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Introduction: After a short hiatus the blog is being relaunched with new submissions from peers, friends and my network of professionals that I respect for their boldness of ideas and commitment to the craft.

Nicole Ward, AVP, Corporate External Relations

Today’s post is from Nicole Ward. I had the pleasure of working with Nicole at MasterCard. She came to us from the news world and always pushed us to think about the value of the story, the audience and if what we had to say mattered.

Currently, Nicole is AVP, Corporate External Relations at Synchrony. Please enjoy the read and share your thoughts. We want to start a conversation and keep it going with additional contributions, debates and conversations. Nicole can be reached at linkedin.com/in/nicolevward.

With that. Please enjoy the first contribution to Spinning Out of Control for 2020. If you have an idea or would like to contribute, please reach out to me at linkedin.com/in/andrewbowins.

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Storytelling has become something of a buzzword in recent years. But honestly, I remember the reporter I shadowed at NECN — at my first-ever internship in TV news — describing his job the same way. “We’re storytellers,” he said to me with an even-ness that revealed neither encouragement nor an attempt to dissuade me from pursuing a career as a television reporter.

Now, more than 20 years later, storytelling is having a moment. Maybe it’s always been what journalism, advertising, marketing, and PR has tried to do … but it didn’t self-identify like it does now. I hear people across marketing and communications functions refer to themselves as storytellers. We may all be trying to do the same thing, but how do we know who’s listening and where to invest more effort? 

Marketing may look at things like NPS, time spent on site, conversion rate … overall popularity of a brand. If a brand is doing well, consumers must like its marketing efforts, right? Maybe.
Corporate communications has traditionally been more difficult to prove ROI, as it’s even harder to draw a straight line between output and impact. Does consistently good Tweeting cause the stock to rise? Probably not. But it is critical to establish your voice amongst all the others in your field. 

And that’s where good storytelling can make a difference — the kind that makes you feel like you know a little something extra about a person, or a brand.

Where efforts can fall flat is when audience isn’t considered. Sounds obvious, but how many times have you seen a Tweet with the same line as the first few words of a press release, article, or marketing asset? If you’re just copying text for another medium, who’s it for? Everyone? No-one. We’ve probably all done it from time to time because of competing priorities and not enough time in the day. But when I see someone has branded themselves a storyteller I expect some context, some “extra.” Something that characterizes news that a company is announcing, or a personal commentary on the meaning of a technology trend. If we’re not being additive with the content we create, aren’t we just being content polluters?

Social media is a spectacular in-between land where audiences of all stripes cross-pollinate, and advertising has its place in that mix. I’ve always thought the nirvana of social is the interaction you can create. True engagement is harder to measure as a metric of your success — yes, you can count likes or retweets. But do you count the conversations you create? How do you quantify one over another? A couple of words back and forth with an influencer might get more attention, but an actual conversation with a customer can create real brand loyalty. So which is more valuable?

The next time you’re uploading content to your website or newsroom, consider who’s going to read it and what you want them to do next. According to Statista, Americans spend around 369-minutes per day — or roughly six hours — with traditional media and juuuust slightly less — 363 minutes — with digital media. If there’s any hope of a message landing, of an idea resonating, of action being taken, it’s going to take more than just letting consumers know your product exists. They need to feel like they’re part of your story.

The War on Content Pollution (Part 4): The new day has dawned. Did you sleep through it?

Happy Monday and thanks for more great engagement around the war on content pollution. This week the topic made it to the McKinsey must read: More momentum for the war on content pollution. http://bit.ly/1hvdMUY #contentpollution. 

As an industry we are waking up to the new day but there is still work to do and current practices to fix. 

So with that, please enjoy Part 4 in the series and thanks to Tom Fishburne for the terrific cartoon. 

That vision of 7 billion personal, one-to-one conversations may still be a long way off. But there is no question that the marketplace is both immensely bigger than it was a generation ago and that is at the same time demanding much more individualized attention.

The fastest growing social networks today aren’t the Facebooks and Twitters. They are smaller interest groups. Moms, foodies, dog lovers, cyclists, investors, entrepreneurs, and any other self-defining group you can imagine.

I saw one estimate that described Social Marketing as a $44-Billion opportunity. I think that’s a low number. But does that mean we should all start bombarding these communities of interest with marketing messages? …. The short answer is NO!

That’s just Big Data as the Big Bully all over again. And nobody likes a bully trying to muscle his – or her – way through the doorway.

Our opportunity now is to understand the marketplace as never before. To behave with finesse to earn entry into the room.

Only by listening can we get to the point where we can have something to talk about that our listeners actually care about.

Only then can we earn our way into conversations. Only by listening and understanding with all the tools and resources at our command can we make our brands relevant.

The art and science of communication lives at the intersection of story and data-driven insight. It is the ability to craft narratives, rich with compelling imagery, which are directly germane to the lives of the people with whom we would connect.

To generate content that doesn’t pollute – it actually enlightens. It excites. It motivates.

It even can help. Help someone’s life or the life of their family be better.

For all of us here today, and for the organizations we represent, the headline is this: we’ve already stepped out onto that slippery slope – and we’re picking up speed. The new dawn has dawned.

The world is going to get there with or without us.

I’m willing to bet that everyone is generally on board with the idea that the way to win and keep customers is no longer to bombard them with mass market messages. But we need to act to create a truly better way.

I think most of us would agree that, in this era of big data and personal engagement, the holy grail of marketing – the ne plus ultra – is one-to-one marketing. One person, credible and trusted, who recommends a brand to someone else.

But we have to move our thinking further than that. Have we accepted that our organizations no longer control their reputations? We should. That ship has sailed.

For decades PR has been on auto-pilot. Certainly there has been good and creative work, but at the macro level PR has operated pretty much like, well, let me offer something of a culinary analogy.

We’ve been like a deli counter. “Give me a half a pound of press releases, a few slices of that nice holding statement over there, half a dozen photo ops, a blog post, some branded content, and 150-million impressions.”

We have to stop doing that. We’re decades into the digital era, decades into the mobile era and a decade into the social era. PR has to stop doing what it still routinely does. And the businesses and brands we support have to stop asking for it.

That doesn’t mean abandoning those tactics completely. It means being smarter. It means using the right channel at the right time to reach the right person.

It means analyzing and designing Big Data to tell a focused, relevant, irresistible story each and every time we start talking. And I mean talking in every possible sense of the term. Aloud, in writing, in a press release, on a blog, in a tweet, and so on.

We have to hold ourselves to a higher, but very simple standard –never give a listener a reason not to listen.

And let’s be clear – whenever a listener does tune out, it’s always for the same reason – here’s the quote in that tuned out non-listener’s mind – this has nothing to do with me.

With all the tools and resources at our command, all that data – there really should be no excuse to get to the point that we are interacting with a listener, or a reader, with information that means nothing to them.

The art and the science is preventing that as much as possible. I’m not saying it’s a perfectly, mathematically reliable, exact science. There is art involved, for sure.

But we need to aspire to get ever closer to precision. One size does not fit all.

And that takes us right back to where we started – it is about the content. And the strategy to get that content out there in the world. That in turn means, of course, a discussion of the channel.

Was Marshall McLuhan right or wrong. In today’s world my belief is…. (tune in next week)

Thoughts and comments are welcome. Let’s keep the conversation going. 

 

The War On Content Pollution (Part 3): It’s supposed to be a conversation.

 

Thanks for all those that reached out and are sharing in the war on content pollution. I was thrilled to see the dialogue carry over to the Huffington Post. (http://huff.to/1ewk9CM)

Here are some more thoughts to keep the conversation going.

We need to become much more selective with the stories we tell. The sheer heft of the data we command is increasingly a problem, not an advantage.

It is a resource only if we make it one.

We have tools we couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago, even 5 years ago. If we succeed in taking advantage of that, the end result will be a rediscovery of the power of a real conversation between two people.

40 years ago, my brother and I engaged in a legendary conversation. We confronted honestly and passionately one of the great questions of our generation – whether the greatest rock n’ roll band of all time was Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. He took the former position. I, the latter.

I believe I got the better of the conversation.

That’s what conversation is all about. That conversation is a happy memory for me, and that’s what conversation does. It’s relationship – connection.

I’m not suggesting that we can create the special bond between two brothers when we’re talking to customers. But any conversation is still about a relationship, and it’s about connection. Brothers are born with both of those. But we can and should aspire as brands to a level of real engagement every time we tell our story to the world.

If we don’t, after all, why are we out there with our information in the first place?

Relationship is engagement. And engagement is credibility. And credibility is trust. And trust is what we are paid to inspire. Everyone in this room is in the trust business.

You can’t fake it. You can have tera-bytes of data. But if that becomes just another data dump – there will be no relevance. No relationship. No engagement. No credibility. No trust.

Now, let me say, it isn’t a trivial effort. Please don’t think I am being cynical. This is not about manipulating our way onto someone’s wavelength with some kind of superficial but cleverly packaged, focus-grouped insight.

I am at the complete other end of the spectrum.

I genuinely want to find ways to be truly relevant.

The strategic shift must be from the traditional command-and-control model of imposing messages to something much more sophisticated.

To clear the air, to end content pollution – there must be a new model.

It must be a continuous, dynamic cycle: Listen. Understand. Respond, with relevance. Engage. Persuade. And then, at the end of that cycle – listen some more. And start all over again.

This is likely the biggest strategic shift that we will see in our careers as communicators and content producers.

With all that we can know about customers…. What stories will we tell? This is what counts.

We have everything we need to succeed. We are very much in the right place at the right time. We are at the threshold, at the doorway, of the C-suite to a degree we’ve never been in this industry. I think we all know that. I’m sure all of you in this room are highly valued business advisors to your CEO.

But I’m talking about a new role for the PR function: as integral and in fact indispensable to the strategic direction of the organization.

In this new world, it should no longer be possible to divorce business decisions from communication decisions.

Not if we want to generate credibility and trust in a world saturated with information.

That takes art, because communicating effectively has always demanded that. Creativity, a fresh take, bright ideas.

But I think we must now begin to think more consistently of the art and the science of communication.

That has important implications for business decisions, meaning where we allocate resources and what return we expect in return.

In this new golden age of PR, the science is our ability to personalize, to localize and to humanize our interactions as never before. And, here’s the thing – we are able to do that, continuously, because we can measure the impact of all this in real time.

More to come. Let’s keep the conversation (battle) going.

 

The War On Content Pollution (Part 2): Don’t talk at me. Talk to me. Talk with me.

Isn’t it amazing to consider all the collective intelligence, capabilities, experience, not to mention the combined budgets, which are represented in this discussion today?

It would be staggering to sit down and add up all the time, analysis, effort, production and money spent in the past year by each one of us to build brand loyalty. All in the effort to engage customers and to try to convince people to use our products and services.

And all that money, allthese smart people, all this enormous vault of technology and wisdom, hundreds of years of accrued knowledge – it’s all aimed at creating a really very ordinary thing.

A conversation.

A genuine conversation between two people who trust each other.

That’s what we’re trying to create with all the engines of our creativity, the depth of our experience and the considerable sweat of our collective brows.

The challenge we face, of course, is how to have 7 billion of these one-to-one conversations at a time.

For most of history that would have seemed to be a ridiculous ambition. But it really no longer is.

We are, in fact, right now, in the middle of that very conversation. As I speak to you, our brands are talking to the whole world, and the world is talking back.

Wherever there is a computer or a mobile phone this conversation is alive, or has the potential to be. Turn the thing on, google the name of the brand, and bingo – a conversation has become a possibility.

Our ability to send and receive data is that big.

I suppose that’s why we call it, and isn’t that clever of us – Big Data.

I’m talking about the immense tides of information that wash over the world and into each one of our individual heads and hearts every minute of the day, and deep into the night too.

Big Data is a big deal, and it has been for some time now. But it’s also in danger of becoming just too big.

Big Data’s become like a very big guy trying to bull his way into the house through a door that’s too small. The door is our brains on Big Data. We don’t have enough room for it. We want to shut the door in Big Data’s face.

The sheer bulk and brawn of all the data at our command is not enough. We need to really, radically, slim our data down. Take some weight off, put data on a diet. We need to decide what people want to let in. Meaning, what will be of benefit to them. What they’re actually interested in.

Then we can get in the door, sit down and really have a, yes, that most basic form of human communication – a conversation.

Don’t talk at me. Talk to me. Talk with me.

More to come on this next week. Lets discuss and share. I am listening.

 

 

The War on Content Pollution (Part 1) – Cloudy With A High Chance of Content Pollution

Chapter One: Big data at the intersection of code and content in the era digital storytelling.

We are at the dawn of the Golden Age of PR.

Maybe.

For each of us who do this work for a living, I believe this can be an amazing time. I have no doubt about that. But there is a big if.

If – we don’t screw it up.

The problem is a whole other kind of global warming. Not the carbon pouring from smokestacks kind. But it is a problem of pollution. It is a problem of hot air. I’m talk ing about – content pollution.

Every day, it spews from too many of the factories of the communications industry, and from the brands we represent. I’m here to tell you that we can do better. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that. Not only can we do better – I know, and we know, that we can do better. It is high time to really stand up and clear the air. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about today. Waging war – on content pollution.

Content is the coin of our realm. We need to make sure more than ever before what we say is really worth its weight in gold. As brands, we have in too many cases become arrogant in our belief that people want to hear from us and that we know what they want to hear. We need to listen a lot better. So that when we speak – we are heard. So that when we speak it doesn’t sound like so much hot air.

If we do that, this really will be a Golden Age of PR. If we don’t – slowly, but surely – people will tune us out.  

One way leads to dramatically enhanced credibility for the brands we represent. The other way threatens the very viability of our industry. The stakes, in my opinion, are definitely that high. We are at a moment at which we can increasingly be seen as a discipline rich with possibility. Or we can risk being seen as a liability – as a force that makes brands less trusted, less authentic. Less worth listening to.

I think we all need to step back and put the brakes on. In some cases, I think we need to stop altogether. We need to take a good hard look at ourselves and at the marketplace, both the commercial marketplace and the marketplace of ideas. And not just critically.

I would encourage all of us to enjoy the view of the incredible potential of this industry. In a world of instant and universal communication, we’re the communication specialists, that’s what we do. But we have to listen better so that what comes out of our collective mouths reaches the hearts and minds of all those literally billions of people we can now have instant and universal contact with. Everything starts with listening. We need to stop manufacturing content without first truly leaning in to really listen to what people are truly talking about. We need to use the powerful measurement tools now at our command to understand what matters to them. Not to us. What matters is what the audiences we want to reach care about.

We need to earn our way into the conversation, more than ever before. That’s how you build trust. We need to enter into a relationship with the people we want to talk to. That’s how to be heard when we speak about our ideas, our offers and our products. We can do it. I have no doubt that we will do it. At MasterCard, we have already begun, and I’m going to talk about that. At my company, and yours, it’s a great time to be in this business. I’m incredibly excited to be a part of it. It is a golden age – if – we don’t screw it up.

More to come this week but would love to get an engagement and dialogue started. I am listening.    

Part 5: Spinning Out of Control – Who Owns Social Media and Who Cares?

Image via Wikipedia

So I want to talk a little bit about getting control of the organization and control of the dollars you need to get the job done.

More than ever in my career I find myself, as a communications executive, fighting for a seat at the table with senior management, and acting more and more as an adviser, fighting for relevance as a “new model marketeer.” And it’s tempting to turn this into a debate over who controls social media….

In fact, there’s already been a tremendous amount of attention in the blogosphere and trade press to the question of “who controls social media,” and whether it’s marketing or communications, and on the importance of getting people out of their silos. And that’s important so I don’t want to denigrate it – people do need to get out of their silos if those silos are built around a media model that no longer works.

But, ultimately, “who controls social media” probably isn’t the right question, because mobile and social media are channels just like print is a channel and I don’t know that anyone is going to fully “control” them within any organization.  Does someone own newspapers in your company?  I doubt it. A major UK newspaper recently reported that “director of social media” has become the latest must-have for companies, but honestly, that’s the result of lazy thinking by some CEO who knows there’s something called social media, he doesn’t know what it is but he knows he needs somebody who does, so he says “let’s get a director of social media.” In the short term, it may help you get up to speed, but it will generate a lot of turf wars and in the long run it makes about as much sense as a “director of newsprint.” Successful companies are approaching this more thoughtfully, integrating mobility and social media into everything they do.

 Whatever the organizational structure, it is our responsibility as communications officers to establish discipline in the company’s messages, and that’s especially important if we’re going to deputize people – as we must – to act in real time, without a lot of layers of review and approval. In my own company, at Nokia, we’ve got something like 70 people who are performing communications functions online but who aren’t in the communications group. I’m less worried about reorganizing the company than I am in just making sure we can enforce consistent message discipline and transparency across the board, no matter who they report to.

If we, as communications leaders, are going to play that role, we need to demonstrate to management the indispensability of these new channels, and our own effectiveness in using them.

Related Articles

• Why Social Media Success Will Not Be in a Silo (visibletechnologies.com)
• 10 Social Media Tips (simbeckhampson.posterous.com)
• Social Media Training: Win at Social Media (web-workathome.com)

Part 4: Spinning Out of Control: What PR execs could learn from Lady Gaga

Image via Wikipedia

Okay, I am starting to enjoy the regular writing on this subject and the ideas that have been stimulated in the process. We left off last time with a challenge about the tools we need. Today, I want to rant a little on what I have learned from Lady Gaga and how it impacts me as a PR pro.

In short – if you’re not using those tools in real time, and as real communication tools, especially after you raise your customers’ expectations, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.  Not only with your customers.  At some point your company’s board of directors is going to want to know what you are doing to manage the risk associated with social media.  In fact, at companies like Nokia, IBM, Novartis and others, the stakes in social media have been raised so high that their boards are now requiring a thorough review of the risk associated with social media and a mitigation plan for each.  This truly represents the elevation of social media to the highest levels of the enterprise.  I should point out that none of these companies have chosen to avoid or hide from the new realities of social media rather they are confronting the opportunity and its risks head on much like they would any other operational risk associated with their business.

Believe it or not, we have a lot to learn from Lady Gaga. You think she’s not a business? She’s building a brand, just like all of us are. Forbes quoted a media expert saying “she is directing every frame of her music and her life imagining what clips will appear on YouTube and what people will Tweet after she appears on the VMA’s (That’s Video Music Awards for those of you over 35.).”

In addition, a comprehensive social media campaign for her, orchestrated by Universal Music Group, featured daily Facebook and Twitter updates, a blog and more. She became the first living person with 10 million fans on Facebook…  Now she has 27 million Facebook fans, and more than 7.8 million Twitter followers. The payoff? 11,500 mainstream media stories cited her just in 2009. Sure, it’s easier for a pop star than a detergent manufacturer to generate buzz, but remember: she was dealing with a very crowded field, and used a carefully orchestrated strategy that is all business.

Of course, more conventional companies are moving more aggressively into social media. Nissan invested heavily in it for the debut of its new electric car, the Leaf. The car has had its share of problems, primarily availability issues. But a combination of micro-site, Facebook page, and Twitter presence is helping Nissan gauge marketplace attitudes, manage expectations, and respond to criticism.

 And Old Spice last year, a mature, even stodgy brand, revitalized itself with one of the fastest-growing online video campaigns in the relatively brief history of such things. I’m sure you’ve all seen the “I’m the man your man could smell like” campaign. It started with simple TV ads, which went viral on YouTube, and follow-up videos and tweets. The result: Ad Week estimated the campaign reached 110 million, “surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast.”

Now, a lot of you are probably sitting there thinking, “Sure, that’s easy for you to say. You work for a mobile company. This stuff is your bread and butter. But how are we going to do this? How are we going to staff for it? Where do we start?”

Stay tuned for the answers in my next rant…..

Related Articles

• Meet Lady Gaga’s newest social media toy (news.cnet.com)

Part 3: Spinning Out of Control: Can we really control our brands?

How can we maintain control of our brands?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, the lesson we’ve learned over the past years is that we cannot fully control our brands anymore (it’s quite possible we were never in control, but now we can actually see and hear our lack of control more readily).

The digital ecosystem is too complex, the opportunities for third parties to interfere too numerous, to really exercise control. Instead, we need to think of ourselves as moderators and participants in the constant conversation flow about our companies, their products, and their brands.

But this is not a reason to throw up one’s hands. If things are spinning out of control, they are not spinning out of our ability to influence. And social media has provided the greatest “touch point” opportunity on the planet. Facebook in particular has succeeded in bringing hundreds of millions of people together onto a common platform, and the worst thing you could do is fail to participate — at least consider participating – in some way.

One way to “control” the message is to attempt to drive that activity from social networks to your own, branded web sites. But increasingly, we at Nokia think that is a mistake. Instead, more and more we are “fishing where the fish are,” and “syndicating” our content on social media platforms to engage and motivate consumers to take action directly from there.

For too many companies, the response to the new mobile and social media environment has been simply to create apps. “Get me an app so I can check the box,” seems to be a common attitude. But it is not enough. We are seeing the device screen itself become an important place for communicating with our customers through text messages, for instance. Last year, we sent 1.1 billion messages to mobile users directly from our servers, and customer response has roughly matched the conversion rate we get from direct email.

In this new environment, it’s critical to map and understand how consumers navigate a “digital ecosystem” in which lots of intermediaries help shape their opinion. Product review sites, forums, social media, and all sorts of other digital influencers stand between us and our customers, and if you haven’t studied that digital ecosystem and mapped out how your own customers are negotiating it, you’ve already let the situation spin out of control.

You need to know all those touch points where your customers are being influenced. You need to be engaged in those conversations in relevant and valuable ways. And you need to be responding rapidly.  If digital communications have created a need for rapid-response capability, the increasing use of mobile creates a need for immediate response capability. That’s especially true as mobile devices increasingly gain the ability to monitor and transmit information in real time. If your organization can’t do anything or say anything without layers and layers of review and approval, you’re going to be “dead in the water.”

One of my favorite examples can be found in how the various European airlines reacted to the air space closings and flight cancellations caused by the volcanic eruptions in Iceland last year. The Website Travel 2.0 compared how well – or how badly – different airlines used social media like Twitter to keep customers informed and ease rebooking.

KLM got the highest marks. It deployed Twitter for rebooking requests, Facebook for FAQ and other information, and a combination of YouTube and Facebook for a video message from the CEO. Lufthansa and British Airways were also praised, though less lavishly. But Air France was sharply criticized for ignoring YouTube entirely and giving Facebook and Twitter short shrift because they weren’t the “official” company sites (Remember what I said earlier about fishing where the customers are, and not necessarily trying to drive everything to your site?).

In particular, Air France was chided for having a “Follow Us on Twitter” banner on its web site. “Why would I follow you on Twitter?” Travel 2.0 wrote. “So I could not be updated?”[1]

In short – if you’re not using those tools in real time, and as real communication tools, especially after you raise your customers’ expectations, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.

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[1] http://travel2dot0.com/2010/04/social-impact-volcanic-ash/

Related Articles

• 8 Reasons Why We Love Social Media (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Building Your Personal Brand On Social Media (personalbrandingblog.com)
• Does Negative Social Media and PR Really Hurt Brands? (kylelacy.com)
• Get to Know Your Customers – It’s as Simple as a Digital Handshake (theharteofmarketing.com)

Part 2: Spinning Out of Control: Impact of Mobile On PR

Image by Ribbit Voice via Flickr

Okay after a a couple more days of thought, I have a few more random ideas to express. I think this blog may end up being a keynote if all goes well. I would love to get your ideas and feedback. So with that, her is part two of my thoughts and rants. :

Section 2:

With the growth of 4G networks, we’re going to see a lot more streaming video, including exponential increases in user-generated live video. That’s already happening.

But a little further down the road, I believe we will see two major breakthroughs reach the marketplace:

[Hold up a piece of paper.] Here’s a simple piece of paper. Nothing special. Except it does one really extraordinary thing. [Fold it in thirds, and put it in your inside breast pocket.]

So far, that’s the one thing we haven’t been able to do with our electronic devices. Either we’ve got a screen that’s small and really portable, or a screen that’s big and not so easily portable. Tablet computers are trying to split the difference, but you still can’t fold an iPad and put it in your pocket, and typing on one is no picnic, either.

I predict that within the next two years, maybe three, we will see some long-talked-about solutions for this problem come to market, and they will take three different forms. One is a foldable or scrollable screen that would come closer to replicating paper than anything we’ve had so far. Another is technology that would permit easy projection of the image from your mobile device onto any surface, and allow you to manipulate the projected image the way you currently manipulate the touch screen on a smart phone or tablet.

Yet a third approach will be wearable devices. Of course, that’s not entirely new – we’ve had wearable earpieces for some time. But these would be wearable – similar to eyeglasses but less intrusive– and would provide a large-format visual experience in a very compact and portable way.

Of course, there are drawbacks, not the least of which is that there are many circumstances where providing someone with a more immersive experience may not be the best idea. This sort of thing could make the problems of texting while driving seem tame by comparison. And you have to wonder whether we want people walking down the street or standing at the edge of subway platforms while they’re engrossed in the latest movie, a football game, or . . . well, I leave that to your imagination.

The other major technological development will be major advances in making telepresence mobile – I personally am very excited about this. Some of you may be familiar with HP’s “Halo” telepresence technology, which is currently used in fixed locations, primarily for videoconferencing. It’s a wonderful technology, but its usefulness is limited by its restriction to those fixed locations.

Now, imagine if that technology is freed from the conference room to travel with you. And you can talk to and “hang out” with your wife and kids, not just in a life-like video conference but in a far more realistic telepresence. You can watch them play soccer in that game you just could not make. You can go shopping with someone and help them pick out clothing. The possibilities for virtual companionship – and the opportunities those present for communicators – are nearly endless.

There will continue to be a profusion of apps for smart phones and other mobile devices, but when you really think about it, the app is more a device for entrepreneurs to monetize their inventions than an efficient way to provide computing capability. In the next 1000 days you can expect to see a shift away from the profusion of all these individual apps that clutter up your devices to more intelligent, adaptive applications that learn from their users and proactively meet your personal needs and solve your problems.

Obstacles remain. Some are financial – as with apps, products based on these new technologies eventually need to be monetized or they won’t remain in the marketplace. And we need to see more seamless interoperability of devices. It’s getting better, but our devices are still siloed. It’s cumbersome to get your laptop to talk to your phone, and it’s still nearly impossible to have them talk to your refrigerator or your car or the thermostat in your house. That will change, but perhaps more slowly than we would like, and the benefits of universal standards will need to be worth their cost.

Meanwhile, we can expect the mobile social media phenomenon to grow. And here I mean not only Facebook and Twitter, but the broad range of interactive communications that are tying people together, as Facebook attempts to become more of an email and IM platform. People will not only be sharing opinions, pictures, and experiences instantaneously, but we will see an increase in the automated sharing of information, such as the location-based alerts provided from Foursquare or alerts that convey health status or other information.

As these advances in technology make communications more mobile and more immersive, and as social media provide people with ever more opportunities and modes of interaction, how do we as marketers and communicators maintain control of our messages? How can we maintain control of our brands?

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My thoughts on the changes facing PR Pros – Our Industry Could “Spin” Out of Control

Okay this is my first draft and a flow of thoughts about the changing face of public relations and our need to adapt with the times. I thought I would post a series of comments and thoughts over the next few weeks and see if I can get some feedback and ideas from the group.

So here goes: Rant 1

While I am trying to hold your attention, I will be competing with the buzzing and vibrating – and perhaps, for the mortified few of you, ringing – of your smart phones.

Until recently, I would have only had to hold your attention against emails from your colleagues and superiors, many of which you would have been only too happy to ignore…

Those days, however, are gone. Now, just in the course of the next 20 minutes or so, you may be informed, thanks to Foursquare, that your friend has just landed at JFK. Thanks to Twitter, he will lament his inability to find his bag. You may receive a text message, or perhaps a Tweet, informing you that your own flight home is being delayed and so on and so forth….

Thanks to Facebook, several hundred of your very closest friends will share their forecast for tonight’s basketball game, report their latest accomplishment from pilates class, pontificate on the state of the union, or publish a mildly compromising picture of you from last Saturday night’s festivities at the local pub.

And the rest of you will be playing Angry Birds.

In short, we are not only connected, we are immersed. And the immersiveness of communications, the intimacy of our relationships with the devices that make it possible – smart phones, tablets, and the like – have become irresistible.

The result? Our communications – inbound and outbound, personal and professional – are spinning out of control. And unless we can figure out how to regain at least a little of that control, our careers will spin out of control as well.

It’s not only a matter of clutter, or the competition for attention, though certainly that’s a big part of it. The confluence of social media and mobile technology has empowered everyone to be a mass communicator, to do it instantaneously, from any location, at any time, in a wide variety of media. Messages, including those about companies and products, can go “viral” overnight.

The impacts range from the trivial to the profound. Protests and revolutions in countries around the world, most recently in Tunisia, have in large part been fueled by this ability.

And that means our ability to deliver our messages to their intended recipients, clearly and uncorrupted by the intervention of third parties, has become nearly impossible.

But it also creates extraordinary opportunity to establish deeper and more intimate relationships with our customers than we’ve ever had before. Think about this – Nokia lives in the pockets of more than 1.2 billion people around the world. That is the perspective from which I speak today.

Whether we seize the opportunities for customer engagement, or continue to let the world spin out of our control, will determine the futures of our organizations and our own careers.

Inevitably, any discussion of this subject has to start with a consideration of where the technology is likely to take us. And we know from hard experience how treacherous those waters are:

[Consider projecting the following quotes on a screen]

• “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us,” a Western Union memo, circa 1878.

• “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan,” Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.

• “We will never make a 32-bit operating system,” Bill Gates

We’ve predicted for the last twenty years that mobile would be a game-changer. But it took a long time to happen at scale. Smart phones – and as much as I hate to say it, especially the iPhone – changed everything. They were cool. They were intuitive. And the apps, the incredible variety of things you could do with the phone, completely changed people’s perception of what a mobile phone is for.

At the same time, social media, especially Facebook and Twitter but more recently things like Foursquare, Gowalla and other location-based services, gave people an easy way to use these new devices that is personal, intimate, and in nearly constant use. They transformed each other and created what some people call the biggest change in the way we communicate with each other in at least 50 years, maybe in history.

Where is it headed?