For companies, brands, organizations and people that ever doubted the value of social media as a powerful means of communication, the events of the last week in Iran must be an eye opening experience. Since the Iranian government has expelled almost all foreign correspondents the only news getting out of the country is being sent via social networks, namely Twitter.

What makes this particular situation different is that the content being shared on social networks is not remaining just on the social networks. Images and videos from inside Iran are being broadcast on television channels around the world – from CNN, to the BBC, to CBC.

The world is seeing the Iranian situation through the eyes of the Iranians. The news is coming from people living the event, not just reporting on it. This new free way to share information instantly around the world is forcing the Iranian government that has been accused of illegitimate actions in the past, to take notice and tread a little more carefully (witness the call for a review of some election returns by the clerics who run things there).
Some people and news outlets have called this the tipping point for Iran. Many feel that if ever Iran was going to throw off the cloak of old world thinking and reenter the world stage as a positive contributor that time is now.

Recent movements for positive change - the falling of the Berlin wall, the solidarity movement in Poland, the end of apartheid - have all come by way of people coming together, joining in the fight for change and slowly gaining the upper hand. It took communication; it took people understanding and drawing strength from their neighbours. With new technologies that enable anyone, anywhere in the world to instantly share their experiences through photos, videos or even their own voice, these movements now have the ability to do in days what used to take years.

It is hard to imagine this happening so quickly had it not been for Twitter, the killer social network with the silly name. Almost over night, a world that looked down on Iran has come to hope for it, to hope for its people. Some say that this could have all been possible without social media and they are right. Major change has happened many other times in our history without social media. However, a big contributor to the movement in Iran gaining momentum so quickly is because the people inside the country did not feel alone, they knew their messages were and are getting out and the people of the world are listening.

Many people are calling social networks a trend, and some aspects of it are trendy. There will always be a newer, hipper social network to be a part of, but social networks will always be there. The opportunities for communication that new media affords the world are just to great to ignore.

If you’re unsure how new media and social networks can benefit your business or organization, give Adam Dooley a call at 204-291-4092. We’d love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you to discuss the potential.

One of the cool things about working with great clients like ICUC Moderation Services is that we come into contact with all sorts of new information all the time. Today’s snoo.ws blog includes an interesting post on how the value of communications executives is growing quickly these days due in large part to the increasing importance of social media.

That is no surprise to me - though I can think of a couple of former bosses who could use  some education there. With the growth of social media, there is no place to hide for companies and organizations.

Even companies that choose not to participate can be thrown in front of the public glare of crisis thanks to a viral video post. Witness the recent Dominos Pizza debacle where a couple of employees from the low end of the gene pool posted YouTube videos of themselves doing disgusting things to pizzas.

As social media makes communications so much easier, companies will need to invest more time and effort into monitoring online conversations  about their brands, as well as participating in those discussions. Often the best way to do that is to start the conversation yourself, which is why we find ourselves frequently working with out clients to create blogs and broadcast feeds (via Twitter or Facebook for example).

It takes time, money and planning, but social media is a vital tool for contemporary communicators.

Dooley Communications is pleased to announce the hiring of Dustin Plett as Communications Specialist. Dustin is a recent graduate of Red River College’s Creative Communications program.

Dustin will be working on a wide variety of projects for Dooley Communications as the company continues to grow as a service-oriented public relations firm serving Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwestern Ontario. He has been working with Dooley for a number of months, blogging for client ICUC Moderation Services on its user-generated content daily news blog snoo.ws. He is also working on other accounts including Keystone Processors, UALocal 628 of Thunder Bay and UNICEF Canada.

In addition to the skills he brings from Red River College, Dustin also has a great deal of other varied experience. Growing up in rural Manitoba just outside of Portage la Prairie, he began working at the family welding shop and learned his father’s trade through watching him. Dustin became a Journeyman welder and spent time in both Manitoba and Alberta working on a number of large and small scale projects and owning and operating his own company while doing so.

Dustin shifted his focus to communications after years in the welding trade. He brings a unique point of view and skill set to the field of communications where his creativity, intelligence and client-centred focus is put to good work.

There was good news for fans of quality, locally-produced food and supporters of the Manitoba cattle industry earlier this week: Keystone Processors Ltd. opened its doors and announced it was shipping Manitoba-raised beef to local stores.

Dooley Communications organized an official “tenderloin cutting” ceremony (in lieu of a ribbon) that generated a significant amount of publicity. Media covering the event included: Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg Sun (I love that print reporters make video now), CBC English TV, CBC French TV, CTV Winnipeg, CKX Brandon, CITY TV Winnipeg, Global Winnipeg and the Manitoba Cooperator. The story was picked up by a number of other print and radio outlets across the province.

So why is a new beef packing plant a big deal? Well, if you’re a fan of high quality, locally-produced food, then you’ll be pleased to learn that Keystone Processors is planning on launching a new premium-quality brand of aged, Manitoba-raised beef this spring. It’s difficult to find premium, aged beef as it is and nearly impossible to find Manitoba-raised products.

But more important is the potential impact the plant could have on the provincial cattle industry. The company plans to make this the first sizable, federally-inspected beef packing plant opened in this province in a generation. That federal licence is needed to sell to national retailers and to export our beef products to the world, including fast growing markets in Asia (where forecasters are predicting most food demand growth will be in the next 50 years).

It also marks the start of the creation of a Manitoba brand of beef. Keystone Processors has an opportunity to capitalize on consumers’ demand for high quality, premium products.

Having a local plant will also be a great benefit to local cattle producers who currently are forced to truck their animals across the continent (Alberta, Ontario or into the U.S.) to get them to market. Once Keystone Processors ramps up its operation, there’ll be another local option that will create more competition among buyers of cattle and one that will save local cattle producers significant transportation costs.

Dooley Communications is working with Keystone Processors on its branding and public relations efforts. Stay tuned. We cooking up some good things together.

For the past couple of months, Dooley Communications has been working to help Manitoba’s newest beef plant get up and running with some branded materials including a new website (www.KeystoneProcessors.com). Keystone Processors Ltd. is in the process of renovating and upgrading the former Maple Leaf pork plant at 663 Marion St. By 2011, the company plans to become federally-inspected, which will give it access to growing export markets as well as to national grocery chains.

It will target the vast and promising Asian markets where rapid economic development in recent years has led to the creation of more affluent middle classes. That economic growth has spurred a surge in demand for more nutritious diets which include more meat.

At the same time, Keystone Processors will also work to process beef for kosher and halal markets in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

I’m very pleased to be working with Keystone Processors. It’s always exciting to develop public relations and marketing strategies for a start-up because the potential of a great idea extends in front of us with nearly limitless possibilities. The Manitoba cattle industry has been hurt badly in recent years. The U.S. border closed after BSE was discovered in Alberta; transportation and feed costs skyrocketed; and last year rains washed away farmers’ fields.

With a new beef plant closer to home, Manitoba cattle producers will have an option in the event out-of-province plants close to them again. More importantly, the new plant makes long term business sense because it will save both producers and Keystone Processors money on transportation. That will also leave a lasting environmental benefit as the carbon footprint of the industry will decrease.

But best of all… Manitobans will have a new source of quality, locally-raised beef to buy. I can’t wait to throw a steak on the barbeque this spring!

Techcrunch is the kind of publication that makes newspapers and magazines turn pale with fear. The daily blog on all things tech is read as gospel by millions of followers (I’m one of them). Not surprisingly, that makes it a target of PR firms wanting some publicity for their clients. Last night, it looked as though some of those firms touched Techcrunch’s last, raw nerve.

Over the past few days Techcrunch has posted a couple of tweets taking on public relations people for promising embargoes, then breaking them. Presumably that means a PR firm promised Techcrunch an advance look at some news in exchange for the promise of delaying its public release. Who knows what happened, but Techcrunch last night tweeted on Twitter “I declare war on PR firms. More nonsense today. We’re publishing a list.” And then later: “we are literally under attack from the PR world. This is going to make a fascinating post.”

Since we don’t dwell in the tech space much, we’ve never had the opportunity to make them angry, so I’m fairly sure we’re not on that list .  But this episode certainly raises an interesting series of questions for media and PR firms. My rule of thumb is always to take the high road when dealing with reporters and bloggers. Don’t over promise, never lie and make sure you’re an honest broker with all your contacts. My experience tells me that is the path to good relationships. Sounds like some PR folks got a little over anxious and burned a very important contact. Not good.

I don’t mean to absolve Techcrunch here though. The declaration of war was way over the top. The sweet sanctimony and self-importance makes me roll my eyes. Public relations people, like myself, are vital for news organizations to do their jobs. Techcrunch is a leader in its space, without a doubt, but I wonder if the Wall Street Journal or the Economist has ever declared war on PR firms in general and posted a blacklist. And besides, even if Techcrunch is angry and put out, it doesn’t need to say it out loud… as I told my nine-year-old the other day: you don’t need to vocalize every single thought that comes into your head. That’s bad PR.

By the way… for those of you who don’t know about Twitter and how it can be an integral part of your next communications program, check this out.

Follow me on Twitter here.

I love my job, because it often puts me into contact with some extraordinarily bright people. Yesterday was a case in point when I attended CREED Seminars‘ “Educating with the Middle in Mind” conference at the Radisson Hotel. CREED is a new client of ours and the conference reinforced why I am so glad to be working with them.

The conference attracted about 450 teachers and school administrators from across Canada. There was a buzz of excitement from the participants because CREED’s speakers are among the most highly regarded in their field. All of them were focused on helping our teachers deliver a higher standard of education … and for me, that is the best possible use of our collective time and resources.

Our job for CREED to develop a media relations program for their conference and their speakers. We were pleased that CBC Radio jumped at the chance for an interview with keynote speaker Dr. Todd Whitaker. It’s somewhat disappointing that speakers of this quality didn’t draw more coverage from local media, as it’s a rare instance that we have easy access to people like this all at once… but that is a digression into the sometimes mercurial world of ‘what makes news’.

We’re continuing to pursue media coverage for CREED’s speakers by direct outreach to long lead trade parenting and education publications. Judging by the quality of the stories we’re pitching, I expect we’ll be successful with media that focus on these issues.

We’ll be pitching the story, for instance, of Dr. Sharon Faber, an expert in improving literacy rates in our schools. If a child isn’t reading and writing well by the time he or she enters the middle years (Grade 5-8), then that child is in big trouble of falling further and further behind, and becoming what we euphemistically call ‘at risk’ (shorthand for drug addicted gang members).

She offers some excellent insights into how to reach kids and help them become literate. For example, often the curriculum our schools follow is based on content that has no relation to the lives of our most disadvantaged children. We need to help them learn to read using their own vocabularies. Once engaged and once these kids have the tools to read and write, then they also will have the skills to learn and expand their horizons and thrive.

It’s Halloween - National UNICEF Day in Canada. As the PR agency for UNICEF’s Prairie Region, we’ve been very busy securing media coverage about this year’s Trick-or-Treat campaign. We’ve run several events this month and fielded interviews across Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Our goal with this kind of campaign is to work creatively with our client and the media to ensure the messages we want are getting across and that the media is getting good stories to cover.

To do that, we staged our first ever celebrity pumpkin carving contest here in Winnipeg. We also organized three simultaneous school events in Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg where children ‘walked for water’ to simulate how millions of African children must walk to get their daily drinking water. We were on the phone to radio hosts for the past three weeks and collaborated with  Shaw TV and CityTV’s Breakfast Television to help them produce UNICEF-themed segments.

All in all, we’re very pleased that our ‘earned media’ was way up this year compared to last. We certainly hope that once all the money is counted that the ‘earned fundraising’ is also up this year too.

In addition to the widespread coverage on television and radio, here are a few of the stories we generated in print and online:

Winnipeg Free Press
Pumpkin carving is not for the fainthearted

Winnipeg Sun
Pumpkin Prowess

Regina Leader-Post
Coming together to make Halloween safe
Learning about life in Africa

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
Walk for Water

If you haven’t donated to UNICEF this year yet, please do so at www.trickortreatforunicef.ca.  The campaign raises money to build and outfit schools in Rwanda and Malawi.

If you haven’t already, check out the blog we’re editing and writing on social media and user-generated content: snoo.ws.

The snoo.ws is a project of Dooley Communications client ICUC Moderation Services, one of the busiest online content  moderation companies in the world. We’re happy to provide our editorial and communications services for this daily news blog. We’re also working with ICUC on a number of other projects to build its business actively through social media, media relations and via speaking engagements.

But why is snoo.ws a cool project? Why does it make sense to do? Because over time the snoo.ws will demonstrate ICUC’s expertise in this field. They are really leading the pack in social media moderation - discussion forums, video, photos, text to screen, etc. - and this blog will help them cement that reputation. It also gives them an opportunity to reach out and connect with people in marketing and public relations fields who are tapping into user-generated content initiatives to drive market share and brand value for their organizations and their clients.

This is PR 101 for the 21st century.

Client Services Manager

Winnipeg, October 14, 2008 - Dooley Communications has an immediate opening for a Manager of Client Services to serve our growing roster of clients. Dooley Communications is a small, fast-growing and innovative agency with a focus on providing senior level public relations and corporate communications services to corporations, government agencies and non-profits.

The Manager of Client Services will take a lead role on managing and executing projects for our clients. We are seeking a career communications professional with a minimum of two years experience working in a corporate or agency environment; very strong writing skills; confidence in oral presentations; a creative flair and a nose for quality and detail.

The position calls for someone with a post-secondary degree or diploma in communications, experience in media relations, issues management and at least some event management. The successful candidate will be a self-starter with an entrepreneurial attitude who can work independently in an unstructured environment. A desire to excel at client service is vital. You will be very comfortable working online, have an interest in the latest trends in communications and marketing, and a desire to consistently learn and improve your skills.

Dooley Communications offers a competitive package of salary, bonuses and benefits. Our motto is to be excellent, be urgent and be yourself. If that suits your personality, then drop us a line.

Please send resume and cover letter with salary expectations in confidence to Adam Dooley, President, at adooley@dooleycommunications.ca. Deadline for applications for this position is October 27, 2008.