International PR: What Makes Embedded PR Effective Globally?

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Janice Hughes

For a die-hard monarchist, this weekend has been splendid: Grand flotillas, interviews, fly-bys, concerts, all in honour (be sure to spell that with a “u”) of a woman who, yes, inherited her throne, but has made the most of the task life has handed her. In watching the panorama celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee of service, I am reminded just how international her role and indeed life has become. The BBC offers a quick test so that you can see how your international travels measure up in comparison: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17826107. She’s hit 116 countries, excluding the UK, while this Canadian has merely travelled to 8 countries, even when you include airport touch downs.

Hughes Communications ranks slightly better when you survey the international embedded PR clients served over the years. Starting with the countries closest to home, the list includes:

  • Canada: Wolf Industrial Systems
  • US: Express Logic, Real Time Logic, PolyCore Software
  • UK: LDRA
  • France: Aonix
  • Spain: Visure Solutions
  • Germany: Fast Objects
  • Netherlands: TASKING
  • Israel: Connect One
  • Australia: Altium

And, if you add the plethora of embedded and engineering editors to the mix, HughesCom site maps out the international breadth of relationships. By far the majority of editors we’re in touch with daily are American, but many technical PR interviews and articles have been placed in technical and engineering magazines throughout Germany, UK, Sweden, India, Poland, Japan, China, Brazil, and the list goes on.

In truth, the global community is what business is today whether you’re a monarch, company, or world citizen. Even if you don’t travel, your products and services do. Companies get public relations agencies to take press releases, articles, tweets, branding, Google+ and Facebook pages throughout the world…this is today’s reality. Obviously, the more internationally savvy and connected the public relations agency is, the more effective it will be in brokering goodwill with international editors and establishing your voice in their international embedded and engineering publications/sites.

How to reach international embedded editors?

Succeeding internationally involves more than just knowing the technology. In addition to knowing the technical bits, HughesCom strives to implement a number of international fundamentals. If you’re trying to gain coverage in the international technical publications, check your PR outreach to ensure the messaging and people are:

1)      Political tolerance—How internationally apolitical is your message and messengers? Can your PR agency set aside their personal prejudices and let others be republican, monarchist, socialist or some other higgledy-piggledy mix without needing to comment about how they do it (implication—better)? To resonate with international editors, curiosity and enjoyment of difference works best.

2)      English-as-Second-Language (ESL) awareness—International PR for embedded and engineering magazines is infinitely easier since English is universally embraced by the computing industry. But, if your target editors are ESL, then keep your subordinate clauses to a minimum and verb tenses easier (no would/should have been). When you pitch topics to editors and the conversation and notes extend beyond the technical vocabulary, make life easy for the ESL editor. Avoid chatting about it “raining cats and dogs” and stick to non-idiomatic dialog.

3)      Time-zone flexibility—is your account manager an “early bird” who starts work at 6 a.m. or a “night owl” who prefers to work late into the night and hit the office late? The first is a necessary evil if you’d like to reach Europe and they live on the West Coast, but if you’re really after Asian editors, the latter is ideal. Know your target audience and pay attention to what time of the day/night your prospective agency works.

4)      Multicultural ease—Since relationships make a difference, how comfortable is your PR agent with accents, international food (assuming no allergies), travel? If they were abroad, would they try a game of cricket, soccer, Tai chi or do they look bored if the casual chat goes to Manchester and not the Yankees or Pirates.

In all that you do, strive to be ever-aware that the dynamic is international. We cannot assume our audience has a similar understanding or background. We need to steer clear of idioms and do our best to pay attention to local sport, disasters, news. They say the Queen has perfected the ability to connect with her guests, asking questions about their lives, hopes, involvement. She is real, warm and gracious—invaluable assets anytime, but particularly when you’re entering into the international community.

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I Have Committed Business Sin.

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Janice Hughes

In this day and age of Google mania where some mad little gremlins sit with complicated abacuses counting the number of times people search for this or that, it is a sin to not refresh rather like the choice to not wear deodorant on a very hot day. You just shouldn’t do it!

And yet, despite being in marketing, despite pushing clients to publish releases more regularly to keep all those little Google gremlins well fed, I have been negligent. Hughes Communications, Inc. has stuck by its old site, old logo, old messaging since 2002 when it was originally put up. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”—or at least used to be wrong with that! Konrad Witte, now senior web developer at Open Systems Media, did a stellar job at putting my first website together while in his final year at the University of Vermont.

Of course, we added to it over the years. When editors wanted photo downloads, HCI’s graphic artist, KC Prescott built a press center with photos, FAQ sheets, releases in other languages. And, little beef ups like staff changes or the addition of client logos, descriptions and what HCI was doing for clients evolved as the years went by. But there was no major overhaul. After all, HCI was still writing press releases, coordinating client-press conference connections, and pitching and editing articles to the same embedded systems industry. There really didn’t seem any great reason to make a shift until…

I got annoyed. After all the gloom and doom about our economy in Q3 2010, the market picked up and was going great guns as 2011 rolled in…until it flopped again about two months later. Depending on who you listened to, the US President was either handicapped with a legacy that couldn’t be overcome or was causing the destruction of modern humanity. It was eminently clear that if anything was going to improve, shift, change for HCI, I had better make sure that I did it and NOT wait for any government anywhere to sort things out.

Strong on the “Field of Dreams” way of doing things, I called Mira Greenland, recruiting goddess of the technical world, and told her I needed some good staff. Mira—not one to simply deliver—DELIVERED! Not one, but three people I wanted to hire:
Jennifer Bodnar, Michelle Allard McMahon, and Deanna O’Donnell.

Did HCI have new clients to pay the bills? No, not yet…that’s part of the Field of Dreams bit. Deanna, blessed with unbelievably good people skills, was hired to build the company. Yes, we would continue to honor HCI’s strong roots in engineering and embedded PR, but we would also reach beyond that, taking on clients in life style areas where social media was taking off and print magazines were growing. As projects came in with specialized needs, we found subcontractors to execute a project with efficiency and skill.

It didn’t take long to realize that, if HCI was going to grow, serious infrastructure issues needed to be beefed up. HCI formed long-term partnerships with industry-leading companies such as Business Wire, Meltwater, MyMediaInfo, winning discounts that ensured clients would get the best services possible without the higher price tag. The database, a PR company’s most important IP, was built up and new relationships formed as we inched our way into new market areas like toys, children’s products, security, consumer, and requirements engineering.

And, this dinosaur of an almost-fifty-year-old entrepreneur started dipping her toe into the altogether new world of social media creating company pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Who’d have thought?! To figure out what the heck I was doing in this space, I headed back to Mira for advice and she sent me for guidance to social media speaker Jessica Miller-Merrell, who authored Tweet This: Twitter for Business. And, the whole educational social media network began. I now twitter and tweet with the best of them, care about Klout scores, post to Facebook and LinkedIn… Is there room for improvement? Absolutely! Tailoring these new services to ensure they’re effective for all communities is a mad science!

Now back to that Field of Dream’s thing: did they come? Yes, with a few false starts—you know, the grumpy old guy who didn’t want to cooperate in the movie. We found a few of them, but with Deanna’s persistence, the field is filling up and HCI is now playing some serious ball.

Today, we’ve opened our new playing field with this brand-spanking-new web site—HCI’s first since 2002, and ain’t she grand. Joshua Touster took nearly all the shots, Adrian of Sound Software designed it, and Lisa Gundlach managed the project in a momentary lull she had in a stream of projects. All of this good work is finely complemented by a splendid new Hughes Communications logo that KC designed. It all looks mighty fine.

Better yet, the new and improved HCI site captures all the changes that have been unfolding over the last year: new staff, new services, new verticals, and an excellent SWAT team of associates.

Welcome to the new HCI! And, keep your eyes open. We’ve grown accustomed to all this excitement and are ready for what else might just walk through the door. Bring it!

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