OP-ED COLUMNIST: The Great (Double) Game

The case of the Great Game of Central Asia is a complicated mix of duplicitous players and failed strategies.

http://nyti.ms/9DD6v4

On the heels of the Brightsource announcement today as well as the 60 Minutes segment that focused on stealthy and well-funded Bloom Energy and the flood of news coverage that will ensue followed closely by the likely increase in the Israeli Solar company’s valuation, I am reminded of the power of Public Relations.
Most clean technology companies that are based in the Middle East might not have hard news just yet of the likes of Brightsource or Bloom Energy, but they can still use the power of the media/blogosphere to generate credibility and a sense of traction within their industries.

No other sector in the economy grew as fast last year and none is projected to grow as much this year as cleantech. This was due, in large part, to the stimulus money from around the world that flowed freely (even in a down economy) into the growing clean or green technology sector.

I’m sure we all noticed that nearly every magazine featured a “green” issue last year.

Consequently, larger PR firms have been launching cleantech practices and smaller boutique firms have emerged to manage the flood of new technologies ranging from electric vehicles to biomass, smart grid players, green building technologies and too many others to list here.

Furthermore, even larger traditional consumer brands are now demanding to have a “green” strategy in their communications plan. That is great news. The only question is: From where will all of these communications professionals come to manage these new accounts? My guess is that biotech, healthcare and technology PR practitioners will initially service cleantech accounts.

My background was in emerging consumer tech PR, which I thought would prepare me for cleantech. Let’s just say I had a rude awakening. Not only are the technologies completely different, but the clients themselves proved to be equally mystifying. It took me a while to get used to the world of cleantech as a communications professional, but eventually I did. I thought it might be useful to share some of the insights I picked up along the way. As a good friend once told me, “Why live and learn when we can learn and then live?”

Want to learn some tricks of the trade? Here are 5 tips for clean tech public relations companies and reps to follow:

1. It is rocket science! Everyone knows that any marketing professional worth their weight in salt should bone up on researching their clients even before they begin working on the account. However, understanding the consumer-facing technologies that most of us are accustomed to using (in my case, Google, eBay and XM Radio were clients) is entirely different than understanding scientific innovations.

Explaining bioremediation flex capacitors or ammonia recovery technology demands a far more intimate knowledge of the underlying science than explaining an iPhone or the Kindle. And make no mistake, you will need to know your cleantech client’s technology well.

Unlike the consumer tech world, where we all speak the same with the same vernacular (cloud computing, web 2.0, social networks, syncing, clicks to conversion, etc.), your cleantech clients (especially at the upstart stage) tend to be scientists. In some cases, your clients will literally be rocket scientists.

The trick is that there are no tricks. We all have to learn and to understand exactly what our clients do and what media will drive their business goals. To accomplish this, read up on their field in the trade publications.

Here are some suggestions that will provide a nice overview of cleantech in general:

Greentech Media

earth2tech (a division of GigaOm)

Treehugger

Grist.org

Renewable Energy World

Green Prophet

Dow Jones Clean Technology Insights

A good primer for the cleantech space is Thomas Friedman’s book “Hot, Flat and Crowded.”

Experience has taught me that your clients will also be looking to be placed in niche industry publications more than in mainstream media. Oftentimes this is a good thing. These niche publications are understaffed and open to content that you create on behalf of your clients; I will say more on that later.

Tech-geeky has already become chic, largely due to the communications professionals who helped turn people like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerman, Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos into media darlings. Our job will be to take advantage of the momentum that “cleantech,” “sustainability” and “renewable energy” currently have, and to transform these socially awkward scientists into media friendly spokespeople for a new age in technology.

2. Content (creation) is king. According to Adam Werbach’s book, “Strategy for Sustainability,” companies need to be aware of how their industry is influenced by the current culture, and how to adapt.

I probably don’t have to tell you that today more than ever, PR people are in the content creation business. At no other time and in no other industry is content creation more effective as a communication strategy than in the cleantech space. What do you do when your client has no news? Start digging up case studies and transforming them into bylined articles.

Due to the ever-shrinking newsroom, editors at cleantech publications (or any other industry for that matter) are in dire need of free content that they can monetize with advertising. This is the holy grail of PR people everywhere: That’s right—a guaranteed placement!

If executed well, this can be the secret to your success. Our firm landed four articles in trade publications for BioPetroClean, a client of ours that focuses on bio-remediation with offices in Houston. All of the content was created in-house—our team of Expansion Media writers working with BPC’s lab technicians and marketing people.

The message was 100% controlled and all parties were pleased with the results. But again, the challenge is understanding the technology. Any writer can pull together a case study on consumer electronics; writing about new trends in wastewater management requires time and training with the client.

3. Major influencers are closer than they appear. Don’t be afraid to reach out to even the top media as long as what you have to offer is appropriate. In a specialized field like cleantech, the media hasn’t yet become knowledgeable enough to be cynical about the space.

For example, we found out that FreeGreen, one of our clients that offer free greenhouse plans to consumers, was listed as one of the “free business” models mentioned at the end of Chris Anderson’s (editor in chief at Wired) now famous book, “Free.”

We took a chance and reached out to this controversial editor with a pitch asking him to follow up on the company one year later. He responded immediately, and he won’t be adding our names to his infamous list of flamed PR people because our pitch focused on the subject matter of his bestseller, to boot. As long as your pitch is appropriate, there’s no reason not to pitch even the most sought-after journalists or to assume you will never hear back from them.

4. Build a brand. Yes, even small cleantech startups with no consumer focus should work on building a brand. A small solar panel outfit can benefit years down the road from a home buyer asking for their specific solar panels. If it worked with Anderson Windows and Intel inside computers, it can work with wind turbines, lithium-ion car batteries or solar panels.

5. Talk the talk. One of the daunting aspects of cleantech PR is becoming familiar with a whole new battery of acrimonious acronyms. Forget DMA (does anyone remember it?) and IR. For the PR professional that is branching out into cleantech, there are dozens of new terms and organizations to become familiar with. Whether your client is a wind turbine company (anemometer, generator set, tip-speed ratio) or a smart grid player (distributed generation, load, microgrid), you will do well by reading up on Wikipedia before that first client meeting.

In the meantime, here is a quick glossary of useful terms for your immediate reference:

• AC: alternating current
• Btu: British thermal unit
• CAFE: Corporate Average Fuel Economy
• ISO: Independent System Operator
• CT: Combustion turbine
• DC: Direct current
• DOE: U.S. Department of Energy
• EER, SEER: Energy Efficiency Ratio, Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio
• ESCO: Efficiency Service Company
• EV: Electric vehicle – a vehicle powered by electricity
• GW: Gigawatt
• GWh: Gigawatt-hour
• HVAC: Heating, ventilation and air conditioning
• Hybrid vehicle: Usually a hybrid EV, employs a combustion engine system along with an electric propulsion system.
• ISO: Independent System Operator
• kW (small k, capital W): Jilowatt
• MW: Megawatt (a million watts)
• NIMBY: Not In My Backyard
• PBP: Payback period
• PPA: Power purchase agreement
• PV: Photovoltaic
• RE: Renewable Energy
• VOC: Volatile organic compounds

Let’s say you get mentioned or featured in the New York Times. Since they are such a big media outlet with high readership, the article itself will probably receive a ton of external links, which gives you more SEO juice since you are linked to within the article. If you are lucky, you might even get direct links from other websites since they’ll have found you on the New York Times and will consider you a credible source for the thing you were mentioned about.

This pretty much sums up the value that we got for Entech Solar, a client of ours that sells tubular skylights from this article in the New York Times

Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can easily drain your entire day of any productive time by doing everything yourself. Recognize what you are really, really good at, and make set times — yes, set times — where you focus on those activities. Everything else should be delegated or outsourced. Bookkeeping? Bite the bullet – hire a part-time person. Data entry? Dictation? You must be kidding. Graphic design? Don’t tell me your time is worth less than an outsourced designer who can do it three times as well in a third of the time.

The secret to time management isn’t such a big secret. It’s this: spend most of your time doing what you’re good at.

Here’s how to start: pick one activity that you do that you’re not great at. Maybe it’s QuickBooks. Marketing. Writing. IT. Cleaning up. Whatever your case is, take a cold, hard look at that one activity and ask yourself, how much time do I waste on this? How much could I accomplish if I didn’t have to look at this task? Then find a way to get that job off of your plate.

Try it!

Rafael Mael
Marketing Strategist
Brand Launcher

Anyone that has picked up a newspaper (do people still do that??) or logged
onto their Google News or any source of news on the internet has seen two
news stories dominating the American media; a) the catastrophic earthquake
in Haiti that at current tally has killed at least 50,000 human beings and
left at least 3,000,000 people homeless and b) the ongoing drama that is the
NBC debacle in the late night. Now, it may seem unsightly to even put these
two stories side-by-side but that is just what the American mainstream media
has been doing over the past week. This unarguable fact begs many
questions. The first question to ask is how did this decision by NBC turn
into such a fiasco?

There are several mistakes (or gaffes) that Jeff Zucker and the other
executives at NBC made that could have easily been avoided if they would
have paid heed to three basic principles: know your product, be accountable,
and be transparent. I can’t claim that these are the only three lessons
that team NBC should learn to avoid the PR nightmare they are in now, but
with confidence, I CAN claim that their collateral damage would have been
minimized had they followed these basic tenets for business.

*Know Your Product*
Would the American public made a big stink over NBC’s programming schedule
if they had moved 30 Rock to a different time slot in their schedule? The
answer is no. Their are two major differences between the Late Night Show
with Conan O’Brien and 30 Rock. A) Late Night is on every week night and
therefore touches the lives of millions of viewers with greater frequency
and impact than a scripted sitcom that airs once a week. B) Conan and all
of his late night contemporaries speak directly to the American viewership.
O’Brien, in fact is famous for using the audience (or the camera) as a
foil. This personal connection that O’Brien has with his loyal audience was
greatly underestimated by Team Zucker at NBC.

For better or worse, Jay Leno is perceived by most as a corporate shill
hocking Doritos chips (“Crunch all you want, we’ll make more!”) despite the
fact that he has a multi-gizillion dollar contract with NBC. Legendary
comedian, Bill Hicks (may he rest in peace) once
said of Jay Leno that the
Tonight Show with Jay Leno was a “cultural train
wreck.” No one can argue that his bland (in this writer’s humble opinion)
format show worked. Leno’s numbers were always good and he worked the
affiliate glad-handing and schmoozing like a politician whenever he
headlined in an affiliate’s city or town. But his audience skews older and
more apathetic than O’Brien’s.

The other thing about O’Brien, he’s smart. Let me repeat and emphasize -
he’s real smart. You don’t graduate high school as valedictorian, become
the president of the Harvard Lampoon, one of the youngest writers on the
Simpsons (when it was still funny – O’Brien wrote the ‘Monorial” episode),
and get your own late night show at the age of 30 without having the skillz
to pay the billz. Underestimating O’Brien himself and his fanbase was a
miscalculation of gigantic proportions…and shows NBC didn’t know their
product.

Conan has a loyal following of younger, upwardly mobile citizens who
appreciate the risks he takes and the fact that O’Brien, unlike Leno, admits
when he’s wrong or when something on his show doesn’t work….a perfect
segue into the next tenet, accountability.

*The Buck Stops with the Zuck(er)*
Ever since the story about the NBC Late Night fiasco story broke
on January 7, 2010, Jeff Zucker and NBC have made all the wrong moves.
Firstly, Zucker seemd to deflect this enormous decision to Jeff Gaspin, NBC
Entertainment Chief. Now, I am sure that Gaspin had something to do with
the decision but the buck needs to stop with Zucker. I am not trying to
demonize the guy, but pinning this thing on anyone other than himself feels
sleazy and has further alienated NBC from its viewership. Instead of trying
to SHOA (save his own a–), Zucker should have admitted his company’s
miscalculation, apologized to O’Brien publicly and in private and asked for
cooperation to help the network out of its hole. The best way to handle a
communications crisis is to be honest about it, take responsibility and own
it. This leads to the third tenet – transparency.

*Openly Own It*
One of the biggest mistakes that NBC made was its underhanded handling of
the situation. Instead of having closed door meetings and shirking from
responsibility, NBC should have told their story openly. Sounds like
accountability? It is in a way. The more companies in today’s marketplace
break down the fourth wall and show their cards, the better off they tend to
be. CEO Jeff Bezos, made an open and humble
apology to the public. In it, Bezos stated:

Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of
line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the
criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful
mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our
mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

Five tips that will make people care about your ’stupid little start up’

1) Tie yourself to a bigger trend (read: what market forces will support your organic growth?)
2) Take every opportunity to meet a journalist in person (read: go out and network)
3) Engage with users: positive word of mouth is even better than press coverage (read: hire customer support early)
4) Journalist are lazy. Help them be lazy (read: create a media resources section for your site)
5) Be a source of data (read: content is important, create lots of it and make it useful for the user)