Gracie Communications

by Lisa Sirkin Vielee

8 years. 151,840 days. (That’s like 56 in dog years, people.)

That’s how long Gracie Communications has been in business. Sometimes I feel each and every one of those days. Other times, I feel like we are just getting started.

Considering that only 40% of the businesses that started in 2005 alongside ours have survived, I’m feeling pretty lucky. When you consider that more small businesses have “died” than been started since 2007, I think I may have to go buy a lottery ticket this week.

To commemorate our 8-year anniversary, here are 8 of the observations that I’ve made as a small business owner in the past 151,840 days:

1. When you start out and another small business owner tells you that you’ll work twice as much on the business as in the business in the first few years, they aren’t kidding.

2. Don’t overthink things. Just get started.

3. You can get more work done when you work from home. Or you can spend all day on Facebook. Be disciplined with your time.

4. The hardest part of small business ownership is making time for training opportunities and professional development.

5. Don’t underestimate your value. According to a PRSA study cited on SoloPR, most solo public relations practitioners were making less than a senior account executive in a PR firm. The same is true for many industries.

6. You can’t do it all. Go ahead, try to figure out corporate tax code. Then call me, I have an excellent CPA.

7. One of my mentors told me to surround myself with people smarter than me. Best advice ever. Not only does it keep you humble and help you make better decisions, it makes you look smart by association.

8. There is no sweeter moment than opening the first check that you earned All. By. Yourself.

Thank you to all our clients, partners, friends and colleagues who have made the past 8 years so much fun. Here’s to day 151,841 and beyond!

by Lisa Sirkin Vielee

For the past few weeks, much of the news has been focused on the fiscal cliff. As we inched closer to the pending financial doomsday and waited while politicians worked more on their sound bites than a compromise, the news media tried to explain what life at the bottom would look like for the ubiquitous middle American.

While many reporters focused on the tax ramifications, the story that seemed to develop the most legs revolved around a basic household staple – milk. Three days before the fiscal lawmaking deadline, the Wall Street Journal published “How the Dairy Cliff will ‘Cream’ Consumers.”  The story really churned after that. A search for “dairy crisis” on Google produced more than 10,000 articles and more than 15 million web results.

Why did milk become the story? I have a couple of theories.

1. The cost of a gallon of milk is easier to understand than the possible percentage increase in taxes. If you follow the Journal of Pediatrics recommendations, one child will drink a gallon of milk in one week. If you have 6 kids like I do, it is a gallon in a day and a half. Add it up, and it gets expensive. And that’s my point: You CAN add it up. Tax code, on the other hand, is extremely cumbersome and difficult to understand. Put two tax attorneys in the same room and they’d get two different answers.

2. Milk is also part of the collective conscious. It is hard to picture the $1,000 or more you are going to pay a year in increased payroll tax. On the other hand, if you close your eyes right now, you probably not only can picture a glass of milk, you can taste it. Americans grew up hankering for a hunk of cheese.

Hoosiers love their Dairy Barn at the Indiana State Fair.  And who among us lactose-tolerant folks don’t love milk and cookies? Don’t mess with our milk.

The bottom line: Milk made the fiscal cliff accessible and that’s when middle America really started paying attention.  Dairy was such a great hook, news outlets continue to “milk” the story.  Robert Ford, a contributor to Forbes.com included the words, “dairy cliff,” more than a week later in a recent headline about the new payroll tax implications.

The lesson here for public relations practitioners? Find a memorable, easy way to relate your story to your audience. It is easy to get stuck in the big picture and worry about trying to explain the huge ramifications.  It’s harder to figure out what your glass of milk will be to make the story resonate – but it is worth the effort.

by Lisa Sirkin Vielee

When I started the car a few Mondays ago, I was greeted by a warning from my dashboard: “Low tire pressure – right front tire.”  So I stopped at the nearest gas station, paid my dollar, and started filling the tire with air. The pressure gauge didn’t move.

I started second guessing myself. Did the sensor mean right side as I was sitting in the car or as I was facing the car? So I moved to the other right front tire and tried filling it. The car sensor still showed nothing. So, I carefully drove in the right lane, at the speed limit, to the Goodyear Tire Center in Fishers, Ind. to find out what was wrong.

After instructing me to pull up to Bay 1 and turn the car off, the repairman walked to the front left tire, pointed a remote control and waited until the car horn tooted. He repeated this maneuver three more times and then filled each tire to factory setting. No charge. On my way.

Here’s what had happened. The car dealer forgot to reset the internal computer when they rotated my tires. Yes, I had a tire with low pressure – in the left rear. The car, however, thought it still was on the right front side. Without the right person (the super repair guys at Goodyear) and the right equipment (the fancy tire remote), I had no way of understanding the problem, let alone fixing it.

Are your clients trying to fix a communications problem themselves only to be frustrated or confused when things don’t add up?

Are you doing a good enough job making sure your customers think of you as the right person with the right tools for every MarCom job?

(photo image from www.sofritoforyoursoul.com.)

Like the rest of you, I’ve watched with horror as more details emerge about Jerry Sandusky’s alleged crimes against children, both on and off the Penn State campus.  As a parent, I’ve been sickened by the charges and the grand jury testimony. As a communications specialist, I’ve been appalled at the delayed and often confused response by the Penn State trustees.

Yesterday, the university took the long-overdue step in of appointing someone with no ties to the university, former FBI director Louis Freeh, to lead an internal investigation of the “governance, protocols, decision-making and oversight within the university.  While Freeh has reportedly been given free rein to take the investigation in any direction needed, other members of the special committee have many ties to Penn State. Only time will tell if the committee will make the difficult recommendations needed to both move the university past this ugly chapter of its history or get mired in the university politics and finger-pointing.

Interestingly only one student, Rodney Hughes, a doctoral student in higher education, was included on the special committee. More on this later.

As the committee begins its work, there are several issues they can and should consider.

1. This is an opportunity for Penn State to not only address the horrors of the child sexual abuse that happened on its campus, but to take the lead and spearhead a national effort to address childhood abuse.  Penn State students have already created a “support wall against child abuse” and are leading prayers and candlelight vigils. University trustees now need to create a system-wide awareness and support mechanism not only for the Sandusky victims but for all child abuse victims. And they should do it before the U. S. Senate mandates it.*

2. Pennsylvania media have reported that one victim has been forced to leave high school after classmates blamed him for Paterno’s firing.  This is unacceptable and Penn State should be the first to say so. Continued silence only condones a culture of bullying and implies they support a “blame the victim” mentality.

3. Vera Greene, a junior at Penn State and a guest columnist for The Daily Collegian, addressed the issue of loyalty in a recent column. As she wrote, “we need to take a step back and understand the societal efforts, the natural human tendencies that come into play when a decision [that breaks the bonds of loyalty] has to be made.”  Penn State should involve its faculty and staff in creating a forum to discuss the role of loyalty and the conflicts it can create.

4. The state of Pennsylvania is consideration legislation to remove the exemption for state-affiliated universities from Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know law. Penn State shouldn’t wait. It should increase transparency now even though it doesn’t have to. Set the good example.

From a communications standpoint, it has taken Penn State far too long to respond, not just to the general public, but more importantly to students and alumni. While I am not privy to the university’s e-mail communications system, it has been reported that local alumni chapters acknowledged the crisis days after the story broke in the media.  As far as I can tell, University President Rodney Erickson, publicly addressed the university family for the first time in a November 21 message. (If I am mistaken, please let me know.)

I understand there are legal concerns that Penn State is grappling with, but it must make every effort to keep alumni, donors, faculty and students apprised of its efforts to address past wrongs and to put new systems into place to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Reach out beyond the university family as well. High school counselors are getting questions. Let them know what is going on and how to answer.

Back to the special committee. While I appreciate the inclusion of a graduate student and former student trustee in the special committee, allow the process to be open to the greater student body. This is a teaching moment.  Students should be allowed to audit the process and ask tough questions of their own. Healing takes hard conversation.

Please Mr. Freeh and company, use this special committee to make recommendations on how to move forward, not just to duplicate the efforts of the grand jury or devolve the process into a blame game.  Yes, this is the time for scrutinizing what went wrong. But Penn State can regain its national reputation by demonstrating a campus-wide desire to right the wrongs and leading the conversation to make sure other children don’t suffer at the hands of coaches, teachers and other adults they trust.

* The U.S. Senate has scheduled for Dec. 13, the first congressional hearing in the wake of the Penn State case. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey requested a hearing by a panel of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to examine how well the nation protects children from abuse and neglect.

This may come as a surprise, but there are still communications folks out there that forget to work with their clients to make sure there are no surprises in the communications process. These same experts then act surprised when their strategic plan presentation is met with stony silence instead of cheers and celebration.  

Like my clients, I hate surprises. (Even birthday parties.) That’s why I forewarn all my prospective clients that the Gracie Communications planning process is extremely time-consuming for them as well as for my communications team. In fact, I tell them we are part of their team and they are part of ours. They have valuable insight and knowledge, and by sharing it they not only keep research costs down, they develop a buy-in to the finished product that results in a working plan instead of a plan that collects dust on a shelf.

Communications pros may know marketing and PR, we may have a general understand of the clients’ industry, but we don’t know their businesses. We may understand how to reach their audiences but we don’t know how they really interact with these audiences currently. We can’t because we don’t live in the day-to-day of running their businesses (or non-profit or charity event, etc.).

We also don’t really know the dynamics that govern our clients. Do they answer to a board of directors? Investors? How do they want their staff involved? Any strategic plan stands a much better chance of getting implemented if the client is able to champion it to his or her internal audiences. To do that, the client has to be involved in the process and given the opportunity to ask questions – prior to the big reveal.

It can be time consuming to include clients in every step of the strategic plan, but isn’t it harder to present a plan cold and have it rejected? Here are seven different phases during the planning process when you can – and should – interact with your client, rather than present to them:

1. The beginning. Explain the planning process. Make sure they understand the timeline AND that it fits with their business calendar.

2. Discovery and research. Involve them. They may be able to connect you with sources you couldn’t reach otherwise.

3. Communications objectives. If your communication objectives aren’t in line with their business objectives, it is better to find out early in the process.

4. Creative brief and/or talking points. This is a guiding document for communications professionals that is often misunderstood by clients. Since it sets the key messages and tone for a marketing campaign and the related PR, make sure you review it.

5. Target audiences. Again, make sure your suggestions are in line with their needs.

6. Strategies and tactics. This one goes without saying, right?

7. Creative/implementation.  Just like with #1, make sure the timeline and creative process leaves room for other business deadlines and needs.

Whenever possible, also try to meet with the client’s boss or board as well to introduce yourself and your goals so all the decision makers know what to expect and can put a face with the actions they will review later.  Yes it is more work, but it’s not called account management for nothing.

Bottom Line: If you want clients to trust your recommendations, you must respect their input and guidance. If you don’t, the one who will be the most surprised by their reaction may be you.

A good friend of mine once told me that he liked to surround himself with people smarter than himself. He said we’d all be in trouble if he were the smartest person in the room. While there is plenty that this friend is the smartest about, I have taken that advice to heart and try to hang out with ubersmart people. I’ve found the really smart ones are also the ones most willing to share what they know.

That was definitely the case at Blog Indiana 2010. The two-day conference was filled with smart presenters who gladly shared their knowledge and expertise with everyone in the room.  With 35 speakers, I wasn’t able to attend every session but there were two in particular that stood out. (more…)

If you are under 18, you aren’t reading this blog post. But if I texted it to you, you might.  Texting is the single most popular way for teens to communicate. Earlier this week, a few Indy area teens helped me understand why. (more…)