CHICAGO - If there's one communications approach that's sure to doom you on the Web, it's relying on cookie-cutter PR and forgetting to customize messages for the many audiences you're trying to reach.
So it's not enough to simply post your company's annual report or press releases on your site. You need to come up with innovative ways to communicate with online users during your organization's ups and downs.
That means you don't want to do what Black & Decker does and just come across as an online warehouse for products (see PR NEWS, 7/21//97) and you don't want to miss the chance to correct public-perception problems: at TWA's site, http://www.twa.com., recent archived remarks by CEO Gerald Gitner (at a meeting for shareholders) do little to repair the criticism that came the airline's way once it failed to show a sympathetic face after Flight 800 crashed last year. Ironically, the idea of using the online world for damage control seems to have flown right by TWA's communication execs.
Marrying longtime PR tactics to a new real-time, interactive thrust has become the formula for blue-chip PR, according to speakers who presented case studies on how their companies have used PR as an effective communications tool at the International Quality and Productivity Center's Effective Public Relations on the Internet conference held here recently.
"[On the Internet], you're not talking to an audience in a room," says Joe Crawley, Web master for AMR Corp., Fort Worth, Texas, the parent company for American Airlines Inc. and The Sabre Group, a company whose cyberspace forays include the popular http://www.travelocity.com site. "You're talking to a parade of people just passing by.And you have to think, 'How are they going to use this?'"
The Price Tag of Online PR
Unfortunately, there are no blue-light specials that'll buy you a top-notch site. Corporate execs are reaching deeper into company coffers to make sure they can fund online ventures and are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their Web sites. According to Crawley, AMR earmarks $350,000 annually to maintain its Web site, http://www.amrcorp.com.
In the same vein, Amoco Corp., Chicago, allotted about $300,000 in start-up costs for its Web site, http://www.amoco.com, which launched in November 1995, says Gregory Duncan, Internet project leader for Amoco. The company also spends about that amount each year to keep the site current and to guarantee hits: last month, 873,951 visitors went to the URL.
And with that money, Amoco professionals overseeing the site have commingled its investor relations and PR efforts (providing shareholder- and media-directed content) with its company profile and business strategies (it lists all of its locations overseas as well as its products and services).
But it also delves into corporate-reputation issues by profiling its environmental/philanthropic face (a feature last week detailed its foundation's $10,000 contribution to the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell, Ga.)
Corp. Communicators' Role
Amoco Corp. certainly isn't unique in the way it's viewed the Web, but its communications philosophy is a prototype worth paying attention to because of the role PR has played.
"Some companies look at Web sites and consider them to pretty much be a computer-driven function," says Duncan. "At Amoco, we consider it a way of presenting a unified face. And our media relations arm, versus just the corporation's information technology (IT) team, has played an important part in the strategic planning."
Case in point: It's been the company's seven-member media relations staff (out of about 100 professionals that make up its public and government affairs department) guiding Amo-co's nearly 25 business groups in exploring what kind of Web presence they need.
The media relations staff also shoulders some additional responsibility when it comes to the Web site: it oversees the daily news releases and daily news clips (a corporate library staffer surfs the Web, including major publications like the New York Times and wire services like Reuters, to come up with five to eight stories that magnify media coverage about Amoco and/or industry news) which are posted on the site daily.
Media relations, according to Duncan, is also taking on another role for the site, which is being redesigned with a relaunch planned for late summer or early fall.
In the future, there will be a domain for "hot news" and communications professionals are hashing out how the Web site will be used should a crisis arise. That plan includes an area that will have an inventory of maps and pictures (that can be downloaded by journalists) and refinery and plant information, according to Gregory.
"This is inherent in how we view communications," Gregory adds. "We're very conscious of our public image and that's what's behind this - the drive to constantly stay aware of how we're represented to our publics."
A Community Voice
Courting the press can't be the sole focus for your online venture. A litany of companies are using the Internet for community relations purposes.
On the West Coast, San Diego Gas & Electric (http://www.sdge.com) has found a way of breaking through both time and geographic barriers by becoming a 24-hour national information leader.
The site includes everything from a calendar of events, including electric vehicle symposiums and eco-friendly events, to a virtual tour of a power plant and cost-saving tips.
"[When news about the Internet began to surface], we didn't view it as some exotic creature that dropped from the sky - we viewed it as another communications tool," says Edward Van Herik, a senior communications representative with SDG&E and another IQPC speaker.
Its most recent site version went up in March 1996 and the company spends "well under $50,000" in yearly maintenance, including in-house upkeep and outsourcing.
Van Herik said planners held 11 focus groups to determine what its target audiences wanted. Thus, its site - which had the potential to be a content hodgepodge instead of a multifaceted PR blueprint - has both a business push (it offers a business savings plan and a newsroom) and a family feel. (Joe Crawley, 817/931-1052; Gregory Duncan, 312/856-5388; Edward Van Herik, 619/696-2000)
Amoco's Web Site: A Well-Oiled Machine
At Amoco, the media relations branch shoulders a crucial task - and it's one that has helped the corporation mete out its online corporate philosophy. It's responsible for a "living document" that's kept on the corporate intranet, detailing how the Web site should be used by Amoco's business units. Those guidelines include:
Source: Gregory Duncan, Amoco |