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I’m asked this question a lot, or it’s often phrased as “You’re the PR person, you should be in front of the camera.”

I’ve heard this many times throughout my career, and it’s a tough for people to understand. As a media coach, we (public relations professionals) help develop key messages, communicate with the media to understand what the topic or story is about, and also train the spokesperson to handle the interview and stay on message. We preach transparency and open communication, with “always tell the truth!” as the cardinal rule of working with the media. If a question is asked, and the spokesperson doesn’t know the answer, then we counsel the spokesperson to say that they don’t know, but will get the answer as soon as possible.

Since we work and help prepare the spokespeople, I can see how this can be a confusing topic. There are certainly instances where the spokesperson is not available, and only in those cases – once all other spokespeople are exhausted – should the PR person step-in without hesitation and deliver the key messages.

At the bare minimum, a company needs:

• a name
• logo
• tagline/phrase/descriptor (optional but recommend)
• letterhead
• #10 envelope (standard)
• business cards          

All marketing materials are then branded to visually relate to this “core pack” of materials. Marketing materials include:

• ads (digital and print)
• website
• social media sites
• eblasts
• brochures/flyers/posters/folders
• sales kits
• direct mailers/invites
• newsletters
• signage
• packaging
• promotional items

On Wednesday, Coca-Cola launched their new—and rather ambitious—global marketing campaign to the world. Primarily aimed at kids and focused on short-form content, the new campaign utilizes 61 different URLs (that’s right, 61), starting with ahh.com and continuing with ahhh.com, ahhhh.com and so on. So far, there are 17 “experiences” available, with more being added in the coming months.

It’s first all-digital campaign; Coke hopes this idea will resonate with consumers who interact with content via their mobile devices. To spread the word, they plan on rolling out ads on various products and social sites in the coming weeks, asking users to submit their own “experience,” of which 25 will be chosen for creation.

With so many users gravitating toward second screen experiences and mobile devices, you have to wonder if Coca-Cola is ahead of the curve or jumping the shark with this campaign. While many of the sites are fun for a short period of time, I found myself growing bored rather easily. It doesn’t seem like something I would engage with more than a few times, which I’m guessing goes against Coke’s hopes for the project.  

There’s also the issue of this campaign taking place via the web, rather than embedded into a namesake app. I’m not sure about everyone else, but it’s still pretty hard for me to get a reception lasting enough to play any of the games or partake in any of the activities when on-the-go. I don’t own a tablet, so perhaps it’s more inviting on a larger screen, but again it comes down to replay ability and interest. With so many sites, games and apps already out in the world, I can’t imagine this one having that long of a shelf life, unless they are specifically targeting a younger, gaming generation.

 On the flipside, you have to give Coke credit for trying something new, quirky and fun. Too many companies aren’t willing to be different. Take for instance, the “I shipped my pants” spot from K-Mart. It’s juvenile, yet brilliant; memorable, yet funny. It’s an unexpected entry from a company who used to rely on a talking light bulb in their commercials. And it’s going to provide countless chuckles, long after Coke’s experiment runs its course.

 Unlike K-Mart, I think Coke dropped the ball with this campaign. Sure, users might engage a handful of times, but in the end, there’s too much quirk and not enough substance. It’s imbalanced. The style, the games, the format, it all harkens back to beloved existing products like Angry Birds, Instagram and Fruit Ninja. It all seems borrowed and it doesn’t scream “Coca-Cola” to me. It’s like your one middle school friend who’s trying far too hard to fit in. It doesn’t make me thirsty for Coke, nor does it motivate me to engage with the site itself for longer than 5 minutes.

Sure, I’m probably out of the demographic, as the campaign is aimed at kids (that’s a whole other issue I have with it), but with the short attention span of children, I can’t imagine them feeling much different. Coke has made a product that would work for an endless number of companies and that’s the problem. In the end, it’s a noble attempt that’s high in style but falls flat in substance.

Your personal printer doesn’t use exact colors that you see on the screen. You have to calibrate your printer with the screen first for the best match. The color you see on the screen depends a lot on the adjustments of the screen settings and color setup. It also depends on the brand and model of the monitor. Two identical monitors brand and model with the same settings will have slight color variation and intensity. There is no way to create a file that will show the same color on all the screens. Furthermore, when you print the file on your office printer the color will change as well and vary from printer to print.

The answer is, yes – if it’s done right. Email is a great way to reach an audience directly, but as the old adage goes, “too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing.”

It’s important to adhere to anti-spam laws while creating an email campaign. It’s equally important to consider the frequency of contact with your followers when developing a campaign strategy. The possibility that your message will be deleted or overlooked increases if your audience receives too many emails too frequently — and then all your efforts are for naught.

There are services out there to help navigate the anti-spam maze, but the best way for your email and message to get noticed is to design it extremely well. Most consumers don’t spend too much time reading all of an email’s content. Messages need to be clear and concise, with an easy-to-discern call to action. A jumble of words won’t get you very far even if you’re offering the best deal in the world.

For all you fellow Tough Mudders, CultureShoc has nothing to do with electroshock therapy, but it has everything to do with energy.  It’s 8:00 am on Monday and you’re walking into your office, that feeling, that energy, that gut reaction you have is in large part your organization’s culture you’re sensing.  It can empower, engage, align, motivate and energize or it can do just the opposite.  In short, it provides energy or it drains energy.

CultureShoc is about understanding the energy capacity of a culture and then purposely designing, facilitating and reinforcing what it takes to expand that capacity.  It’s about understanding if an organization’s culture is a net positive, a true asset that needs fine tuning, or if it’s a liability that needs a full overhaul.  After we understand the current state, we meet with leadership to determine their desired state and from there design and built a culture development calendar that will measurably close that gap between current and desired.

As much as we enjoy helping clients build cultures’ that feel good to be a part of, we equally enjoy watching the improved business results that a high performance culture produces.  A culture with high-energy capacity will outperform an average culture by 300%.  Stay tuned, we’ll be breaking down our 7 cornerstones to CultureShoc, trust us, it’s not as painful as a culture with low energy capacity.   

HTML5 is the latest installment of the HTML standard. It’s not unlike the previous versions – it’s an ever-developing standard. Meaning, eventually HTML5 will be the outdated version. Let’s not rush things though. What sets HTML5 apart from the previous versions is an array of new features, new elements, new attributes – but the biggest of these, are the support for audio and video natively within a browser. This is huge and why HTML5 has become such big buzzword over the past few years.

In the past, web developers had to use third-party plugins to play video. You can say good-bye to those constant Flash install updates. As the Internet becomes increasingly integrated with video, having an HTML standard that supports this natively will become one of the biggest reasons developers will look to add it to their projects. This is just the surface of what the new HTML5 will allow us web developers to do now and in the future.

Still looking for more information?

Further Reading: w3school

HTML5 Intro Video: What is HTML5?

Brand has certainly become one of those buzz words that’s used to describe and define all kinds of things. The truth is, your “brand” is not your logo, your tagline, your corporate colors, or graphical standards and guidelines.

In the simplest terms:  your brand is simply what others believe, think and say about you.

Through marketing, advertising and other methods of communication, we’ve traditionally had the ability to tell that message.

Branding is much more about showing; doing what you say you will, marrying our values to our actions. People are smart – they have access to information that was never available before and the channels to tell their own stories that didn’t exist in the past.

Those stories just might be about you.  In the past, communicating what we wanted other people to believe about us, our products and/or services was about talking to a customer – now it’s about finding ways to talk with a customer and above all else, listen.

One way I talk about building your company brand is to understand that the best brands start from the inside out.  What I mean by that is if your internal brand (or what your employees witness and believe) is in alignment with the conversations you are having with customers, you have advocates that are built through trust, engagement and loyalty, both inside and outside the organization.  That makes for a much easier conversation.

Yes. Although the Adobe Creative Suite is capable of being used for illustration, Illustrator lives up to its name when it comes to being the king of vector illustration. While you can use Photoshop or InDesign for illustration, those pieces of software are kind of like shoes that don’t fit quite right when used that way.

The opposite also applies. While you’re now able to have multiple page documents in illustrator, it’s clunky when comparing it to InDesign.

From time to time in any office, there will be conflicts that arise, causing the office to be off balance and not run as productive as you’d like. In resolving the conflict, we meet in a private setting and agree in advance we are meeting to resolve the conflict. The goal is to first, determine what outcomes we would like to see as a result of our discussion. 

• Increased alternatives for a successful project? 
• Improved processes? 
• A better working relationship?

Each party discusses their point of view and explores potential solutions and alternatives. Then, we agree on the follow up steps and what each person will do to solve the conflict, as well as set clear goals for how we’ll measure success.

Generally, this produces a positive outcome for the workplace. It will foster idea generation, help people get along, minimize negative behaviors and promote the success of all in placing their attention where it belongs – on the customer.