thinking about this newest social media craze. The story helps to depict Pinterest as more than a temporary fad, and I learned how one of my favorite stores – Nieman Marcus – is using the site.

My thinking about Pinterest now is two-fold: I can use it personally to pin all the things I love, and I can also think of ways my clients can use it to tell their stories and connect with their target audiences. Now, that’s a win-win.

If you’re not yet sold on Pinterest, think about this. Just last month, Pinterest attracted 17.8 million users during the month of February according to comScore, Inc. To put that into perspective, that’s more than double the population of the most populous city in the U.S. and the largest city in the Empire State: New York City. And as if that isn’t enough, according to CNN, President Barack Obama racked up 2,000 Pinterest followers on March 27, 2012, the day his campaign announced their presence on the site. With the presidential stamp of approval, and Pet Lovers for Obama board, you must check it out.

I’m pinned, are you? I can’t wait to read your comments on Channeled Thoughts or via @malizy. Let the conversation begin…

I recently read an article on Ragan’s PR Daily.com   that referred to public relations as being a ‘pink ghetto’  because of its prevalence of female workers. According to a study conducted by Ragan.com, the percentage of women in the industry is as high as 85 percent. In addition, Ragan.com reported that 73 percent of the 21,000 members of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) are female.

As a man and a PR professional, I see this gender population difference first-hand at Open Channels Group and at PR conferences and events that  I attend, and have always wondered why I don’t see that many men working in PR.  I believe that some men might not look at the PR field as an option because they might be focused on working in industries that men have traditionally gone into such as management, banking, technology, construction, and government.

PR Daily.com held a focus group last month with 15 male and female students attending the University of Illinois to get their viewpoint on why men do or don’t choose to study public relations and some of the comments include:

“There are more jobs in fields tailored to women more than men. I’d like to do sports PR. Women have more choices within the field.”—Alex (male)

“Men seem to avoid confrontation, and PR is very confrontational. You can’t be afraid to start fights or dive into a fight.”—Janelle (female)

“Women are more social.”—Hannah (female)

“The writing part doesn’t excite me as much as meeting objectives and pretty much everything else aside from writing. I mean once you get in the upper levels. It’s about manipulation, strategy, and gamesmanship. To get in is hard, and then I have to work my way up.”—Alex (male)

As it turns out, while the percentage of women in PR is high, 80 percent of PR professionals in upper management are male, according to Ragan.com  and men in PR seem to earn more money than women overtime.

I personally do not have a problem working with mostly women, but I do sometimes wish I wasn’t outnumbered. At the end of the day, I work in an industry that I enjoy and have a passion for. I also get to work with really great co-workers and leaders. That’s all you can really ask for.

Why do you think there are fewer men in the PR industry? Comment below and give me your thoughts!

My first SxSW Interactive experience was amazing!  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but almost every session I went to was packed full of great information.  A lot of the sessions I attended were focused on design and user experience.  Here are some key takeaways from just a few of them.

Designing for Context

• Reject 1:1 mapping when designing in different contexts (i.e. Web, mobile, tablet, etc.) – the design shouldn’t be the same across platforms; leave/take things from one context to another
• Think about prioritizing aspects differently in different contexts – example: having a “find a location” feature more prominent on mobile vs. Web browser
• Things to be aware of when designing for context:
• TIME – designing interactions for different lengths or instances of time
• ECOSYSTEM – designing well for one touch point in the ecosystem of a product can force the others to up the game
• LOCATION – how do we accommodate and embrace various locations? Where are you when you use a certain interface?
• FORM & TECHNOLOGY – think about screen size, input methods, technical constraints, and about each contexts assets to use in design (i.e. iPhone assets – camera, voice capturing, touch, GPS, etc.)
• BRAND & RELATIONSHIPS – one conversation, multiple approaches –  design for that context individual while still having a unifying brand presence

Designing Experience for Women

• Don’t “shrink it and pink it”
• Beware of stereotypes, myths and assumptions
• The Buchanan Test
• Do you feature a woman outside of the home?
• Do you feature a woman in a role other than a mother?
• Is she not doing yoga?
• When designing for women, emphasize benefits of a product over features or specifications
• When possible, get to know your audience firsthand through user research

The Complexity Curve: Designing for Simplicity

• Complexity is easy – we can make anything complex
• Why does it get complex?
• Disregard for design
• Expectations vs. reality
• Scope creep – rate at which scope increase, forgotten features are added, absent stakeholders voice opinions, etc.
• Constraints and requirements – technical constraints, legal requirements, etc.
• High cognitive load leads to sense of complexity
• Need to look for advances in technology to make things simpler
• Simplicity is not just about reduction
• Watch what people are doing and make it easier for people to do what they are already doing

How To Be an Idea Factory

• Things that effect your creativity
• You
• What you think (Your mindset – have to be curious, don’t judge, be open to new things and ideas, and believe you can be creative)
• What you feel (Your emotions – you have to have thick skin, be brave, be in control of your emotions, and be patient)
• What you know (Your experience)
• What you do (Your character – be self disciplined and persistent)
• Your Environment
• Be at the right place at the right time
• Work alone and unplug yourself
• Make it easy to start – starting is the hardest part
• Time of day – work first thing in the morning, while your fresh
• Do it everyday
• Work for an hour straight
• Your Process
• Try idea sheets – start writing ideas and continue writing your stream of consciousness – just jotting down ideas
• Try adding to one idea or subtracting from an idea
• Try a mash-up of ideas
• It takes about 15 minutes to get into the zone; you kind of “lose” your mind in the moment of creating, so you don’t want to be interrupted
• Flip the funnel – funnel in ideas and then turn out design; sometimes you have to funnel in ideas again

Bootcamp for a UX Team of None

• Think like a user experience (UX) designer to solve real users’ problems
• Sketching – just draw it; don’t be afraid of writing words too
• 6-8-5 exercise – six to eight sketches in five minutes
• Pitch and Critique – get internal feedback on your concepts
• Ask for feedback: I want feedback on…; I don’t want feedback on…; Set up the context in 30 seconds or less
• Give feedback – provide a solution to every problem you find
• Receive feedback – don’t knock it until you’ve considered it, be a listenoholic
• Testing and Validation – try man/woman on the street or rapid iterative protosketching (to keep testing multiple designs/wireframes until you whittle it down to one design)

Hopefully, that gave you a little insight into my SxSWi experience. You can also go to the SxSW website to listen to the audio from all of the Interactive sessions.

It was another amazing year at South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi)! It’s hard to imagine that anything could top my 2011 experience, but 2012 did (even with the “Rainpocolypse” that threatened to ruin the first two days). Maybe it was because I knew what to expect, but this year I felt empowered to grab SxSWi by the horns and get everything I could out of the experience. I soaked in the conference like a sponge, taking every opportunity to learn, network and enjoy the interactive paradise I was fortunate to call home for those five days.

While there wasn’t one big, overriding theme this year – like gamification in 2011 – the main themes for SxSWi 2012 (in my experience) were: the importance of visualization and storytelling, a focus on social good, and social apps to make “serendipitous” connections.

It would take forever to talk about all of the nearly 20 sessions I attended, so here are quick recaps from some of my favorites:

Guy Kawasaki’s Fireside Chat with Vic Gundotra on Google+

• Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com interviewed Vic Gundortra, SVP of engineering for Google+.
• Vic described Google+ as Google 2.0 – they classify “users” as people signed up for Google+, using any form of Google (YouTube, search, Gmail, etc.). So, when they say Google+ has “100 million monthly active users” and “50 million daily active users” that doesn’t mean those people are necessarily using Google+, just that they are signed up for Google+ and using some form of Google.
• There are no plans to open Google+’s API.
• Came out of this session even more anti-Google+ than I already was, but a big Guy Kawasaki fan!

Multi y Mono: A Cultural Advertising Battle

• Marketers and brands are going to have to alter the way they perceive their audiences in order to continue to prosper – this is due largely to the growth and mainstreaming of Latinos and African Americans.
• Explore different, untraditional avenues to recruit multicultural talent – get creative.
• Minorities need to participate from the very start of messaging to be effective — not just be an afterthought and “Hispanicize” an ad or content that’s already been created.
• Multicultural agencies find they are competing with traditional agencies when it comes to digital work.

The Hispanic Persona Project

• Hispanic marketing is dying.
• Hispanics are the largest U.S. minority:
• 16 percent of the U.S. population
• 23 percent of children in the U.S. are Hispanic
• 63 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. were born here
• Majority of the Hispanic population is under 30 years old
• If you want to be relevant, you must figure out the Hispanic market.
• Think of Hispanics as “users” instead of “consumers.”
• To better understand the 50 million Hispanics living in the U.S., Villa created four prototypes, or “personas,” based on ethnographic research.
• Villa said these personas may be recreated or repurposed to different ends, but are help to think about the “Hispanic market” in a more useful and tangible way.

No Brochures: Digital Storytelling for Nonprofits

• Start with the story!
• Build layers upon layers, readers want:
• Findability – table of contents
• Social layer – way to interact with the content
• Connectivity – publication connected to a wider world
• New publications need to adapt to all digital platforms, screen sizes and operating systems.
• Treesaver – online publishing forum.
• Listen! Stop and take the time to hear the stories – http://storycenter.org/.
• In some context, print is necessary. But, if content in print isn’t also findable online it’s as good as dead – give your print content a life online.

Shut Up & Draw: A Non-Artists Way to Think Visually      

• Visuals can help you:
• Articulate your thoughts
• Memorize things
• Get more out of your conversations
• Convince someone of something
• Vivid Grammar – create a visual framework of what you’re thinking about.
• If you want to visualize, but don’t know how to draw, just draw a circle.
• Drawing doesn’t have to be perfect; it can be quick and dirty and still make an impact.

Drugs, Milk & Money: Social Media in Regulated Industries

• Legal needs to be your friend and involved as much as possible.
• Re-imagine your content – example: turn a whitepaper into a 500-word blog post.
• Classify your content into red, yellow and green depending on how sensitive or questionable it is. Create “green” content and have it ready to use.
• You see a lot of company’s with the “come be our friend” mindset, expecting it to just happen – you have to have incredible value and bring people in.
• Social media in a regulated industry has to start at the top and they have to be involved; people feel more comfortable with engaging when the tone is set from the top.

Hopefully, that gave you a little insight into SxSWi 2012. You can also go to the SxSW website to listen to the audio from all of the Interactive sessions.

To sum it up, SxSWi 2012 was one of the best weeks ever and I absolutely can’t wait for SxSWi 2013! If you want to chat about the conference or ask me any questions, leave a comment or tweet me at @coreylark.

How does one define public relations?  That’s the question that the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) set out to answer last year.  PRSA had last updated its definition of public relations in 1982.  That version went like this: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”  Hmm, OK.

We can probably agree that an update was in order, especially when you consider how communications has been turned on its head since 1982.  The public (or “publics,” as PRSA would say) depended largely on the daily newspaper and the three major television networks to receive news and information.   Cable news was in its infancy and the 24-hour news cycle was still years away. The speed and ease at which information would one day be shared via the Internet and social media networks would have been difficult for most people to grasp in 1982.

Recognizing that the PR industry needed a new definition for its practice, PRSA spent nearly a year researching and debating.  Then, in a public vote last month on three final definitions, the following was selected as the new definition of public relations:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

I think it’s a big upgrade from the 1982 definition.  To me, strategic communications and mutually beneficial relationships is – or should be – what this industry is all about.  It’s certainly what we spend our time on here at Open Channels Group.  Through its crowdsourcing efforts to come up with a definition, PRSA generated a word cloud about the industry:

Looks right on to me!

If I had a criticism, it would be with the use of the word “publics.”  One thing effective communicators have to do – even when communicating with each other – is to convey their thoughts in everyday, common language.  “Publics” is not a word I hear very often.  In fact, I’m not sure I have ever heard it outside a PR industry context and it makes me wonder what non-PR people (the people who hire us) think when they hear or read about people in our industry using words like “publics.”   I know what the definition writers were going for here – to acknowledge that there are different segments of the public – hence, the plural reference.  Nonetheless, I think saying “the public” would have sufficed and made for a cleaner definition.

But as I say, that’s a quibble and I don’t want to detract from the hard work a lot of folks put in on this definition.  What do you think – does the new definition adequately define PR?  Or would you have said it differently?