BridgeBuzz

A recent article in the New York Times reported a growing trend among American college students to spend junior year abroad in the Middle East, learning Arabic and soaking up the culture.  At about the same time, Bloomberg BusinessWeek  and the Wall Street Journal were reporting that there’s a growing number of North Americans going to top Asian business schools each year.   The Journal also covered the story from the point of view of professors who had been teaching in the U.S. and were recruited to one of these new “Asian Ivy Leagues.”  Four of the top schools (China Europe International Business School [CEIBS] in Shanghai, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [HKUST] Business School, Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and Nanyang  Business School in Singapore) even decided to band together as “Top Asian B-Schools” to capitalize on this trend and promote the idea of going to a top business school in Asia. We have been working with them to get the word out about their upcoming visit to North America to attend MBA fairs in four cities. 

The ”millennials,” as the generation of 20-somethings is being called,  really seem to understand that cross-cultural experience and training can have an important impact on their careers.  For many years there has been a steady stream of students from overseas – Iranians, Indians, Israelis, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans - to study in the U.S.  Back in the ’70s when I was graduating from college, U.S. study abroad was pretty much restricted to Europe.  But starting in the late ’80s/early ’90s, a summer or semester in Asia became a hot trend for American students, with Tokyo rivalling, if not surpassing, Paris as the destination of choice.   Today’s students are, not surprisingly, focusing on future economic growth, and the hot spots reflect the shift taking place in economic power to Asia.  

Those who opt for study in Asia or the Middle East will have a big advantage when it comes to managing the increasingly more diverse work force right here in the U.S.  They’ll also be way ahead of their peers in understanding the cultural adjustments that must be made to be successful in international business.

Lucy Siegel

Have you taken our business travel survey? If not, please take a minute to do it! Thanks. 

…that business people from overseas often don’t know

A visitor from Europe came to discuss U.S. PR with us for his company recently.  He thought he knew just what needed to be done and how it should be done, and he had already allocated a budget for the work. Our conversation shook him up a bit and sent him back to the drawing board. What he discovered is that the American market was different from his own in many respects when it comes to communications and that many of his assumptions were wrong. Here are five of the important differences we pointed out:

1.   Size matters

The U.S. population is large and dispersed over a huge geographical area. There are as many people in all of Switzerland as in New York City alone. The number of media outlets in the U.S. is much larger compared to a country in Europe or South America, or one of the smaller Asian nations.  (I’m not saying that Americans consume more news.)

2.  From tostados to tempura

In the U.S., there are 21 languages that have at least 200,000 native speakers. Wide diversity is a fact of life in all the big American cities and even many small ones.  There are few places where so many diverse cultures live side-by-side (relatively peacefully) under the same flag.

3.      PR: not just “publicity,” a strategic function

In some parts of the world, PR is still restricted to bringing messages from senior management to the media and publicizing new products.  It is “publicity” in an old-fashioned wining-and-dining sense of the word, and not a high-ranking function.  In the U.S., PR professionals develop the messages, they don’t just deliver them. PR – and its twin sister, corporate communications – are strategic functions here that are considered very important by senior management. Often the top communications person reports to the CEO.

4.  Higher budgets

Size, diversity and the strategic nature of PR all contribute to higher costs and bigger budgets. Overseas companies often come to the U.S. with too low a budget to do an effective job of communicating.  They don’t understand that they need to spend more here to reach their target audiences (who have different lifestyles, are spread 3,000 miles apart, live in totally different climates, come from a wide variety of cultural traditions and speak different languages).  

 5.   Vital importance of targeting

With such diversity and geographic spread, the way to make effective use of a communications budget is to narrow down the audience to the people you most want and need to reach – those who are the best and most important targets for your company – rather than trying to reach everyone. Unless this is done, either the budget becomes astronomical or efforts are spread so thinly they aren’t effective.

by Lucy Siegel

We’ve heard opinions about the BP oil crisis by now from all the American somebodies (and lots of nobodies), speaking from every conceivable angle. However,  I thought many of you would be interested in a perspective from afar – an Englander’s perspective – on the BP oil crisis.  I’m pleased to introduce David Watson, Principal, Campaignteam, the Britsh member of PR Boutiques International  (the worldwide PR firm network of which Bridge is also a member). David has kindly taken the time to give us his views as a guest blogger about how news of the BP calamity is being received by the British. Campaignteam is based in Ditchling, West Sussex, about half hour or so from London. – Lucy Siegel

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BP is the UK’s biggest company, so you can imagine we tend to keep a weather-eye on it, and we have not been impressed by recent events in the Gulf of Mexico and Washington DC. Deepwater Horizon has remained high on the news agenda in the UK even though competing with a new coalition government announcing the most draconian cuts in public services since the Romans left.

Of course we like to think that we have a “special relationship” with the US so America is always in the news here, but there’s an edge to this story since it looks a little like Brit-bashing. After all, it’s nearly 10 years since the company’s name changed to BP, but we noticed how Americans have been referring to “British Petroleum” in a flourish of rather cynical rhetoric.  

In fact BP is a multinational – about 39% owned by Americans and 40% by us – and so we see this as a “blame foreigners” ploy which our own government has used down the centuries to great effect. While we understand this strategy, we might expect to have it used on us by Iran (or France, obviously) but not by our friends in the US.

Of course, we’re as appalled as anyone else by the loss of life, the environmental damage and the economic fall-out, but we see the range of companies involved in the disaster and we doubt that only one of them is at fault.

Our attitude is also affected by the fact that British pension funds are major investors in BP, which contributes around 14% of all dividends paid by FTSE 100 companies, so the American call for a suspension of a $2.6bn dividend payment was unpopular here.  This looked like gesture politics and we got doubly annoyed when the BP board decided to cave in, particularly when we spotted that Transocean, who owned and operated the rig, approved a $1bn dividend in May.

However, our paranoia is already waning. We don’t mind that Tony Hayward got a hard time. Sure, he’s British and has been torn to shreds by one and all, but we figure that the CEO would have been in trouble whatever nationality he was.

It’s clear that the executives are caught – as usual in such situations – between the communication people and the lawyers and so we’re not surprised that Hayward’s performance before the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce resulted in accusations of evasion and vagueness. Everyone is preparing for years of lawsuits and these are very early days …

Unsurprisingly, BP’s reputation in the UK is better than it is across the Atlantic, largely because they haven’t done so much damage over here, so we’re happy to leave the US to drive the agenda on this. But please stop calling it “British Petroleum”.

By the way, my solution to the oil leak is to print out all the crisis management advice that BP has been offered since April and cram it down the well. If that doesn’t stop it, nothing will.

by David Watson, Principal, Campaignteam

BP has entered a realm of never-ending PR slip-ups since the Gulf Coast oil spill which occurred over two months ago. BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, has been the center of attention due to a string of insensitive comments such as, “I would like my life back” and “The environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.” If these comments don’t shock you, read The Christian Science Monitor article on the ‘10 Worst BP gaffes in the Gulf oil spill.’ And while Hayward has continued to make slip-ups, BP only recently brought a communications staffer on-board and hired an outside PR agency to handle the public’s discontent with the company.

The animosity Hayward has received is understandable. His appearance of being detached from the consequences of the oil spill has upset many people. But recently the spotlight shifted briefly to BP’s Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, for a comment he made that drew heavy criticism, which may have been unjustified.

Svanberg made a public statement after meeting with President Obama and agreeing to establish an escrow account of $20 billion to pay for claims from the spill. His full remarks state, “People say that large oil companies don’t care about the small people. But we care. We care about the small people.” Critics immediately pounced on Svanberg and called his remark overbearing and paternalistic.

BP quickly followed up with a statement explaining Svanberg’s use of the word ‘small’ and clarified that he meant BP wanted to ensure the local residents of the Gulf Coast were taken care of financially. The mix-up of the words ‘small’ and ‘local’ demonstrate an example of how cultural differences can end up causing confusion.

It’s safe to say that Svanberg, originally from Sweden, may have experienced a translation error. The Wall Street Journal also pointed out that Svanberg attempted to relate to the American public by using the sympathetic language President Obama often uses, which is uncommon for politicians to do in Europe.

There are several lessons companies can learn from Hayward’s and Svanberg’s gaffes.

• Research your target audience. This is extremely important, especially when working internationally where cultures may differ.

• Move quickly in a crisis to bring in local communications expertise. If BP had brought in an American crisis management expertise earlier, such as services available from several firms in the PR Boutiques International network, of which Bridge is a member, perhaps Svanberg would have received guidance in advance that could have prevented him from making such a remark.

• Be sympathetic. If a company head isn’t genuinely sympathetic, don’t appoint him or her as spokesperson.

-Tiffany Winbush

Recently I wrote on this blog about what kind of news people share online. Research has shown that news that  evokes emotion engages people so much they want to share it with others.   

GSK's CEO Andrew Witty

 Earlier this year, not long after the Haiti earthquake, GlaxoSmithKline’s CEO, Andrew Witty, was the subject of a lengthy front page New York Times article with the headline, “Ally for the Poor in an Unlikely Corner.”   The  article links Witty’s earlier years working in Africa and Asia tothe company’s support for improvements in healthcare for the poor.   If you read the article in print, you’d notice that the Times edited it down for the web and left out mention of Witty’s trip to Haiti after the earthquake. According to the article, he worked right alongside the doctors, Red Cross workers and, of course, CNN anchors.  The reporter concluded that Witty went to Haiti because he’s genuinely concerned about the earthquake victims and wanted to see how his company could help. Unlike most other executives, he wrote, Witty is a man of action, not just words. 

The article also reports on GSK’s commitment to sell malaria drugs for no more than five percent over the cost of manufacturing them, and credits Witty with establishing this and other corporate policies designed to help those who have a hard time helping themselves. 

I  don’t know how the Times article originated. Perhaps a CNN anchor in Haiti mentioned to a Times reporter that Witty was there. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in GlaxoSmithKline’s corporate communications department or at its PR agency didn’t think, “Hmm, Andrew Witty is headed for Haiti – that might make a great angle for a profile piece in the New York Times.”  A communications professional with good media relations know-how may have planted the seed of the story idea. I see nothing wrong with that, and I’m not implying that Witty’s trip to Haiti was done for PR purposes. I don’t doubt that he was genuinely concerned and wanted to help.  GlaxoSmithKline could simply write news releases to tell the media about its programs to help the poor. But no news release could have the same impact as a personal, emotional feature story, written by someone outside the company. The article must have generated considerable public goodwill and admiration for GSK.

Because we’re bombarded with stories and information all day every day, thanks to the Internet and 24-hour news, it’s difficult for a company to get – and hold – people’s attention.  It’s our job as PR professionals to deploy the maximum creativity and know-how to find the corporate stories that will stand out in the news so much that people will not only remember them, but will even want to share it with others. 

As a brief aside, the BP crisis has certainly captured and held everyone’s attention and created content hour after hour for the news industry. The devastating impact of the oil gushing into the Gulf on wildlife and people has made this a very emotional story that people, in this country at least, will not forget for a long time.

- Lucy Siegel

Wednesday, June 2^nd marked the first official meeting of this year’s Public Relations Internship Summer in Manhattan (PRISM) program with seven PR interns coming together at Bridge Global Strategies for a meet-and-greet lunch followed by a guest speaker. The ten-week PRISM program meets every Wednesday and consists of interns from five different PR agencies, including Red PR, Makovsky & Co., Lotus PR, Herman & Almonte PR and Bridge Global Strategies. This unique summer program promises to expose the participating interns to first-hand knowledge of today’s public relations industry while also providing them with invaluable experience.

At our first meeting we were privileged to have Kenneth Bandler as our guest speaker. Ken’s extensive knowledge of the communications field was evident from the beginning of his informal speech. The PRISM interns asked questions about his past experiences and current responsibilities.

The major topic of the day was Ken’s position as Director of Communications for AJC (the American Jewish Committee). As an international think-tank and advocacy organization, the AJC attempts to identify trends and problems early – and then take action. On-going global issues of concern to the organization make Ken’s position both time-consuming and intellectually demanding.  With such a high level of activity and responsibility to react quickly to numerous global crises, Ken must always be on his toes and ready to call upon his years of experience at a moment’s notice in order to successfully represent the AJC’s interests around the globe.

The PRISM inters both learned a lot from hearing Ken describe his present position and were inspired by the prospect of someday being able to work in a similarly fast-paced and challenging environment which produces tangible, real world results.

by Ryan Viviani

I was disturbed but not surprised to see a new statistic on the fall in newspaper readership in the U.S. this week. The New York Times reported that the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures show average weekday sales of newspapers across the U.S. have dropped nine percent from a year ago.

Newspaper readership is sinking fast in the U.S., but in many other places, newspapers are holding their own. In Sweden, 80 percent of the population read newspapers. In Israel this figure is 95 percent. And Japan has the highest newspaper sales in the world. By contrast, only 39 percent of Americans in a Pew survey last year said they had read a newspaper the previous day.

Many analysts blame the Internet for the decline in newspaper reading in the U.S., but the 39 percent figure above includes online papers! I’ve also heard people say the cause is the instant availability of news, 24 hours a day online and on TV and radio. To me, this doesn’t explain the situation. Other countries have access to news updates all day, either online or via broadcast or both, and yet their newspaper readership figures are still very high. And TV network news programs are dying here, too. It scares me to think of our democracy with so few people reporting – and reading – the news.

Mine was the first generation to grow up watching TV. Sure, we watched cartoons and “I Love Lucy,” but we also watched Dave Garroway and Barbara Walters on the “Today Show” every morning. We watched the Kennedy and Nixon debate on TV, and a few years later cried while we watched President Kennedy’s funeral. In 1969, we were awestruck and excited as we witnessed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, but horrified at the bloody images from the Viet Nam war on the network news.

We were the TV generation, but we also read the newspaper.  We saw first-hand what a powerful effect the news could have with the courageous publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times in 1971. The result was severe damage to President Richard Nixon’s credibility and a shift in public opinion on the Viet Nam War. The skillful reporting of the two Washington Post journalists that brought Nixon down further reinforced the importance that newspapers play.

In the U.S., both newspaper and TV network news staffs are shrinking fast. A report last fall that almost 36,000 journalism jobs had been lost in the U.S. over the previous 12 months came as no shock to anyone in my industry. We work on a daily basis with the media and see this close up. In the last year or two there have been numerous prominent newspaper bankruptcies and closings. Many TV news shows have morphed into entertainment or disappeared.

We try to explain this trend to our clients from overseas and they find it hard to understand because contacting newspaper reporters in their countries is the way to reach almost everyone. We tell them that in America, especially if they want to be known by the “Millennials” – the 20-somethings who grew up using the Internet – they’d better starting learning how to use Facebook, Twitter and a host of other popular new media formats.

by Lucy Siegel

1) You get to work with people who are smart, energetic, passionate and confident.

2) It feels great that our work is the key to their visibility, and essential for their success.

3) It’s fun to be with them to watch them grow.

Small business advisor

4) Start-ups come from obscurity, and acquiring visibility delights them. What delights our clients makes us happy.

5) What delights them even more is getting VC funding. We can celebrate a lot of interim successes with them even before they’re profitable.

6) Start-ups are more open to new ideas, and they tend to be very receptive to our creativity.

7)  We don’t have to wade through an ocean of bureaucracy to get directly in front of the ultimate decision-makers.

8) We become part of the solution to a problem.  As Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees problems in opportunities whereas an optimist sees opportunities in problems.”

9) We’re a match made in heaven: they’re hungry for attention and we’re great at feeding and nurturing.

If your company is a start-up and you are interested in learning how Bridge can help you, please contact us (lsiegel at Bridgeny dot com).  We’d be happy to hear from you.

By Lucy Siegel

The New York Times recently reported the results of a research study conducted by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to determine what people are most likely to share with others online, and why. 

The researchers compiled the New York Times’ list of most-emailed articles over six months and analyzed them.  They discovered that a significant percentage of the articles people e-mailed were about science, and a lot of them had a “surprise factor.”  Many of the “surprising” articles had what the Wharton team called “an awe-inspiring quality,” according to The Times. The researchers concluded that, after reading something that touches them emotionally (whether it inspired awe, fear or other emotions), readers want to share and talk about their thoughts and feelings.

Communications professionals have always understood that emotion is what makes people remember what they see and read.  Sometimes what matters most, unfortunately, are not the facts (the truth), but the “emotional truth.” If a story sounds plausible and appeals strongly to people’s emotions, many people accept it at face value and share it with others. There are numerous incidents of a company losing millions of dollars –brought to the brink of bankruptcy, even – because the “emotional truth” in a news story made the company look terrible even though it ignored the facts. 

Here’s an example: 20 years ago, actress Meryl Streep launched an all-out attack on the apple growing industry for using the chemical Alar. Studies had shown a correlation between cancer and exposure to very high levels of Alar in lab animals.  An environmental group, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), claimed there were traces of Alar in bottled apple juice and wanted the Environmental Protection Agency to ban Alar. They hired a PR firm to develop an anti-Alar campaign, using Streep as a spokesperson. 

In media interviews, Streep warned emotionally, from one mother to another, that Alar in apple juice could be harming children. One result was a story on “60 Minutes” that was devastating to the apple growers.  Mothers poured apple juice down the drain, and sales plummeted.

The apple growers deployed legions of scientists to lay out detailed facts to prove that Alar was safe. But their complex scientific explanations fell on deaf ears. Mothers across America were very receptive to what they perceived to be the truth, the highly emotional anti-Alar accusations.  Here was Streep, a mother herself, with no apparent ulterior motive, warning them about a product grown by “Big Agribusiness.” 

It turns out that Alar actually does pose a small cancer risk, and children are more at risk from toxins in food than adults. One consumer group concluded that Alar should be banned if it posed even a very small risk.  However, the group also pointed out that drinking juice made from apples grown with Alar was much less of a health risk to children than feeding them candy bars. Simple, dramatic and emotional, with a famous actress as the star, the anti-Alar crusade had all the elements of a story the media would love.  But the arguments on the other side were not black and white and their complexity didn’t resonate well with the media. Finally the apple growers hired their own PR company, which also used a spokeswoman. She claimed that the anti-Alar hysteria was unscientific and had cost America’s farmers, many of them small family farmers, $100 million. This humanized the apple growers’ side of the story, and gave an emotional argument to bolster scientists’ facts and figures, but in the end, Alar was voluntarily taken off the market.

We live in a much more complex communications environment now than when Meryl Streep attacked apple juice in the ‘80s.  Companies need to understand what makes news and what doesn’t, and how to respond when their own organizations or products are maligned online. This will not only help them to protect themselves from the plentiful mis- (and dis-) information that can be found online, but also help them take advantage of the incredible opportunities to be heard that the Internet offers to those who know how to use them.

Lucy Siegel

We hope that you enjoyed the first part of our interview with Stephen Elliott, Managing Director of Elliott & Partners Reputation Management in Wegberg, Germany.  In the second part of the interview Elliott explores more about public relations in his country and provides what he sees as common misconceptions about Germans and Germany. 

Part II.

Bridge Global Strategies: What sorts of professional public relations associations can be found in Germany?

Stephen Elliott: We have the DPRG (Deutschen Public Relations Gesellschaft e.V.). It’s a serious-minded organization that doesn’t just set out to benefit or promote the big agencies. The DPRG is academic in its approach, rather parochial, and not very commercial at all. You can view some or most parts of the DPRG website in English.

Bridge: Your clients call Elliott & Partners “PR with a brain.” Would you mind explaining this further?

SE: Most PR people do not “get” business…and business people often do not “get” PR.  This damages our profession’s credibility.  This age-old adage says it best: “Before you can sell to John Smith – and John Smith buys, you must see the world through John Smith’s eyes.”

In a perfect world, PR people would have MBAs and not PR, mass communication, or journalism degrees.  You need to understand your client and their business arena before you can help them communicate within it.  I got in the habit of matching communications objectives in proposals with the prospect’s business objectives.  This helps everyone involved “get” what we are trying to do.

In an age of shrinking budgets for anything, PR – and communication in general – must pay for itself and contribute to the client’s bottom line.  In order to do this, PR programs must be measurable (not just in press clippings), gather and apply market, customer and competitor intelligence, and clearly support selling of more of the client’s offering.  This requires us to move beyond just media placements and social media feeds and use every appropriate communication tool at our disposal to achieve a set of strategic business objectives.

Bridge: What do you see the future of public relations looking like in your country?

SE: Profitable, but not at the rates we saw in the 80s and 90s – with big budgets, first-class accommodation, etc.  We will need to be evermore accountable for every copper penny of a client’s budget and make do with much less.

Ad spends will still far outweigh PR spends, but this doesn’t mean the margins for ad agencies will remain large.  Consolidation in the broader communication market will take hold here more as well.

The present German tax structure is excessively burdensome and drives most small businesses (e.g. agencies) under before they complete their second year.  This means fewer boutique agencies will be around.

Bridge: Do Germans do any freelance public relations?

SE: Yes, however, because of tax, pension and insurance burdens on small businesses and the self-employed, most people prefer to be employed.

Bridge: What are some myths about Germany that you would like to clear up?

SE: Here are some truths:

1. Germans are actually pacifists.  Historians will rightly blame the Treaty of Versailles after WWI for planting the seeds for WWII and the rise of the Third Reich.
2. There are brilliant rock bands out there from Germany.  It’s too bad so few people speak German. Silbermond, Thomas Godoj, Peter Fox and others are excellent and worth a listen.
3. Germans are also mad for most things American.  Germany is still, I believe, the largest importer of Harley Davidsons.  However, we prefer our own real beer.
4. We are not racists and remain Europe’s main melting pot: Prussians, Poles, Dutch, Hungarians, Czechs, Slavs, Turks, Italians, Scandinavians, French, Ukrainians – they are all here, all religions, and have been for centuries, considerably predating the US.  Part of this is due to the fact that modern day Germany was the central crossroads for the Holy Roman Empire… and the need for cheap labor to rebuild the decimated country after WWII.
5. Germany is really made up of several historic lands, with their own distinct dialects (some so far from German that they begger belief or comprehension).  But, as a nation, we celebrate our contributions to the world – science, music, art, food, industry, philosophy, literature, and peace.
6. Not everyone is pleased with reunification with the East.  Reunification has cost the country billions and created more social and economic problems that it solved. Nonetheless, the country is coping and people are assimilating.
7. Germans are not cold.  A German’s formality is really about respect for each other, and what one might have attained in life – even if it’s just old age.  Until an elder colleague or acquaintance says “Go on, call me Gunter…” he will remain, “Herr Vogelsang.” It’s all about mutual respect for individuals…and that last point, my friends, probably sums up Germans the best.

By Lauren Lonson
Bridge Global Strategies

An interview with Stephen Elliott, Managing Director of Elliott & Partners Reputation Management in Wegberg, Germany

What first comes to your mind when you think of Germany? In a two-part blog entry, our colleague Stephen Elliott, the Managing Director of Elliott & Partners Reputation Management clears up some common myths about his country and provides a plethora of information regarding public relations and media in Germany. Visit the Elliott & Partners website to learn more about their unique approach to public relations http://www.elliottpartners.eu/

Part I.

Bridge Global Strategies: Can you give us a brief summary of media in Germany?

Stephen Elliott: Cutting-edge, objective, respectful, serious-more-than-sensational, very traditional.

Cutting edge – new media is embraced, but used appropriately. It complements traditional and reliable channels of information (television, radio, broadcast) as much as it can be stand alone.  However, all on-line journalism is responsible and accountable for what it reports and held to the same libel standards as print and broadcast media.

Objective – the German press prides itself on facts and leaving it to the intelligence of the audience to form their own opinions.

Respectful – if a crime has been committed, the press will use the accused’s first name, but only a last initial.  Being fair-minded, a person is innocent until proven guilty.  Everyone has personal privacy and certain human rights and the media respects these boundaries

Serious-more-than-sensational – we get the occasional “unglaublich!” (unbelievable) celebrity story, but even then it is not ad hominen as one might find in the US or the UK.  It is more important to convey facts and let the audience judge for themselves.

Traditional – the media don’t mind emails too much anymore, whereas they used to like receiving a hard copy of a press release. We are VERY “green” here, so email speeds up the process of receiving information, without wasting paper and such.  However, this is a formal society, the press – as much as anyone – prefer to be treated with respect.  Therefore, broadcast emails from newswires are not acceptable and personalized email pitches are preferred and get results.

Bridge: Is on-line media negatively affecting print media in your country?

SE: No, it has its place and its purpose.  It can stand alone for specific audiences and topics or be used to complement existing print media.  Print media here uses all technology tools available to them, including RSS feeds, mobile phone “scan-to-downloads” et cetera. However, in this latter situation, it is important to remember that the print offering is the foundation and anything on DVD, PDFs, newsfeeds are built upon the integrity and the commercial viability of its print forbearer. Print is still relevant.

Bridge: Is social media popular in Germany? If so, are sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube widely used?

SE: Facebook is very popular.  Celebrities and their fans use Twitter and the like.  Too much is made about social media and too many businesses worldwide have Twitter and blog sites.  In most cases it is an inappropriate way to reach most business audiences – in Germany, or other countries.

Few decision makers in business have time to “Tweet” and they get more done via emails, phones and direct contact with their real key publics.  Customers and business associates can respond to emails and actually engage in communication with emails. Twitter and the like just broadcast info (of dubious value) to anyone who subscribes.  I have a client who insists that they use it.  To date, after several months of investing time in it, there has yet to be one sales inquiry or even a subscriber to their Tweets. Like everything we do in PR, the channel for communication has to be appropriate to the client and their audience to be successful – not another programme bolt-on for us to sell.

Bridge: What tips do you have for PR professionals doing business in Germany?

SE: None. Contact me and let me help you. That’s why we have a network. There is no way you can hand someone a tips sheet and expect them to be successful in another country.

Bridge: How is the public relations industry viewed in Germany? Is it thought to be important to business?

SE: It is important to business, but “PR” here is really more like what people in the US would call “integrated communication.”

PR is about more than press cuttings/clippings. What this means is that we examine a whole raft of ways businesses and organisations can reach people in a way that is best for them and gets them results.  If our PR activities do not support the client’s business and help them sell more of their offering (by influencing and communicating with would be customers, regulators, influencers, et al) then we are not doing our job.

Please return to our blog next week for the second part of  Stephen Elliott’s interview.

By Lauren Lonson

Bridge Global Strategies