TrendSpotter Report: Uniqueness of MA Medtech Companies

By Liza Heapes

Today’s Washington Post article on congressional conflicts of interest highlights the proposed $4 billion tax on medical-device firms to help offset the cost of health-care reforms. This tax is currently facing opposition from senators including Massachusetts’ own John Kerry, speculated to have significant personal investments in the sector.

According to the article, the uncertainty created about lawmakers' motivation undermines confidence in Congress and the political process. More than half of all lawmakers own stock, and they are entitled to. It’s the question as to whether their personal portfolios affect their decisions, and if those decisions are then not made for the good of the general populace. This state of affairs highlights why state legislators felt it important to enact the Massachusetts Gift Ban statute, which went in effect on July 1, 2009. The transparency the Gift Ban brings is something completely unique – no other industry in any other state is open to this type of scrutiny.

Perhaps the Senate should take a hard look at the statute and weigh whether such disclosure would be a benefit or more of a burden.

In Kerry’s defense, his constituency has much more to lose if the medtech sector is to shoulder the cost of healthcare reform more than other industries. There are roughly 225 medtech companies currently based in the Commonwealth, employing about 50,000 in Massachusetts and contributing $7.2 billion or 10 percent of all goods exported.

The latest MS&L TrendSpotter Report looks at the unique circumstances facing Massachusetts medtech companies and how the implications of taxes, incentives and new regulation will affect corporate communications now and into 2010.

The report also includes a comprehensive list of who on Twitter is reporting, advocating and deciding the fates of medtech in Massachusetts and the U.S

To read the full TrendSpotter Report please fill out the form below. We'd love to hear your reactions via the comment section.

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A Look Inside PR: Agency Leaders Assess the State of the Profession

By Ed Cafasso

It’s been a year of high anxiety for every major industry, and the public relations profession is no exception. Our business, like so many others, has endured smaller budgets, higher client expectations, intense competition, downsizing, and ethical criticism.

As a contributing editor to The Public Relations Strategist, the top trade magazine for the PR industry, I recently interviewed the chief executives of five of the nation’s top communications agencies, questioning them about the value of PR, how they measure its impact, how client expectations have evolved, and how they view the future of our profession and its reputation.

The executives I spoke with are influential thought leaders with 150 years of collective experience who employ thousands of PR professionals serving most of the world’s best-known brands, businesses and institutions here in the U.S. and abroad.

They maintain a decidedly optimistic perspective on the profession’s future. Each lauded the unequaled value of public relations as the best vehicle to build, maintain and advance the credibility and trust that organizations need to succeed.

From where they sit, public relations is the only discipline that effectively creates and nurtures the relationships that lie at the pivot point of two historic trends — a) unprecedented public scrutiny of companies, governments and organizations, and b) access to a historic buffet of Internet-fueled consumer information and influence.

You can download The Strategist piece here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required). Since one of the most important things any successful PR person must do is to listen, I would be interested to hear your views on what these agency leaders said. Continue reading...

MS&L on FDA Social Media Hearing

MS&L's North American Healthcare Practice Director, MaryEllen O'Donohue, and New York Healthcare Practice Director, Kelly Dencker, recap Day 1 of FDA Social Media Hearings held in Washington, DC.

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TrendSpotter Report: Public Affairs Gone Digital

French President Nicholas Sarkozy, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and a batch of mid-level Boston City Hall workers share a common bond. They each recently made headlines through their use (and misuse) of social media.

Every day, we read about the public migration from traditional media to social media. The numbers are staggering: 300 million people on Facebook; More than 23 million unique visitors to Twitter in September alone; Executives from every Fortune 500 company on LinkedIn.

Massachusetts government is undergoing a similar transformation. To find out what it means for public affairs communications in 2010, we decided to talk to the public officials and advocates who use social and digital media. Our findings are presented in this MS&L TrendSpotter Report. Four key insights emerge:

• Lawmakers and regulators realize that, when used properly, social media is a two-way street – or more accurately an intersection of ideas and voices, as one State Senator on Facebook told us.
• Advocates realize the one-on-one State House conversations still matter but, when moving large groups of people – particularly those under 30, Twitter and Facebook can be incredibly effective, as we learned from a leader at Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts.
• Since social networking is where their constituents are, lawmakers use social media to blunt negative and misleading information. One State Representative details his efforts to ease fears about flu vaccines on Facebook.
• Government relations pros, even the skeptics, are dipping in a toe but know they need to do more research and utilize social media as part of a broader strategy – not just to have the latest bells and whistles, as the head of the state’s largest retailers group told us.
  

Social networks are the modern town square run amok. They are Hyde Park’s "Speaker’s Corner " on steroids. If public affairs sways public conversation, then those who seek to sway it ought to be where the conversation is happening. This MS&L TrendSpotter Report looks at how those who are doing it best see this trend playing out in the next 12 months in public affairs and beyond.

Our report also includes a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive list of who in Massachusetts politics, government and advocacy is using Twitter. Check it out here.

To read the full TrendSpotter Report please fill out the form below. We'd love to hear your reactions via the comment section. Or if you have ideas, questions or insights on how you are – or want to – use social media in your efforts, send me an email or Tweet. And stay tuned for more TrendSpotter Reports from the many fields where MS&L works here in New England.

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Casino Politics Enters U.S. Senate Race

By design, the format at this morning’s “forum” among Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate was not meant to encourage much in the way of sparks – which presented a huge communications challenge for any candidate trying to break through and into the headlines.

Throughout the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast event, candidates stuck mostly to 90-second stump speeches.

So when it came time for closing statements, most in the audience probably weren’t expecting any bombshells. But City Year founder Alan Khazei threw a curveball into what has so far been a predictable campaign and, in the process, raising an issue analysts have said front-runner Martha Coakley is trying to avoid.

Khazei railed against the Chamber for endorsing an expansion of casino gambling in Massachusetts, using the social ails arguments. [Full disclosure, I directed communications for former Speaker DiMasi when he led opposition last year].

Khazei didn’t target anyone else on the stage directly but staked the clear anti-casino ground and sure got the media interested in a hurry. Reporters I spoke to on the way out were abuzz about his comments as the businesspeople left the Chamber forum and the first take up on the wires already leads with Khazei and casinos.

The media interest is predictable.

The casino issue will always be a communications hot button. It has always played more like social issues such as abortion, gay marriage and the death penalty than anything else. It brings with it significant public interest, passionate support and opposition and, let’s face it, reporters and the public get casinos a heck of a lot more than they do Medicare reimbursement rates or economic development strategies.

The under-current to watch, however, is whether Khazei continues this strategy tonight in their first live televised debate (live at 7 p.m. on all Boston TV stations) and whether any of this lands in Coakley’s lap.

The AG has proposed vigorously regulating the casino industry and made her voice known about criminal justice matters related to it but has not forcefully taken sides on either side of the issue beyond that. Casino opponents have tried to call Coakley out and State House observers have suggested that Senate President Therese Murray, a Coakley supporter, shelved the issue in the Legislature this year to keep it off Coakley’s docket before the Senate election.

Some in the audience were shaking their heads at Khazei’s move because casinos are not an issue facing the U.S. Senate and the next Senator really won’t have much of a voice in the debate on Beacon Hill.

All that may be true but Democratic primary voters in Massachusetts care a lot about casinos, and some of the most liberal voters in the state are still furious with other Democrats who have championed casinos – including Governor Deval Patrick. And, as noted above, Khazei is already seeing the PR benefits in getting his so-far largely under-the-radar campaign noticed by the media and the talking heads.

Will this tact make a dent in the December 8 primary? Time will tell. But today’s verbal volley puts Khazei, and casinos, on the map in the Senate race. Continue reading...

Social Media News Buffet

Yesterday was quite the eventful day with tons of breaking social media news.

First off, there was the Microsoft search deal with Twitter and Facebook to put status updates in Bing. Then there was Google bellying up with Twitter to also have status updates and Tweets listed in search results. Finally, Google pumped out another announcement, but this time about their new product, Social Search. Highlights of social search include (from @mashable):

- The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr (Flickr) photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results.

- These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.

- They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

- It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.

What is interesting about each of these deals is the fact they all point to a sign that social content is just as important as content created via traditional online channels (news outlets, corporate websites, etc.)

This news is more important to companies and organizations than it is consumers really. It'll help brands find nuggets of conversations in a more efficient manner than having to drill down through the various social networking services separately. Additionally, the search functionality for social networking services lacks the "smarts" that Google or Bing tout; after all this is what they do best.

Yes, some leg work will still have to be done to pull those conversations out of the interwebs, digest them and create strategies around them. But with Bing and Google spreading their tentacles into the social content space, those conversations will be easier to find.
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Mommy Blogger v. The TSA: A Reputation Management Case Study

Today’s case study in how social media has changed the game in modern reputation management comes to use from a reporter-friend at a major daily in New York City, who watched this scenario play out over the weekend completely under the radar of the traditional media.

It began on Friday, October 16, with a blog post headlined “tsa agents took my son” authored by “Nic,” who describes herself as a 28- year-old freelance writer and the mom of 16-month-old son. Nic is a mommy blogger who authors the My Bottle’s Up blog.

Her post about the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) offers a harrowing account accusing airport security at Atlanta’s international airport of taking her infant away for 10 minutes during a security search. It was a gripping story; the worst nightmare of mothers everywhere. And, given that the TSA does not make a lot of friends in the course of performing its duties, the post exploded virally on Twitter and among sympathetic bloggers nationally.

Folks were outraged and the post garnered 316 comments, including many folks who shared their own claims of mistreatment at the hands of the TSA.

But here’s where things get interesting. It turns out that the TSA has its own blog. Who knew?

By 7 p.m. on the evening of the 16th, “Blogger Bob,” an author on the TSA site described as a father of two, had posted a response to Nic’s “emotional” story – and posted the actual video of her trip through security. “After watching the video footage, you'll see the video clearly shows that this individual was never separated from her baby by TSA. You'll also see that a lot of the other claims are also unfounded,” Blogger Bob wrote.

By Saturday morning, the tables had turned. Many of the same social media channels that had initially empathized with Nic and taken her allegations at face value now turned the scrutiny on her, asking rightly how she could reconcile her claims with the TSA’s visual evidence.

For a time, “My Bottle’s Up” was “temporarily shut down.” It soon re-emerged with a post entitled “my apologies”, in which Nic defended and explained her original account but noted that she felt it is time to move on. The apology was not directed at the TSA, but toward those seeking an explanation. (As of this morning, the “apology” post has drawn 133 comments, although the blog’s commenting function appears to have been disabled.)

In a 36-hour span, damaging written accusations were hurled and then rebutted with video evidence – all spreading at the speed of light online and focused on two blogs that most people had never heard of on October 15. The traditional media may or may not catch up to the story today, but already thousands of people have heard of it and are sharing it with each other.

This is the new normal of reputation management. If you don’t know what’s being said about you online (good or bad), you cannot know whether or not you should respond. And if you do not have the smarts and the appropriate tools to respond online when you must, then you are and will remain at a serious disadvantage in the modern flow of news and information.

The TSA was the only party who could “win” or “lose” in this scenario. It knows it is never going to win any popularity contests. But it defended itself, at least to “a draw,” and it served notice that it does not take lightly claims of traveler abuse.

The one downside for the TSA? As our reporter-friend wisely noted: “The next time someone complains of TSA mistreatment and it's true, they will have a hard time fighting demands for the release of video.”

~ Ed Cafasso, Managing Director

Follow him on Twitter

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