Come check out “Smashing The Glass Ceiling” February Luncheon Event featuring Kristi Krueger  and Boardroom Communication’s President, Julie Talenfeld,  on February 2 at the Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale!

Where:

100 SE Third Avenue

28th Floor

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

When:

February 2, 2012

11:30 a.m. -1:30 p.m.

Cost:

$30 for members

$45 for non-members

Please include attendee name and company name when registering.

Advance registration is required. Please note: Registration closes February 1st, 2012 at noon. Registrations received after noon on Wednesday, February 1st will be charged an additional $10 late fee at the door.

For more information check out their website.

With the New Year many companies are trying to enhance their business and create a stronger presence online.  You should too! According to a recent article in Open Forum, there are eight easy steps to boost your website on a budget.

The following are our top 5.

1. Maintaining a blog can do a lot for your business. They bring traffic to your website, stir discussion and keep the public interested.  Blogging is as easy as creating a free account on Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. If you already have a Website, your Webmaster or marketing firm can create a blog as part of your site.  Once the blogging tool is installed, just log in and start writing.

1. Don’t hesitate to register with a business-listing site.  Websites like Bing, Yahoo, Yelp and Google can help your business with website traffic through search engine optimization (SEO), and help increase the amount of times you are seen online.

1. Paying attention to key words helps with SEO.  The more precise your wording, the higher the probability of increasing traffic to your website, and prospectively more clients.  You can also use the Google Keywords Tool which allows you to check for searches that describe your business and will notify you with successful and unsuccessful keywords that resulted from the search.

1. Watching your analytics also helps with your online presence.  You can register with Google Analytics and search your blog posts to see which are faring well on your site and what specific keywords were used to accomplish it. This helps see which keywords work best and what types of information are read frequently on your website.

1. Adding social media tools should be a priority in today’s society.  Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Linked in are just a few of the names we hear on a daily basis in public relations.  These social media sites are very popular and effective tools in creating website presence.

To read more helpful tips, visit Open Forum’s website.

“Micky Arison should take ownership and get in front of the story,” said Boardroom’s president, Julie Talenfeld, in response to how Costa and Carnival should have responded to the Jan. 13th deadly accident. The current PR approach has both Costa and Carnival’s Doral headquarters under fire – especially after reports of the company offering shipwreck survivors a 30% discount on their next cruise. Media around the world has picked up the story – giving Carnival yet another crisis. CBS Morning show expressed amazement at the offer and the New York Post branded it as “tactless.”

The Miami Hearld reached out to our very own, Julie Talenfeld, for her expert advice and was quoted in today’s article, “Carnival Cruise Lines faces a hostile PR tide.” Click here to read full article.

The holidays are here! Not only does that mean ’tis the season to be jolly with family and friends, but in the workplace as well.

By peppering your business with a little holiday spirit, you can revamp your brand image and inspire some holiday cheer in your customers.

Take Starbucks.

Its holiday marketing campaign, which debuted in November, features seasonal beverages like the “Peppermint Mocha” and “Gingerbread Latte” served up in special edition holiday cups.  This year, Starbucks has gone one step further with the Starbucks Cup Magic App, which allows coffee-drinkers to animate the action on their coffee cups on their smartphone screens.  The object, says VP-Global Digital Marketing for Starbucks, Alexandra Wheeler, is to both “surprise and delight” customers during this holiday season.

So get in the spirit! Here are some things you can do to make the holiday season a catalyst for your business:

-Deck the halls with boughs of holly! But seriously, some easy, simple decorations can go a long way.  By creating a fun, holiday atmosphere, your employees and customers alike will relish in the spirit of the season.

-Learn the holiday news cycle. To avoid missing out on an opportunity for your product or service in a publication, make sure you’re up to date on the editorial calendars well in advance to see what specific topics the media outlets will focus on during this holiday cycle.

-Wish your social media following a happy holidays. A simple tweet or Facebook post spreading the spirit will bring you back into sight and into mind.  Keeping up a rapport with those in the digital world (and continuing to maintain your online presence) is extremely important, especially now!

So enjoy this holiday season, and take advantage of the opportunity to enact some timely marketing strategies. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Congratulations to LYND for its purchase of $49 million in distressed notes secured by three apartment buildings in Florida. LYND has been one of the most active players in the distressed commercial real estate market having purchased $400 million in notes since January 1.  President and COO A. David Lynd talks about the company’s latest deal with Globestreet.

To read the article, click here.

Much already has been written about Steve Jobs – his marketing genius, his control of public relations, his ability to skillfully meld the products he created with a pent-up consumer demand for those products (or so we thought once his products were released).

That was the brilliance of Jobs. To paraphrase something he once said, “It isn’t up to consumers to know what they want. It’s up to us to tell them.”

Steven Jobs was one of those transformative inventors who comes along once every few generations. Perhaps it is a testament to how much he touched so many that – as President Barack Obama commented – so many learned of Jobs’ passing on a device he had invented.

He was also a public relations and marketing mastermind. His retail success came from creating powerful products backed by the buzz that made people feel they must have those devices. Apple’s iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone wowed audiences when revealed in grand on-stage debuts – with Jobs as the emcee. Journalists were awed, and their articles reflected their amazement.

And we consumers bit – hard.

Apple didn’t need “traditional” consumer electronics marketing. The company consistently avoids major announcement hubs like the Consumer Electronics Show, notes PRdaily. He launched the hype – and sustained it.

Most (dare we say All-But-Apple) cannot afford to sidestep the major events. We bend over backwards to please our patrons, and play the retail merchandising game the way the industry has created it. Yet Jobs’ prowess in product development showed us that the brand dictates the trend – and not vice versa.

By developing one-of-a-kind products with unique messages to match, marrying art and technology in a way we’ve never seen before, Jobs dominated the technology industry. As the article explains, many described Apple products as “funky” and “snazzy,” showing their appreciation for the visual appearance of the tech.

Steve Jobs was quoted once as having said, “The customer is not right, I am.” Masterfully brilliant, unabashed in his view of the world, in every essence of the word, Steve Jobs – in his jeans and black, mock-turtleneck – didn’t just sell us things. He sold us dreams.

And if you were listening, he sold us a new roadmap to successful marketing.

Let’s face it— there’s no such thing as a straight print journalist anymore. If you’re in the journalism field, never has going multi-platform been more important.

Miami Herald reporter, columnist, blogger (and tweeter!) Cindy Goodman agrees, encouraging all journalists to use new media to enhance their brand as well as the quality and readership of their stories.

This is 2011. If you’re not on the new media train, you are most likely soon without a job.

Goodman was one of the first writers at The Miami Herald to start a blog (eight long years ago!), The Work/Life Balancing Act, and is an active voice on Twitter. She has additionally developed her own blog, Raising Teenagers in The Digital Age, uses a website for her own personal branding, and has Facebook pages devoted to her stories.

Goodman is an awesome example of using new media to stay alive in journalism, without sacrificing her journalistic integrity. Here are some tips and tools you can use to follow this new media maverick into the realms of multi-platform journalism:

BLOGGING

• Have fun with voice and personality in your blog. It’s a platform where there’s some wiggle room for editorializing. But don’t go overboard! You are still a journalist at heart.
• Make sure your blog has a consistent theme, voice, or message to establish yourself as an “expert” or “go-to” on your topic.
• Use your blog as a place to put ancillary, fun, less relevant information that didn’t necessarily fit into your stories.
• Keep up a conversation with your readers on your blog. Listen to their opinions and give them what they want!

TWITTER

• Be smart about your tweets to bring traffic back to your news story rather than give it all away in 140 characters.  Always try to tweet with links to a bigger story unless you are giving periodic updates from an event.
• Create a conversation with your followers. Don’t simply promote yourself, your brand, and your stories.
• Be careful about retweets: even if you’re not the one writing them, they still reflect on you and your journalistic voice and integrity. Make sure your retweets are reputable and that you are willing to be liable for them.
• Follow and retweet relevant sources to expose your readers. Twitter is all about vanity, so retweeting twitpics from your followers will encourage others to send in their photos, and ultimately follow you.

VIDEOREPORTING

• Be sure your videos complement the print/online story. They should not reiterate the print but augment it.
• Keep your videos short, from 90 seconds to 3 minutes.
• Sometimes you can use footage from an interview as online video; an interesting fact that didn’t necessarily fit into the story could make it in to the piece this way.
• Again, don’t shoot video for the sake of shooting video. There has to be a reason for people to play it.

With regards to all of this new media, take a deep breath before you post or upload. Think, do you really want to say this? Once you click submit, your words, pics, and video have free reign in the online vortex. You can never really take anything back! So next time you write a story, grab your flip-cam and your smartphone, because you’ll need them!

As a journalist, you may be entering uncharted waters, but with street smarts and adaptability, you should be a-okay.

At the Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday night, Charlie Sheen shelved his tiger blood and goddesses, and revealed a seemingly much less violent torpedo of truth.

Sheen seems to have taken a sabbatical from his previous antics, which lead to his firing from the hit comedy series, “Two and a Half Men.” With the season premiere of “Men” and his Comedy Central roast both airing on the Monday night after the Emmys, Sheen picked the perfect moment to debut his new, non-warlock self.

He also offered a lesson in why celebrities and other high-profile individuals – CEOs, executives and athletes – must protect their public personas, and apologize if they’ve transgressed.

Before being fired, Sheen was the highest paid actor on television at the time. Then, the meltdown. He held surreal interviews and television appearances. He spewed rhetorical nonsense that left viewers and media wondering about his mental state. He quickly became the hottest trending topic on Twitter for his outlandish posts and wild behavior.

Though he claimed to be “bi-winning,” this seemed like a huge lose-lose for Sheen, the show, and CBS.

So when Sheen took center stage at the Emmys to present the award for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series – his old category – no one knew exactly what to expect. He was apologetic and humble. He wished his old series well. He said (with apparent sincerity), “I know you will continue to make great television.”

So the question is: Who was the Sheen we had just seen? Was it an act, or has he truly changed? More importantly, how will he be remembered? Will we look back on Charlie Sheen and think of the eight years he spent dominating primetime? Or will we recall only “Violent Torpedoes of Truth,” “Rock Star from Mars” or any of the other 22 phrases he sought to trademark? Only time will tell.

On a more broad scope, celebrities and others in the limelight – community leaders, presidents of corporations, executive directors of a charity – must watch how they act in public. Don’t act in ways or say things that will tarnish the personal or brand image. Behave with decorum. Beware who’s watching. If caught, apologize – quickly.

Though Sheen dug himself into a PR nightmare this past year, he’s managing to slowly dig himself out. He’s even endorsing the “Two And A Half Men” premiere with his replacement Ashton Kutcher, tweeting, “Odd…But cool..! So far a lot of laughs!”

Though his jury is still out, hopefully Charlie Sheen can emerge #winning.

The University of Miami football scandal has rocked the college sports community, players, and coaches for almost a month now.

In mid-August Yahoo! Sports reported the corruption within the University of Miami football program- detailing a UM football booster’s showering of 72 players (and even administrators!) with lavish gifts including parties at night clubs, prostitutes, jewelry, clothing, and electronics. Nevin Shapiro, the culprit who is currently serving time for a $930 million dollar Ponzi scheme, wined and dined the players to get into the “in crowd,” and develop a posse of top players turning top recruits and then pro. Shapiro is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his actions- but the University of Miami as a college, community, and brand is facing serious repercussions. In fact, in their September 5^th game against Maryland, certain UM players who were deemed ineligible to play because of their part in the scandal left many inexperienced freshmen taking over their positions. The investigation will continue on.

The scandal floats like a black cloud over campus, and University President Donna E. Shalala has only recently instated a crisis communications plan. As WPLG-Miami reporter Michael Putney writes in his opinion piece in The Miami Herald on August 23^rd, “UM President Donna Shalala certainly didn’t look good the other day striding around the campus with a pasted-on grin as she welcomed reporters, none of whose questions she would answer…Not even ‘no comment.’” Even if Shalala didn’t have all of the facts, we at Boardroom Communications would have advised her to at least let reporters know she was on their side. She could have said, “I have no comment at this time other than to say that we are taking this very seriously and investigating it,” or something of this nature, from the very start. Putney puts it well, asking, “Why didn’t Shalala just call a news conference, say she wouldn’t be answering questions and read the limp, ineffectual statement her office issued…?” Maybe the media would’ve given her a break if she went humbly to the camera right away.

Then again, it probably wasn’t too fun greeting the parents and students of the Class of 2015 amidst the biggest scandal in University of Miami history.

Shalala did pen a letter to the community, and has made two videos reaching out to the university and community at large- directly addressing the incident from her own office. “When our values come into question, we only have one option,” she says in the video. “Do what is right and have confidence in tomorrow. The allegations leveled…are serious. And we are treating them with the urgency and priority they warrant.” Shalala also notes that the NCAA has instructed her and the university to not yet comment on specifics, and her personal frustration with being “unable to speak more freely and answer questions.”

Though initially faltering (and getting beaten for it), Shalala is starting to take the right steps by confidently looking straight into the camera and accepting responsibility for this scandal. When CEOS and corporate executives are faced with any sort of catastrophe, more often than not there is simply a press release, a general statement sent to publications and mass media, and nothing more. Shalala has employed a simple yet successful public relations strategy- appearing personal, humbled, and intimate with her audience and community. It’s obvious that she and the University of Miami administration are trying very hard to remain proactive in an attempt to redeem themselves and the reputation of their college. Thankfully, their current coach Al Golden remains untainted by the scandal- having arrived long after Shapiro’s departure. If he takes the reins and focuses on the future, maybe, just maybe, Miami can recover.

As consumers, we are bombarded with advertisements on a daily basis. Ads come at us from all directions – when we’re sitting in our cars on the highway, when we grab a newspaper or magazine with our daily coffee, when we log on to the Internet…the list goes on. The average consumer is unaffected by most of the ads, rendering them ineffective.

When the Internet started displaying ads based on the user’s search history, the number of insignificant ads declined. And now marketers are turning to a new kind of advertising strategy to cut out more pointless ads from our lives – facial recognition.

Digital advertising displays can now identify the age, gender and race of an individual and will only show ads that would be relevant to them. For example, the Venetian resort and casino in Las Vegas uses facial recognition to provide suggestions for restaurants, night clubs and other entertainment to passersby.

How it works: Essentially, when you stand in front of a display, the camera analyzes your facial features to determine your approximate age. Using that information, the system will only display ads that are marketed towards that demographic. For example, if the system decides the person in front of the display is a woman in her mid-20s, it will show her advertisements for shoes, handbags, cosmetics, and so on.

Companies like Adidas and Kraft Foods Inc. are looking to implement this technology to their marketing efforts. The belief is that consumers will be more likely to buy something if they are offered the right products quickly.

While the thought of getting rid of trivial ads sound great, is it worth giving up your privacy?

Some people fear that the use of this technology will be an invasion of privacy. Proponents of facial recognition think it’s another way for companies to gather information without the public’s knowledge and permission.

In a similar fashion, when Facebook Inc. unveiled their photo tagging system using facial recognition, users were in uproar at the lack of privacy.

Is the risk of losing some privacy worth evading the ads that have nothing to with us? What costs are you willing to pay to avoid being exposed to a plethora of advertisements?

For more information about facial recognition technology and how it works, click here.