Zeno Group Blog

I am all for a lively exchange. From town halls to pundits, from papers to blogs, lots of folks all are focused on how we are going to tackle health care. Just a few observations:

1) On July 23, Pres. Obama referred to “health insurance reform” when in Cleveland. While few noticed this substantive change in White House strategy back then, kudos to Cathy Arnst, BusinessWeek, for flagging it. The strategy is to assign blame to a segment (the insurance industry).

2) As has been noted by many, when Social Security was created, Americans tended to retire at 65 and die in the following year or so. Thanks to medical and health advances, we are living longer. The challenge is how to pay for our longer lives and the advances that help to make that happen.

3) Care of health care reform, I have learned a little something about Twitter: I commented on a tweet about health care being a right. I got a direct message back that was questioning my opinion. I tried to send a direct message back, but can’t until that person follows me. (This frustration further confirms my earlier blog that I am twitless.)

At the root of my health care reform post was that we need to consider the quantity of health care provided. Surely, this is very complicated. While “death panels” are a flash point, in fact, we need to do a much better job providing end of life care. Americans are optimists and we all hope for a miracle cure. I agree that a well informed physician and patient team should be in control of the decision. Ultimately, though, we need to become more realistic about the intended outcomes of care, the evidence that is available to guide the decision and weigh the options. By the time anyone reaches middle age, just like getting the invitation to join the AARP, we should also embrace the critical landmark of establishing a living will and ensuring we have done the very best we can to plan financially for long lives.

On Monday, Zeno Group hosted a roundtable discussion about food, beverage and nutrition trends for 2009 and beyond, and the implications for business. Never before have the opportunities, threats and stakeholders been so diverse. Who could have ever thought eating and drinking would get this complicated?

Sylvia Rowe, President of SR Strategy LLC, kicked off the presentations with an overview of the unprecedented “convergence” of food and beverage trends: as risk, as medicine, as ethics and values, and as fuel. “Obesity continues to the lens through which all nutrition issues are viewed today,” noted Sylvia. Interestingly, the importance of sustainability was mentioned in relation to 2 distinctly different notions: the sustainability of production and the sustainability of consumer behavior change. (Given that it was World Oceans Day with Ted Danson on CNN warning of imperiled global fishing stocks, sustainability was clearly in the headlines and central to the roundtable discussions.)

Following Sylvia’s remarks was Nutritionist Ashley Koff, RD. From the perspectives of her many clients and the media, Ashley emphasized the importance of simplifying the message to an overwhelmed consumer. Balancing new discoveries related to the functional benefits of foods and food ingredients is ever challenging, while the promise of new advances, such as personalized nutrition tailored to an individual’s DNA, is off in the future. Across the board, addressing energy is a key.

Zeno Group’s Nick Mendoza rounded out the presentations with a sampling of food and beverage brand social media programs. Today’s consumers discuss the brands they eat and drink frequently with their friends. To participate in these conversations, a healthy social media program requires brands to communicate with transparency, while always listening first and valuing the relationship. Authentic engagement and audience empowerment should be driving social media activities, rather than self-serving promotions or a soapbox mentality.

Representatives from O.N.E. Natural Experience and Nuttzo brought along their products for everyone’s enjoyment. The FDA representative also brought an array of the agency’s communications tools.

With the release of the movie Food, Inc. coming later this week and the deliberations around the 2010 food guidance system (the heavily anticipated next food “pyramid”) still very much underway, food and beverage producers and marketers need to be ready to tout their advances and protect their brands in these dynamic times.

Wondering how this tough economy is really affecting consumer spending habits? To get a pulse on today’s consumer, Zeno Group’s Speaking Female Team went straight to those controlling the purse strings – US women. According to the US Census Bureau, women buy 81% of all products and services – who better than this powerful consumer group to give us insight into how spending habits are changing.

In this month’s Zeno Group She Report we offer an enlightening look into what women are thinking and doing when it comes to money. While most are cutting the family budget, women still need a vacation.

Everyone was all a twitter about social media at last week’s PR Week Awards. For those just putting a toe into social media, my mother has provided a simple framework for considering how to approach digital communications: Does a social media program solve a business problem?

My mom, Ruth, is the proprietor of the Animal Exchange in Rockville, MD. She is a noted animal care expert with a degree from Cornell U in ornithology. On a daily basis, pet owners and aspiring pet owners stop by for guidance. As a result, Ruth faces a number of routine animal husbandry questions as well as questioners coming in with misinformation – often garnered from the internet.

To solve Ruth’s problem of providing the deep information her customers need, she is developing a series of informational videos. From baby hamsters to lizards to birds, Ruth is now able to refer her customers to her growing online video library. (Her debut video, Bearded Dragon Care, has been viewed more than 11,000 times.) Ruth and I are now talking about bringing Animal Exchange to Facebook so that her customers and many followers receive regular updates on new animals and products arriving in the store weekly.

In addition to solving a problem, though, everyone should be ensuring that social media does not cause a problem. Monitoring online discussions is essential for all brands and companies to ensure that lively digital conversations and content do not crossover into the land of misinformation and brand and reputation destruction. A customer scorned can create a digital black eye in no time when you are not looking.

Frankly, I worry about the decline of the newspaper and the related decline in community. When reading a paper cover to cover, you are exposed to not only what you are looking for and want, but to a wide range of topics and issues that may not be part of your google news search terms. Immersing yourself in only the content you are looking for or identify with, erodes shared perspectives and understanding. So, I was interested to learn care of Bob Pickard’s Facebook page about the launch of the Newspaper Project.

According to the project’s blog, “NewspaperProject.org was launched in 2009 by a small group of newspaper executives to support a constructive exchange of information and ideas about the future of newspapers.” While surely part of the future of newspapers in inexorably tied to the financials, let’s also not forget the role newspapers play in shaping the fiber of our communities.

I signed up for Twitter. Like many, I want to understand this new sensation taking over the globe. I found some folks to follow and some folks (largely the Zeno Group Digital Lifestyle Team) started following me. But, my world didn’t change. I check my page every now and then. New headlines from the Chicago Trib, PR Week, an occasional missive from CNN’s Rick Sanchez, or a thoughtful insight from my wittily named colleague, aquahombre. And so, I became obsessed with how to describe someone like me (who is generally a lurker on chat boards (from CafePharma to LTHForum) and who rarely spouts off online.)

So, it is with this background that I dip a toe into the social media world and propose a term for those who sign up to explore Twitter, catch glimpses of new stuff, but who rarely tweet themselves: twitless. In context, “I am addicted to Google News, keep an eye on foodie boards, and I twitter (http://twitter.com/lynnhanessian), but am generally twitless.” I think this is growing on me.

I was struck recently regarding the similarities between the just completed presidential campaign and election and how PR agencies participate in competitive new business assignments. During an election and a pitch for new business, there are bold visions and differences in approach. Chemistry is important: Do I like the candidate? Do we share the same values? Can I imaging working with the team? There are promises and emotion. There is energy and hard work. After the election and the new business win, there are congratulations and smiles. As the work begins to take shape, there is a move towards a core program (likely included in every one of the agency pitches.) And the broad vision is tailored to the more immediate situation and getting the job done.

I am not an overly political person, but I am vexed (in a bipartisan way) with the way PR consultation is being positioned as an evil in the presidential campaign. Pieces in the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post which are gaining widespread readership flag PR as a critical turning point with the clear implication, “a turn to the dark side.” Now, there is a clear distinction between PR for corporations, organization and institutions versus political PR for partisan politics. But, care of the unprecedented coverage and attention being paid to this year’s campaign, that distinction is lost in the eyes of many consumers and the image of PR indelibly tied to the “spin” business of political communications.

From the Chicago Tribune: “But the reason Ayers is not a big deal in Chicago has to do with the Chicago Way, and the left fork of that road that has been bought and paid for by the Daley machine, subsidized by taxpayers who foot the bill for public relations contracts from City Hall.”

From the Washington Post: “An outside public relations expert hired under a $31,000 contract with the state Department of Natural Resources pitched the “upstart governor” as a crusader against Big Oil, a story line that Palin has adopted in her campaign as Sen. John McCain’s running mate. The contract was the only time the Palin administration hired an outside consultant to set up media interviews, a function performed in many states by government employees.”

As my colleague Dan Skinner noted about the newly redesigned Chicago Tribune, the magical experience of reading a broadsheet from page one to the end is changing. The new Chicago Tribune features stories that fit on one page with more color and pictures. Inevitably, the print version is a attention grabber that hopefully will drive readers to the web. (In the interest of full disclosure, I confess that I am a Google news junky and very frequent visitor to chicagotribune.com along with myriad of other news media websites.) While I think it is dandy that I am able to reconnect with the paper of my childhood, the Washington Post, online and for free, I am also convinced that the critical role that newspapers used to play (informing the populous on a wide range of matters—news and otherwise, and contributing to the development of a democratic society) is in the past.

While there is more information around us, I know that my eyes and clicks online glom onto topics of interest, not necessarily the news of the day. With a printed paper in hand, I invariably read items I would never have clicked on if presented in an online form. Other readers of the print paper are also getting that information exposure. While Dan’s post addresses the loss of his paper, I am also worrying about the loss of community. The common set of information delivered via news outlets has given way to consumer control over info sources. I bet this leads to a lot of self-affirming moments (the ability to find a blog that reaffirms ones political values, for examples) rather than diverse, community discussions with a wide range of perspectives participating.

Lots of what we do in PR is to consider the interests and desires of target audiences. We work vigilantly to craft messages that have relevance and eye, ear, heart and mind-catching appeal. Our beloved target audiences, however, are now more and more diverse and making decisions on an ever more varied set of information inputs. Sure, there is a terrific upside to this: we are expanding our direct reach to consumers who are expecting to be able to see and reach us in places other than in the news media. (Do you thing that consumers reading the boiler plate information at the bottom of our press releases will make all of the difference in our ability to persuade them?) We also need to be thinking about the diversity and flexibility of our efforts.