Perception Drivers Blog

Let’s dispense with full disclosures first: We are big fans of teddy bears. The father of one of our FolFry colleagues, in fact, purchased them for each of his children and grandchildren when they were infants, taking an exacting, almost scientific approach to selection based on size (proper baby-to-bear proportion being key), softness and other factors.

That teddy-bear-loving fellow probably would have lined up – as did thousands of other plush-toy fans – for Build-a-Bear Workshop’s recent pay-your-age promotion. The idea behind the one-day, traffic-building event was that children could create and take home a furry companion for just a few dollars, with prices capped at $29 for older teddy bear lovers.

In theory, it was a great promotional idea. But in practice, not so much as stores became so overcrowded that the event had to be canceled in just a few hours for safety considerations. (Build-a-Bear’s subsequent apologies and efforts to rectify the mess with $15 coupons was a good step to put the proverbial stuffing back in the bear.)

The fiasco is a reminder that even the best-laid plans can come completely off the rails. Build-a-Bear isn’t the first well-intentioned company to have its promotional activities go awry. But it underscores precisely why, when planning for events and programs, due consideration be given to what can go wrong and have preparedness measures in place for worst-case scenarios. A few important questions to ask:

• What are the worst things that could happen?
• How will we respond in the event of negative events?
• Who are the stakeholders we need to be prepared to address?
• When should we act and how will we activate our response?

Don’t get us wrong. We are optimistic folks at FolFry and prefer to focus energies on planning for what will go right – and ensuring that it does. And, while we are the first to acknowledge that it’s impossible to envision all the things that can go wrong with a promotion, the exercise of simply considering various “what ifs?” is a step in the right direction.

In the 1990s, the Wall Street Journal ran a campaign for itself selling the benefits of—what else?—advertising in the Journal. (Let’s recall the pre-internet days, when the four broadcast networks, print outlets such as the Journal and the New York Times, and newsweeklies Time and Newsweek were the ad domains of blue-chip brands.) In that Journal campaign, “I Wish I had Done That Ad,” agency creative directors gushed with admiration—and a hint of envy—about others’ impactful ads they’d wished they had done, ending with a plug for why they make media buys in the Journal.
 

Read More

When reviewing assets on a balance sheet, those with even basic accounting knowledge will zero in on line items such as cash, cash equivalents and inventories.  

Read More

It’s an exciting day at FoleyFreisleben LLC (FolFry). Today, we are proud to announce the launch of Captivate Public Relations & Marketing, an entirely new agency incubated by FolFry.

In conceiving and co-founding, Captivate, a partner agency of FolFry, our objective is to more seamlessly integrate the corporate and marketing public relations functions. In these trend- and brand-conscious times, FolFry is regularly contacted by enterprises that seek help targeting and breaking through to consumer audiences. Clients are furiously trying to navigate a fast-changing media landscape and need solutions—traditional, digital marketing, launches and activations—to captivate consumers by illuminating and elevating their products and services. (Hence, the Captivate tagline: Illuminate. Elevate. Captivate.)

FolFry already provides corporate and financial relations, reputation management, and crisis communications to many of these same type consumer companies—our firm’s 20-year association with Calavo Growers, Inc., the world’s largest avocado marketer, is a client case-in-point. However, we have historically turned away from the product and services marketing to stay focused on our areas of specialization.

Without diluting FolFry’s focus, we seized an opportunity to seamlessly integrate a new agency—with its own dynamic leadership team and culture—and capitalize on excellent cross-marketing potential between the partner firms, offering our clients a broader range of services.

It brings many of us at FolFry, as well, closer to professional roots in consumer public relations. Our team’s credentials include implementing branding campaigns for clients such as Pepsi, Chrysler, Michelin and Burger King, as well as destination and travel programs for Hilton, Singapore, Republic of Ireland and LVMH Moet Hennessy, too.

As our colleagues at Captivate pondered: does the world really need another consumer-product and services public relations and marketing agency? While the word “need” is relative, we believe there is always room in the marketplace for fresh, creative and captivating ideas.

In the early days of rock ‘n roll, radio disc jockeys decided which songs got the airplay that would make them hits. To make sure DJs played their tunes, record labels used “payola” in the form of cash or other goodies.

When listeners learned about these payoffs to style-setters they admired, the resulting scandal triggered Congressional investigations and ended a number of careers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that today’s investors have reason to wonder if the opinions of securities analysts about a company’s shares are distorted by a modern form of payola.

With declining stock-trading commissions, brokerage firms increasingly rely on fees they charge institutional investors for arranging private meetings with the top executives of publicly traded companies. Those fees total about $2 billion annually, the Journal estimated.

The CEOs and CFOs of these companies know there’s a high demand for face time with them. A number of them have decided to grant this access only to analysts who publish positive reports about their companies.

Analysts who rate their stock a “buy” get to bring in their institutional investment clients. Those who rate it a “sell” get shut out – and forego the hefty fees they would collect for arranging these meetings.

According to the Journal, success at pulling in access fees can determine a third of an analyst’s annual income. That provides a strong incentive for analysts to write upbeat reports on the companies they cover.

In addition, investment funds are likely to steer stock trades, and their accompanying commissions, to brokerages that are able to arrange private meetings for them with corporate executives.

Companies that acknowledged granting or denying access based on analyst ratings include Coach, Inc., Sprint Corp., Walt Disney Co., Dollar Tree Inc. and many others.

Individual investors and small funds may still value the opinions of analysts. But that seems to be less true for institutional investors. One analyst says he was sometimes told to sit outside the meetings he had been paid to arrange.

The powerful financial incentives on brokerage houses and their analysts to provide upbeat reports about the companies they cover has put them on a path that is very likely to erode investors’ perception of the value of the advice they provide.

What does this mean for a company’s investor relations program? If institutional investors are willing to pressure analysts in order to get direct access to CEOs and CFOs, why not focus your IR efforts on reaching out directly to these funds? Think about a non-deal road show to communicate your well-presented story to an audience that clearly wants to hear it.

Each day, we are deluged with messages—digital and social media posts, as well as e-marketing blasts, which blur indistinguishably, sap our attention spans, and fall flat in their intended purposes of capturing mindshare and being memorable.  

Read More

We at FolFry have always advocated that corporate citizenship begins in the C-suite. 

Read More

MILAN--A visit here this year is not complete without checking in on the Expo Milano 2015, which runs through October 31. Other than the Olympic Games--and possibly World Cup--there is no greater coming together of countries.  

Read More

There is an axiom in the public-relations profession that products and issues—political and nonprofit causes or social-impact initiatives, specifically—do not truly “arrive” until they have a celebrity name attached to them.  

Read More

Everyone knew the news was coming—albeit not precisely when. Yet, the “digital wildfire” that accompanied Caitlyn Jenner’s public debut on June 1 via tweet of her upcoming Vanity Fair cover story and pictorial took even the most Internet savvy by surprise. 

Read More