Marina Maher Communications

This month I attended the annual global meeting of Worldcom Public Relations Group, the world’s leading partnership of independently owned PR firms.  MMC has been a Worldcom partner for almost two decades and our partnership allows us to offer clients local access to 93 markets worldwide through 112 partner agencies.

A key theme at the meeting was forging productive relationships with our partners to better serve clients.  It’s not an uncommon global meeting theme.  As Worldcom’s global chair Matt Kucharski from Padilla Speer Beardsley reminded us of Worldcom’s partner protocols, I was struck by how relevant they are to any partnership – be it with an agency half a world away, your clients, or your colleagues down the hall.  It’s one thing to hear these values; it’s another to really live them.  Here are some of the highlights I thought were worth sharing:

• Clearly establish roles and responsibilities – and adhere to them
• Provide specific direction for program deliverables, including a sample of the format you or your client needs and a realistic deadline
• Respect the lead partner’s role
• Take time to understand what common practice is in other markets
• If possible, strive to “do it their way,” and if you can’t, explain why
• Be sensitive that a “big project” for you is not a “big project” for everyone.  On the flip side, recognize that even though a project may be small for you, it’s important to your partner
• Request nothing that you yourself wouldn’t do
• If you’re too busy to help, provide alternative resources

In other words, do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  That’s what partnership is all about.

Last week, MMC launched a survey about Influence-Hers – the 12 percent of women that other women often turn to for advice before making a purchase.  One of the most interesting findings about this group of highly influential women, who have large social networks and love to share information, is that they are more readily influenced – compared to all women – by recommendations from experts, celebrities, online reviews and media that marketers can engage to endorse their brands.

The survey results further substantiate strategies MMC frequently uses to motivate women to take action.  One recent example is a campaign for Kimberly-Clark’s U by Kotex, for which we just won a SABRE award. Kotex is a brand that most millennials view as their mother’s menstrual protection.  So when Kotex launched U by Kotex, a bold and breakthrough line of feminine protection targeted to millennials, we had to engage influencers who would be relevant, credible, and connect emotionally with this fickle and difficult to reach target.  Key to success was building a strong bond with the target by ditching euphemisms about vaginal health, sparking “real talk” conversations and giving millennials a platform and a voice to drive social change.  We launched a campaign called the “Declaration of Real Talk” to drive “Real Talk” about menstruation and vaginal health in disruptive and unlikely places.

To deliver the message, we engaged multiple tiers of brand endorsers, including high-profile celebrities such as Khloé Kardashian and Tyra Banks, the author of an in-your-face book about women’s bodies, and a millennial media personality. We aligned with Girls for a Change (GFC), a national non-profit empowering girls to create social change as a third-party partner.  We partnered with 100 online influencers to deliver clear, unvarnished information about the brand and in the process the program generated more than 640 million media impressions.

But the real test was getting women to take action.  The Influence-Hers moved to action were the hundreds of thousands of women who engaged on the campaign website, the tens of thousands of women who signed the Declaration of Real Talk online, and the thousands who tweeted and “liked” the campaign on Facebook.  Their collective efforts reached many millions of our target, who used our coupons, asked for samples, and ultimately bought the product, which resulted in record-breaking share for Kotex and U by Kotex within a few months.

Perhaps most rewarding was feedback from our target women.  Because we engaged women through trusted and relevant influencers with a message that resonated, the vast majority were thankful for U by Kotex*’s commitment to “real talk.”  The value of these new consumers will be realized well beyond the product launch, as feminine care loyalty generally lasts a lifetime.

Photo credit:  box fish

Sunday is Mother’s Day, a day when moms will be celebrated, catered to and honored for making us who we are today.  We thought we’d see how all that wisdom helped to shape our amazing staff.  So we asked everyone, “What was the best advice your mom gave you to help you succeed in business?”

The answers came back quickly.  All were wise.  Some were poignant.   And some were pretty funny.  They sorted out into three distinct themes:  relationships, passion for what you do, and, not surprisingly given our trend-savvy staff, grooming.   So here are the wise words that shaped the women and men of MMC.

Relationships:

• Surround yourself with people who will push you to be your best!
• Form good relationships with the receptionist and office administrators. They’re the ones who really run the place.
• Treat people the way you want to be treated.
• Be nice those you meet on the way up because you’ll see them again on the way down.

Passion and Work:

• Don’t be afraid to push yourself out of your comfort zone!
• No one knows how to write anymore.  You’ll stand out if your writing is flawless.
• If you love what you do, you’ll never view it as work.
• Fake it till you make it.
• Be the light you want to see at work: don’t burn up in the politics, and don’t burn out from the pressure.

Grooming:

• Wear lipstick and look people straight in the face.
• Good clothes open all doors.
• Always get your nails done for important meetings.
• Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. And, oh, get a haircut!

Finally, there was one wise mom whose advice didn’t really fit a category, but seemed important nonetheless:  Never teach a pig to dance – it just gets you muddy and frustrates the pig.

For all the moms and moms to be…have a wonderful Mother’s Day!

I was quite surprised – as in ‘how can that be?’ – to read in the New York Times this morning that only about 2 percent of retailer’s sales are coming from mobile devices. You know, those things that about 75 million Americans use to organize their lives, according to eMarketer.

But apparently that’s the reality.  According to the Acquity Group, 12 percent of the country’s top 500 online retailers had optimized their sites for mobile browsers as of mid-2010.  And just 7 percent had apps.  While some online retailers like eBay and Amazon have done amazingly well with Smartphone sales, other major retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, Coach, Dillard’s and Ann Taylor don’t offer shopping via mobile.

The 2 percent statistic is even more astounding when you consider two very recent studies on how consumers – particularly women – are using their Smartphones:

• BabyCenter found that nearly six in 10 moms have a Smartphone and 42 percent use it to shop
• A study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies found that 41 percent of iPhone users and 23 percent of all Smartphone owners are purchasing directly from their phones.  And half of all Smartphone owners use their handsets to assist them while shopping in-store.

So why haven’t more retailers optimized their online sites for mobile?   According to the Times article, retailers realize that they are missing out, but need to overcome some of the online-to-mobile technical challenges so that their consumer’s mobile experience isn’t more frustrating than helpful.  Typing on a tiny screen, entering a credit card number to check out and getting through checkout quickly are some of the key technical shortcuts that retailers have to get right – or consumers will just abandon their purchase.

In the meantime, retailers are not only missing out on sales opportunities, they risk losing consumer loyalty to a direct competitor.  But that’s not the only risk.  At some point, consumers are going to suffer from “app overload” as more and more companies get on the app bandwagon.  If retailers wait too long to launch their mobile app consumers may not even want it.

Here’s an interesting perspective on corporate social responsibility.   Yesterday, the chairman of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, told the Council on Foreign Relations that companies shouldn’t use shareholders’ money for philanthropy.  His POV:   corporations don’t need to “give back” because that implies they’ve “taken something that doesn’t belong to you.”  Instead, he advocates “creating shared value,” which basically means profiting from doing good, by, for example, increasing the nutritional value of his company’s products or reducing its water use and greenhouse gas emissions.  This isn’t a new concept; it’s been talked about for at least the last five years and has been put into practice by Toyota, Whole Foods and other companies around the world and seeks to create a competitive advantage by baking social values into a company’s strategy.

Brabeck-Letmathe feels this trend, which has been integrated Nestlé’s business strategy, is a win-win for business and society.  The company’s focus is on water, nutrition, and rural development because those areas are both vital to the company’s business and the welfare of the people in countries where it operates.  It’s a smart business strategy and certainly an attractive one to shareholders and a myriad of other stakeholders.

So will this become the future of corporate social responsibility, especially in an economy where every dollar is counted and recounted each quarter?  Will consumers respond as well to “creating shared value” as they will to a brand supporting their personal favorite cause?  I have lots of questions, but not necessarily any answers.  What do you think? 

Tomorrow is the 100^th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, when literally thousands of events will be held around the world to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women.  Over the next few days, people far more knowledgeable than I will discuss women’s accomplishments and challenges ahead.  That’s not what this post is about.

I just want to make one point:  Women don’t rule the world.  They’re still in the minority in business, government, science and academia.  But if more women did rule, the world might be happier, healthier and more fulfilled.  This is not a feminist or political statement; it’s based on women’s unique skills, and how they are programmed to act.

Most women today, despite their out-of-home responsibilities, are the CEOs, CMOs (chief medical officer) and in some cases CFOs (chief financial officer) of their families and their households. Consider some of women’s everyday responsibilities that make them well suited for leadership:

• Management:  Few would debate that women rule the roost in virtually every way. This is most evident in women’s economic power:  they make 85% of all purchase decisions – everything from homes to cars to vacations, according to She-conomy.
• Health decision making:  Women excel in managing their family’s health.  They have superior skills in processing complicated health information, considering both the rational and emotional implications, and then making reasoned decisions about what to do.   “Women seem to know instinctively what to do when health is on the line,” Dr. Mehmet Oz asserted in a Time magazine article last year.
• Consensus building:  Women naturally seek cooperation and consensus when faced with conflict, a point that sociolinguist Deborah Tannen makes in her book, You Just Don’t Understand.  This may not guarantee world peace, but I can think of a few countries and corporations where that skill might come in handy.
• Forgiveness:  You can debate the pros and cons of this as a leadership skill, but according to a recent Spanish study, women are better at it.  All things considered, I think forgiveness trumps blame or anger.
• High performance:  Women outperform men in government, according to a new study, perhaps because the bar is higher for them to get elected in the first place.

I could go on about this, but I think I’ve made my point.  Women have skills that make their families flourish.  These are skills that also make great leaders.  As we celebrate women, let’s keep that in mind the next time you have a say in whether a women breaks through a glass ceiling.

At MMC we’re proud that 10 of our 12 top executives are women and we’re honored to be a certified woman-owned business by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).

PureWow, a free daily email for “fabulous women of substance,”  (which apparently means those 35+) is launching its first local edition tomorrow.  And wouldn’t you know…it’s in the Big Apple.  Over the next year the site, which launched its national edition last September, will be launching local editions in other markets.  LA is next.

So how does this site differ from DailyCandy, you may ask?  A key difference is the demographic.  PureWow’s target is older (age 35 to 60) than typical DailyCandy readers.  She’s busy and accomplished and wants tips that will save her time (I signed up the minute I read those words!).  She also influences what her friends and family buy.  The site has already attracted major advertisers including CBS, Visa, Equinox, Jim Beam, and Procter & Gamble (client).

For those of us in the PR biz, PureWow is looking for new tips, services, products and trends that readers have yet to hear about, but will want to buy, try, or use when they hear about them.