Fine Print

One of the most thrilling tasks that a public relations consultant can experience when working for a client would be acclimatizing to a new variable, ultimately, to change. A new client or perhaps even an existing one with a new campaign can be very exciting, as one is being introduced to new relationships and original ideas are abundant. That’s the industry — it doesn’t just move with the times, but keeps one step ahead.

GCI Canada has an abundance of creative and innovative strategists who fully comprehend the value of digital and social media. They understand and indeed wield new digital and social media trends in order to extend the reach of client messages. After reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR, I found similar inspiration on dynamic PR and its value from David Meerman Scott.

I have had the privilege to liaise with Scott in the past about new and exciting forms of digital and social media, and he has never disappointed. He regularly updates his blog, furthering his book’s teachings of frequent, credible content and streamlined communiqué, and their importance over client matters to the consumers. It’s not just the message but how many mediums it can be sent through; how important even the minutest change in policy or in practice can be to the consumer/reader.

Many books attempting to rewrite the rules of new social and digital media and their relevance to PR are usually found to be outdated by the time one is finished reading them. As an avid bookworm, I was beginning to feel dismayed. However, I’d like to give my first “hat tip” to Scott, and suggest any people interested in social media give his book a gander.

~ Sam Amsterdam, Account Coordinator, GCI Canada

The author of Tribes — Seth Godin — is involved in a conference call October 21 @ 2 p.m. EDT, and it’s free.

Snip: “We’ll discuss how the Internet has enabled everyone to lead a tribe and create movements with customers, employees or neighbours.”

Register. Hat tip.

[Update: Unfortunately I missed this due to some last-minute blog research work, so any insight from people who listened would be great!]

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Every two weeks at GCI Canada we have a Book Club, which is cool for three reasons: (1) We learn a lot by discussing certain relevant books, (2) It encourages me to actually read a book rather than get my fix of information from the Internet, and (3) I finally get to use the “Book Club” category tag that I thought was impossible.

So, the current one we are discussing is Good to Great by Jim Collins. It’s not the newest of books (published in 2001), and there’s not even a hint of social media in there (so far, we’re only on chapter 2) but the ideas that Collins puts across through his research are still relevant for today’s companies who are trying to make that leap to greatness.

One topic that came up is the fact that a very successful leader of a well-known billion-dollar tech company isn’t comfortable taking questions from an audience. They’d rather have a one-on-one with an interviewer, in front of an audience, instead. That got me thinking, and I thought it a bit strange.

I’m not the loudest guy in the room, but I know that if I was the founder of a successful company, I would relish the thought of taking random, on-the-fly questions. The reason being is that I would certainly have an idea of my game plan, and the path that myself and my team wanted to take the company would be clear. So, that would give me the confidence to be able to answer any question — it would be my opinion, and my thoughts on where the company should be in five years based on certain strategies.

Success or (hopefully not) failure would follow those decisions, but at least some strategy would be in place to try and achieve the former.

Anyone else out there prefer not to answer questions about their company? If not, why? If so, why?

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada