I felt my head nodding a lot as I read David Meerman Scott’s updated ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR” which has been on my reading list for a long time.

Updating a book of this nature can be tricky, especially in world of shifting sands and on occasion the updating feels like new case studies rather than a fundamental rethink.  In 2007 I can imagine it would have had a much bigger impact on my thinking.

The book is well laid out with stand alone chapters although I went through it from front to back.  In scanning a book of this nature you can easily miss one of the main attributes, which is his first hand experience of actually doing much of what he writes about.  I did pick up some handy tips and in some cases a nice way of branding something that most PR companies have been doing for a long time without a term for it – newsjacking.  This practice of jumping on to an emerging news topic with your own value add content is not new (although twitter does add an extra element) but I can see it popping up on lots more PR plans.

For the last few PR companies who are purely focused on publicity and the traditional media this book is an absolute must.  For those who are awash in social media and the evolving trends it’s a good reminder and a handy reference tool.

 

I agree with the author on the demise of interruption marketing but the impact of key influentials versus smaller groups as in Paul Adams book Grouped is up for debate.

 

Although I see an almost daily demise in the newspaper industry there is still plenty of value in traditional media relations and the skill of gaining earned media.  The PR skills of negotiation, content creating, selling stories, influencing content creators are timeless and will continue to be in demand.  The key is understanding the trends and riding the wave.

 

The book is available on Amazon in printed form or audio.

 

 

 

You can also see Mr Meerman Scott in action being interviewed on YouTube.

 

Despite all  the leaps in technology we are still complex social creatures and an solid in-depth understanding of psychology rather than technology will define the winners in marketing and business.  Paul Adam’s book ‘Grouped’ is a surprisingly short read (it took me two afternoons and I am a slow reader) but its insights are based upon a lifetime of research as evidenced in the long reference lists.  He debunks certain commonly held truths (the primacy of the ‘online influencer’) and also gives a succinct analysis of human behaviour.  I studied psychology in college and really enjoyed the pragmatic, if possibly selective nature of the why we do certain things.

Paul works for Facebook and previously Google so sometimes the books feels initially like an justification of why certain services are so good for business but rapidly it become clear that the online functions we see and accept on these platforms are based upon a deep understanding of anthropology, psychology and human interaction.  A ‘like’ feels like such a frivolous thing until you start to think about permission marketing and changing attitudes.

Some of his takeaways are:

• The web is being rebuilt around people and the social web is here to stay.  Those who can market to connected groups of friends will win.
• Our immediate networks are small but those closest to us have a disproportionate impact on us.
• The impact of influencers is overrated in spreading ideas over the structure of networks.
• Our non conscious brain drives most decisions, emotion carry more weight and we look for things that match our beliefs.
• Information overload will increase emphasis and reliance on friends for evaluation, decisions and information.

The light presentation of conclusion makes this book seem like common sense but its only as a glance back through the pages that I get the deeper meaning and significance of his points.

A lot of work went into making it this simple.

On a complete aside Dublin does get a few mentions and its interesting to seem Jameson Irish Whiskey mentioned a few times as a case study.

You can see more about the author here.

 

After finishing the New Handshake – Sales Meets Social Media I had a real feeling of ‘this is all common sense’.  But common sense is anything but common and without structure, experience and insights things that should be simple are actually complicated and difficult for people to grasp.

This book is really designed for sales professionals who are ignoring, dismissing or afraid to tune into social media.  It also serves as a nice reminder to those working in social media to take a step back to ensure their activities are actually grounded in business objectives and they are taking a strategic approach.

This book is roughly divided into three sections: first, a look at sales from an historical perspective through to modern practices; second, a quick tour through some of the main platforms and tools; and finally a highly narrated case study of an SME taking the 30-day social media challenge.  I found myself rushing through the earlier sections with interest to see how the authors would tie the concepts in an easy-to-digest case study on how to implement a social media sales strategy.

The opening sections are an interesting insight into how little the sales process has evolved since the late nineteenth century oil snake salesman, with more recent additions being quotas, territories, role plays and a general professionalising of the American salesman.  In essence, the authors contend that fundamental changes are needed to harness the power of social media.

They are at pains to point out that hardnosed salesmanship tactics won’t work in social media and that research, expert positioning, tailored approaches, adding value, listening and community engagement need to be blended in with the ethos and sensitivities of social media. 

They describe the changes to consultative selling and some of the current changes in sales/buyer roles where customers are now in the driving seat – they can decide how they will communicate with a company, have access to vast choice, expect tailored offerings, can decide when they will buy, and have access to a “big megaphone” allowing them to badmouth a company to a wide community at the touch of button.

They also discuss how online buyers now buy from each other (think eBay) and provide data to each other (think online reviews) to support the assertion that sales people can no longer ignore social media. 

One of the nice things about this book is that it collates some tools and structure to help put a framework around social media.  They put forward the ‘New Handshake approach’, which advocates a four-prong system of People, Purpose, Plan and Technology.  In essence, this involves thinking about the people barriers in changing sales approaches; identifying and quantifying what you want to achieve; approaching it in a programmatic way; and, finally, looking at the technology.  This in itself is useful as people generally jump into the tools and platforms head first and find it unnerving or, worse still, drift in limp online efforts.

The book also provides a light but handy eight-question checklist to rate a company’s social media readiness, which once again emphasises the planning approach to social media.

The different types of social media available are detailed in the book and  I found the description of platforms I am comfortable with quite interesting in that the authors take a step back and link them to solid netiquette and what is and is not best practice.  This area in particular felt like common sense, but social media in the hand of a hardnosed sales person could very quickly backfire. 

By its nature a book of this type cannot cover all the complexities of these platforms and is quickly out of date so taking a top level approach makes sense.  The authors have gone for tools that are immediately and easily accessible to sales people and spend and therefore discuss expected platforms such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. 

This book is a good starting point for any company that has a very traditional sales approach. It’s sensitive to the pressures, prejudices and realities of a sales environment, while giving a robust account of the changing dynamic of modern day communications.  For seasoned social media professionals it’s worth a read, both as a reminder of the need to have a strategic view and approach and as a handy insight into how sales-led organisations work and struggle with social media.

I reviewed this book on my laptop with Kindle for PC.  It’s certainly the fastest way to get the book, but screen flicker, difficulty in sharing and lack of page numbers mean I’ll be less like to revisit often, which is a pity, given some of the nuggets.

 The print edition of thei review can be found on Marketing Age magazine.

The Irish Times interview with James Lovelock gave me a nudge to finish the final chapter of RTE Paul Cunningham’s book called Ireland’s Burning.  James Lovelock is a world thinker on environmental issues and takes a very grim view of the earths future – that global warming is in fact irreversible.

Paul Cunninghams book take a slightly less pessimistic and more hopeful view of things.  Paul is RTEs environmental correspondent and his book reflects the years of covering environmental stories on behalf of RTE.  Overall the book is a collection of 20 or so interviews/essays on people/initiatives from around the country that give guidance on environmental issues or are doing something to help reduce our impact on the environment.  Some of them are extended versions of news items that would have at some point been aired on RTE.  In the book he can obviously go into more details than a 30 second news item.  The stories themselves are pretty varied with some featuring ground breaking steps (tidal energy projects) and some that feel extremely mundane.  In each of the stories he takes time to build a detailed personal profile of the person concerned while explaining the areas they have action in or their expert opinion.  Some gave interesting backgrounds into international government negotiations on environmental treaties where Environmental Minister at the time Noel Dempsey and current John Gormley detailed the late nights and almost horse trading/blackmail in reaching consensus.  More mundane accounts were also given in other chapters such as the efforts made by the tourism industry in Donegal which really appeared very inadequate against the drama of global warming.  It is important to have examples at the two extremities and in general he covers most of the key areas.

The books is obviously designed to raise awareness on the impending crisis which is an extremely difficult balance to get right.  Too much doom and gloom and people switch off or are too frightened to think straight.  Too low a level and people reject the need for any pain as the danger does not appear great enough.

Telling this story responsibly from an Irish perspective is even more difficult.  I was expecting some more of the Lovelock type doomsdays stories but the impact of global warming in Ireland will not be as severe as else where- some issues for potato growers, some small changes in rain fall and some coastal erosion- all means that in the short term Ireland will do fare pretty ok.  This is also reflected by Lovelocks hypothesis that Ireland could become ‘a life boat for humanity’ and our biggest challenge could be deciding who to save.

This presents a problem in getting people to take the issue seriously.  Our recent reluctance to bear a reduction in our lifestyles in accordance with the economic collapse does not bode well for taking serious measures to save the environment.  Even in the face of disaster we tend to want to cling to what we have and leave action for others.  Lofty ideals of helping to save the planet have to compete with our creature comforts.  The economic crisis is a lot more real for people than global warming where individual action can appear insignificant.  People are happy to recycle while its free but you would face rebellion if you tried to limit car/plane journeys, increase taxes or impact on comfortable living.  If we feel that we may be ok then we forget that if everyone took that perspective the entire planet would be at great risk.

I do feel that all the awareness programmes are important but even if Irish people took the most extreme measure for these it would still be scratching at the surface.  People need some level of fear coupled with some element of empowerment where they can effect change.  Problem is that no one really knows how serious it all is.

Paul does put this succinctly where he says “focusing on the concerns of today rather than the consequences of inaction tomorrow” poses real danger.

There is an interesting  web chat on RTEs site with Paul Cunningham.  Although a huge amount of work went into this book I dont imagine it will be his last one on the topic as grim predictions become a reality.