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This is the final post in our explanation of the process that we use to meet the strategic challenges of our clients. Planning is complete, now we have to earn our fee, achieving effect through our outreach and demonstrating that effect to our clients.

Stage 5: Multi-Channel Outreach

Our planning has identified who we must speak to, the effect we want to have on them, what we are going to say and how we are going to make sure they hear us. It has also revealed the multiple channels we must use to achieve the consistency and repetition of message – crucial to achieving our effect on our target audiences.

We speak to traditional media, placing news and opinion pieces, arranging interviews, reaching out to trade press and special interest publications and putting spokespeople on TV and radio. We harness the power of the web, building in social media outreach into every one of our programs. We might mobilize supporters through grassroots, grasstops and third-party programs, as well as by leveraging satisfied customers. We might speak to business or financial analysts and investors, think-tanks, community groups, trade associations and business groups.

Phase 6: Measures of Effect

All of our clients rightly demand that we demonstrate program value over time, so we build in measures of effect at the planning stage against which we gauge success. This means we do not simply hand over a wedge of clippings and pat ourselves on the back. We make realistic assessments and weigh them against planned influence or marketing effect.

It is a no-nonsense procedure that allows us to recalibrate where necessary and show our clients that our process works. It also allows us to optimize programs over time.

So, that’s our methodology. I am planning a post that will go into more detail on effects-based planning and another that will illustrate this process in action through real life case studies. I hope you all get something out of them. Comments are welcome. (SK)

With a clear idea of the nature of our client and its target audiences, we move into the meat of the planning process – stages 3 and 4 which often run concurrently. This is the point at which we decide what we must say, and work out how we get people to listen:

Stage 3: Effects Based Planning

Effects-based planning is the rock upon which we build our temple. We take our defined audiences and plan what marketing or influence effect our communications must have. The effect is the switch that must be flicked in the minds of individuals to achieve our aims and objectives. To use a simple example, if our strategic challenge is to sell more in an existing market, our communications must have the effect of convincing potential buyers that our product is a better option for them than the products of our competitors. Once we have identified the effect we must have, we can then work backwards to tie down the ways in which we can achieve it. We add a creative element to devise a narrative around our client’s strengths into which we can embed our key messages. We also pare down the communications channels (media, digital, third parties, grassroots etc.) to our audiences that are likely to be most effective.

Stage 4: Message Development and Testing

Message development is one of our two core functions at Keymer, the other being media relations. Message development must be rigorous, utilizing the findings of phase one research, with a clear understanding of our planned effect. We also have the option to test our messages, through informal or formal polling. We end up with a usable message platform upon which all communications are based.

To take stock, at this stage in the process, we have:

- Identified our strategic challenge

- Developed a clear understanding of our client’s strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations

- Identified and fully researched the nature of our target audiences

- Clearly identified the effect our communications must have on target audiences to achieve our aim and manage our strategic challenge

- Developed a creative narrative and developed clear, effective messaging

- Identified optimal communications channels in to our target audiences

With the planning complete, it is time to begin our outreach. Part 5 of the process will be posted tomorrow, detailing multi-channel outreach and what comes after that…

Tackling strategic business challenges is what we are all about. We help businesses enter new markets; cope with significant change; launch new products; prepare themselves for sale; or find a competitive edge in a commoditized marketplace. We help trade associations and other interest groups manage the political, regulatory and social issues that worry them. We help clients of all kinds deal with damaging crises.

Whatever the strategic challenge, the way we build and execute a public relations program to address it remains broadly the same. This is the first of three posts which briefly outlines our unique 6-stage process. I hope it gives you a glimpse inside our minds, underscores the solid foundations upon which our programs are built, and goes some way to demystifying the process by which we bring value our clients….

Stage 1: Research and Investigation

Upon beginning a new project, we start with C-Suite meetings to identify and define the strategic business challenge or challenges. We support this as needed with communications audits, brand positioning studies, issues analysis, competitor comparisons and customer polling. Only when we have a thorough understanding of our clients, their history, their bugbears and their aspirations, can we begin the process of enabling their success.

Stage 2: Target Audience Analysis (TAA)

We take time to identify and define the groups and individuals that we must affect to achieve our aims, and then we chart the potential communications channels to them. We assess human and group factors to ensure we have a thorough understanding of each client’s stakeholders. We move to the next stage knowing who we must speak to, how to reach them and a basic understanding of what we might say.

The graphic below illustrates the entire process. Look out for Part 2, on Monday, in which we build on our research to develop the strategies and messaging needed to run a successful campaign.

I once had a long conversation over lunch with Frank Luntz on the subject of influence. He is smart – very smart, so I was not surprised to learn that he had been hired to feed into the debate around financial regulatory reform. His memorandum on how the financial services industry should push back against the prospect of wholesale regulatory reform – particularly the establishment of the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Agency (a well-intentioned but potentially disastrous new government bureaucracy) – was shared with the world on the Huffington Post. The memorandum gives an interesting glimpse into the workings of the message development process – with which, in one form or other, we are involved every single day. Check it out at The Luntz Memorandum

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A few weeks ago, Simon was interviewed by Jacksonville’s Small Business Advantage magazine for their After Hours section. The story is now live on their website and will be in January’s print edition. Many thanks to Brian Barquilla (Founder & Publisher) and Linda Segall (Editor) for their interest in the story and for the great piece. If you would like to view the article on their website, you can link to it here.

The BABE Rally continues to interest people, and we are thankful to all those who supported us in our endeavor!

Most people know that after taking my degree and attending RMA Sandhurst I spent some years as an officer in the British Army. I served without particular distinction, but it is a period in my life of which, like most ex-soldiers, I am inordinately proud. I left to marry and emigrate and though I completed some reserve service in 2005, I have not really looked back. The funny thing is, I think of those times every single day.

Partly this is sentimental. It was my good fortune to serve alongside literally dozens of real characters, at regimental duty and on what, in those pre-Iraq/Afghanistan days, passed for operations. The mere recollection of those guys brings a smile to my face. It is sobering to think that some of them have spent the time since I saw them last shuttling between the fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some have been injured, some badly. Some have been killed.

Even when I was in the army, Veterans’ Day (called Remembrance Day in Europe) was more about my grandfathers’ generation. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War II, one in Europe, one in the Far East, but for me, nowadays, the focus has shifted. Now I feel a deep responsibility to remember the sacrifice of serving soldiers and veterans of my own generation.

And, of course, the dead.

I’ll be keeping my meager medals in my sock drawer today…. but I’ll be wearing them in spirit. And my dangerous black beret…..! (SK)

Immediately prior to the November 2008 Presidential election, Simon was asked to put our experience and expertise in financial services issues to work as a guest columnist for Accountancy Age, a trade magazine for accountants and financial staff in the United Kingdom. The full text of the article is below or you can link to it here.

AccountancyAge, 30 Oct 2008

US election special: a mandate to reform and regulate

Simon Keymer explains why a former chairman of the federal reserve will help Obama

Two weeks ago, democratic pundit James Carville delivered a verdict on the 2008 presidential election.

The man who is nowadays known as much for his partisan rhetoric and Cajun accent as for running Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, said that, barring some unforeseen circumstance, Senator McCain could ‘…call the dogs in, wet the fire and leave the house. The hunt’s over’.

If Carville’s prediction comes true, then it is certain the New Year will see the accounting profession facing a US regime with a clear mandate to reform and regulate. Predicting accurately the form this will take is more difficult.

This is partly due to senator Obama’s meagre voting record – of his three years in the Senate, more than one has been spent campaigning for president. His platform too, gives little indication of his attitudes to accounting issues, or indeed to wider corporate governance, less some populist efforts to curb CEO pay.

The difficulty inherent in predicting an Obama administration’s behaviour can be illustrated by taking the example of US GAAP convergence with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Senator Obama has appointed Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve chairman as one of his top economic advisers, and it is expected that he will play a role in any administration.

Volcker is a man who has unequivocally expressed an ‘interest in encouraging international convergence to a single set of global accounting standards’. One would imagine that this would be a clear indication that convergence, or outright adoption of IFRS, would continue unimpeded under president Obama.

Other indicators, however, point elsewhere. Most expect Obama to make good on promises to move toward a more protectionist position, rejecting what could be seen as international interference. This, allied to the dangers of IFRS being seen as de-regulatory, could slow the process.

Some dismiss charges of a protectionist mindset in the Obama camp, and it is true that some of the more strident ‘USA first’ language has been toned down since the need to appeal to the democratic base in the primaries ended. The broader point remains, however. The potential for a democratic controlled congress pressuring a democratic president to dispense with free-trade orthodoxy has implications for the profession that go further than IFRS, extending to the US-UK tax treaty, the debate surrounding auditor consolidation, and, indeed, on efforts to manage the extra-territoriality ramifications of Sarbanes Oxley.

For accountants seeking a ray of sunshine in all this, it is possible that a democratic administration may shy away from the prevailing republican notion that the Wall Street meltdown would not have been nearly so bad were it not for the influence of mark-to-market accounting.

Unfortunately, even that possibility is likely to fall foul of the likelihood that president Obama and his top-dollar advisers will find their room to manoeuvre significantly limited by the reality of economic circumstance.

Simon Keymer is the lead consultant and CEO of the Keymer Group, an issues management consulting firm specialising in financial services, based in Washington DC

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One of our core competencies has always been crisis planning and handling. Here is an article from the Jacksonville Business Journal quoting Simon and proving our expertise in this area.

Strategies, May 25-31, 2007, Page 19

In Case of Emergency…

As hurricane season approaches, crisis planning is best offense


By Dolly Penland, Correspondent

The theft of critical inventory, the death of a key manager, a natural disaster – all companies, large or small, will face a crisis at some point, but those with crisis management plans in place can handle whatever life throws at them better than companies that do not.

A 1997 Oxford University study found that while all catastrophes have an initial negative impact on a company’s value, those that manage a successful recovery from a crisis actually gained an average of 5 percent in net stock as opposed to corporations with an ineffective response to a large-scale emergency. Those companies lost an average of 15 percent in net stock value in the months following the crisis.

Small businesses are especially vulnerable to sudden upheavals. “The kinds of clients we work with are robust enough to rebound, but if [smaller companies] don’t handle a crisis effectively, you can lose everything for the sake of a little planning,” said Simon Keymer, CEO of the public relations firm, The Keymer Group. “You might lose your entire livelihood.”

The institute for Crisis Management reports that natural disasters, white-collar crime, class-action lawsuits, labor issues and mismanagement are the top causes of crisis. Poor management is responsible for more than half of serious problems at companies of all sizes, with employees – at 28 percent – and outside forces – at 19 percent – causing the remainder in 2005.

“Whether it’s a natural disaster or a man-caused disaster, recovery still involves the same steps,” said Doug Wilder, president of coaching firm, Wilder Business Success. “If you have a plan, you can quickly find out what [needs to be done to] salvage the situation and try to make it better.”

Wilder speaks from experience. In 2001, fire raged through his home and home office. “After that, we worked out of the La Quinta hotel,” he said. Being able to work under any condition is important to recovering from a crisis. “It’s fascinating because everything that was important the day before was no longer important after the fire, yet I still had to focus on my business” despite circumstances.

The foundation of any crisis plan is solid communication. That means being able to reach and be reached by employees, customers, vendors, suppliers, bankers, accountants, insurance agents and even the public, if need be.

Patsy Underwood, president of Atlantic Laser Office Products, lost everything in 1996 when a fire razed her business. She credits good communication with keeping her business going. “We made deliveries the day after the fire,” she said. “We didn’t miss a beat.”

Underwood said it is critical to work with professionals who understand your business, to not only help it run better in good times, but when problems arise. “We had excellent professionals who helped us recover,” quickly. She added it is critical to have all the company’s data backed-up and stored off-site. An emergency reserve account isn’t a bad idea either.

Any crisis plan should include several detailed potential scenarios. “It should be very specific on what happens and who does what,” said Zelda Fraden, president of Fraden’s Produce, which was slammed by a tornado caused by Tropical Storm Bonnie in 2004. The company was making scheduled deliveries the day after the storm.

“In an emergency, sometimes people panic and they don’t know what to do,” Fraden said. “If you have a written plan, everyone already knows what their responsibilities are. Have your staff help write that plan.”

Once a plan is in place, simulations can ensure things run smoothly in an actual crisis. “It’s like a fire drill,” Keymer said. For clients, “we can do everything, even hiring actors as hostile media; we try to be as realistic as possible. But it can be done at the desk, just to make sure the information goes to the right people. It doesn’t have to take a whole morning. They don’t have to take their eye off running their business. It’s just making sure everyone understands their priorities and how they act together as a team.”

Should disaster strike, don’t be afraid to ask for help from family, friends and even competitors. “We had an incredible outpouring of assistance,” Fraden said. “Our competitors allowed us to stay in their facilities as long as we needed. Establish good relationships with your competitors and practice the Golden Rule.”

Fraden’s Produce turned its crisis into an opportunity for growth. “We didn’t lose any customers and we’re now in a fantastic facility with room to grow, and we have expanded what we do,” Fraden said. “We feel lucky that we have survived and thrived.”

Atlantic Laser has also not only rebounded, but continues to grow as well. For Underwood, the most important element of a recovery is a positive attitude. “We adopted the tag line of ‘We’re all fired up,’” she said. “My daughter, Lisa Moore, our marketing director, [re]-designed our logo with flames coming up through it. You have to laugh and suck it up and move on.”

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