Interviews

Doing taxes is no fun. Scott Gulbransen knows that, and he tries make things a little bit easier in his role as Senior Manager of Public Relations & Social Media, Consumer Group, Intuit. The company is home to such brands as TurboTax, Quicken and now Mint.com.

We spoke to Gulbransen about the PR challenges of incorporating the recently acquired Mint.com brand while phasing out Quicken, how he built the brand's Twitter presence by engaging, and what his team does to go into "high gear" each tax season.

Intuit is phasing out Quicken with the acquisition of Mint.com, where in the communications process, does that stand?

We're happy to say that the deal to acquire Mint.com closed on November 2nd, so it's finally official and we can welcome all the Mint folks into the family.

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PRNewser caught up this week with Jim Whaley, Vice President, Communications and Marketing at Siemens Corporation. Whaley oversees communications and marketing, meaning Siemens' CMO reports to him. "We do have a seat at the table," Whaley said, when it comes to the communications arm. The b-to-b company, with 69,000 employees and $25 billion in revenue in the U.S. alone, does business in verticals from health-care to energy to consumer products.

We talked a bit about Siemens' "Answers" campaign, which Whaley said seeks to educate people on how the company "has the answers to the tough questions here in the U.S." They've invested four times the budget to this campaign as compared to any other previous Siemen's campaign, he said.

Whaley previously served as Director of Communications for the United States Military Academy at West Point. In that role, he was responsible for a campaign celebrating West Point's 200th anniversary that resulted in 24 books, eight network television documentaries and on the 2003 PRSA Award of Excellence and the PRWeek Public Campaign of the Year.

Not in this video, but an interesting story nonetheless, Whaley told us a about how the book, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, came about. Author David Lipsky, then a long-haired Rolling Stone reporter fresh out of Brown University, approached West Point about a story on the academy. Some top brass were skeptical of giving Rolling Stone unfettered access, but Whaley insisted. The story turned into the book, which became a New York Times best seller. For his research, Lipsky carried around a signed note from Whaley in a Ziploc bag that said he has complete access to the academy, its facilities and personnel.

Liza Anderson knows it's not easy to grow your agency in the midst of a recession. Her tricks: Hard work, hiring lots of great people, and "constant hustling." Anderson founded Anderson Group Public Relations, and has since taken on a number of celebrity clients including Eva Longoria and Michael Emerson of Lost.

In this interview, Anderson talks about her style of PR ("I don't see the benefit of being on Page Six.") why truth and honesty is key to her business ("I don't think press is necessarily used to that from a publicist.") and if Hollywood is overly scared of blogger Nikki Finke ("I don't pay that much attention.")

You've quadrupled the size of your agency in three years. What are they keys to growing an agency?

Very little sleep. Lots of hard work. I've just been working a lot and hiring lots of great people. It's constant hustling. The minute we opened our doors there was the writer's strike then the actor's strike followed by recession. There was a constant black cloud that's followed us as we've grown as a company. That overwhelming gloom and doom is a great motivator for success. It makes you work twice as hard. Sometimes fear is great motivator and it's worked wonders in my case.

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"They can't not participate," says Courtney Barnes when it comes to companies and social media. Barnes, former editor of PR News and now Vice President and Director of MH Group Communications is the co-author of Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications (McGraw-Hill, August 2009), alongside Paul Argenti, Professor of Management and Corporate Communication at Tuck at Dartmouth.

PRNewser caught up with Barnes this week to talk about why many large brands have changed their tune when it comes to social media, if PR will be able to grab a larger piece of the pie when it comes to digital and what stories stick out in terms of the executives she's spoke with over the last year.

A lot of books have been written about digital communications, social media and PR. What makes this one different?

This one is really targeting senior management in terms of how not only they can, but how they need to leverage social media to advance their brand's reputation and bottom line.

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On the heals of mediabistro's UGCX conference, we joined AgencySpy editor Matt Van Hoven on today's podcast. Our guest: Jessica Amason, viral marketing editor at BuzzFeed and co-creator of "This is Why You're Fat" - a Tumblr blog turned book deal. Amason's job at BuzzFeed is to marry editorial content and marketing. In other words, figure out how to make some money from user generated content.

Amason spoke about BuzzFeed's analytics reports, where clients can see everything that's happening with their content - what keywords are hitting, which social media technology is most used to spread it, who is reading/watching. "Each of those elements points to how and why something is spreading," said Amason. "And I think that those are key [data] that advertisers don't really have."

Also discussed: Times earnings report; Google music; and a social media strategy recap from Forrester Research's presentation at UGCX. You can listen to all the past podcasts archived at mediabistro.com or download episodes for free on iTunes.

PRNewser sat down today with newly appointed Managing Director of Fenton Communication's New York office, Rob Anderson. Anderson comes to Fenton from Golin Harris, where where he was executive vice president and director of the firm's corporate citizenship, social marketing and cause branding practice, Change.

In this interview we ask Anderson how it's been "getting back to his roots" working for a mid-size independent agency. We also spoke about his time as chief strategist behind the "Truth" anti-smoking campaign while at Golin Harris. "What [we] did was to recruit young people to become a part of that campaign...it made it real," he said.

Lastly, we got his take on the Fox News / Obama administration back and forth: "I'm not sure that it's all that effective for anybody besides Fox News."

Samsung, in conjunction with PR agency of record Weber Shandwick, hosted an event today at their Samsung Center in Manhattan. Titled "The Reinvention Economy: Re-casting Communications as a Critical Corporate Innovator," the panel examined how communications is going beyond traditional functions and evolving to drive corporate innovation, from product development to market research.

PRNewser spoke with David Steel, SVP Marketing at Samsung, before the panel discussion. Steel oversees all North American marketing for Samsung and we spoke a bit about how social media has changed how the company develops and refines products.

"When we hit the ground with a new product, we need real feedback from consumers that there's real demand, real interest, [to know] what appeals to them," he said. "So this new paradigm of communications allows us to do that, because we can hear what consumers are saying about our products and technology in essentially real time, what they're saying to each other as well as what they're saying back to us as a brand. So a lot of these techniques and tools in social media and online marketing allow us to get consumer input very early in our product development process and then we can reflect that in new products that are coming out. It's a very powerful new tool for us."

Steel gave an example of how this feedback cycle affected the launch of Samsung's Blue-ray offerings.

SonyInsider has an interview with Sony VP of Communications David Migdal. In response to blogger Christopher MacManus' question, "What's one thing you'd like to say to bloggers who unfairly criticize the company?" Migdal said:

Everyone has the right to their opinion and fairness is in the eye of the beholder. I understand it's not in vogue to praise large corporations these days. Come to think of it, I'm not sure it's ever been. But it's our job to listen to what's being said and choose to take some course of action or not. When you're a company as large as Sony, criticism comes with the territory. We're not perfect, but on balance, we're still a strong, highly respected company and a powerful consumer brand.

Read the full interview here.

As the debate continues on the implications of the FTC's new disclosure guidelines for social media, one company has released a new URL shortener service that it hopes will become a standard. The new guidelines go into effect on December 1st.

Called Cmp.ly, the service provides "six standard disclosures that are intended to cover all material connection disclosures." The disclosures include:

CMP.ly/0 - No connection, unpaid, my own opinions
CMP.ly/1 - Based upon a review copy
CMP.ly/2 - Given a sample by vendor/agency/brand
CMP.ly/3 - Paid post - cash payment or other compensation
CMP.ly/4 - Employee/shareholder/business relationship
CMP.ly/5 - Custom Disclosure

It will be interesting to see if this catches on. We caught up with Cmp.ly co-founder Tom Chernaik by phone today from the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas to ask him why he launched the service, if he hopes to monetize it and if they've received feedback from the FTC.

What do you hope to acheive with the launch of Cmp.ly?

Really what we hope to do with it, is we felt that it's important to have a standard format for disclosure. Obviously people know that they have to start disclosing. There is certain info, we know that there are certain things that need to be included. But when you look at how that information travels on the web, there is a disconnect, and that happens, because content on the web gets moved around the way traditional media doesn't.

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Jennifer Risi of IPG (NYSE: IPG) agency Weber Shandwick stopped by the mediabistro offices today to talk about the work her group has been doing, which consults across a variety of account teams and combines media and "influencer" relations with both creating client events and booking client executives to speak at high profile events. Risi said the group is also a big presence in new business pitches to show the kind of relationships and global scale the agency can bring to the table.

"We go to our clients, and we talk about who are the most influential media driving business. Not just media covering their industry, but those...who are brands within themselves," she said, citing Maria Bartiromo as an example.

Risi has been at Weber Shandwick for 11 years and cited the agency's "entrepreneurial environment" for her long tenure. We also talked a bit about some of the dos and doesn't when it comes to executive speaking gigs. "It can't be just be a sales pitch, it has to be [about] how can you work together with the other folks in attendance to drive business forward for the greater good," she said.