McDonald’s recently reminded us that no brand is safe in this age of the unthinkable, where social networks can wield unimaginable power over any corporation. But, this time, the gatekeeper started the fiasco. What McDonald’s envisioned as a positive promotional campaign instantly turned wrong.

McDonald’s sent the following promoted tweets:

• “When u make something w/pride, people can taste it,” – McD potato supplier #McDStories http://t.co/HaPM5G9F
• “Meet some of the hardworking people dedicated to providing McDs with quality food every day” – #McDStories http://t.co/BoNIwRJS

Seems like a great plan, right? Create a campaign about the instrumental people behind McDonald’s and tell their stories.

Instead, the #McDStories hashtag was born and the rest is history – a history McDonald’s would like to forget. From tweets about being hospitalized for food poisoning after eating McDonald’s to finding Band-Aids and worms in the food, there is clearly a large contingent of folks not “lovin’ it.” Don’t these stories just make you want to run out and get a Big Mac? De-licious.

As the hashtag spiraled out of control, McDonald’s social media experts and strategists were likely wondering what they could have done differently. How did their hashtag go rogue?

It reminds us of the importance of developing a sound social media strategy. With any communications strategy, you must always discuss the potential pitfalls of your initiative. Should McDonald’s have been surprised by the negative stories being shared? Not at all. They just opened the floodgates.

Yes, it’s a mega corporation with millions of dollars to spend on controlled advertising and marketing, but no amount of money can stop a social media backlash, especially from a corporation that continually gets negative coverage. Hello, Pink Slime. (Yet another reason to go grab a burger from good ol’ Mickey D’s, right?)

My advice – Before you start any conversation on your social media channels, think it through completely, and try to envision how each segment of your followers will react. Once it is out there, it’s hard to take it back. Will they love it or hate it? Will it give them a platform for praise or criticism? Remember, not everyone has to agree with your posts, tweets or uploads. A two-way conversation is one thing; actually, a healthy thing. But a one-way backlash can do irreparable damage to a brand.

The rise of social media is only gaining steam. You lovin’ it? You should. Yes, there are risks, but the opportunities are greater if you are thoughtful of every action and considerate of your audience.

— Sarah Brewster, Account Supervisor

Wayne Kaufmanschmidt

What do you want to be known for?

It is an essential marketing question we ask our clients. If you were building a physical storefront, what would it say on the building? In the windows? When your customers tell their friends about you, what do they say? These are not digital or website questions, but marketing questions. Knowing and being consistent with the words attached to your business helps improve all points of marketing and communications.

For most organizations, their website is a primary point of interaction with stakeholders, customers, prospects and other key audiences. In many if not most cases, it is the first contact people have with their organization and brand.

Just like the historical storefront, websites also depend on traffic to connect with current customers and create new opportunities. Small to medium-sized businesses receive about two-thirds of this much-needed traffic from search engines.

The goal of every search engine is to take only a few words and magically deliver relevant results. The goal of SEO is to get your business at the top of that list of results.

While there are many factors that can improve a website’s performance, the linchpin of SEO strategy is the keyword list. When we work with clients to develop a keyword list, we keep these points in mind:

Internal Focus
Words must be relevant to the company, the brand, and the people. These words should already appear frequently in company literature. They need to be a natural extension of business conversation because, once selected, they will be used everywhere with a goal of making them synonymous with your business.

External Focus
The potential customer is the one initiating the search. Winning keywords need to be in their voice, in their vocabulary, and in their mind.

Exploration
Complementary and competing businesses offer new perspectives and ideas for keyword selection. Think beyond where the business is today to where it wants to be.

Testing
The Web is spilling out piles of data every day. This allows companies to know the answers to questions, instead of relying only on speculation and intuition. Try out potential keywords in the search engines. Discover if the space is overcrowded or empty, full of your competition or devoid of it, on target or off the mark, and perhaps find a few surprises.

The Keyword List
Now is the time to pick the winners. These are words that score well in relevance to company, customer and search engine.

Don’t think of this as the final list of keywords, but the first list. This is a process of measurement, discovery and correction. A solid SEO strategy acknowledges a gap between expectation and performance that makes way for improvement. It also expects change and is prepared to test and change along with the world.

Next in the series: Now that I have the words, what do I do with them?

- Wayne Kaufmanschmidt, Digital Strategy Vice President

Sarah Brewster

It’s just beer, right? Okay, so it’s chocolate-flavored. And it’s made by Boulevard. Points taken. Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few days, it’s hard to escape the brand awareness Boulevard Brewing has generated with the relaunch of its now famous Chocolate Ale.

Some may think January 31, 2012 should go down in history as Chocolate Ale day in Kansas City. When liquor store doors opened early, folks waited in lines for hours just to get their hands on a bottle. TV news stations were abuzz all day, newspaper reporters wrote article after article, consumers took to their social media channels and colleagues discussed it over lunch. It just may be a Kansas City love story.

I’ll be honest. With apologies to the Most Interesting Man in the World, I rarely drink beer. But when I do … well, it’s usually a Boulevard Wheat. So, I haven’t tried the Chocolate stuff just yet. But, I will say the hype is rather intriguing and makes me wonder what I am missing.

So, what’s the big deal? Is it really that good? Why the love affair with chocolate beer? How did Boulevard get to this point of brand awareness for this one limited-supply product, that it became the topic of conversation for an entire metro area?

As communications professionals, we call this generating “Brand Champions,” and it is marketing gold. A paid endorser is one thing; when thousands of people are talking to their friends and neighbors about your product, voluntarily, that’s endorsement you can’t buy at any price.

It’s a certain kind of marketing phenomenon that causes us to ask ourselves, what did Boulevard do so right to make this happen?

Yes, I am sure hours were spent on developing the marketing strategy, pitches were sent to local news outlets and leadership was prepped with key messages.

However, a single marketing team cannot create this kind of phenomenon. It’s the brand champions who make the difference, and truly influence behavior.

Think Apple. (Mmm … Apple dipped in chocolate …) Then, think about the company, Apple. All they have to do is tell a handful of people they are going to launch a new product and the whole world starts buzzing.

Some may call this grassroots marketing. The truth is, it’s more than that. There are lessons to be learned from brands like Apple and Boulevard that can impact every company, regardless of size. Here are a few things to borrow from these iconic brands – no matter your audience, reach or industry:

• Keep your brand promise. What is your audience expecting from you? Every interaction you have should deliver on that promise.
• Understand your target market. What emotions impact them? What makes them tick? Why should they care about your brand or product?
• Create a brand experience. No matter if you are making beer or selling insurance, in today’s world, audiences expect to engage with brands. If successful (and it’s not easy), you gain loyalty. With loyalty comes a craving for your product or service. With that, you’ve built a brand champion.

Easy enough, right? Remember, this level of hype – seriously, log onto Facebook and try not to see a post about Chocolate Ale – does not happen overnight. You can’t expect a product launch or business announcement to get this kind of attention without remaining committed to your brand and your market, every day. No single marketing strategy for a product launch can stop a city in its tracks. But, a loyal brand with a loyal customer base sure can.

Think about it while you’re sipping your Chocolate Ale. What are you doing to create your brand champions?

Oh, and enjoy the beer. I hear it’s delicious.

– Sarah Brewster, TCG Account Supervisor

Advertising is all about reach and frequency – how many people you can reach and how many times. The Super Bowl packs an enormous punch when it comes to viewers. Last year’s game has the distinction of being the most-watched television program in U.S. history.

In case that’s not enough punch, a recent poll revealed that 27 percent of viewers watch the game primarily for the commercials. Companies spend $3.5 million for a 30-second spot, not to mention the production costs of the spot. It’s a high-cost, high-reward proposition; and until now, it had largely been a one-time shot for the advertiser. Now brand marketers are finding that supporting the ads with a low- to no-cost social media campaign can both extend reach and frequency.

Last year Volkswagen’s The Force commercial was one of the biggest Super Bowl hits. VW is capitalizing on that momentum this year, first with a teaser campaign called The Bark Side that features a canine rendition of the Imperial March from Star Wars. The teaser video alone has more than 10 million views on YouTube. Then, just four days before the big game, the actual ad appeared online. The Dog Strikes Back ties into both The Bark Side and The Force and does a fantastic job of allowing people to start a conversation anticipating the actual appearance of the ad within the game on Sunday.

Honda is betting that some 25 years after its release, the iconic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off will still have enough pop culture power to get people talking about star Matthew Broderick’s sick day adventures around LA in his Honda CR-V. Although the CR-V may not come close to your best friend’s dad’s 1961 Ferrari 250 California, the two-minute video debuted on YouTube early in Super Bowl week and quickly accumulated more than 3 million views.

Giving viewers a chance to see a spot early by extending a campaign in social media outlets allows people to feel they’ve been let into a special group with a different and closer relationship to a brand. So, even if you aren’t buying Super Bowl ads, you can exponentially extend the reach and frequency of any campaign through social media.

- Shawna Samuel, account vice president
- Tom Heapes, senior communications consultant

Phil Smith

The Artist, an Oscar nominated 2011 film, has a lesson for all of us in advertising. The film tells a story about a silent movie star whose screen fortunes suffer with the demise of silent films, and the awkward rise of a charming young actress whom he helped launch in the first “talkie.”

What’s magical about this one-hour and 40-minute movie is that it’s told with no dialogue.

Imagine entertaining an audience for 100 minutes with no words. Imagine a press release, an ad, a Web page, or a TV spot with no words. Words are our currency, our medium. Or so we assume.

What The Artist illustrates, along with Disney’s Fantasia, the Paranormal Activity series, Apple’s 1984 spot, the Budweiser dalmatian and Clydesdale spots from recent Super Bowls, and the Clio-winning Cadbury Ape spot from ’07, is that words aren’t necessary. Emotions are the true currency of effective communication.

Let them hear you smile.

Think of the bond between humans and pets. Between mother and newborn. Between parent and teen. Need, expectation, urgency, anger and joy are all expressed clearly with no dialog. Your hound – and your teen – can and do pay more attention to your body language, hesitancy, tone, inflection, and facial expression than they do to your words. Subconsciously, we often use words to cushion the truth, not to reveal it, and it’s revealed by our gestures, our posture, our silences.

Gerald Zaltman, author of How Customers Think and a director of Harvard Business School’s Mind of the Market lab, believes 80 percent of our communication is nonverbal.

He points out that man has been on earth walking upright, hunting, gathering and proliferating for 3 million years. But speech just surfaced as a communication tool in the last 50,000 years. This means 98 percent of our time on earth as evolving problem-solving, collaborating creatures was managed without speech. We aren’t hardwired to chat; we’re hardwired to read the bigger picture.

If I promise not to talk, will you promise to listen?

Marketers spend most of their energies conveying information. Compelling facts, we’re sure, will sway prospects. But are we listening?

A quiz: if you drove to work today and listened to the radio, name one sponsor of one ad.

Information forced on us as consumers overwhelms our ability to digest, consider and retain. To survive, we’ve learned to screen out most of the noise. The path to our minds is more successfully navigated if we feel something first. When we are emotionally engaged, our minds tune in. When we are emotionally surprised, we want answers.

Listen to radio commercials next time in your cars. Local marketers pack 70 seconds of copy into every 60-second commercial. It’s almost painful. Imagine how disruptive it would be to face 45 seconds of silence interrupted by 15 seconds of shocking copy.

The emotional path to our brain is faster and more efficient than the rational. It ties back to fight-or-flight survival mechanisms from primitive times. If our forebears had to stop and consider the risks of a charging saber-tooth, we wouldn’t be here today. Consequently, we’re hardwired to feel things and respond before we rationally dissect input. An infant or a puppy dog on a billboard triggers emotions before we’re aware of it.

The Artist has a lesson for all of us in marketing.  It isn’t what we say that matters; it’s what they, our audience, feel.

- Phil Smith, Executive Creative

City of Kansas City, Mo. City Hall

One of the best features of the Gee Whiz Factory, our offices in downtown Kansas City, is easy access to the urban culture of a busy, thriving city. Lunchtime walks are more than healthy. They can be emotionally and intellectually inspiring.

A recent stroll took me to City Hall, where I noticed an inscription on the lobby balcony that opened my eyes and my mind for the new year. The inscription reads in part: “The greatness of a city depends . . . upon the probity and industry of its citizens.”

Being a wordsmith, I wondered what those words – probity and industry – truly mean. Merriam-Webster.com reports that probity means “adherence to the highest principles and ideals,” from the Latin word probus, which means honest. Industry means “diligence in an employment or pursuit; systematic labor especially for some useful purpose of the creation of something of value.” Part of the origin includes the Latin word struere, which means to build.

One typically wouldn’t call the offices of a marketing communications firm a factory. Taken in the context of the City Hall inscription, it most certainly is.

At Trozzolo Communications Group, we do not punch time clocks in the classic, factory sense. Instead, we complete timesheets documenting our work. Included is a section labeled “billing comments,” which is designed to be a description of the work we have completed for our clients or the company.

That section is my opportunity to self-evaluate my professional effort. If I am to fulfill Kansas City’s definition of a great city, I must ask myself these questions when I complete my timesheet:

• Have I adhered to the highest principles and ideals of my work, which is communicating about the goods and services of our clients?
• Have I been diligent in my employment and my professional pursuit?
• Has my labor been systematic (which I take to mean effective and efficient), and has it been for a useful purpose on behalf of our client?
• Have I created something of value?
• Has my effort been honest?
• Have I built something?

At the Gee Whiz Factory, we don’t make ladies hats or distribute medical devices, as previous generations of Kansas City laborers did within these walls. But through the discipline of timesheets and the creative inspiration of those who built City Hall, we aspire to sustain their legacy and enlarge their efforts to build a great city.

—   Michael Grimaldi, Senior Communications Consultant

P.S. Like I did at City Hall, perhaps you know a cultural, economic, charitable, educational or civic location, object, event or topic close to the heart of your hometown, your work or your life. Please share in the comment box below.

Sarah Davis

When clients approach us for help setting up or managing their social media presence, they often struggle between the need to sell and the desire to help.

Initially, they lean more toward selling. They want to tell the world how great their brand is, how everyone loves them and how there is no better business than theirs. Granted, for many of our clients this is true, but this is not why people use social media.

At Trozzolo, we know that social media outlets are not sales channels. After all, 43 percent of people have “de-liked” a brand because it was overly promotional.

This is a huge statistic, given that people on average only like two to five brands on Facebook. Instead of selling to your friends, followers, etc., try helping them.

Think about it for a second – why do you like Facebook? Twitter? Google+? What is it that drives you to look at these sites once, twice or 10 times a day?

You get on to have a social connection. You like seeing what your friends are doing, what they are talking about or finding out more about Kim Kardashian’s failed marriage.

That’s why we love social media so much – because it is about people. It is our own world composed of updates on people we’ve known, loved, aspired to be and perhaps even disliked.

More importantly, it’s a world that revolves around everyone’s favorite word … me. People can voice their opinions, discuss what they like and dislike or post a picture of something they just saw. In essence, we are all creating news.

Hence, the power of social media: We (the consumers) are now able to influence and sway companies and brands just by posting on their walls or replying to a tweet.

Ask them questions, talk to them like a human being (not a brand) and answer in a timely manner. People come to a brand’s page not to be its BFF, but to interact with it on a personal level.

They want to feel that the brand cares about them. This does not mean writing giant “I Love You’s” all over the brand profile. It means taking the time to note and remember those fans who frequently ask questions or post about their undying love for your brand. It means engaging with them on a first-name basis. It means showing them that their business/money means more to you than anything else in the world (even more than your biggest client).

Social media has given brands this opportunity. So take hold already … be personal, be helpful and please don’t sell.

— Sarah Davis, Account Executive

Michael Grimaldi

This simple question appeared a few weeks ago on the discussion page of a LinkedIn group:

“I’m getting ready to conduct media training with folks in my organization. Anyone have lessons learned from working with media that they would like to share?”

There were lots of ideas – four per day on average in the two months after the question was asked. My contribution was pretty simple: Start with the truth.

Seems strange, doesn’t it? Would a professional public relations practitioner do anything else?

As it turns out, that could be. I recently asked a reporting class at the University of Missouri-Kansas City what they thought the role of a public relations person was. The first answer: “Manipulative.” And a recent trade media story reports that a university PR student commented in an ethics class, “PR people are supposed to lie.”

Wrong! You’ll get caught if you lie, and the chances of getting caught grow daily with the exponential public adoption of social media. As for “manipulative” – Well, a spin doctor, to me, is somebody with advanced engineering degrees and a specialty in centrifuges, not a PR pro.

Hard as it may be, the truth must be embraced in public relations. That can be very scary when there is really bad news.

Happily, our Trozzolo Communications Group clients are companies and organizations with the right intentions and high integrity. Still, bad things happen or actions are perceived negatively when the opposite was intended. What to do then? Here’s a process:

First, it’s very important that the public relations counselor has all the information about a bad situation. With wrong or partial information, the PR pro could give advice that is actually counterproductive to restoring or sustaining a positive reputation.

Next, a good PR pro will ask questions that will explore the essence of developments – the truth, if you will. The questions will focus on motives of the people involved, unintended and intended consequences of activity, and extenuating circumstances.

Next, the PR pro will establish a position – a theme and associated messages – drawn not only from the situation at hand, but also from the company’s or the organization’s vision, mission and brand. To develop a position that derives from anything else will be disingenuous and unpersuasive to people important to the company.

Sometimes, telling the truth means “biting the bullet” or “taking a hit” and disclosing bad behavior or adverse outcomes that could or should have been avoided. Nevertheless, honesty is still the right choice. An organization’s credibility is its most important asset, and once damaged, it is difficult to repair and restore.

The negative blow can be softened not only by giving a prompt, candid and accurate explanation, but also by describing what is being done to make sure the bad thing doesn’t happen again. Public forgiveness is often generous when remorse is genuine and corrective action is prompt.

For best results, advance preparation is essential. We have helped companies prepare crisis communications plans by asking, “What keeps the C-suite awake at night?” We then equipped the company to respond, should those bad things happen. This work builds internal confidence and thus prepares the company for virtually any adverse circumstance.

It’s a cliché, but people are stronger for having survived adversity. Done right, a negative news episode can be the platform for building new, stronger public relations that reinforces reputation, brand and organizational values.

— Michael Grimaldi, Senior Communications Consultant

John Martellaro

Two of the biggest and most successful corporate entities the world has ever known are headed for an inevitable crisis.

At Apple, CEO Steve Jobs announced his resignation due to ill health. At Berkshire Hathaway, CEO Warren Buffett hasn’t announced anything, but he doesn’t have to. Not at the age of 81.

Apple must learn, internally, how to move forward without Jobs. Perhaps more importantly, the company must learn how to move forward externally without Jobs as the public face of the company. Sometime soon, Berkshire Hathaway will have to deal with the same crisis.

That doesn’t necessarily mean bad news. Dictionary.com defines “crisis” as “a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; turning point.”

For most organizations, the departure of a single individual, even a dynamic leader, does not rise to the level of a crisis. In a handful of cases, however, the power of that individual’s personal brand is such that the separation of the personal and organizational brands triggers a crisis.

Stock market reactions in late August demonstrated the power of Buffett’s and Jobs’ personal brands.

On August 24, after Wall Street exchanges closed for the day, Apple announced Jobs’ resignation. After-hours trading was furious, and the nation’s second-largest business lost about five percent of its market value over the course of a few hours, before rallying the next day.

A day later, Buffett announced that Berkshire Hathaway was going to invest $5 billion in struggling Bank of America. On a day that the Dow Jones industrial average fell 171 points, The S&P 500 dropped 18 points and the NASDAQ declined 48 points, Bank of America went up about 10 percent. This was on the heels of a 30 percent decline in Bank of America’s stock price for calendar 2011 up to that point.

Jobs and Buffett are names – personal brands – that move markets on a global scale.

Clearly, the departure of these two larger-than-life personalities will be fundamental turning points for both organizations. That’s the double-edged sword any organization faces whenever the personal brand of a dynamic leader becomes thoroughly intertwined with the organizational brand.

As the Bank of America investment shows, the positive impact of that personal brand can be enormous. When the leader leaves the stage, however, the organizational brand so closely tied to that leader’s personal brand becomes obsolete. The organization must redefine itself to the world.

It’s a double-edged sword because the contributions of singular individuals are profound. Without the intelligence, creativity and leadership of Jobs and Buffett, it’s hard to imagine either Apple or Berkshire Hathaway becoming the force of commerce they both are.

Now, however, the organizations face the challenge of defining who and what they are, separate from those individuals. That’s why organizations with leaders who are strong, charismatic – and very public – need to start thinking about communicating transition and succession long before such plans need to be put in play.

Organizations seeking to build brands that will endure should focus on institutional values and characteristics that are bigger than any one individual. A brand dependent on a single individual is a brand that is always on a countdown to obsolescence.

— John Martellaro, Senior Account Manager

Shawna Samuel

At Trozzolo we often say, “We’re not the nod squad.” If a client is looking for a yes-man to do exactly what they ask and no more, we’re not a good fit.

We’re always thinking – playing the devil’s advocate, examining the big picture. I’ve heard Pasquale say, “If we’re all thinking alike, then nobody’s really thinking.”

This approach can make clients uncomfortable, but that’s a good thing.

The key to successful marketing is standing out from your competition. It’s vital to leverage your unique differentiator – what makes you a better choice than your competition. That’s challenging when you’re trying to build a brand because it’s uncomfortable being different. It’s much safer to look like the other guys – stay in the mainstream.

Marketing guru Seth Godin recently posted in his blog, “Pleasing everyone with our work is impossible. As soon as you work hard to please everyone, you have no choice but to sand off the edges, pleasing some people less in order to please others a bit more.”

Many times we help clients navigate layers and layers of approvals. An important aspect of the process is reminding them that those who are approving the work are usually not the target audience for the message.

One of our clients is a large university specializing in postgraduate degrees for adult learners. When we developed a new campaign targeted to undergrad students for summer classes, the work looked very different from previous campaigns aimed at a different audience. It made the “approvers” uncomfortable. That’s OK! If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be doing our job.

Not only is pleasing everyone impossible – it’s not right to try. It wastes the valuable time and energy of our client, our creative team developing the campaign and the target audience. We must focus on the one group we are trying to influence. And, sorry, that’s probably not you.

— Shawna Samuel, TCG Account Vice President