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Let’s talk about money. Michael Porter describes strategy as defining and attending to those activities at which an organisation must excel in order to create a sustainable difference in the marketplace, and thereby create sustained value for its shareholders (or sustainable value in the case of non-profits). Once you’ve articulated why your organisation exists (the mission), and what you want it to be (the vision), the strategy describes the what, who, how, when and where needed to pursue the vision, and specifically how these differ from the competition. How these help beat your competition. However, as hard as strategy formulation is, the really hard part is putting it into action. The Balanced Scorecard Institute finds that 70% of organisations with a strategy simply fail to execute it. And this becomes the more obvious the further away from the sale / the product / the service you get; the more you get into the intangible assets pivotal to your success. Marketing and PR are intangible assets. They are intangible investments. We all know that the right mix of the panoply of marketing and PR activities is essential to organisational success – to the successful definition of organisational strategy and its execution – but too often we’re not quite sure how so. This is most apparent when, particularly in harder times, marketing and PR are considered cost centres first and foremost, and cost centres that can be cut. ...

I was delighted to have the opportunity to present my take on the ROI of social media to approximately 80 people yesterday evening at the Digital Publishing Forum . It seems this was a hot topic of interest; as well it should be. I sought to put the topic into perspective with the following challenge. What’s the ROI?… Of the latest rebrand? Of the office refurb? Of the internal communications activity? Of the training and development programme? Of the upgrade to Windows 7? Of the new standard issue smartphones? Of the stakeholder engagement via social media? If you’d like to see where we went from there, here’s the presentation: ...

Neil recently left BP after 14 years where his most recent role was in the unified command centre in the US, set up to respond to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Neil has more than 25 years’ managing public affairs issues and crises that have grabbed the headlines in different parts of the world, helping scores of executives to help them communicate more effectively in support of their businesses. ...

It’s a beautiful sunny Spring day here at the EUPRERA Spring Symposium in Lisbon. It’s my first time at this gathering of the European Public Relations Education and Research Association – the forum for innovative PR research and education – and I’m delighted to have been invited to deliver the keynote. Thanks to Philip Young and David Phillips for the invitation. Here’s the slidestack. I was a bit surprised to get a slide count of 77, but 16 of the slides present the infographic ‘Content – An illustrated history ’, which is easy to breeze through :-) ...

Real-time PR is a hot topic. This is nothing to do with fashion, but the unavoidable pressures of modern PR. David Meerman Scott’s November 2010 book, “Real-time Marketing and PR ” is already a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and with Twitter responses frequently meaningless after an hour’s delay, if not minutes, and many conversations requiring a response within the hour or two, awaiting the Monday meeting to debate possible responses is now simply unrealistic. ...

You can now get your hands on The Marketing Century – out this week – a compilation of expert insight across a wide gamut of marketing and PR related topics to celebrate the centenary of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). The chapter outline here is based on the book’s introduction. I’m delighted to have authored the chapter on digital marketing, and I’m more than happy to answer any questions you may have on reading it. Buy at Amazon / CIM / The Book Depository / Blackwell’s / Waterstone’s . And more info at Google Books . 1. Strategic Marketing (Martha Rogers and Don Peppers , Peppers & Rogers Group) The Marketing Century opens with a clear statement from Don Peppers and Martha Rogers: it is vital that organisations put customers at the heart of what they do, both in the long-term and the short-term. To create value, firms must lift their sights from the typical focus on current profits and instead start seeing customers as the company’s long-term resource – looking at each customer in terms of the long-term return they generate. A long-term strategy for marketing – one that focuses on customer equity and not solely on current profits – can provide marketing with the context and objectives needed to maximise the overall value created by each customer. ...

Today, I’m in Paris. I’m working with the Mozilla Europe team to prepare for the imminent launch of Firefox 4 and Firefox Mobile. And this prompts me to write here on the subject of privacy – a hot topic and one on which your organisation can lead, to your customers’ advantage and yours. Mozilla is a global, non-profit organisation dedicated to making the Web better. It emphasises principle over profit, and believes that the Web is a shared public resource to be cared for, not a commodity to be sold. This means that whilst Internet Explorer must justify its existence to Microsoft, Safari to Apple, and Chrome to Google, Firefox is only answerable to you. Many consider Mozilla to be the sole reason we’ve all moved on from the terrible browsing experience Internet Explorer 6 gave over 90% of Web users back in 2003. And now Firefox is the most popular browser in Europe. Back to privacy. Do you know what information your browser is reporting about your browsing habits? Do you know that some high profile websites add as many as 100 tracking devices to your computer? Now, lest you think this is some kind of hippy essay, I’m a capitalist. I believe the for-profit motive is the best mechanism we’ve found to date to improve life. But we’ve also seen in recent times that some free markets require a bit of intervention now and then; a spot of regulation. Indeed, a recent Business Week article identified how free-marketers are as fond of regulation as they are more widely reported to dislike it. ...

I’ve teamed up with some very useful chaps to form Meanwhile . We’re defining venture marketing. Before I explain that further, I’ll elaborate on the main trends that make me think Meanwhile is precisely the right approach at the right time. In short: Previously distinct disciplines are converging There is a renewed focus on measurement and evaluation of marketing and PR related programmes with boards demanding an unprecedented level of accountability A new framework must emerge placing influence at the heart of business strategy. Here’s how I present the situation in my upcoming book, The Business of Influence (Wiley, April 2011): ...

I need your help. My book, The Business of Influence, comes out with Wiley in April. That means the proofs go to press 24th February, and the URL to the book’s accompanying website will be writ therein. And what better URL could one have than thebusinessofinfluence.com? The problem is, this domain is registered. According to a whois lookup, the name of the owner is Beeta Vahdat, a “principal of IMANI Communication Design” living in the Melbourne, Australia area. Ms. Vahdat does not appear to be using the domain name, so I’d like to see if I can buy it from her… if only I could get in touch. ...

Just over two years ago I posted about a ’lost cat’ poster stapled to trees in my neighbourhood, but a poster with a difference… this was a ‘cat found’ poster saying thank you to everyone who had helped recover the treasured pet. Sometimes in business it’s too easy to think that the value exchange, where I give you what you want in exchange for what I want, is the be all and end all… the customer has the product or service they were looking for, and we get money (or other currency, like attention). But every business must strive for a relational rather than transactional customer, moving the focus from the once-off purchase to the lifetime value of the customer and the network of friends and family he / she might bring with them; so emotion comes into it, not just economic arithmetic. Moreover, perhaps the transaction doesn’t complete. I always check my shed to make sure I haven’t locked the latest lost cat in there – and whilst I wasn’t directly responsible for returning the cat in question above, I was thanked anyway. Do you say “thank you”? If you do, do you do so in a way that’s believable? Authentic? Or in a “have a nice day” automated sort of fashion that communicates no emotion whatsoever and just constitutes pollution? I have a hypothesis that only those that are passionate about what they do and what they sell can find genuine feeling when conveying their thanks. And I look for this enthusiasm when considering my lifetime patronage of a cafe, bank, web host and, well, everything. Thank you. Thank you for your attention, to this Friday Roundup and the previous 160 or so! Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team. ...