It may be taboo in public relations, but Heath Shackleford, PR
manager at American Healthways Inc. (Nashville), admits that
he "always hated press releases."
But he changed his tune about the effectiveness of press
releases after the company - which specializes in comprehensive
disease management for 1.5 million patients via 50 major health
plans - overhauled its Web site last year (http://www.americanhealthways.com).
Prior to the overhaul, "our information was available on our
home page, but it didn't have weight or a brand identity that
people could associate with in getting our information,"
Shackelford says. So, working in concert with the
marketing-communications department, Shackleford helped to create
two separate "microsites" specifically tailored to support PR
initiatives initiated by the company.
The microsites, http://www.patient-physician.com,
launched in February 2004, and http://www.rewardingquality.com,
launched earlier this month, disseminate information on the results
of an annual conference American Healthways holds with Johns
Hopkins University that tackles best practices in the
patient-physician relationship and other vital healthcare
issues.
With the sites up and running - patient-physician.com has had
more than more 10,500 hits so far - Shackelford now considers press
releases a much better option: "It just seems like our press
releases gets disseminated more widely via the microsites - and
show up on other Web sites." That, in turn, has generated more
knowledge about American Healthways among its main constituents -
healthcare providers and physicians - as well as the greater
healthcare community. "Suddenly I'm seeing our information getting
pickup in a meaningful way, rather than just firing off [press
releases] into outer space," Shackleford says. "People are seeking
us out, whereas before they didn't know about us."
The Web certainly has come of age in a short time. Earlier this
decade - with memories of the dot-com debacle still fresh among
marketing professionals - the Internet was perhaps considered the
third rail of marketing communications: Touch it and your brand
could get burned.
But in the last couple of years, as skepticism about the Web has
waned, the Internet has grown tremendously at the workplace and the
home (see chart), presenting PR execs with a plethora of choices on
how to enhance their electronic communications. These include
tracking the blogosphere (see PR News, Feb. 23, 2005) to
finding ways to making sure your product and/or service shows up on
the first page of increasingly popular search engines like
Google and Yahoo!
For Andre Lawless, director of marketing communications for
Ecast Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of MP3-enabled
jukeboxes and gaming devices, using an Internet service provider
(ISP) for his online communications saves him a boatload of
time.
The ISP, http://www.iPressroom.com, which
launched in 1999, distributes regular online surveys that take the
pulses of Ecast's vendors on such items as sales and customer
satisfaction. "Each survey we send out takes the place of 20 or 30
hours of phone work," Lawless says, adding that "rather than create
a marketing plan from anecdotal information from our marketing guys
in the hallway, we thought it would be more intelligent to go
directly to our customers and find out what's relevant to
them."
iPressroom.com also serves as a corporate online media center
for Ecast, enabling Lawless and his clients to post, say, company
e-newsletters, blogs, online disclosures, photos, and RSS news
feeds and streaming media - all designed for those media reps who
cover the digital-jukebox space. "The more you can give them the
more likelihood it's going to get covered," Lawless says.
Eric Schwartzman, managing partner of Schwartzman
Associates (Los Angeles), which represents Ecast - and which
also uses iPressroom.com to power its Web site, http://www.schwartzmanpr.com -
adds that online pressrooms "democratize the distribution of
information and let's you extend the sphere of influence beyond the
media to your industry and community."
Online communications can also impact public policy. Honey Rand,
president of The Environmental PR Group (Tampa), which seeks
to educate the public on environmental concerns and whose clients
have included DuPont and The World Bank, says one of
the organization's main Web sites, http://www.thephosphaterisk.com,
has helped the group get its message out about what it calls the
"risk" of phosphate strip-mining, in which technology is used to
dig into the ground to get the phosphate ore.
In April, the group, which has been engaged in a three-year
battle with the strip-mining industry about activities near the
Peace River Basin area in Charlotte County, Fla., will revise the
Web site to include more online lessons about the risks of strip
mining, using photographs, short movies and hot links related to
the issue.
Rand is confident that, through her group's Web presence, "the
risk will be managed and [the industry] will have to reduce the
threat to the public, such as the pollution of drinking water
supplies and accidental spills." Other environmental groups,
including The Audubon Society and the Sierra Club,
will, in turn, cross-pollinate the information to their
constituencies.
Another benefit: Rand doesn't have to create separate
information packets for the media reps following the debate as well
as for state and local legislators and environmental lobbyists.
"It's very simple. I can send them the link, and they can evaluate
it and get more details," Rand says, adding that measurement stats
show people stay on the site an average of a half-hour.
Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO of New York City-based eMarketer,
which aggregates e-business and Internet statistics, stresses that
maximizing online communications often requires PR execs to, in a
sense, take a back seat, to the news du jour.
"Proactive PR is riding the wave [of big stories] and figuring
out an angle," he says. "You can put out a press advisory via
e-mail with informational facts [related to the stories], quotes or
key pieces of information that a reporter can incorporate into the
story without necessarily contacting you. It's got to have the
right tone. If it does, it can be incredibly powerful."
Contacts: Andre Lawless, 415.277.3566, [email protected]; Geoffrey
Ramsey, 212.763.6042, [email protected]; Eric
Schwartzman 310.789.2482, [email protected]; Heath
Shackleford, 615.263.7405, [email protected];
Honey Rand, 813.948.6400, [email protected]