Public Relations Society of America

Welcome to the official newsletter of the Greater Spokane PRSA Chapter. Past issues can be found by going to www.prsaspokane.org and clicking on the "Newsletters" link.

NOTE: The breakfast meetings cost structure has changed. New prices are listed at the end of this article.
RSVP and save money by logging onto www.spokanemarcom.com.
To take advantage of the RSVP discount, you must RSVP by Monday, Oct. 1.

The October 5th MarCom and PSRA members breakfast will feature two guest speakers who have significant experience in the design, implementation and deployment of internet based enterprise collaboration tools and social networking sites.

The presentation is entitled “Social Networks and Internet-Based Enterprise Collaboration,” and our guest speakers, both operating from Spokane, will be Nick Murto of Seven2 Interactive and Joe Tansy of Guerilla Development Company.

Nick Murto and his partner Tyler Lafferty formed Seven2 Interactive in 2003. Mr. Murto has an extensive background developing interactive marketing strategies for such prominent firms as AT&T Wireless, Nintendo, Ericsson, Motorola, Therm-a-Rest, National Geographic, among others.

Guerilla Development Co. is a Spokane based company that creates database driven web applications and solutions for large companies. Their current focus is implementing Sharepoint solutions to facilitate enterprise-wide communications for clients such as the Renton and Lake Washington School Districts and the City of Renton.

Attendees will experience a first hand look at what current web trends are in both the public social networking side of the web as well as the back-end enterprise-wide collaborative side, and learn how they can deploy cutting edge technology solutions to meet their own marketing and public relations objectives.

NEW breakfast meeting costs: $10 for students and members who RSVP, $13 for members at the door and non-members who RSVP, and $15 for non-members at the door.

Dear fellow PRSA Members,
It was wonderful to see many of you at the September breakfast meeting, as we discussed ethics “from the inside out” and the effect that has on our daily work and our profession. This is just the beginning of an outstanding year of programming that has been developed based on your feedback.

I look forward to seeing you all at our October meeting, focused on new media and technology. This is an area of our business that is quickly growing and changing, often times making it difficult to stay up-to-date. It is also important when examining new media, as well as other communications tactics, to look at the cost-value impact on your organization. While blogging and other tools can be a great source of information in some industries, in others it could be detrimental. Also, as with any communications tool, the tools are only as good as the time and content we put into them. It is essential to review the pros and cons of each of these tools as we continue to utilize them in our work and personal lives.

I look forward to a lively conversation on this topic and would be interested in hearing your feedback and thoughts as well. We have some outstanding examples right in our community of how using new media can work to advance your message with your audiences and get timely and valid feedback.

I also encourage each of you to attend the PRSA Fall Workshop on Friday, November 2nd and the Magnum PR Holiday Auction on Tuesday, December 4th. Both these events are slated to be excellent and more detailed information is in this newsletter. Remember, our organization is only as great as we collectively work to make it; please provide your thoughts and feedback to myself or any member of the board on what our chapter can do to best serve you.

Spokane PRSA is proud to bring you this special professional development opportunity on Friday, Nov. 2, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sign up today for Low-cost PR Solutions (featuring Rhoda Weiss, APR) and PR Research Tactics on a Budget (featuring Erica Austin and Bruce Pinkleton from the Murrow School of Communication at WSU).

Rhoda Weiss, APR
Rhoda Weiss, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the chair and CEO of the 31,000 member Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). During her career, she has traveled more than 6 million miles speaking and consulting to over 700 organizations in 49 states and abroad. A UCLA Extension faculty member, Kellogg Foundation Fellow and national consultant in public relations, marketing and strategy, Rhoda is based out of Santa Monica, CA. She is a recipient of dozens of communications awards, including the PRSA Health Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, PRSA National Volunteer of the Year, Award of Individual Excellence from the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development, Woman of the Year from Women in Health Administration, among others.

Erica Austin, PhD
Erica's research interests include uses and effects of communication in decision making and social development, particularly in the areas of politics and health. She teaches PR management and campaign design, communication theory, health communication and social development classes at the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University.

Bruce Pinkleton, PhD
Bruce is the coordinator of public relations internships at the Murrow School of Communication at WSU. His research interests include communication campaigns, including political communication and health communication.

Stay tuned for an update e-mail with more details, including an agenda and cost.

PRSA Magnum PR Holiday Auction
In the Fabulous Fox Theater
Benefiting PRSSA Scholarship Fund
Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2007, 6 p.m.

Fantastic food, great wine, breathtaking venue, terrific auction -- an incredible experience!

By Garry Matlow
I remember when I got my first personal computer. It was January 1994. We bought a Macintosh Performa 467 for $1,300. That baby had a 180 MB hard drive, 4 megs or RAM and a 33 MHz clock speed. We could even connect to this new service called America On-Line with our 2400 bps modem. The Internet? That was for the very brave. You could find some text files and some binary photo files if you knew where to look, or join a bulletin board, but you had to make sure you didn't offend any seasoned veterans with a faux pas like writing in all caps. The Internet was all text; Netscape Navigator and the World Wide Web hadn't come along yet. E-mail? If you knew someone who had it, you could send them a message, but very few people outside the scientific community used it. No one had to worry about e-mail spam, either.

In the mid-1990s, the most advanced technology used in the practice of public relations was sending a fax. Computers were used for graphic design and desktop publishing, but the equipment was expensive and the learning curve was steep.

Fast forward to today. We've come a long ways in the past 13 years. I can't think of any other technology in my lifetime that has advanced so far so fast, with the exception of the eight years between Alan Shepard's space flight and the lunar landing. But that wasn't technology that was available to the masses.

For those of us in the communications business, we run the risk of jumping on the train or getting left at the station. Things that were once seen as toys are becoming essential tools of the trade. People are getting information in myriad ways that didn't even exist when we started our careers. (When I was in college, "high tech" and "state of the art" meant an IBM Selectric typewriter with a font ball that you could change.) Today there's My Space and You Tube, RSS, podcasting (and video podcasting), Second Life and a host of other interactive tools.

I look at www.seven2.net, the Web site for one of our Oct. 5 breakfast speakers, and marvel at the type and quality of work going on right here in Spokane. I feel like everyone's favorite dumb blonde, Jessica Simpson, describing 1080i in the high-def television commercial: "I don't know what it is, but I want it."

That's the way is goes with fancy tools, whether it's "Tim the Tool Man" Taylor with a turbo-charged chain saw or the latest in computer technology. The new media tools need to be used in the context of sound public relations strategies and tactics. When the two meet in perfect harmony, it's a beautiful thing.

Save the date for a FREE teleseminar brought to you by Spokane PRSA! Getting the Most Out of Surveys will help guide you through the pitfalls of survey design and help you gather solid data that will hold up against the post piercing scrutiny. This is a great program to prepare you for the Fall Workshop which focuses on research in public relations. And did we mention it's FREE?

Date/Time: Thursday, Oct. 11, 12-1 p.m.
Location: TBA
RSVP for this event online at: http://www.prsaspokane.org/event.asp?id=144
Cost: Free for Spokane PRSA members, $20 for non-members

Access PRC Search for free at www.prsa.org -- just click on PRC and select PRC Search. This tool connects you with a fully accessible online reference library that houses a vast collection of full-text articles from PRSA's award winning publications, PR Tactics and The Strategist, as well as hundreds of groundbreaking Silver and Bronze Anvil campaign profiles dating back to 1969.

By Susan Nielsen, M.S., APR
PRSA Ethics Officer
Corporate Communications Director, Rockwood Clinic

If we asked 25 major Spokane companies how many of them have an ethics mandate within their organization, most would likely state they have such a statement. If we asked these same companies where or which department was responsible for the function within their organization, we would likely get a variety of responses. If we then asked who the single person responsible for the ethics and compliance function is and if that person's full time job was to be the Ethics or Compliance Officer, most if not all would likely be hard pressed to pinpoint a full time person.

This topic was interesting enough to me that I focused my 2005 master's thesis on "The Rise in Ethics Officers and their Role in Organizations." There was not an abundance of scholarly research available on this topic in 2005, so I turned to the Ethics Officer Association (now called the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association) for assistance. According to their Web site, "The Ethics & Compliance Officer Association (ECOA) is a non-consulting, member-driven association exclusively for individuals who are responsible for their organization's ethics, compliance, and business conduct programs. The only organization of its kind, it is the largest group of business ethics and compliance practitioners in the world." According to their Web site, their membership is approximately 1,300 ethics and compliance professionals within the ECOA network (up from 1,235 in 2005).

According to a recent white paper published by the ECOA, entitled Leading Corporate Integrity: Defining the Role of the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, the role of the CECO is not always clearly defined, and many CECOs report feeling set up for failure due to insufficient authority or inadequate resources.

The next few issues of the PRSA Ethics Officer column will focus on excerpts from this white paper to 1) describe the role of a Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer and 2) to provide further resources for those interested in learning more about organizations focused on ethics and compliance issues. I obviously find this topic incredibly interesting. My hope is that from this, and other resources I will include in future columns, you will learn more about ethics issues for your own organization and this interesting corporate position (CECO) over the next several weeks.

[White Paper Excerpt 1] "Senior corporate executives are under great pressure to build and maintain strong organizational ethics programs. The stakes are high for any organization that fails to make ethics a priority and then finds itself embroiled in scandal. Public perceptions—often driven by the media—spoil a company’s reputation and weaken its brand value. Lowered trust among investors can devastate a company’s ability to attract support for growth. Regulators and lawmakers may move swiftly to punish and/or further regulate those who step outside accepted ethical boundaries. Today, many organizations are choosing to consolidate the critical responsibility for ethics and compliance programs under a chief ethics and compliance officer (CECO). But the specific roles and reporting lines for this relative newcomer among corporate management positions are not always clearly defined; many CECOs report feeling set up for failure due to insufficient authority or inadequate resources."

(To be continued...)

Lance Kissler has accepted a new position as the Director of Marketing at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, effective Sept. 24. He was previously employed at Eastern Washington University. Lance will continue to serve on the Spokane PRSA board of directors and attend membership events.

The Spokane PRSA board of directors met on Tuesday, Sept. 11 and discussed the upcoming fall professional development workshop, holiday auction and teleseminar. In addition, the board revised its sponsorship packages, in an effort to approach fundraising more strategically for the organization and it's supporters. Also, stay tuned for an upcoming mentorship program with PR college students in the area. And finally, the board with conduct a strategic planning session on Oct. 27 -- please feel free to contact any of the board members before that date with your feedback and suggestions about the organization.

Have a story idea for the Spokane PRSA newsletter? Send your article, announcement or shameless plug to Lance Kissler by the 15th of the month.

The Update