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Points of View is our blog dedicated to exploring the critical corporate communications issues of the day through insights and videos of Fortune 500 business and communications execs, industry insiders and our team.

PulsePoint Group

Marketing Diagnostics in the Digital Age - Michael Gale

PulsePoint Group
June 24th, 2011

Marketing Diagnostics in the Digital Age

The reality is that most B2B and many B2C companies are increasingly moving to more integrated digital models. Those that choose to be more focused on that migration, with an active focus on digital and social media engagement, are winning. They are winning because they understand the best practices for journey mapping, marketing score carding, and especially a focus on the world-class enablement of their teams. Digital and social media enables the best brands to integrate content journeys and messaging hierarchies in powerful and effective ways.

Companies, like people, often can tell that something is wrong, but they aren’t sure about the diagnosis. And without a good diagnosis, a business can spend a lot of money trying to cure a disease it doesn’t have - while the disease it does have continues to erode its health.

Our audit and “scorecarding” tools have proved highly effective in identifying hidden problems in communications and marketing, and in paving the way for effective solutions, turning decline or stagnation into growth and profitability.

(more…)

PulsePoint Group

Weekly Pulse: 4/8/11

PulsePoint Group
April 8th, 2011

A recap of last week’s POV posts:

4/6: Google Launches +1 as Part of Social Push: Last week Google launched a new social feature called +1. For searchers with a Google account, they will have the option of clicking the “+1″ button, which is similar to the Facebook “like.” Then, other searchers who are signed into Google will see “+1″ feedback from their connections.

3/24: SXSWi Wrap Up: SXSW is over … and I’m not going to lie, I’m enjoying the decrease in downtown traffic and increase in cell signal. Overall though, I had a blast at SXSWi and was impressed with this year’s line up.

3/16: Web Now Second Only to TV as News Source: For media relations and communications professionals, understanding where target audiences go for news is critical. A new report from the Pew Research Center reveals that for the first time, the web has passed newspapers as the second most popular source of news. It’s second only to television.

PulsePoint Group

Weekly Pulse: 3/14/11

PulsePoint Group
March 14th, 2011

A recap of last week’s POV posts:

3/11: SXSW: Back to the Future of Digital: It’s that time of year again when our “live music capital of the world” (Austin, TX) decides to multitask and become the temporary epicenter of all things film, music and digital. Being based downtown, we welcome the SXSW visitors to our neighborhood and can’t wait to get out and mingle with some of the best, brightest and most innovative companies in the industry.

3/8: What it’s Like on the Other Side of the Search: I spent many years on the agency side - at Burson-Marsteller, Ketchum, and GCI Group - pitching business and always wondering what it would be like on the other side of the table. Now I know. My firm doesn’t do a lot of agency search for our clients, but occasionally we’re asked to help out. Coincidentally, we’ve been involved in a few situations just since the beginning of the year. The process is enlightening. Here are some lessons learned that agencies would be well advised to consider.

3/7: Where Strategy and Implementation Meet: Achieving Buy-In: Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin was recently ousted after less than six months on the job. An agent of change within the organization, his approach to overhauling the ailing media organization clearly didn’t mesh with what his organization was ready for. Griffin’s demise reminds me of the stellar job Louis Gerstner did when faced with a struggling IBM in the early 1990’s. One of the greatest examples of a change agent succeeding, Gerstner was responsible for changing the entire direction of an organization that until he took over was looking to break up its business into smaller units and dissolve others. Today, IBM is a singular technology services powerhouse thanks to Gerstner’s strategic vision and ability to guide the company through a massive change in culture.

PulsePoint Group

The Weekly Pulse: 3/2/11

PulsePoint Group
March 2nd, 2011

A recap of our latest POV posts:

3/2: PulsePoint Group Corporate Communication Index Series Part 7: Deeper Focus: (video) Bob Feldman, partner at PulsePoint Group, provides commentary on the firm’s recently released Corporate Communication Index Study. This is the seventh (and final) in a series of videos where he provides insight into the findings.

2/28: Google “Cleans Up” Search Results: Last week, Google announced a significant change to the way it determines search results. The change is supposed to place more value on sites with original content over sites that aggregate content or repost from other places. Google claims that this change will impact about 12 percent of searches.

2/25: Unlocking the Social Enterprise: There has been a lot of debate on the pros and cons of “empowering” employees in the enterprise by allowing them access to social media and collaborative tools in the workplace. What can the enterprise gain from allowing full access for all its employees? What are the inherent risks involved and how can they be minimized? How much is enough? These types of questions are what most organizations we work with are struggling with as they come to realize they must embrace the digital revolution.

PulsePoint Group

The Weekly Pulse: 2/23/11

PulsePoint Group
February 24th, 2011

A recap of the previous week’s POV posts:

2/23: PulsePoint Group Corporate Communication Index Seres Part 6: Change (video): Bob Feldman, partner at PulsePoint Group, provides commentary on the firm’s recently released Corporate Communication Index Study. This is the sixth in a series of videos where he provides insight into the findings.

2/9: “Translating” Innovative Ideas for Clients: As a strategic consulting firm, counsel is only as good as it is palatable to our clients. Some might interpret that as requiring that we supply strategic insight that adds value to our clients. While that is at the core of what we do, it isn’t what I am referring to. What I mean is that a great idea can’t penetrate an organization if it isn’t delivered in a way its people can readily understand.

2/4: Instilling Practical Innovation in the Enterprise: Much of the recent discussion surrounding innovation in the enterprise has been geared towards consumer-facing aspects of the business: crowdsourcing new product ideas, engaging the consumer in experiential marketing, or even asking the consumer to develop advertising or mobile applications for the business. While these are all innovative ways to engage the consumer and garner some relatively cheap attention, business leaders often find themselves relying on “tried and true” examples of innovation, rather than harnessing it from within their organization.

PulsePoint Group

The Weekly Pulse: 2/2/11

PulsePoint Group
February 2nd, 2011

A recap of the previous week’s POV posts:

2/1: Can You Be Both a Tactician and a Counselor? (PRWeek): Research among CEOs and line-of-business executives reveals that the single-most common criticism of communications professionals is that below the CCO level the function is primarily occupied by tacticians. A common result: when divisional or business unit leadership meet to discuss strategy, the PR person — perhaps other than the CCO — is often left out.

1/31: Extend Social Media Beyond Communications and Marketing: We’ve seen many companies struggle with the question of who “owns” social media. In one sense, you are communicating to customers, so it must be a marketing function. But, isn’t marketing usually “paid” and communications “earned?” If so, most social media profiles are “free,” so it must be a communications function! Well, we’ve seen the most successful social media companies embrace both and use cross-divisional teams to find manage the space.

1/28: Crowdsourcing, Innovation, and … the Home Shopping Network?: Anyone who watched the President’s State of the Union address this week may have noticed the many times he used the word “innovate” throughout his hour-long speech. The morning after, many op-eds complained that for all the talk of “out-innovating” the rest of the world, the President didn’t provide any concrete examples of how he envisioned America achieving this. According to a new article on Mashable, 2011’s focus on driving innovation may have an unlikely leader in the Home Shopping Network (HSN), as their new crowdsourcing project suggests.

1/27: A Case for Social Media Access at the Office: It’s an oft-discussed question in many IT departments and beyond: should employees have unrestricted access to the internet (including all the social networking they can get their hands on) while at work? A recent SocialCast report suggests that there might just be a productivity bump to be had from such access.


PulsePoint Group

The Weekly Pulse: 1/26/11

PulsePoint Group
January 26th, 2011

A recap of the previous week’s POV posts:

1/26: PulsePoint Group Corporate Communication Index Series Part 5: Managing Talent (video): Bob Feldman, partner at PulsePoint Group, provides commentary on the firm’s recently released Corporate Communication Index Study. This is the fifth in a series of videos where he provides insight into the findings.

1/25: LinkedIn Maps: Your Professional Universe Visualized: Have you ever wondered what your personal network looks like? Well now you can see it. Yesterday, LinkedIn launched InMaps an experimental project that creates a visualization of the connections within your business network.

1/24: Foursquare Grew 3400% Last YearFoursquare had a big year in 2010. The company experienced 3400% growth in “check-ins” with a total of 381,576,305, and there was at least one “check-in” in every country in the world, including North Korea. We even saw the first “check-in” from space at the International Space Station on October 22, 2010.

1/21: Placing Open Innovation in the Professional Services Industry: A clear trend emerged in business over the last decade: the rise of “open innovation.” Forerunners in the practice of utilizing third parties in creating, developing, and disseminating innovative business practices and products include Dell, having introduced and successfully integrated their IdeaStorm platform to drive new product development, and Starbucks, which followed suit with My Starbucks Idea, garnering yet more feedback from customers looking to enhance their personal experience with the company.

1/20: The Continuing Evolution of Employee Engagement: Mashable recently featured a piece by Soren Gordhamer, founder of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, on the evolution of the enterprise in the age of social media. It’s a fascinating read, here, but there were two things I wanted to point a spotlight on here.

PulsePoint Group

The Weekly Pulse: 1/19/11

PulsePoint Group
January 19th, 2011

A recap of the previous week’s POV posts:

1/19: Grammys Go Social – Will It Improve Ratings?: The music industry continues to be at the forefront of social media innovation and excellence. Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Rhiana are Twitter legends and music videos continue to be the most-viewed videos on the web.

1/17: PulsePoint Group Corporate Communication Index Series Part 4- Governance (video): Watch Bob Feldman, partner at PulsePoint Group, provide commentary on the firm’s recently released Corporate Communication Index Study. This is the fourth in a series of videos where he provides insight into the findings.

1/15: Eight Communication Traps that Foil Innovation: Clients often ask us about best practices in corporate communications and for examples of how best-in-class organizations implement them. These engagements vary depending on the client’s needs and their industry, but one constant is the need to benchmark those organizations that are among the first to transform emerging communications practices into core competencies.

1/14: Trendstream Study Finds Consumer Trust in Social Networking Contacts on the RiseTrendstream, the UK-based digital consultancy, has released its 2011 Web Index, available here.  It provides a thoroughly interesting, in-depth look at the evolution of social media engagement that observes a growing trend toward social networks and users as qualifiers and distributors of “professional” content, with individual content creation on the decline. I wanted to take a minute to point out one thing that really jumped out at me.

1/13: Tips on Writing Strong Social Media Content: There is a lot of social media advice out there and it can be tough to know where to start. You should definitely develop a strategy and do some planning before launching, but don’t let extensive planning and the need for perfection prevent you from getting started. Here are five tips that you can use now to create content for a social media program, even in a large organization.

PulsePoint Group

The Weekly Pulse: 1/12/11

PulsePoint Group
January 12th, 2011

Every Wednesday we are going to recap the previous week’s POV posts. Check out our first installment of the “The Weekly Pulse:”

1/4: “Checking In” at Locations is so 2010: If you pride yourself on snagging the best deals, be sure to check out, or rather “in,” to your favorite brands. “Checking in” is no longer restricted to physical locations. Today, people are checking into their favorite books, movies and of course brands. It’s just another way to define yourself via the web or your phone.

1/4: PulsePoint Group Corporate Communication Index Series Part 3: Deeper Role: Bob Feldman, partner at PulsePoint Group, provides commentary on the firm’s recently released Corporate Communication Index Study. This is the third in a series of videos where he provides insight into the findings. Be sure to check out his first and second video.

1/5: Mobile Matters More in 2011: The Consumer Electronics Show is about to kick-off in Las Vegas and industry watchers are expecting hundreds of exciting, new gadgets to wow tech lovers. Most of these new “consumer electronics” will probably fall short, but a few will inevitably spur major attention and revenue.

1/10: Your Social Media Agency Walks the Walk… But Can They Talk the Talk?: It’s important to select a strong social media agency because your agency will:

  1. Help you integrate your social media program into the larger marketing or communications plan.
  2. Train and build the skills of your internal team.
  3. Get the most out of increasing social media budgets.

1/11: Twitter Goes Casual: Twitter users frequently abbreviate and misspell words in order to adhere to the 140-character limit. A new study from Carnegie Mellon University shows that there are regional differences in how users choose to shorten words.

PulsePoint Group

Charlie Perkins on the Current Communications Landscape

PulsePoint Group
December 3rd, 2010

Charlie Perkins, public relations director of the Americas for Ernst & Young, on the current communications landscape and how we impact our organizations.

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