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Greentarget, since its earliest days, has endeavored to give back to the community by working with a variety of pro bono clients. In 2016, we contributed hundreds of hours to worthy organizations across the country. And we’re on track to do the same this year. Now, with 2018 just around the corner, we want to expand our list of possible pro bono clients with the first ever GT Cares Grant. Throughout January, we’ll be collecting applications from U.S.-based organizations. We’ll evaluate and pick one client to work with as part of a 90-day engagement in early 2018 – and we’ll announce the winner in March. Organizations submitting applications must have a 501(c)3 designation and a communications goal that can be achieved in 90 days. They also should be new to Greentarget and not have a religious or political affiliation. Greentarget can offer pro bono clients services in media relations, content production, social media, digital strategy and/or public relations training. But we don’t want to limit potential efforts to those buckets. Organizations submitting applications can also suggest other related types of work. Still, it’s important to keep in mind that we’ll judge applications based on the likelihood of a fit – that is, how well we could serve your organization. Here’s a sampling of organizations we’ve worked with in 2017:
  • Barrel of Monkeys: The Chicago-based arts education organization focuses on teaching creative writing to grade schoolers and turning their stories into performances for the public. The organization celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017, and Greentarget helped create messaging that resulted in coverage in several local media outlets.
  • Cameron Kravitt Foundation: CKF teaches future doctors, particularly pediatricians, how to tell parents their child has died. With a primary goal of increasing awareness of and engagement with CKF, Greentarget leveraged earned media as a channel to articulate the CKF story. We also provided a social media framework for the Junior Board to consider implementing in the second half of the year.
  • Culinary Care: The organization provides made-to-order meals from a network of quality restaurants for families facing cancer. In September, the nonprofit held its 3rd Annual Corporate Cook-Off with a Chopped-inspired affair. Leading up to the event, Greentarget provided traditional media relations counsel, and post-event we developed follow-up material to help Culinary Care reconnect with sponsors, patients and families in need, as well as social media messaging.
  • Heartland Alliance: Each year, Heartland Alliance hosts a Home & Garden Tour in Southwest Michigan offering a glimpse into homes and gardens with interesting architecture and interior design. Because all proceeds go to the Heartland Alliance Fund, ticket sales are of utmost importance. To increase awareness of the event, Greentarget secured media coverage in numerous event calendars, as well as articles in Road Trips for Gardeners and Harbor Country News that promoted the tour.
  • Humble Design: The Detroit-based nonprofit helps families transitioning out of homeless shelters by furnishing their new homes soup to nuts (furniture, curtains, towels, dishes, art, books, etc.). The nonprofit opened a Chicago chapter in March 2017 and wanted to get the word out locally. Greentarget secured broadcast coverage on ABC, NBC and CBS.
  • Kids in Need of Defense: KIND strives to ensure that no child appears in immigration court without legal representation while continuously educating lawmakers and the general public about what the kids are fleeing and who they are. Greentarget helped get the word out by leveraging traditional and social media to promote two reports on sexual and gender-based violence in Central America, and we produced two Q&As with legal volunteers.
  • United Way of Metro Chicago: Greentarget facilitated planning discussions about the organization’s new neighborhood network program, developed an executive positioning plan and engaged in story development conversations with the organization’s CEO and SVP of Community Impact. We also instituted a twice-weekly news monitoring notification newsletter to flag stories that United Way can be positioned to comment on.
We’ve also worked extensively with the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic, which we wrote about in September. We’ll be accepting applications from January 2 through January 31, 2018. If you’re interested in submitting, please answer the following questions in a Word document and send your submission to probono@greentarget.com. ABOUT YOU ORGANIZATION NAME: ADDRESS: PHONE NUMBER: WEBSITE: MAIN CONTACT NAME: TITLE: PHONE NUMBER: EMAIL ADDRESS: Is your organization a 501(c)3 nonprofit? Yes/No What is your annual marketing and public relations budget? How did you hear about this program? COMMUNICATIONS NEEDS
  • Describe your organization. (200 words or less)
  • Give us your best pitch about why we should work with you. (200 words or less)
  • What specific communications challenge can Greentarget help you solve starting in early 2018? (200 words or less)
  • How do you envision Greentarget helping you meet that challenge in 2018? (200 words or less)
  • What is your ideal outcome of the work associated with this challenge – e.g., improved overall messaging, media coverage or increased social media presence? (200 words or less)
  • Describe your organization and staff, particularly your communications/public relations personnel. (200 words or less)

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At Greentarget we work hard to keep up with the evolving media landscape, given the work we do for clients. Sara Fischer, media reporter at Axios, has been an important resource for us – and probably is for anyone trying to understand the future of news. So we were excited when Fischer agreed to discuss the latest industry trends with us and provide her thoughts on the role Axios is playing in the current media environment. Axios was established as a media company delivering vital, trustworthy news and analysis in the most efficient, illuminating and shareable ways possible. Fischer joined when the publication launched in January 2017. She told us why her role as a media reporter made sense – she came in as “an expert on both sides.” “I had sold advertising on behalf of a number of high-profile outlets, and also had the opportunity to be a reporter,” she said. “When the heads of Axios were looking for a new reporter to cover the media environment, we all agreed it was a good fit.” A focus of Fischer’s writing has been to better understand user behavior and media consumption. She’s dug into user experience’s impact on how people get news, and her takeaways have shaped the direction of Axios’ news coverage. “Readers don’t always like long-form content when reading hard, breaking news. However, as it relates to softer news, longer-form is more acceptable,” she said. “User experience is also paramount. Design and technology need to go hand-in-hand. If a site has too many ads, the user won’t stay with the publication. A website must be clean and fast, or a user won’t want to go there.” Fischer and Axios have extensively researched user behavior and whether people will pay for news – a matter that has bedeviled news organizations for more than two decades. Of particular interest is social media, with fewer than 10 percent of respondents to a new Adobe study saying they are very likely to pay for news through social media channels. For Fischer, this wasn’t at all surprising. “There is a news and information gap in the U.S. between highly educated people and low-income people,” she said. “Highly educated people are more likely to pay for news, and they are starting to do so more frequently. However, lower-income people will continue to turn to social media as a way to access news and information, because it’s free. The challenge, however, is that they are still looking for sources of news they believe in and trust, and on social media, it’s not always easy to decipher.” Fischer analyzed these challenges in an article on a study from the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It found that just 25 percent of people have a “great deal” of trust for social media as a news source, with trust in Facebook being much lower at 12 percent. Fischer explained in her article why this is such a huge problem. “Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults get news on social media, and according to Pew, 68 percent of people don’t trust the news they see or read, which is the highest distrust rate the U.S. has ever seen.” Fischer also writes about how reporters continue to adapt in the evolving media landscape. Last month, she wrote about how Google is launching new features in its free Cloud Natural Language API to help newsrooms and other businesses sort out information, making it easier to search later. Artificial intelligence’s impact on journalism is an important topic these days, and Fischer believes AI will continue to affect the stories journalists write and become instrumental in helping reporters market content to reach new readers. “Reporters will be able to use the machine learnings to better manage reader relationships,” she said. “Some newsrooms are using AI to translate pieces for international markets.” Following up on our recent conversation with Courtney Radsch, advocacy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, we asked Fischer about how the current political environment has impacted the media environment, both for better and worse. She noted how media outlets (even publications like Vanity Fair) are creating political verticals to keep up with the public interest and a newfound aggressive fact-checking culture. “Fact-checking has really become the center of the news landscape, and we continue to see services for fact-checking and verification to counter fake news in social media increase,” she said. “Some journalists are struggling amid the 24-hour news cycle, longing for the day when they could be done at the end of the day,” Fischer said. “But the chaotic environment has enticed more readers to pay for news.” “More and more people are looking for ways to distill the truths around them, and a number of publications have definitely witnessed bumps in subscriptions,” Fischer said. Fischer moderated Axios’ first Future of the Media event last month and wrote about some of the key takeaways from the heavy hitters who participated (it’s definitely worth a read). To close our conversation, we asked Fischer what she finds most fascinating in the evolving news environment. Her answer: There is no regulatory body that is completely responsible for oversight of the internet. There are three bodies that are responsible for parts of internet regulation. The Federal Communications Commission is responsible for illegal content, like child pornography. The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for false commercialization, like diet pill scams. And the DOJ is responsible for anti-trust. “With what technology is capable of doing, I’m not sure how people are shocked about Russia using Facebook’s tools to target specific ads,” she said, echoing a recent Mashable story. “Anyone who has worked on the sales side of media knows that there’s nothing crazy about the functionality of this, and how easy it is to do.”

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It’s an old question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? But in this era, the more appropriate question might be: If you were there to witness the tree falling, would you hear it if every other tree in the forest fell at the same time? The second question is emblematic of the challenge business-to-business communicators face — a beautiful piece of content or original research can go unnoticed with so much other content available. Without a distribution strategy, truly good work can get absorbed in the noise. This was one of the primary topics of the 2017 Critical Issues Forum held on September 15 in New York. The event is convened annually by the PR Council, and this year’s forum drew industry leaders to discuss brand transformation, the effects of new platforms and how the iGeneration is challenging marketers. Participants also were offered the chance to ask former White House spokespeople what they think of the current administration’s communications team. Greentarget attends the forum each year with clients and friends. This year, we attended with senior business-to-business marketing communications executives from several organizations, including a leading provider of financial solutions, a top insurer, a valuation advisory firm, a litigation financier and several global law firms. Here are the takeaways they were thinking about after the event. Do as I Do, Not as I Say On a panel about marketing transformation, Heineken CMO Nuno Teles said, “Trust what customers do, not what they say they are going to do” — meaning, don’t waste your time (and money) asking clients what they think about your brand. Study how they behave around your brand. Greentarget’s technology clients pay close attention to where different customer segments look for and digest information about products and services. These clients develop “personas” that represent each customer segment based on predominant behaviors and then craft a content strategy to precision-target each persona. This approach has been around in political and consumer marketing for a while — remember Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads? For business-to-business communicators, understanding what information can tip people from consideration to adoption, and how they prefer to receive it, should be no less commonplace. TXT ME! Snaps CEO Christian Brucculeri and Txt Me author Bonin Bough impressed participants with the potential of messaging apps to micro-target prospective customers. Digital platforms are proliferating rapidly. Messaging is the common element across these platforms — both established and emerging — and it is overrunning how we communicate. Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion monthly active users; it is among the top five apps in every demographic of U.S. consumers, according to ComScore. iMessage easily exceeds this. As anyone familiar with the iGeneration has observed, there is an entire generation of consumers that doesn’t know that e-mail exists. And yet according to Brucculeri and Bough, almost no one is working to organize and manage communities on messaging platforms, as is common on popular social networks. So anyone who needs to tell stories to drive engagement with a brand should be packaging everything they do on social platforms for messaging apps or risk missing the next massive opportunity in consumer engagement. How this will play out in the business-to-business space remains uncertain. But Signet, the preferred messaging platform of Edward Snowden (it’s an encrypted service), surely presages a wave of messaging apps that can enable secure business communication. The Best Communicators Serve the Audience      Greentarget believes that one of the principles of journalism — that the message must serve the audience — is essential to effective business-to-business marketing. This was echoed by Karen Hughes, a former counselor to President George W. Bush. On a panel of communications directors from the Bush and Clinton administrations, Karen asserted that the White House press secretary, in fact, serves the people, not the president. To what heights of sincerity and authenticity might our storytelling ascend if we took a lesson from this as business-to-business communicators? We possess a nuanced understanding of our audience and a narrow focus on its needs, and it’s exciting to think about crafting exactly the right story, at the right time, on the right medium — and inspiring clients to act. You can view videos of all the panels mentioned here and others at the Critical Issues Forum’s website. Please watch a few. We’d love to hear what sticks with you.

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Ever wonder where all those crazy political headlines on social media come from? There’s a good bet they originated in Veles, Macedonia – which is (incredibly) treating fake news as a growth industry. They used to make porcelain there. But, of course, social media isn’t all bad. As another RR entry notes, victims of recent hurricanes have used it to get help. We’re also reading about counterfeit shoes, a fabled Forbes editor, how zoos and aquariums deal with natural disasters and a podcast about the nature of self. Also, make sure to check out Senior Vice President Pam Munoz’s post about Greentarget’s work with the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic. With that, here’s Recent Reads. The Fake News Machine – You’ve probably never heard of Veles, Macedonia, but it’s one of the origin points for fake political news – and its entrepreneurs are getting rich and ready for 2020 (with the not-so-tacit support of local government officials). This is a chilling account of what we’re facing as a democracy – as a world? – when it comes to finding enough shared beliefs to even function. With headlines like “Michelle Was Caught Cheating with Eric Holder – OBAMA IS FURIOUS!!!” – and the knowledge that 2017 isn’t even a major election year, I can’t imagine what the next presidential election will look like. – Paul Wilson Hurricane Harvey Victims Turn to Social Media for Assistance – As a Houston native, my Facebook feed – typically filled with photos of babies, political frustration and bold asks from “friends” to buy the latest life-changing product – was flooded (pun intended) by people I grew up with asking for emergency assistance in real time in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. This article focuses on the use of social media relating to the storm, including the U.S. Coast Guard and the Houston Police Department urging people to call specific phone lines for disaster response instead of using social media. But as detailed in a recent Vogue story (which quotes a friend’s dad), when one man called an emergency phone line, the operator told him there were 2,000 calls ahead of him. A philanthropist with celebrity connections, the man reached out to his pal Montel Williams who made a plea via Instagram and got him the help he was looking for. Sounds to me social media was the way to go. – Lisa Seidenberg Counterfeit Yeezys and the booming sneaker black market – Replica sneakers have taken street fashion by storm. Sneaker companies do what they can to stop counterfeits, but the buzz surrounding Yeezys and other designs boosts the replica industry even more. Sneaker collectors don’t feel the need to hide the fact that their shoes are replicas either – buying a pair that is indecipherable from the legitimate design is a badge of honor. This article explores the replica sneaker market and the global network of sneaker collectors that fuels it. – Scarlett Wardrop Flamingos In The Men’s Room: How Zoos And Aquariums Handle Hurricanes – With much of the country dealing with major hurricanes and their aftermath, human evacuation becomes a priority – but what about the animals? This story highlights the unusual solutions zookeepers had to come up with to solve an impossible problem: what to do with the zoo animals when the hurricane hits? In my own career, I often find myself with my own flamingo problems. In PR, it is inevitable that you will need to create unusual solutions to impossible problems. Much like the zookeepers, we get creative and find a way to “make it work” even when it shouldn’t. Although the flamingo situation makes for an interesting photograph, it required some PR thinking to solve the problem. – Lauren Kokoskie The instructive poetry of a legendary Forbes editor – The last six months of Jim Michaels’ 27-year reign as editor of Forbes were my first six months as a staff writer there. A former UPI reporter who broke the news of Gandhi’s assassination, Michaels gets a lot of credit for bringing classical journalistic discipline to business news. At Forbes we worshiped and feared him in equal measure. His editing notes in our stories usually took the form of profane all-caps whippings. For those of us who wanted to be good at it, the response was always “thank you sir, may I have another?” – Brandon Copple GT Podcast Recommendation The Road Back to You – Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile teach not only awareness of the self, but also how to develop an awareness of others in this podcast. Derived from the Enneagram personality type system, this program explores nine distinct personalities and the intricacies of each. Unlike traditional personality tests, the Enneagram is uniquely fluid in that it recognizes the adaptive nature of human personality. The test reveals each personality type’s tendencies when healthy, stressed out, happy, etc. Cron and Stabile interview nine individuals who each possess a different one of the nine personality types outlined in the Enneagram. The podcast provides valuable introspection while opening up a great capacity to empathize with the ways other personality types view the world.  – Aubrey Martin

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Pro bono work has been part of Greentarget’s mission since our earliest days – and we contributed more than 1,000 hours in 2016. Through these efforts, our staff gets a chance to use their professional skills to support organizations they believe in, and our junior staffers get to work on higher-level projects. And our pro bono clients get to see how our team can elevate an executive’s profile – and elevate the conversation around the issue they’re dedicated to. For example, in the past year we’ve worked a lot with the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic (DVLC), a Chicago nonprofit that provides free legal services to survivors of domestic violence. Their work comes in the midst of crisis (orders of protection) and in the aftermath (divorce, custody and immigration). Our work with the DVLC began in April 2016 when we introduced Executive Director Margaret Duval to local reporters. We provided Duval with media coaching, wrote a crisis preparation plan, drafted media advisories and social media posts and generated attention for DVLC’s annual spring benefit. We established a PR strategy for DVLC based on its business goals and fueled by our tactics for both achieving short-term milestones and laying the foundation for long-term progress. DVLC wanted to expand its sources of fundraising, so our mission was relatively simple: Increase the organization’s recognition in Chicago to extend DVLC’s fundraising base. Our media coaching sessions paid off when Duval received a barrage of interview requests from reporters at local and national outlets – print, online and broadcast. They were writing about a Chicago native who in 2016 started a local movement when she announced via Twitter that she would donate $10 to DVLC each time Aroldis Chapman, a pitcher who had been acquired by the Chicago Cubs after allegations of domestic abuse, saved a game. As soon as the reporters started calling, we went to work, coaching Duval on interview tactics and facilitating introductory calls. She was interviewed by The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, NBC 5 Chicago and ESPN, among other online and broadcast media. The initial coverage helped Duval quickly identify the media and fundraising potential of a formal fundraising campaign around the Chapman story. It also showed sports reporters that she was insightful and could be a valuable source on domestic violence issues. For example, the New York Times reporter who wrote about the campaign reached out to Duval for a recent story, then quoted her on the good and bad of making domestic violence public on social media when the alleged abuser is a professional athlete. Greentarget’s corporate journalism approach applies to media relations as well – we engage with reporters who write for the specific audiences that are most valuable to our clients. When we began conducting media outreach around DVLC’s 2016 annual benefit, we focused on reporters who covered nonprofits and events at publications such as Crain’s Chicago Business, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, the Chicago Sun-Times and more. Most reporters were busy on the days of DVLC events, but our outreach familiarized them with the DVLC. These efforts made the Chicago Tribune’s Balancing Act columnist more open to our proposal for an in-person introductory meeting with Duval in June 2017. Duval’s ability to tell DVLC’s story, discuss how the state budget crisis was impacting DVLC and its clients and speak about trends in domestic violence led to a profile in the Chicago Tribune, which published in July and generated valuable buzz among potential donors.

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It’s pretty incredible how quickly the phrase fake news has permeated public discourse. The term itself has been around for a long time – but it really blew up during the 2016 presidential election. Our lead item in this edition focuses on the role of social bots, which continue to hold some sway despite the retirement of those dumb egg photos. We’re also reading about how being a journalist can be bad for your mental health, how one ski bum got political, how blue dogs (not the political kind) descended on India and a look at who really makes Trader Joe’s popular products. With that, here’s Recent Reads. First Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading Fake News — Fascinating and relevant to the PR industry, this article explores findings from a first-ever systematic study of the way online misinformation spreads. The key finding: social bots are the main player in the spread of fake news soon after it is published. One way to combat this problem, according to the authors, would be to outlaw specific social bots. However, knowing which bots to outlaw is challenging because many social bots spread legitimate information. A modern day conundrum that was unimaginable even a decade ago now challenges our ability to make informed decisions, based on facts, that align with our values. Maybe that’s dramatic, but the fake news problem is anything but trivial. – Pam Munoz When Being a Journalist is Terrible for Your Mental Health – Many journalists (perhaps too many) have written about their personal struggles over the past few years, as traditional outlets have been forced to adapt, sometimes painfully, and layoffs have decimated newsrooms. But this article addressed journalists’ mental health, a topic that probably doesn’t get enough attention. Throw in the vitriol directed at the news media – and the fact that the journalists covering the most important news are people, too – and it’s no wonder that many of them are likely struggling. – Paul Wilson From Ski Bum to City Council – As a college student in Colorado, I had plenty of friends who longed for the ski bum lifestyle. So it was refreshing to read about Eric Balken, a long-time ski bum at Utah’s famed Alta Ski Resort, and his transition from ski bum to City Council member. As a bum, he learned that vacationers to resort towns largely take things like public transportation, affordable housing, taxes and other community issues for granted. Seeing an opportunity help his town, Balken leveraged his years growing up in Utah and working at a local non-profit to add his voice to the issues. Now, who’s going to fill Balken role in the ski bum trade? – Padraic Swanton Blue dogs roaming India lead to discovery of chemical firm’s river contamination – When a group of activists in India saw dogs and birds turning blue, they knew something was amiss. The critters had been wandering around an industrial area in India, which led the state pollution control board to investigate the strange occurrence. They found that Ducol Organics, a plant that exporters, manufacturer and supplies pigments, was releasing untreated waste, specifically blue dye, into the air and Kasadi River in Taloja. Officers immediately shut down the facility. As for the animals? Don’t worry – they’re safe. Blood tests performed on some of the affected dogs showed the dye was water soluble and no threat to the hounds’ health. – Dana Provost What Brands Are Actually Behind Trader Joe’s Snacks? — Using big data (publically available via government filings), Eater uncovered the origins of Trader Joe’s private label snacks and food. While the conclusions are hardly earth-shattering, I like the way the reporters used data was used to uncover and support the hypothesis that Trader Joe’s food isn’t as hip or boutique-y as it seems. The authors then went a step further, with primary research (taste tests) to further support their findings that the food tasted no different from its name-brand counterparts. – Kevin Iredell
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