There is, admittedly, a streak of arrogance that runs through Blogenberg at times: my public relations firm knows where PR is going and we’re betting that the market catches up with us. (Read on and hopefully you’ll see we’re really not arrogant – just trying to allow clients to go where today’s communications market can take them.)

A number of businesses and organizations we work with are getting it, making me feel more and more comfortable with the business bet I’ve made. But nobody yet has gotten it like The Hitachi Foundation. We have put together and implemented entire rollouts that rely completely on blogger media relations, e-mail marketing and word of mouth, website placements, and partnerships with allied organizations.

As part of our work for The Hitachi Foundation, we are in the midst of rolling out the State of Corporate Citizenship Survey 2007, the most comprehensive survey of business attitudes and practices when it comes to corporate social responsibility. The linchpin of the rollout is a blog, www.corporatecitizen07.com. Every piece of a comprehensive communications strategy – including traditional media outreach – revolves around this blog. (Check out the contributors list. The heft of this list speaks both to the leadership of The Hitachi Foundation and its partners on the blog, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Net Impact, and the import of the issues at stake.)

So I’ve been asking myself, how do I find more Hitachi Foundations? (more…)

In earlier Blogenbergs I’ve posted about how I’m betting that we know where PR is going – narrower and narrower, more and more segmented, embracing social networking and citizen journalism. Am I an “out in front” progressive business owner, or Don Quixote? The income statements will tell us.

We just submitted an extremely creative proposal to reach youth with messaging built entirely on a social networking platform, never touching traditional media. If we win, it will work. The question is, will the screening committee “get it”? I’ll let you know.

And once again, I’ve been asked by a potential client, one who has a track record of building successful organizations, why not hold a press conference? (more…)

The toughest thing about being a small business is being bigger. Not getting bigger; being bigger.

Getting bigger will happen – or not – on its own time schedule. But being bigger, when business or proposals or pitches demand it, that’s another thing. Because sometimes the only way I can get new business, or put a competitive proposal in, is to actually be bigger than we are. That’s why, as I’ve mentioned in earlier Blogenbergs, I’ve started on a concerted effort to enter into strategic alliances with other companies.

I’m now creating marketing materials around alliances with an advertising agency, a marketing firm, and a design shop – case studies, for example, which share logos. I pick and choose the strategic alliance, off the shelf, so to speak, depending on what the proposal or pitch demands. Now, I can market my business as bigger. I’ve just got to make sure bigger equals better.
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My wife likes to watch Dateline. I’d rather watch Barney re-runs.

Just somebody tell me what journalistic contribution NBC is making with it’s all murder, all rape, all kidnapping, and, of course, all pedophilia show that is Dateline. Indeed, it’s not that Dateline makes no contribution to society. It’s a negative, a drain on the bit of civility this society has left. Dateline is nothing but the constant glamorizing of evil for the sake or ratings.

Here’s a note to Dateline producers: take a field trip to 60 Minutes, where they actually try journalism.

Blogenberg Bit 1: My daughter said she wants to be in the military when she grows up. “Why would you want to do that?�? I responded in such a way that both she and her twin brother immediately asked why I sounded so negative. Wow. Just the question had terrified me. I could only be honest. “I have great respect for the military. Serving is very honorable. Having one of my kids in the military would scare me.�?

Imagine how I would feel if I were a parent of a son or daughter who was serving today – not just asking me about it.

Thank God we have parents brave enough.

Blogenberg Bit 2: My 13-year-old son had a lacrosse tournament this past weekend in Princeton, NJ. I’m driving him and three other 13-year-old boys to watch a high school game Saturday night. One of the boys asks my son if his 13-year-old twin sister is “hot.�? My son is smart enough not to answer. I’m driving, wondering what would happen if I let one otherwise very nice, very likeable 13-year-old boy out on the side of Route 1.

Blogenberg Bit 3: Two things I’ll never enjoy in business. One is calling up a client and pushing for payment. I think I want to get big enough that I can have somebody whose job it is to do that. Second is busting our humps on a very strategic proposal and then being met by silence. Yep, can do without both.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has an independent business-owner group or community or whatever they call it. I must have signed on to it because I get the e-mail discussion thread in my in-box. A recent online conversation, prompted by somebody considering starting their own PR shop, explored the benefits of running your own firm. Numerous “old hands�? raved about controlling your own schedule, about being able to balance work and family, work and recreation, work and whatever.

Call me Mr. Reality Check. Yep, I do achieve a fantastic balance between work and family. But I’ve had to do two things. One, I’m willing to work myself to exhaustion and two, not give a damn if clients give a damn when they reach me and I’m at a kid’s lacrosse or soccer practice, a hockey or basketball tournament. (more…)

The hardest thing about running a PR shop may be building a PR shop. It’s one thing to get going and bring in enough business to keep afloat and take care of your family. I did that reasonably well for more than 10 years. But about three years ago I decided I wanted to build my small consultancy into an honest-to-goodness PR firm. Not an easy task, especially in Washington, DC, a city with more PR shops than McDonald’s.

Other than one five-day trip to London with my wife last spring, I’ve not rested since. (Indeed, ended up sick while working last week, which is why there was no Blogenberg last Tuesday.)

I’ve hired extremely talented staff – and won’t hire any other kind. I’ve got great consulting on federal contracting and accounting from Aronson & Company. We won some major federal contracts. (I’m always amazed, as happened just last week, by people who assert [with real nastiness, mind you] that I must be rolling in cash because we have some large contracts and we’re a small shop – ever hear of partners and subcontractors, folks?)

But now my job is and has been building on the success we’ve had, of continually marketing and bringing in additional business because I always assume that, at any moment, large contracts can become gone contracts. (more…)

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I promised our countless Blogenberg readers that, “If it’s Tuesday, it’s Blogenberg.�? And yesterday was Tuesday and there was no Blogenberg. Hence, another lesson about running a small business: I was exhausted.

We had a quote due to a federal agency by 10 a.m. Monday. I worked Sunday until 11 pm and then started Monday at 2 a.m., not knocking off until 5 pm Monday. And I’m now too old to recover from what was, essentially, an all nighter, so quickly. (Not to mention I was already worn out from moving my oldest son home for the summer from college – 4 flights of stairs, no elevator!) So it was a Tuesday without a Blogenberg.

But I can report that we put together a very good proposal. (more…)

My Blogenberg of last Tuesday elicited some interesting, to-the-point questions from Jim Durbin of brandstorming. In my post, I talked about our intensive effort to understand and navigate a communications market that is becoming ever more segmented. I talked about our efforts to expand “media relations�? at a time when Americans are expanding their own, often individual definition of “media.�?

Durbin asked three questions:

• How do you quantify and bill for that time?
• Is time spent talking to a blogger the same value as talking to a friendly reporter?
• Is writing a blog post the same value as writing an editorial?

His questions go to the heart of how I must look at today’s PR challenges as a businessman. After all, my ultimate job is to make sure I can keep a small PR shop in a city full of behemoth PR shops running, and running profitably.

In my last Blogenberg I wrote that this more sophisticated approach to outreach is really “a new modification to what I’ve been telling clients for more than a decade.�? The starting point for every campaign, every outreach project remains the same: Who does the client want to reach? Everything else reveals itself in the answer. The difference is that there is much more to reveal itself. It used to be that the strategy available to us was traditional media, with various cuts by market, circulation, audience, etc. Today, there are myriad strategies available to us – from traditional media to blogs to podcasts to online and offline word of mouth. (more…)

I’m placing a big bet. I’m betting my business (12 years of toil) that I know where public relations must head. I’m betting that I know how we’ll be telling the truth a decade or two from now. (In the future I’ll Blogenberg about truth and PR – and if you’re now thinking that’s an oxymoron, your cynicism needs a dose of creativity.)

Recently I attended a press conference at the National Press Club. It was extremely well run. It was very well attended by national press. I’ve no doubt the PR firm that did the work – with whom I was very impressed – celebrated “mission accomplished.�? But accomplished what? I’ll tell you what – they accomplished getting their news to the same intellectual elite, opinion leaders, and politicians that represent the target of every National Press Club press conference. That’s not unimportant. But it’s not enough, not if you want to make a real difference in how people think and behave. (more…)

This is inside my head. Right now, it’s sitting, still on top of my shoulders, in my office, which is painted gold, just off the common areas of my shop, Rosenberg Communications, which is painted cranberry zinger. That’s right, cranberry zinger. I don’t think it’s an ordinary PR shop. I don’t think it’s an ordinary head.

For more than 20 years I’ve been doing PR in Washington, DC. If you’ve looked at our website, you’ve hopefully seen my bio and seen how impressed I am with myself. My favorite line about Washington, DC is, “Do you know how important I think I am?�? Kind of sums up life in this city right there.

My favorite line about running a PR shop comes from Winston Churchill. That’s right Winston Churchill. Actually, it’s two lines – one about Winston Churchill and the other by Winston Churchill. I recently finished Roy Jenkins’ Churchill. It is 900 pages of type so small that I’m going to bill Jenkins’ publisher for the bifocals my eye doctor says I’m soon to need. (Jenkins died before this book was published.) Nonetheless, because of its excruciating detail, the book is the greatest study of greatness I’ve ever read. In it he describes Churchill this way: “Driven men are not often the most balanced. But they are generally the most dedicated.�? That’s me. I gave up on being balanced a long time ago. I’m not talking about Oprah-style claptrap of balancing work and family. I’ve got my unique ways of doing that while working 60-70 hours a week (keep clicking in and, I’m positive, you’ll hear about them!). I’m talking about inside my head – it’s not balanced (which, if you keep clicking in, you’ll see!) but, thus far, it’s serving me real well. It served Churchill well, and you should read Jenkins’ book. (more…)