Ryan Anderson dot ca

I’m putting together a crash course for coworkers on public relations, social media and the media world in general, and I’m looking for some suggestions on content. What are the books, blogs, articles and sites that you would recommend for such a program?

What are the must-reads on the topics of public relations, new media, changing consumption habits, the advertising industry and social media? Give me your suggestions and I’ll post my compiled reading list here in the next couple of weeks.

Ryan Imel at Copyblogger asks an interesting question, one that I think applies to much more than just blogging, but to marketing, business and life in general.

Who Would Miss Your Blog?

It’s a simple question, but one that provokes some interesting thoughts. If you are truly serving a niche with your blog, they should miss you if you’re not there

As Ryan points out, this is a very effective meditation for every business to think about.  Who would miss your product, your business, your brand… who would miss you?

Personally, I can think of a number of brands I use – Apple, for instance – that I would miss if they suddenly went away.  On the other hand, there are a number of brands that would affect me not at all.  If you’re in the latter camp, you should probably think about how you’re actually effecting people, rather than just shouting that you’re the best.

Ottawa is usually a very sleepy little bureaucratic town, with an inept city council and the shadow of the Parliament Buildings hanging over us at all times.  But, for the last couple of weeks, Ottawa was a different place.

The city woke up in a way I’ve never seen.  Hockey fans took over major streets, and an entire city that is usually very far from a community was united by one thing – the Stanley Cup.  For once, we looked like a top-tier city… one running over with civic pride.

No, we didn’t win, but something good did come out of the experience, I hope.  The Senators have a very interesting history, and like everything that is Ottawa, had to cut through a lot of red tape and indifference to get the team here in the first place. 

I’ve had the good fortune of being taught by and working with Bruce Firestone, who was the man responsible for bringing the team to Ottawa.  Today, the Ottawa Citizen published a piece by Dr. Firestone himself, telling the story of how the team got to be where it is today. 

It’s definitely worth reading, whether you call Ottawa your hometown or not, because it’s a pretty good example of how a singular devotion to improving a community can reap great rewards.  Even though this all took place years before the internet really took off, I think there might be some lessons for social media in that.

Okay… I’m interested. 

Ragan’s has just launched myRagan.com – a social network for PR people.  I haven’t played with it much, but I like the idea. 

Who wants to be my friendster?  http://www.MyRagan.com/joinNetwork.php?network=Ragan&rflc=54qdudm

And even more, I love that every once in a while when you’re researching a media list, you come across a gem of a ridiculous trade magazine.

My current favourite is a meat marketing trade publication called “Meatingplace.”

Brilliant.

Last week, I got up preposterously early for an “Entrepreneurship Breakfast” at the University of Ottawa.  One of those things where business people meet with students to give them the benefit of their wisdom.  Sadly, at 7am I have very little wisdom to spare. 

The keynote was my friend and former professor Bruce Firestone, probably best known for bringing the Sens back to Ottawa, talking about the difference between people with ideas, and people who execute their ideas.  I think this is probably the most important thing any small businessperson can understand and live.  Ideas come by the dozens – execution takes committment, time and effort.  Bruce is the perfect person to talk about this, too.  I’m sure many people had the idea to bring back the Ottawa Senators, but he was the only one who DID it.

Ideas are great, but they can be dangerous – especially when they come in the form of the half-idea.  The half-idea sounds like a regular idea, but it’s not yet become a fully formed idea.  It’s a quantum idea – simultaneously an idea and a non idea.  These are great starting points for ideas, but they can either show themselves to be a great idea, or something that seems cool, but is impossibly to execute.  

It’s this potential for greatness that makes the half-idea so dangerously tempting.  It’s just a little further before it emerges into brilliance, like that one last lottery ticket you buy before you can retire and buy an islant. It’s one that makes you want to invest a lot of time in it – to really make it happen.  Half-ideas usually begin with the phrase, “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and almost always end in a terrible product.

Working in the advertising industry, I spend a lot of time looking at other interactive and social media campaigns out there, and as a result, I see a lot of half-ideas that have been forced through to execution, likely because by the time that the half-idea revealed itself as a non-idea, it was too late to back to the drawing board.

The easiest way to avoid getting bitten by half-ideas is to recognize them before they hatch.  The best people to help you do this are the people who are going to execute the ideas.  The double-edged sword is that the odd time you may end up throwing out a half-idea that could have been brilliant, so you can’t always leave the final say with the techies or designers, but take to heart the concerns of the team who will make your ideas into reality at the first step – not the last.

If that team happens to be you, learn how to look objectively at your own ideas.  If you’re still married to it, take Ze Frank’s advice and execute your ideas as soon as you have them.  If they work, perfect – stay the course and see it through to the end.  If they’re impossible or stupid, then you’ll find out very early on, and you won’t have wasted time or money on creating a finished product that just sucks.

You can’t always make half-ideas into real ideas, but you can recognize them early, before they have a chance to bite you in the ass.  If an idea doesn’t work in real life, it doesn’t count.

[Add-on: Dr. Firestone's presentation also included a four-minute animation about why we should move to the moon.  I'm still wrapping my head around that.]

I’m a terrible traveller. After taking the red-eye back from San Francisco, I slept for the better part of a weekend, and it’s taken me until tonight to have enough energy to actually write something. Thankfully, I don’t do it very often, but that’s the reason I’m about five days late with this particular post.

So, I didn’t get much of a chance to see any actual sessions at GDC, but I was able to get away for one entitled “Next Generation PR for the Game Industry.” It was a bit of a waste of time, since it was basically a PR 101 panel, and nothing particularly interesting came out of it, but what struck me as interesting was the fact that only the Microsoft PR guy had anything positive to say about community and blog marketing. One of the panelists seemed like he was against social media altogether.

This struck me as completely amazing, since the Web is precisely where I would go for real information on games I wanted to buy. I might check out the online versions of the gaming pubs, but for the most part, I would want to know what real people are saying. As a PR person then, I would consider it my job to get the game in front of those who I think would be influential, and whose tastes I already have a sense for from past reviews, and get them to talk about it. I would empower communities around specific games or types of games to spread the word. To me, the industry pubs would be a secondary goal. I know you can’t send preview copies to everyone, but to outright ignore social media seems pretty silly to me.

The interesting thing that I noticed in the question period is that most of the questions were from the press asking “how can we get you to take our publications seriously?”

That’s a different flavour than I think most of us are used to, but it’s the way it goes when you’re dealing with big entertainment properties, be it film or games. The biggest publications get the best deals – media tours, private screenings, access to talent. Still, it always seems odd to hear.

I wish I could say I got a whole lot out of this session, but I really didn’t. I’m sure it was interesting for the game developers there, but for anyone who had been in the industry for any length of time, it was just stating the obvious.

If you’re at all like me, you probably went by the university career centre once or twice when you were in school and thought to yourself “why is this place even around?”  Their career database was hopelessly out of date, and the only service they seemed to offer was giving you a computer to update your resume.  They knew nothing about your particular line of study or industry, but told you to dress nice for interviews, and held career fairs where pretty much only the army showed up to exhibit.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, we’re hiring like mad right now.  Since there are two universities and a college in Ottawa, we try to maintain good relationships with the schools so they’ll send the best and brightest our way.  So I called one of the schools, one of which I am an alumnus, and offered up our CEO to talk to graduating classes in computer science, multimedia and the like.  She was very excited to hear this.

Then she told me it would be $250.

I was extremely surprised by this.  Here I was, offering up the CEO of a major company – certainly the largest agency in the city – to speak directly to a graduating class of kids who would KILL to work at a place like Fuel, but probably think they have to leave the city to do it. 

I asked, “is it not in your best interests to get your students hired?”

Of course, she said yes, but that all the other schools did it, so they did too.  $250 is nothing, really.  It doesn’t even fall outside of discretionary spending, but it’s the principle of having to pay to provide a public service.  Sure, we get something out of it too, but I would have loved to have someone like Mike talk to ANY of my classes in university.  It’s an incredible opportunity for these kids.

I changed tacks, just to see where this rule was coming from.  “So, what if we do something that’s more geared at educating these kids about getting a job in the gaming industry – what they should be studying, what they should be putting in their portfolio?”

“That’s fine – we wouldn’t charge for that.”

“And if we mention at the end that we’re hiring?”

“Then we’d have to charge you $250.”

Having gone to this school, and having gotten absolutely nothing out of it in terms of building my career other than meeting a couple of professors in my industry, I was pretty aphalled at this.  I’ve told a number of people about it since, and they all reacted with the same incredulity.  Schools are not only not trying to help you get a job, they’re actively prohibiting it by charging companies to provide opportunities to their students. 

I can’t think of a better example of uselessness.

Oh, hello, BUSIEST WEEK OF MY LIFE.

So I’ve been out of the blogging loop for the past couple of weeks, what with moving offices, being bogged down with launching a new website, three new blogs, a podcast, a recruiting communications plan, a giant media launch, conferences, and the usual day-to-day.  As a result, I’ve got a lot of juice to squeeze from my mind grapes.

1. Todd Defren and Shift Communications recently released the Social Media Newsroom.  For me, this could not have come at a better time, because I was right in the middle of redesigning my own newsroom.  I think it’s a great prototype, and I was especially happy because it validated a lot of things that I was thinking.  I’m going to write more about it next week, but for now, check it out for yourself. 
2. For those of you in Ottawa, Paul Wells of MacLean’s will be speaking to the Third Monday meetup group on Monday at Fresco Cielo on Elgin.  I’ll be there… should be a good time – details.
3. For those who are unsure of the ROI of blogging, consider this – in the past two weeks, I have had four calls from different people that I have met directly as a result of this site, with potential business for Fuel Industries.  It occurs to me that questioning the ROI of blogging is like questioning the ROI of talking to other people.
4. If you know anyone who is looking for an incredible job in the advertising industry as an account executive, project manager, flash developer or web developer, have them contact me, or point them to this page.  All contractually obligated loyalty aside – you could not ask for a better company to work for.

That’s it for now.  Hopefully, I’ll be back in blogging form now that the craziness of the move is somewhat behind us, and now we only have to deal with the craziness of remaining construction.

I don’t really like answering the question “so what do you do for a living,” because unless the person I’m talking to is particularly knowledgable of the public relations and advertising industries, it usually necessitates a long answer. The fact is, most people don’t understand PR, and I think that has something to do with the fact that now, more than ever, we’re struggling to understand ourselves.

Those who don’t know what PR is have a hard time understanding. It’s not surprising – it’s really not an easy industry to understand because it’s extremely broad, and for the most part, it’s far behind the scenes. We’re not making television commercials or writing articles. We’re out of the public spotlight, advising and making relationships, but rarely are we out in the open – the centre of attention.

Those who do, or at least think they do, usually don’t. Even more, they don’t understand the arena that we operate in. Many don’t really understand where news comes from, that company spokespeople are usually well-trained and that many reporters rely on PR people to even begin to understand what it is they’re writing about (I sense a few of my journalist friends composing their response to that even now).

My point is, we work in an industry that is only truly understood by ourselves. Combine that with a typically adversarial relationship with the media and a general misconception of PR practioners as charlatans and liars, and that pretty much tells you why, when asked, I usually say I work for an ad agency and change the subject.

I recently went out for drinks with a friend of mine who is a computer engineer. He’s obviously very interested in how the Web is changing the world, but is somewhat in the dark about the whole social mediascape and how it’s changing the world of communications. After about three pitchers of me prattling on about conversations and the growing empowerment of the consumer through education, he finally said to me something that will stick with me forever.

“Wow. You’re not nearly as evil as I thought.”

This is a man I have been friends with for years, whose band I helped get publicity while we were in university, who I started a company with, and who I have talked to about PR and advertising many times in the past. Even still – he didn’t really understand, because unless I outlined every trivial task that I encounter in a day, only knows that my job is to gain positive coverage and avoid the negative. He (and I think many others) assume that this is done through spin and lies. Sometimes it is – it’s not like every PR person is completely innocent – but on the whole, every textbook on the subject will tell you that shading the truth is the worst thing you can do.

I’m the only PR person where I work. My job is valued, but not entirely understood. They have a pretty good idea of what I do, but not always how or why. In the end, it’s my job to educate them on what PR is and how it fits into an organization, just as it is our responsibility to educate the public on what PR is and isn’t.

Maybe all it will take is to split a few pitchers with everyone in the world for them to understand. At the very least, it can’t hurt.