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Renowned Irish Songwriter Visits Portland

During the past several years we’ve hosted Speakeasy events featuring internationally acclaimed filmmakers, Oregon Book Award Winners, journalists and esteemed editors of Portland publications. Now we can add a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter to the list.

We’re delighted to host Mark Geary on May 18th for a “Living Room” concert in AM:PM PR’s living room, located at 2006 SE Clinton.

Mark Geary RSVPMark is one of Ireland’s premier singer-songwriters and throughout the past 20 years he has toured all over Europe, the US and Australia, and has shared the stage with performers including Josh Ritter, Bell X1, Coldplay, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders and Joe Strummer. His records evoke comparisons to artists including Van Morrison, John Lennon, Elliott Smith and Richard Thompson.

Fresh off an autumn tour supporting Glen Hansard (Once, The Swell Season, The Frames) Geary is on his first West Coast jaunt since he was here with Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, and is performing a series of private house concerts in Washington and Oregon.

Geary’s AM:PM PR performance is Wednesday, May 18th with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. The event is free, but a $10 donation to the artist is recommended. RSVP required.

Again, you must RSVP with Mike Phillips if you’d like to join.

Click here to listen to Mark on Spotify.

For more:

Tesla preso chart spike

Will Tesla Become a Victim of Its Own Success?

How Tesla Can Keep Customers Happy – Even if It Keeps Them Waiting

The exciting unveiling of Tesla’s new Model3 attracted more than 325,000 pre-orders in 72 hours. The Model3 may be the first financially accessible mass-market electric car with a 200+ mile range.

But initial demand producing three times the pre-orders initially anticipated means Tesla could face production delays. Tesla’s communication team would be wise to anticipate and prepare for potential PR challenges caused by missing delivery deadlines to customers. In this week’s podcast, AM:PM PR Co-Founder Pat McCormick, shares advice for protecting a company’s reputation and keeping customers happy when manufacturing challenges delay deliveries.


The Risk of Success

In the past few years we’ve witnessed several overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter projects frustrate their backers and generate negative media coverage when the challenges to manufacturing at scale were coupled with significantly underestimated demand.

pyro pet candle Portland-based Coolest Cooler broke a Kickstarter record (previously set by Pebble Watch) raising more than $13 million from backers. Last month, The Oregonian reported that the company’s founder is now seeking a $15 million injection to help fulfill its remaining orders.

I had my own experience with Kickstarter delays after ordering this cat-shaped candle that reveals a metallic skeleton when fully melted. Fortunately, it wasn’t really a must-have item, so I had forgotten about it when the candle finally arrived, six months later. Their communication team was off the hook!

Making a Plan

For any launch, a crisis communication plan is as important as the go-to-market plan. In this podcast, Pat shares tips for preparing a crisis communication plan, and the role the communications team should have in all stages of the planning process.

 

Award-winning reporter Chris McGreal of The Guardian

Reporting Controversy and Creating It – Chris McGreal


Guardian’s Chris McGreal Featured Guest at AM:PM PR’s Speakeasy

From Rwanda to Ferguson, The Guardian’s Chris McGreal, has been covering many of the world’s historic events for the past three decades. He’s won a series of awards for his coverage of Africa, Israel and the US and even published a book about the complicity of the Catholic Church in  Rwanda’s genocide – Chaplains of the Militia. McGreal agreed to come share some is harrowing stories with the AM:PM PR Speakeasy guests and it was a hit.

Chris McGreal at ampm pr

McGreal is a member of the WARM Foundation – an organization “dedicated to war reporting and war art, as well as history and memories of war, and dedicated to the promotion of emerging talents and to education.”

Currently, McGreal is writing about the US from the Pacific NW for The Guardian. He is a former Washington correspondent and was previously posted in Johannesburg and in Jerusalem. Before joining The Guardian, McGreal was a BBC journalist in Central America and merchant seaman.

 

Racism, Government Secrets and Drugs – Stories with Impact

Chris McGreal's coverage of wikileaks

As part of the team reporting on WikiLeaks, McGreal’s work has been shared on sites across the world. In 2014, McGreal covered the Ferguson riots and tweeted the experience sharing gripping images from within the protests. This past December he wrote an analysis of the behind-the-scenes secrets of the US-Cuba deal.  He has covered Oregon’s marijuana legalization and Portland’s own issue with police racism and this week wrote about Netanyahu’s speech to congress, calling it: “long on speech, short on terror.”

 

Many More Compelling Stories 

McGreal wowed the Speakeasy crowd with stories about what he saw and learned covering violent political situations and the fallout he’s seen from his award-winning reports on volatile political issues. If you’re not already a regular reader of his articles, start now. You won’t be disappointed.

 

Mike Phillips - Washington... University

Mr. Phillips Goes To Washington (state university)

Mr. Phillips, a.k.a. Mike, shared his thoughts on writing effective cover letters and resumes with students at Washington State University in Vancouver and, now, you.

Last month I traveled to the beautiful campus at Washington State University in Vancouver where I was a guest lecturer for a technical and professional writing class taught by professor Craig Buchner.  I spoke about writing effective cover letters and resumes for job applicants.

Although I somehow managed to talk for an hour and fifteen minutes, the essence of my presentation can be distilled into two simple points:

1. Know your audience.

2. Check for spelling and grammatical errors.

This may appear to be non-information, but believe me, if you’re out applying for jobs right now, many among your competition are sending the same generic resume and cover letter to all prospective employers without regard for the company or position they are applying for. If you are guilty of such things, this blog is for you.

 

How does this look in practice?

Writing better resumes and cover letters

Now, I have enough empathy to recognize that applicants resort to these tactics in an effort to cover the most ground possible while expending the least amount of personal energy. Unfortunately, this is a flawed tactic, mostly because the people getting hired aren’t using this tactic. As a golden rule, you always want to personalize your writing to the specific job and company you’re applying to.

At AM:PM PR we’ve seen cover letters that begin with “Dear to whom it may concern” – kind of a mashup between two boringly generic introductions. People will sometimes do this when they can’t find the appropriate hiring manager. But you can get around this problem using Google to find the correct contact. Or if it’s a small company, identify someone that appears to be senior-level that you feel you might have rapport with due to common interests or experiences.  Personalize your outreach, but don’t be too cheesy (or stalker-like).

In other cases we’ve seen people gloating about their attention to detail in the same paragraph as a major typo. We’ve received long-winded cover letters that read like novellas, yet have no direct application to any position we’d ever have at our business.

You're hired!Another writing tip is to include some information in your cover letter to acknowledge that you’re familiar with the company and position that you’re applying for. Spend some time with the prospective employer’s website, read some recent news coverage. Use what you learn and insert it into the cover letter to foreshadow how your resume will be directly applicable to the position you’re applying for, and demonstrate some enthusiasm.

Finally, tweak your resume so that your past experience is relevant to the position you’re applying for. If your previous experience is baggage handling and you’re applying for a writing position, you may need to get creative. But don’t get so creative as to lose credibility.

 

A Final Word

am:pm pr tips

First impressions are important, and even seemingly inconsequential typos can make for a dour first impression among potential employers. You can’t underestimate the importance of good writing, punctuation and grammar. If these are areas where you lack expertise, it may be worthwhile to call in an expert to help you.

You can avoid all the aforementioned problems if you customize your resume and double-check your work before submitting. Two seemingly simple ideas, but woefully lacking from a surprising amount of job queries and applications.

For more, here’s a handy WikiHow entry titled, “How to Write an Email Asking for an Internship.” 

 

For future insights and ideas from AM:PM PR, like us on Facebook.

REPOST: Cool Spaces: AM:PM PR’s Southeast pride (Photos)

Earlier today our office was featured in The Portland Business Journal for our “Cool Space.” We’ve linked to the original piece and reposted much of the article below and hope y’all find the opportunity to make your way in here someday, either through our Speakeasy events or otherwise.

* * *

Cool Spaces: AM:PM PR’s Southeast pride (Photos)

You can tell a lot about a company from its entryway.

Walking into AM:PM PR’s Southeast Clinton Street offices, for instance, one barely feels as if they’ve entered an interior space. The floor plan revolves around natural light, conveyed by the firm’s (it shares the space with the tech firm 7/APPS) massive north-facing windows.

The firm occupies a neat space in the Cyrk Building, owned by Will Emery and Bonnie Serkin. DECA Architects designed the office while B & G Builders, with a eye on using sustainable materials, built it.

It’s a keenly planned layout that evokes its Southeast Portland environs (many of the materials are recycled or repurposed) as well as AM:PM PR’s sense of fun (an image of firm co-owner Pat McCormick depicts his penchant for wearing socks with sandals).

Click on this link for more glimpses of the AM:PM PR and 7/APPS space.

Reading Event at AM:PM PR on Thursday – Please Join!

shards by ismet prcic

Thursday at 7:00 p.m. we’re hosting Ismet Prcic for an evening event at AM:PM PR headquarters. He’s the critically acclaimed author of the the award-winning novel “Shards.” This intimate, fun and conversational discussion will cover his book and recent film success. A film Ismet co-wrote titled “Imperial Dreams” was recently selected for an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.

If you’d like to join our reading event, please reserve a spot at Eventbrite so we know how many people to expect. Here is the link.

ABOUT SHARDS – Ismet Prcic’s brilliant and provocative debut novel is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to move forward he must “write everything.” The result is a great rattle bag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. And as Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man—real or imagined—named Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s New World identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one li

ving it. Shards is a thrilling read—a harrowing war story, a stunningly original coming-of-age novel, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family. Remarkable for its propulsive energy and stylistic daring, Shards marks the debut of a gloriously gifted writer.

ismet prcic

ABOUT ISMET – Ismet Prcic was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow and in 2013 he received the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, presented by Literary Arts. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.

Rebranding PR 3.0 – Introducing Speakeasy

We started a little informal gathering we dubbed “PR 3.0” back in 2009 as a way to stay up to date on the latest social networking trends. PR and communications were changing rapidly so we assigned staff members specific areas of study so they could educate the rest of the team at the weekly get-together. In the beginning we religiously monitored Facebook, Twitter, social apps like Four Square, SEO and video. We held our meetings every Thursday at 4pm over drinks in our office or at a cool spot with wi-fi. We started inviting peers and clients and anyone who was interested, and the gatherings evolved.

Four years in social network time is like 40 human years. Changes in social networks are happening daily and the list of social networks worth paying attention to has grown substantially. Our jobs as communicators are increasingly more complicated with so many challenges to take stock in, while traditional media outlets shrink, and catching the attention of overburdened reporters becomes an Olympic-sized challenge.

We recently realized the name for the group was dated when a 17-year-old high school student came to our office for an informational interview to learn more about PR. She asked what 3.0 referred to.  She had never heard of Web 2.0. The name hadn’t been cool for years. We must have looked like dinosaurs.

We decided then to give our PR 3.0 meetings a makeover. With the addition of new team members, new interests, new strategy, and tactics and technology making waves in our industry, we began the search for a name that fully encapsulates this wild industry (and sounds professional enough so that our colleagues from other companies can talk their bosses into attending). After several failed attempts at witticisms, a visitor named Brie Shea suggested the name “Speakeasy.” Perfect.

So, there you have it. We’ll be hosting Speakeasy gatherings twice a month.

Click here to join the Facebook Group to receive and share the latest news.

We’ll try once a month to have a special honored guest we think is extra smart about a topic. Kelli Matthews, University of Oregon’s most popular PR instructor, has already agreed to make a special trip up for one to talk about what she’s teaching the next generation of PR pros. Our next Speakeasy gathering is planned for September 19, 2013 in our office. We’ll have some adult beverages on hand to get your big thoughts flowing. Who knows what could be happening in communications three weeks from now? If you can predict it, you’ll win.

PR 3.0 gets all up in Linkedin

linkedin logoThis platform has been adding new features and updates during the past month that may dramatically alter how PR professionals, small businesses and jobseekers use the platform.

At PR 3.0 on Thursday, May 9th we’ll discuss some of the latest developments including the new Facebook-style mention feature, visual portfolio feature – and discuss how they’re trying to corner the market for both job-hunters and established professionals.

For a primer, check out the following links. Feel free to share any additional links or comments that may facilitate further conversation.

LinkedIn Now Lets You Add a Visual Portfolio to Your Profile

LinkedIn Adds Facebook-Style Mentions Of People And Companies In Status Updates And Home-Page Comments

LinkedIn’s New Recruiter Homepage Gives Headhunters Better Search, Status And News

linkedin screenshot

On branding and social media

 

Have you found yourself censoring images, ideas or other posts on social media platforms because you feel they might cause negative feedback from certain members of your online community? This is an example of managing your brand identity, whether you’re conscious of it or not, and many people and businesses have been struggling with the act of branding ever since the first adorable baby animal images started circulating on the Internet.

Make no mistake, managing brand identity on social networks is a difficult task. Additional considerations include when to post, what to post, how to post, where to post, how to respond to criticism or a communication crisis. With all this pressure, some folks are on a personal quest to determine a special formula or to instill a set of rules to follow that will ensure social media success. I don’t know that there really is a secret formula, but I suspect it comes down to one of the first social lessons that most of us learn at an early age: you’ll be far more successful being authentic and empathetic to others, versus a self-aggrandizing type-A loudmouth. In other words, just be real and be aware of your audience.

There have been some pretty atrocious examples of brands and business leaders failing to “be real” on social media and it’s had disastrous (if not amusing) effects on their brand identity. Curiously, many of these missteps have occurred after national or international tragedy, in some ill-advised effort to capitalize on a hot topic of media intrigue. Other missteps have occurred when brands have taken a stance on social issues, temporarily unaware of the people that inhabit their target audience that they’ve spent building over a period of years.

In recent days we’ve seen the following PR disasters:

*  Epicuroius advertising some scones and breakfast treats, tying the promotion into the Boston marathon bombing

*  Eden Foods opposing the contraceptive measure imposed in the new healthcare law (do they NOT know who their target consumer is?)

For a list of more social blunders, check out this article from Mashable. These examples offer a teachable moment for AM:PM PR friends and clients.

We’ve drummed up a list of five additional suggestions on branding and social media to ensure your brand doesn’t follow in these footsteps.

  1. Don’t try to attach your brand to a crisis. I would argue that you shouldn’t do it at all, but some folks have big hearts and feel the need to express their sympathy for a tragic event. If you must, let your audience know that the employees of your business have their hearts and minds in the right place. That is real human emotion and it’s fine to express. Once. But trying to tie a product promotion or sale into a disaster is just gross, and above all, not what a real person would do. Several brands including Kenneth Cole and The Gap have had their brand images tarnished by thoughtless Tweets.
  2. Share information that interests real people.  I like kitty posts as much as the next person, but for brand integrity I try to limit myself. As challenging as it is, I do so because sharing kitty images and related social media memes does nothing for my brand. If I do ten kitty-like posts and then one post related to something business-related, my target audience may have already tuned out (or worse, hidden ALL of my posts).
  3. Don’t oversell yourself. When I was a kid, this guy Jack Roberts was famous in Seattle-area TV commercials for his many, many commercials saying “I wont be undersold.” While his marketing message has stuck with me for 25 years, it’s not an effective strategy for social media. People will get annoyed and tune you out. However, if you get a windfall and want to buy a bunch of TV advertising, give it a shot. Also check out Chuck Curcio for inspiration.
  4. Don’t create alter egos to bash your critics or competitors. Falling under the “be real” requirement, the founder of Dilbert and CEO of Whole Foods have something in common. Both created fake alter egos to praise and defend themselves online, generating some negative publicity for their brand as a result. Here’s a feature in the NY Times for John Mackey, which is usually a good thing, but this time it wasn’t.
  5. Make sure you know your customers before sharing your beliefs. In the case of Eden Foods, CEO Michael Potter (no relation to Harry) obviously had temporary amnesia of his customers when he sued against having contraception covered for his employees. Then he kept digging that hole deeper, as shown in this piece from Salon. You have to be careful when taking political postures that represent your public brand or image.

This is a snapshot of some considerations to keep in mind when branding your online business or persona, based on our observations from recent events. While the platforms are always changing, the same general rules always remain. Be authentic, be real, and in the immortal words of George Carlin’s character Rufus, from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “be excellent to each other.”

 

Branding, Communications and Public Relations: Questions to Answer Before Working With a PR Firm

At AM:PM PR we begin each new client relationship with the hope it will lead to a long-term partnership. We believe the more we know about a prospective client’s business, the better we can understand the qualities that differentiate them from their competition, thus allowing us to do a better job helping to communicate each client’s unique story to targeted audiences.

During our information gathering process, we like to ask a lot of questions – a process that is beneficial to both parties. Answering the following questions provides potential clients an opportunity to think about the way they communicate about their business, product or service. If you’re ready to ask us how we may help you, copy and paste the following questions into the body of an email with your answers and email them to: info@ampmpr.com.

As you ponder your answers, are you learning anything new about your business, your brand, or your current need for marketing and PR assistance? Here are some branding, communications and public relations questions to ask yourself before working with a PR firm.

Introductory Questions:

What short-term and long-term goals are you hoping to achieve with PR and marketing services?

Have you worked with a PR firm in the past? What was your experience?

What are you looking for from a PR firm?

What is your budget for PR/Marketing?

What is the PR assignment, as you see it? How will you define success?

Your Brand:

What is your positioning statement? What sets your brand apart from the competition?

What is your brand personality/culture?

What are some examples of your messaging?

Have you tested your messaging?

Communications Focus:

What is the background of your business (your history, your story)?

Who are your target audiences? What is the demographic and psychographic profile of your key customers? What are your key insights into these audiences?

What media does your target audience consume?

How do they currently learn about your business/product?

What is your consumer promise?

Who is your competition?

Do you advertise? If so, where?

Website:

When was the last time you made improvements to your website?

Do you have a budget for improvements to your website?

Do you use and monitor your web analytics? Are you making adjustments based on your analytics reports?

What are the search terms that lead visitors to your site?

Are you blogging?

Social Networking:

Please describe how you are engaged with social media? Which tools are you using and what do you share?

Are there any social media tools you refuse to use? If so, why?

Curious to learn more about our services? Please contact us to learn more by clicking here.