In communicating product recalls, transparency is key
September 20, 2011
Companies should certainly prepare for the possibility of a product recall–but ”no matter how prepared you are, you will never be prepared enough.” So said Lisa Adler, VP Corporate Communications at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company, in moderating a panel on “Communications During Product Recall.” The panel, held on September 19, was sponsored by the company and MassBio.
In her experience, Adler said, “things never go smoothly. You need to anticipate that. “
Panelists recommended that companies have a “war room” in which stakeholders–including decisionmakers from legal, regulatory, and other key departments– gather to approve everything that goes out.
Manisha Pai, Millennium’s PR director pointed out the importance of being prepared to use–and respond to– social media. “While you can’t get your entire message out in a 140-word Twitter message,” she said, you can link it to more complete information on your home page.
[Boston Globe Reporter Rob Weisman and thestreet.com 's Adam Feurstein both said that while they might follow a few companies on Twitter they consider such communiques "tips" or alerts" to follow up on, rather than news items in themselves.]
When Weisman asked fellow panelists whether companies’ communications efforts in recalls are meant to protect the company or the public, Pai, of Millennium responded, “It’s both. “
As a consumer-focused company, she explained, “our reputation rests on our responsibility to consumers and on our role as a public citizen. We need to protect the public–and also the company. “
Adler added that, for Millennium, protecting the public comes first.
Feuerstein and Arlene Weintraub, Xconomy’s New York City bureau chief, both emphasized the importance of transparency–and telling the whole story as soon as possible.
Feuerstein said: ”Coverup is the biggest crime.” It’s better to risk getting some negative press in the beginning if need be–because if you wait a few months to come forward, the analysts “will nail you….You often can’t recover from that.”
Anita M. Harris, President
Harris Communications Group
HarrisCom Blog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and marketing firm located inCambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer.
Filed in Communications, Health Communication, Journalism, Marketing Communications, new media, Public relations, social media
Tags: Adam Feuerstein, Anita Harris, Anita M. Harris, Arlene Weintraub, Boston, Boston Globe, Cambridge, Harris Communications, Harris Communications Group, HarrisCom, HarrisComBlog, Lisa Adler, Manisha Pai, Marketing Communications, mass bio, media relations, Millennium, Pharma, product recall, product recalls, Public relations, Rob Weisman, thestreet, Xconomy
Free Business Website Consult with HarrisCom
April 14, 2011
Free consultation with the Harris Communications Group on Thursday, April 21, 2011
Filed in Events, Harris Communications Group, new media, News and Events, social media
Tags: 1 Broadway, Anita Harris, Anita M. Harris, Cambridge, Cambridge Innovation Center, CIC, Harris Communications Group, Ma, marketing, media relations, new media, Public relations, thought leadership, Web content
The New York Times doesn’t need me to provide free advertising (I hope!) –but I found today’s business section fabulous for anyone interested in social media and media relations and thought I’d share some of the wealth.
First–David Carr, in The Zeal of a Convert to Twitter writes about how long-form magazine journalist, Buzz Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights,” got hooked on twitter…
Then, there are Noam Cohen’s piece on Wiki Leaks: A Renegade Site, Now Working With the News Media
and Claire Cain Miller and Ashlee Vance on Bing and Google in a Race for Features .
Robert Cyran opines on how the growing popularity of the Ipad could present problems for many tech industries in iPad shift may wreak havoc on parts of tech sector…
and Jenna Wortham describes “tumbler,” a blogging platform that sounds like a cross of Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress, and which, supposedly, many media companies are starting to use to promote themselves. Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr .
There are also articles on the UAR’s attempt to block blackberry messaging unless BB allows government monitoring, there, and Clarie Miller’s piece, New Site Aims to Connect Reporters and Publicists , which describes NewsBasis, a site on which journalists can get queries to potential sources, which launched today.
Founded by Darryl Siry, a freelance writer for Wired and a marketing executive, the new site sounds much like Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out, (AKA HARO) in that it allows journalists to post questions or search for sources– asking questions anonymously to avoid tipping off competitors.
Speaking as former journalist, I can’t imagine giving away ideas, even anonymously–tho fishing in public is certainly easier than digging for sources.
Evidently, on NewsBasis, sources can also add a footnote to articles across the Web, so when reporters are doing research using their Web browser, a tab will appear indicating that a NewsBasis source has offered a different point of view or corrected a fact.
I hope this wasn’t too much information for one shot…but, hey, it’s the information age, we’re talking about here. I’ll be interested in seeing how all of this works out.
Anita M. Harris
Anita M. Harris is president of the Harris Communications Group, a marketing communications, media relations and social media firm in Cambridge, MA.
Filed in Harris Communications Group, Journalism, Media, new media, Newspapers, Public relations
Tags: Anita Harris, Anita M. Harris, Ashlee Vance, Bing, Buzz Bissinger, Claire Cain Miller, Darryl Siry, David Carr, Google, HARO, Harris Communications, Harris Communications Group, Ipad, Jenna Wortham, New York Times, NewsBasis, Noam Cohen, Robert Cyran, Tumblr, Twitter, WikiLeaks
Press release hoaxes are bad news
June 23, 2010
According to Globe reporter Todd Wallach, last week, PR Newswire sent out a fake press release claiming President Obama had ordered a probe into General Mills.
And on Friday, Business Wire sent a release falsely claiming that Javelin Pharmaceuticals had won a 5-to-4 victory before the Supreme Court with the aid of Justice Clarence Thomas.
In both cases, the releases were rescinded before they could affect the companies’ stock prices, Wallach reports.
Both included a New Zealand phone number at the bottom.
When Wallach called the number, Matt Reed, a 30-year-old database designer in Auckland told him that he’d sent the General Mills release to discredit President Obama. And that he’d sent the Javelin release to push Business Wire and other press release companies to step up their security to prevent future hoaxes.
Odd, to say the least–but definitely a cause for concern. And, Wallach reports, an FBI investigation.
As a media relations professional, I’ve found both Business Wire and PR Newswire (as well as Marketwire) to be above-board and careful–but can see how hoaxes like these can easily be perpetrated by anyone who has a credit card.
Not sure if paid wire services need to require background checks before posting releases or if I‘d be willing to undergo one…but do think there’s a need for greater scrutiny of press releases–not just by the paid wire services but by bonafide journalistic wire services, as well.
Again, under my media relations hat, I was delighted when, several years ago, the Associate Press ran a press release I sent on behalf of a client verbatim–except for one minor change in wording. (Uncredited, of course).
I like to think it was such a great release that nothing needed to be done to it–or that perhaps my reputation for honesty was known.
But, under my journalist’s hat, I was appalled that no one from AP called me or my client to confirm that we had actually sent the release–or checked the facts– before disseminating it to the world.
Today the situation is even more serious: anyone with a computer and an Internet can post anything to the world.
On the one hand, this great boon to free speech and the sharing of ideas and information.
But on the other, the burgeoning of Internet use has eroded the readership, financial position and gatekeeping power of the traditional press. In financial distress, news organizations are cutting corners–and staff. Reporters and editors are being asked to do more, faster.
Not only is there less coverage, but it is becoming more to difficult trust the accuracy of what is covered. The traditional press has long been our nation’s main bastion for protecting the marketplace of ideas from the spread of disinformation.
I hope that media organizations, bloggers, anyone in a position to disseminate information will do so responsibly. And that my readers, business owners, the American public, will subscribe, buy ads, do what you can–to prevent a potentially dangerous situation from getting worse.
Here’s a link to the Globe article: http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2010/06/23/cambridges_javelin_is_latest_target_of_hoax/
Anita M. Harris, president of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA, is a former national journalist who has taught journalism at Harvard, Yale and Tufts Universities and at Simmons College.
HarrisCom blog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries.
Filed in Journalism, Media, new media, Newspapers, Public relations, social media
Tags: Anita Harris, Anita M. Harris, Boston Globe, business wire, Cambridge, disinformation, General Mills, Harris Communications Group, hoax, Javelin, Ma, Marketwire, media relations, pr, PR News Wire, Public relations
I’m hard at work on Ithaca Diaries–a book, vook, and/or nook about college in the 1960s.I’m debating whether to go via the traditional publishing route (agent, publisher, an advance that will amount to about 2 cents an hour, low royalties, do-it-yourself marketing, wait a year for it to come out)–or self-publish–which carries its own travails.
I’m interested to see that Amazon.com is now offering self-published authors 75 percent of royalties on ebooks–compared with the measly 5 per cent I received for my first book, Broken Patterns–which came out in 1995 and for which I’m still paying back the $2000 advance. ( BTW–it’s now selling for 9 cents a copy on Amazon–plus postage; I now have the rights and will plan to offer a new edition later this year).
I also note that Kindles are now being sold at Target for $279… though you can buy quite a few “real books” for that price, pass them along to others, and not worry that they’ll become useless as technology changes.
Today’s Wall Street Journal does a terrific job of exploring the ins and outs of self-publishing–and includes links to other excellent information.
According to Goffrey A. Fowler and Jeffrey A. Tractenberg:
Much as blogs have bitten into the news business and YouTube has challenged television, digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry. Once derided as “vanity” titles by the publishing establishment, self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment.
Here’s a link to the article: Vanity Press Goes Digital
–Anita M. Harris
HarrisCom Blog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries blogs.
Filed in Books, Communications, new media, Publishing Industry
Tags: author, Broken Patterns, Geoffrey Fowler, Harris Communications Group, HarrisCom blog, Ithaca Diaries, Jeffrey Tractenberg, Kindle, New Cambridge Observer, Self-publishing, Target, Vanity Press, Vanity Press Goes Digital, Wall Street Journal
Boston health journalists have little use for social media
January 18, 2010
Much enjoyed hearing members of the Boston health care press admit (boast?) that they have almost zero use for social media.
Speaking on a panel at last week’s meeting of the Publicity Club of the New England, journalists from the Boston Business Journal (BBJ), Dow Jones Newswires, the Boston Herald and WBZ-TV) said they don’t “get” Twitter--don’t have time for it, and can’t see why anyone would want to use it.
Jon Kamp, who covers medical technology and energy for Dow Jones said, “I’m 35 going on 100. I don’t get it; I don’t know what to do with it. When I’m 100, I hope I’ll be saying the same thing.”
Brad Perriello, executive editor the year-old MassDevice.com, an online business journal covering the device industry, said he mainly posts news feeds to attract readers to the publication’s Web site.
Ryan McBride, a correspondent for Xconomy, a national online publication with bureaus in Boston, Seattle and San Diego, said he follows certain industry leaders on Twitter but rarely contributes, himself.
Several said they have linked-in accounts that they barely use and and none use Facebook professionally.
” Facebook is to show people pictures of my kid,” Kamp said.
McBride described Linked-in as “an online Rolodex that’s full of people I don’t talk to much. Facebook is friends and family and all the people in high school whom I didn’t know were my friends.”
Julie Donnelly of the BBJ can’t see the point of posting on Facebook. “I’m not that interesting,” she said.
Debbie Kim of WBZ-TV said she doesn’t have time and Christine McConville of the Herald, said that, as an investigative reporter, she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make public the details of her life. Plus, “I can barely return my emails, get enough exercise, see my friends. I certainly don’t have time for [Facebook]. “
She does, however, enjoy contributing to videos that appear online every three weeks or so.
The conversation was moderated by Michal Regunberg, vice president of Solomon McCown & Co, a Boston public relations firm. Regunberg’s questions focused on the ways in which cutbacks and other changes in the media are affecting coverage.
All of the journalists agreed that the national debate over health reform has been the focus of their coverage in recent months (and that they’re tired of it).
All said they are working with less time, fewer resources and greater demands to produce more. As a result, they have less time for research or feature writing.
McConville said she must write two stories a day for the Herald. McBride covers two different beats for Xconomy. Donnelly writes for both the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech and is responsible for breaking stories on line as well as in print. Debbie Kim, medical producer for WBZ-TV, must sometimes produce as many as four pieces in a single a day.
Kamp mentioned that in the past, Dow Jones’ headquarters was relegated to offices in New Jersey but now shares the New York City newsroom of the Wall Street Journal–and that, in many newsrooms, there is tension over which stories should be posted online immediately and which should be held for the print version of the paper.
All of the above means that anyone trying to get coverage faces huge competition for reporters attention and must provide information that is extremely clear and to the point, the journalists agreed.
The discussion made me glad to be out of the pressure cooker journalism has increasingly become–but happy to see a high level of competence, dedication and concern for truth in the Boston press corps.
——-Anita M. Harris
HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries Blog.
Filed in Journalism, Media, new media, Newspapers, Public relations, Publishing Industry, social media
Tags: BBJ, Boston Business Journal, Boston Herald, Brad Perriello, Chrstine McConville, Debbi Kim, Dow Jones, Jon Kamp, Journalism, journalists and twitter, Julie Donnelly, Mass Device, new media, Publicity Club of new England, Ryan McBride, social media, Twitter, Wall Street Journal, WBZ-TV, Xconomy
How-to Guide to the New Online Newsroom
December 15, 2009
On behalf of the Public Relations Society of America, Steve Morella of Tekgroup, today gave a very useful Webinar on how to integrate social media and online newsrooms.
I was impressed with Steve’s knowledgeability and pleased to learn of several new sites for monitoring social media outreach and campaigns.
Among other topics, Steve emphasized the importance of:
- Online newsrooms as central headquarters for all materials–including not just press releases and contact information but also white papers, bios, articles, blogs, rss (real simple syndication) capabilitt and feeds to social media such as facebook, twitter and linked in.
- Search engine optimization not just in the writing of press releases, but also in posting them in online newsroom postings
- Categorizing feeds by topic (sales, financials, industry) and type
( news, features, video, audio, blogs) - Co-ordinating feeds with social media outlets such as Facebook, linked-in, twitter, u-tube and blogs–as well as bookmarking/commenting/referral/sharing sites, like http://delicious.com, http://www. stumbleupon.com, and http://digg.com.
- Including video, audio and hyperlinks, as well as links to stories, studies and the like, in order to create social media press releases with “legs” (my term, not his!)
- Setting goals and measuring success of social media outreach using sites like https://bit.ly/ shorten, shares, and tracks hits on your links; http://technorati.com, which allows you to search for blogs based on keywords; http://www.blogpulse.com, which analyzes daily trends in the blogosphere. Http://trendistic.com/ measures twitter trends, www.twitalizer.com measures users tweets and retweets; and www.tweetstats.com allows you to see when and how often your tweets are read or retweeted, so that you can post when you’re most likely to be read.
Obviously, Steve’s social media tactic worked; here I am, a potential competitor–posting a blog about it! (He’s the director of Sales and Marketing for Tekgroup, a global firm offering online public relations services). Here are urls to the presentation slides.
http://www.greenjobsdaily.com/HowToUseAnOnlineNewsroomToInteractWithSocialMedia.ppt
http://www.tekgroup.com/marketing/HowToUseAnOnlineNewsroomToInteractWithSocialMedia.pdf
–Anita M. Harris
HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer.
Filed in Media, new media, Public relations, social media
Tags: Boston, Cambridge, Harris Communications Group, Ma, Measurement, Online Newsroom, Public relations, Public Relations Society of America, Search engine optimization, SEO, social media, social media monitoring, Tekgroup
Vooks
October 2, 2009
I read with interest Motoko Rich’s September 30 2009 New York Times article on Vooks–a hybrid “literary” form “mashing together text, Web and video features. “
She describes publisher Simon and Schuster’s release of fitness and diet and beauty books that include videos on how to perform exercises or make skin lotion. Also, Anthony Zuicker’s novel “Level 26, Dark Origins, published on paper, as an e-book and in audio, with a Web component that allows readers to watch brief videos adding to the plot.
The online comments–101 of them–range mainly from skeptical to negative.
John in New York writes, “Should we still call them books?”
Val in Baltimore suggests we’ll soon see “A nobel prize…in viterature!”
Mary the Trainer from Texas writes that the best part of ”reading a novel is creating the scenes in one’s mind based upon what the author has written.”
According to R Weber in Park Slope, ”Publishers –– all corporate hacks these days, with quotas to meet, bearing little resemble to publishers of old who thrived some years, got by in lean years –– have so little imagination & entrepreneurial drive, that idiocies like this are the best they can come up with. The truism proves true once more, “Pay peanuts, get monkeys.”
I scrolled through pages of comments in hopes of weighing in–but found that the comment box had closed.
What I would have said is that as an author, former radio and television producer, photographer, and musician, I’m thrilled and energized by the prospect of being able to merge media in order to give readers/viewers a fuller experience than is available through any single medium on its own.
In research Ithaca Diaries, a book (or something) based on journals I kept in college in the late 1960s, I was delighted to be able to check my fading memories using video, photos and news accounts I readily found on line. I’ve been struggling to pull my journal entries, letters, photographs and drawings into a linear form–but now it will be possible to include video of the Doors from 1969, Bob Dylan’s 1969 concert on the Isle of Wight; old news footage of the Chicago and Democratic News Conventions, maybe even the shootings at Kent State. Maybe I can even read from the diary entries, aloud–and share tapes of my old professors and friends.
Now all I need to do is figure out how to do this and how to find the time, what it will cost–and whether–and how–it will sell.
I’d welcome YOUR comments.
—Anita Harris
HarrisComblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer
Filed in Books, Media, new media, Publishing Industry
Tags: Anita Harris, Books, Cambridge, Cambridge Authors, Harris Communications, Harris Communications Group, HarrisComBlog, Hybrid books, Ma, New Cambridge Observer, Public relations, vooks
How to write a winning blog for SEO
September 3, 2009
At the September meeting of the Cambridge Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Chris Baggot of Compendium Blogware, advised a tech savvy group of 72 that key words and multiple pages are crucial to winning high blog rankings on search engines like Google and Bing.
Group members interrupted Baggot numerous times with questions. (They didn’t want to believe that Compendium’s platform, which focuses on providing many pages, each with its own keywords, could work better than WordPress). But Baggot held his own.
Key takeaways:
- Eighty percent of activity on the Web is search–by people who are looking for solutions to particular problems– using keywords.
- Bing, and, now, Google, are increasingly using content, as opposed to links, in ranking the importance of particular posts.
- Domain names don’t matter: blog titles, and keywords do
- Have as many focused blog pages as possible–hundreds, if you can, each with its own main keyword
- For consultants: tell stories of problems you have solved
- Search engines “like” frequency and fresh pages; write short but often
- Blogs should be 100-150words; if you have to more say, write another post
- Include a call to action–give people a way to go forward: have an offer; ask them to sign up for something
Ohmygosh I’m over 150 words!
Here’s my call to action: Contact me at harriscom@harriscom.com if you need communications strategy, media outreach, Web structure and content, a WordPress blog or writing for any medium about almost anything.
–Anita M. Harris
Harriscomblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer. Copyright: anita m. harris, 2009
Filed in new media, Publishing Industry, social media
Tags: Blog ranking systems, blogging, Cambridge SEO Meeting Group, Cambridge SEO Meetup, Chris Baggot, Compendium, Harris Communications, SEO, SEO Optimization
Welcome!
July 16, 2009
Hi–and welcome to HarrisCom.blog, a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.
We’ll be covering and commenting on issues relating to the traditional and new media, public relations, social media, health care life sciences, and our clients. We welcome links, pingbacks, comments and suggestions. Our materials are copyrighted, so if you’d like to use them, please email us for permission.
Thanks for stopping by!
Anita M. Harris, President
Filed in Health Care and Life Sciences, Interpersonal communication, Journalism, Media, new media
Tags: Cambridge MA, Harris Communications Group, life science, Media, media relations, new media, pr, Public relations, social media
