Followers of this blog have noted our preoccupation with the unwritten rules of going off the record – see the previous post. I think it goes back to one member of our team’s own adventures as a reporter, attempting to explain to sources when he was going to accept them going off the record, and when it was just silly for them to ask. Look, we’re not all Deep Throat. But this little item from Poynter is quite something. The fun thing about unwritten rules is some folks try to take them to unimaginable places.
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Public Relations
Adventures in going off the record
The communications odyssey that is the Groupon IPO continues. This time a public relations firm attempted to intervene with a journalist on behalf of their client, only to have it backfire. But read all the way to the bottom of the reporter’s account. You will see her explaining the PR representative failed to ask to go off the record before launching the conversation. She says if he had, the unflattering story that resulted wouldn’t have come to be.
The unwritten and formally unenforceable rules around going off the record can be relied upon to generate pieces like this, making communications professionals squirm when they read about it. But common sense and good PR counsel helps. You can read our three basic rules for going off the record and what it means here.
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Investor Relations, Public Relations
Groupon and the “Quiet Period”
Business Insider is spilling ink over the timing of the resignation of Groupon’s PR Chief, Bradford Williams vis-a-vis an ill-advised communications strategy aimed at the company’s detractors. There is speculation that Williams resigned because CEO Andrew Mason would not behave with the decorum required of Groupon’s “quiet period,” the slug of time that passes between a company’s filing its intention to go public and the SEC’s declaration that the offering is effective. During that period, it is generally accepted that companies cannot say anything to the press, regardless of the circumstances.
For all this sturm und drang, in fact Groupon is not required to be completely silent during its “quiet period.” No company is. The SEC liberalized its rules re: quiet period communications in 2005, partly in response to interference with Google’s IPO caused by a Playboy article, and a less notorious New York Times article about Mark Benioff that delayed Saleforce.com’s IPO. The SEC forced Google and Salesforce to delay their IPOs due to alleged gun-jumping.
Per the SEC’s guidance, EVC Group believes that media relations during an IPO quiet period are appropriate and acceptable if certain guidelines are followed closely. For example:
A company may give media interviews after it has filed an S-1 and stories about the company may be published. During an interview, management must stick to the language that appears in the company’s prospectus, and not diverge from it. This includes interviews on the first day of trading. (Recall VMware’s very successful IPO. The CEO and CFO gave interviews on its first day of trading, in print and on TV.) Management must not, of course, at any time, tell a reporter that he hopes readers will buy the stock, or say anything that could be construed as promoting the offering.
It is advisable to file with the SEC any story for which management was interviewed, and stuck to the prospectus. It is imperative to file a story in which management appears with comments that are not included in the prospectus.
The company may issue press releases containing information not included in the prospectus if it is of a type that the company routinely made public before the S-1 filing, and therefore is consistent with past practice and not focused on the potential offering.
Exactly how a company manages press inquiries and prepares for interviews during the quiet period is somehwat more involved – and is best handled by a firm with experience in this area. EVC Group helped Diamonds Foods manage criticism of its public offering during its quiet period – and won an award for it.
Investor Relations
QCOR + EVC Win Silver Anvil!
Questcor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: QCOR) won a 2011 Silver Anvil for the company’s investor relations campaign executed by EVC Group. Symbolizing the forging of public opinion, the Silver Anvil is the public relations professions’ highest honor. Conferred annually by the Public Relations Society of America, the Silver Anvil acknowledges the highest level of achievement and is the established icon of the “best of the best” public relations practices.
The winning program for Questcor resulted in dozens of new institutional shareholders, expanded sell-side analyst and financial media coverage, as well as multiple invitations to leading healthcare investor conferences. Don M. Bailey, Questcor’s President and Chief Executive Officer, accepted the award at the 2011 Silver Anvil Award Ceremony on June 9, 2011 in New York City.
“Questcor is an extremely well run company that has generated superior returns for its shareholders in the past 18 months,” said Doug Sherk, Founder and CEO of EVC Group. “It has been our privilege to develop and execute this award-winning program with Questcor. Questcor and EVC Group are honored by PRSA’s recognition, which we believe validates a relationship approach to investor relations and a management team that believes in open and clear communication with its shareholders.”
Investor Relations
A Russell Reprise
Every year in June, Russell Investments rebalances its family of indexes. This Friday, June 10, after 3:00 pm Pacific Time, Russell will announce the preliminary additions and deletions to all of its indexes. This begins a busy trading period as investors who benchmark against the Russell indexes begin to align their portfolios. The rebalance will be finalized later in June.
EVC Group will be monitoring for the preliminary updates this Friday for its clients. Companies that are identified in the preliminary stage can take advantage of the moment and attract the attention of new investors before the final rebalance is published. We recommend that companies who are added to any of the Russell indexes issue a press release before the market opens on Monday, June 13.
We’ve published on this subject before. Happy Rebalance Day!
Public Relations, Social Media
PatientsLikeMe, clinical trials and social networks
Amy Dockser Marcus of The Wall Street Journal (and others) reported today on a study on lithium and Lou Gehrig’s disease conducted through PatientsLikeMe.com, an online patient social network.
Readers will recall our post back in March on patient networks and the observations of Barcelona Tech University professor Mari Carmen Domingo. What we didn’t include then were Prof. Domingo’s comments on PatientsLikeMe.com and the generation of patient social networks like it.
In the July 2010 edition of Computer magazine professor Domingo wrote that PatientsLikeMe co-founder James Heywood saw how patients wanted to know more about how diseases and treatments would affect their everyday life, more than doctors could share effectively.
And as we noted, research is showing that patients in some cases trust peers more than their doctor, adding to the demand for online communities.
When EVC Group asked Professor Domingo in August how companies might find value for patients and customers through social networks, beyond sponsoring them and advertizing on them, one of the multiple areas she pointed to were trials like the one reported on today.
“Pharmaceutical companies can run clinical trials with patients willing to be volunteers,” Professor Domingo said then. “Tools that analyze the effects of treatments on their bodies such as blood levels, symptoms, side effects will be very useful for this purpose.”
PatientsLikeMe is not the only patient network that is building communities who can help advance innovation. CureTogether.com is another. Each must walk a delicate balance between privacy and advancing patient care, as well as the benefits of community.
PatientsLikeMe lets users know up front that the medical records they enter into the site will be visible to others – which is the point – and they point out that among those others are companies who can pay for access to aggregated data.
Domingo observed in her July article that the large numbers of patients participating in communities like this obviously do not see a threat to their privacy as much as a commons where they can share their own experience and metrics to benefit others, and themselves.
An initial draw to these communities is the everyday take on disease and treatment as Mr. Heywood observed.
“[A] contribution that is really hard to quantify is the psychological support such a platform provides to patients, who without it, would most certainly have been left to suffer in silence,” Professor Domingo said in August.
But after that comes the ability to marshal that information to start crunching real numbers that can guide treatment of hard-to-crack medical problems in new directions.
Public Relations, Social Media
Twitter? It’s Clearly Not for Everything
The report on corporate IT in today’s Wall Street Journal contains some smart examples of how companies are benefitting from social media and mobile technologies.
But this cautionary tale from The New York Times should remind social media novices and veterans alike that Twitter’s cachet should not make it the default channel for every conversation.
By the Times’ account, one company invited employees to Tweet suggestions for improving their workplace, then criticized an employee who suggested that the workplace would benefit from imporved relations between management and labor. The company told the employee that the response violated corporate policy against public statememts that could damage the company’s reputation.
So, in this case, management invited employees to comment on working conditions in a public forum, but was embarrassed the feedback it elicited. Frankly, this should have been anticipated. It is folly to expect nothing but comments about the quality of cafeteria snacks or jokes about nap rooms. This discussion should never have been hosted on Twitter.
As an interactive broadcast medium, Twitter is not for everything. As the Journal points out today, corporate users of social media platforms must be prepared for freewheeling discussion of their compnaies or products. Management can set guidelines for employees but cannot ultimate control user behavior. There are plenty of reasons why this is sometimes good. The example reported by the Times is not among them.
The lesson: No doubt, people like Twitter, it is cool and current and useful. That doesn’t mean that every corporate discussion will be cooler and more useful when hosted on Twitter. A company needs to think critically about how its uses Twitter and the other ubiquitious social meda platforms, and it should deploy more private forums for conversations that it wouldn’t want to appear in The New York Times.
The corporate social media policy is a good place to address this issue. Most policies that we’ve seen are written to limit employee behavior, or limit the employer’s liability for this behavior. It would be appropriate for a social media policy to also set guidelines for the company’s official communications on social media channels, identifying which are appropriate, and which are clearly not.
Public Relations, Social Media
Patients trust peers more than doctors?
That’s what Dr. Eric Topol said earlier this month at the American College of Healthcare Executives’ annual Congress on Healthcare Leadership.
Social media has become so rich, accessible and easy-to-use that it is meeting the demand of patients, particularly those with chronic conditions, for the experiences of others like them to guide their own decisions.
Peer-to-peer health information is becoming more influential than a physician’s advice, Topol said. (If you weren’t at the Congress, you can read Modern Healthcare’s account of Dr. Topol’s 90-minute presentation here, you will need to register, but it’s free).
The doctor is no longer the gatekeeper but a participant, a very authoritative and influential one, in a big and complex ongoing conversation.
Studies bear this out.
Wendy Macias and Liza Stavchansky Lewis found evidence in their 2004 work that many Americans believe the Internet is a better source for health information than health care providers.
The 2009 Pew Internet Project found 42% of Americans had been helped by following medical advice online.
An iCrossing Survey found 64 percent of respondents perform searches for health information at least once a month, 11 percent once a week, 12 percent two or more times a week.
In her July, 2010 article in Computer Magazine Professor Mari Carmen Domingo of Barcelona Tech University points to an “increasing reliance on physician and patient social networks, which promise to transform healthcare management,” echoing Dr. Topol
“Some additional contributions not related with the velocity of the conversations are the possibility to bring together people who would not otherwise have the opportunity to meet and share experiences,” she said in a conversation with EVC Group.
That means communicators need to respect the ability of empowered e-patients to impact an expanding part of the healthcare economy as they join physicians as networked managers of their own treatment and wellness.
For companies that need to communicate their unique value for patients, EVC Group says:
- Tell more patient-facing stories that better reach e-patients through social media.
- Listen to what e-patients are saying and how they react to your communications.
- Participate in the social media conversation, at the very least, don’t be distinguished by your absence.
Public Relations, Regulatory Communications
From insurance to medical devices, J.C. Scott
April 11, J.C. Scott will walk into his new job as head of government affairs for AdvaMed. But at the pace issues are moving these days, it may feel more like a running start.
His predecessor, Brett Loper, is now the policy director for House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican. Hopefully for those in the medical device industry, this will give Mr. Scott a sympathetic ear in an important place. Mr. Scott and Mr. Loper also share a common Ohio Republican background, considering Mr. Scott served as deputy director for policy at the House Republican Conference, and worked for Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio).
Mr. Scott was previously at the American Council of Life Insurers, where he says he sees a lot in common with the challenges the medical device industry is currently facing. He compares the current tightening, or slowing (depending on how you look at it), of the FDA process to the challenges the insurance industry faces navigating the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as on a number of major tax and retirement security initiatives.
He will certainly have a lot on his plate in terms of questions about the 510(k) process and questions on whether the US is losing competitiveness with a regulatory process that is much slower than the efficient CE Mark process across the Atlantic.
The good news for Mr. Scott is he knows Washington very well, he knows his way around regulators, and that should translate well for the device industry.
Public Relations, Social Media
Quora and public relations
Quora is the new Twitter, or at least the buzz machine is treating it that way. The question is, does it have a place in a communications professional’s toolbox?
Just as with blogging, Facebook and Twitter before it, the answer is yes and no.
Quora is a social networking site, in which users choose who to follow, and may in turn be followed by others, except in this case the main activity being followed is asking and answering questions.
Part of the excitement here is interacting with hotshots in the business or media world in a personal manner, something that has helped bolster Facebook and Twitter (anyone want to know what Ashton Kutcher is doing right now?). There is some additional excitement about Quora, though, because the questions-and-answers format speaks directly to authority and thought leadership.
The EVC Group take on it – which as always is focused on the tangible - remains in line with what we had to say about Twitter and many other social media outlets when we spoke to PRWeek back in 2009. Be strategic in how you use it, don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re being productive because of the volume of your activity or number of followers. Is that activity leading to face-to-face relationships, something EVC Group prizes above every other interaction?
That doesn’t mean don’t get out there.
When The Poynter Institute recommends six ways for journalists to use Quora, that means public relations professionals should be there.
Six days after Poynter’s January 12th piece, Katherine Boehret at The Wall Street Journal wrote a review of the service in which she pronounced it to be still an insider’s tool that is continuing to evolve. Interestingly she then tweeted on @kabster728 “So I’m curious: If you read my column today, did you sign up for Quora? What are your 1st impressions? http://is.gd/3nnU2N.”
An insider’s space that is continuing to evolve is a good place to be, even if you mostly do what Katherine found herself doing and monitoring what others are doing and saying. PRWeek agreed later in the month.
The jury is still out on the ultimate utility for businesses as Inc.’s article Monday articulates. Though, we do note that Tyler James’ advice on how to cultivate tangible relationships through social media is in line with our own experience.
Be there, be findable, monitor and participate. At minimum, do not be distinguished by your lack or presence.