In this environment, a news organization’s ability to consistently break news has never been more important.  Today’s media outlets, like Dealbook, Business Insider and TechCrunch, are built for speed.  This creates a number of challenges for professional services companies which rely upon thought leadership to help credential their brands and drive their visibility.

To start, reporters are dealing with increasingly tight deadlines, creating an environment where they regularly lack the proper time and resources to address the complexity of the issues on which they are reporting.

On the other hand, reporters are seeking near-immediate responses to their inquiries, which can threaten the desired message of companies that respond too quickly or those that aren’t equipped to respond in a timely manner.  Accuracy can also be an issue in this “post first, fix later” media environment.

Operating in such a fast-paced environment, however, also creates a number of opportunities. There is a strong appetite among media for access to expert commentary and thought leadership (just look at the popularity of HARO and ProfNet).  Reporters need sources they can trust who have the ability – and standby availability – to quickly distill complex issues and diagnose key points.

In the search for expertise, corporate blogs and self-publishing vehicles have also become more important resources for media.  For example, our clients have seen a noticeable increase in the number of media opportunities generated by perspective and content from their blogs and Twitter feeds, as well as more in-depth analysis distributed via their client alerts.

Meanwhile, the emergence of online research tools like Wikipedia represents a growing area of opportunity for thought leadership as the platform is heavily dependent upon media citations.  As our 2012 New Media Engagement Survey reveals, the majority of buyers of professional services reported using Wikipedia on a weekly basis for both issues-based research and personal use.  By properly pursuing media citations in Wikipedia entries around issues of strategic importance, professional services firms can participate in the dialogue while credentialing themselves with audiences who are highly engaged in these topics.

Reporters, interestingly, have also been thrust into the thought leadership spotlight by developing powerful personal brands with dedicated audiences and followers via a variety of social media platforms (think Felix Salmon of Reuters).  Today, a mention on their blog or Twitter feed may be just as valuable, and in some cases more valuable, than a traditional front page mention.

By properly navigating these dynamics, professional services companies have the opportunity to differentiate themselves with thought leadership platforms designed for the speed, access and trust required by today’s media.

In the face of plunging sales and increased competition, RIM recently replaced co-Chief Executive Officers Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG. However, during his first conference call, Heins told analysts not to expect “seismic changes” and ruled out splitting up the company. Analysts and investors were not impressed, and they proved it with their dollars. RIM’s stock price, which had lost 3/4ths of its value over the prior year, dropped an additional 9% on the day of the announcement (Monday, January 23), and another 3% the following day.

The board of directors certainly had enough faith to appoint Heins to the position, but the confidence did not translate during the CEO’s introduction. For the outside world, this was yet another misstep:

• After an almost four-day outage of RIM’s Blackberry service in October, there were more questions than answers.

• RIM’s share of the global smartphone market sank to 11 percent in the third quarter from 15 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

• On his first conference call, Heins attempted to address past mistakes and marketing missteps, although he left a lingering perception that it wasn’t enough.

A change in leadership is an ideal opportunity to lay out clear goals, strategies and expectations, particularly in the face of lagging stock performance and very public mistakes. However, past missteps built up an emotional expectation among stakeholders, shareholders in particular, which manifested itself in the media coverage when the company didn’t empathize with their emotional need for major change.

The conservative manner in which RIM communicated this and other recent events left outsiders with general doubts about the future of the company and its ability to enact or even recognize the change needed. With stronger attention to executive comments, RIM could have talked about the future and instilled faith in the new management. But, they failed to mind the perception gap.

As law firms emerge from the recession, however, they must re-examine how they manage merger communications amid increased attention on the industry’s shifting economics.

For example, The Wall Street Journal’s recent “Merge or Die” story makes for a splashy headline (or t-shirt jokes Above the Law), but the placement of this story on  Page B1 – front page of the Marketplace section – reinforces the microscope under which the industry currently operates.

The WSJ notes that demand for legal services remains relatively flat, which has spurred a significant uptick in law firm mergers as law firm leaders seek to improve profitability or more specifically, profits per partner (PPP), through acquisition.  This “buyer’s market” presents a unique and high-stakes set of challenges for law firms looking to maximize these merger milestones and communicate their newly expanded platforms to a variety of audiences.

But bridging the communications gap between “buyers” and “sellers” in this type of market is more difficult than ever.  Whether merging out of necessity or opportunity, today, law firm merger communications need to carefully balance the financials underlying the newly combined firm, which may involve $1 billion-plus in revenue, with clients searching for greater value.

It’s through this balancing exercise that law firms have the opportunity to differentiate themselves and leverage mergers as strategic platforms, not just transactions.

It has been our firsthand experience that the most successful law firm mergers, like those that created DLA Piper and WilmerHale, use this platform approach to begin telling a story around which the firm can advance its position, engage with stakeholders and share its next chapter.   The merger that created DLA Piper, for instance, was initially met with a range of skepticism but the firm leveraged that interest and has carefully communicated its strategy in the media to help build its brand.  Through this strategic platform, DLA Piper now enjoys coverage that strongly credentials the firm, such as last week’s Wall Street Journal story that describes the firm as a “global powerhouse”.

Today, anything less will simply fuel this “merge or die” dynamic.

In the pre-social media days, the first decision was whether to address this passively or aggressively in the media.  However, in the age of instantaneous news cycles largely driven by social media, that decision point may no longer exist. Especially for CEOs who have chosen to exploit social media platforms as a course of doing business or to build their personal brands.

Headlining this significant discussion is Micky Arison, the CEO of the parent company of Carnival Cruise Lines, whose ship ran aground off the Italian Coast on Jan. 13, resulting in at least 16 deaths and many more missing and unaccounted for.  Mr. Arison has purposefully kept a low profile, according to numerous insiders, as that is his style.

Yet, contrary to that approach, Mr. Arison has an active Twitter account and is not unfamiliar with expressing his viewpoints publicly.  This previously established platform cancels out his desire to be silent as the expectation has been set. It becomes impossible to choose to be a public figure only when it’s convenient.

With a legion of constituents, investors and followers demanding transparency and accountability by today’s corporate CEOs (see Occupy Wall Street, etc.), Mr. Arison has lost his ability to avoid facing the music at times of crisis, and his leadership and communications traits have been called into question in a recent Wall Street Journal story. In addition, by virtue of Mr. Arison not being publicly accountable for this tragedy, the reputation of Carnival, twice as large as its next competitor in terms of annual revenues and stock market capitalization, as well as being a leader in the cruise industry, will suffer.

Mr. Arison needs to pick his poison: either be fully engaged or stay muted.  And if the latter, be prepared to pay the price for this silence from a huge, restless collage of watchers.  With no legal obligation for Mr. Arison or other CEOs in similar situations to come forward, the public jury has already meted its verdict:  if you offer and provide access into your house, you will surely receive visit from these audiences – and many will be carrying pitchforks.

The question of why the Journal chose to explore this story in the first place is interesting to consider and has everything to do with the power of communication.

Non-practicing entities (NPEs), or “patent trolls” as they are often referred, are companies or individuals whose sole purpose is to enforce or assert patents and patent infringement claims against other companies without having a manufacturing or research base of their own. They’ve long existed and, as one expert mentions in Jones’s article, are often viewed as a drain on the economy because of their lack of innovation. Others suggest that they’re merely protecting what is legally theirs.

A less reported practice is the crux of Jones’s article, which profiles two elite lawyers, John Desmarais and Matt Powers, who made it their goal throughout their careers as patent-defense litigators to brand these plaintiffs as “trolls” and have now jumped the proverbial ship (in this case, law firms Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP) to work on behalf of these NPEs.

At first glance, “When Lawyers Become Trolls” is a story about reputation management and exploiting market opportunities. But it also speaks directly to the importance of language, labels and effective messaging.

The legal industry shrewdly developed and cultivated the “patent troll” label until it became a natural part of the legal lexicon. The label had staying power because of its emotional punch and the vivid imagery it produced. It aided corporate clients in painting NPEs as exploitative and unproductive.

In fact, according to a Wikipedia entry on the term, “patent troll” was initially coined in 1994 in “The Patents Video,” which was sold to thousands of universities, governmental entities and law firms as a way to educate them on critical information and commonly misunderstood concepts about patents. In the video, the “patent troll” is strategically positioned to collect patent licensing revenue, unbeknownst to his “victim.” The term gained further popularity in 2001 when Intel’s former assistant general counsel, Peter Detkin, used it to describe the entity, TechSearch – at the time, Intel was defending a patent suit against them.

How do lawyers who have battled “trolls,” a label they helped create, reshape the largely negative reputation these NPEs have? The answer is they may not have to, and perhaps that perception should be reevaluated. The legal industry is trying to bounce back from a few of the toughest years in its history and is in the process of reinventing itself. These lawyers seem to be ahead of the curve in finding new ways to apply their talents to serve clients and prosper.

We’ll likely see this trend continue as companies (both practicing and non-practicing) snap up patent assets by the thousands. It will be interesting to observe whether or not the reputational damage caused by the “troll” label seeps into the courtroom as NPEs gain more sophisticated legal counsel and become more aggressive in their enforcement.

In this economic environment, you never can tell when today’s “troll” might end up being tomorrow’s “client.”

This relatively simple question has a complex and varying answer. While the utility of social media within the consumer environment is clear, marketing executives throughout B2B organizations, particularly professional services firms, continue to struggle to determine how much attention to pay to these networks.

Our analysis of this issue started with the legal industry where we noticed that law firms had widely varying degrees of engagement on social media networks. To what extent are the purchasers of legal services paying attention to social networks? We decided to pose this question to in-house counsel directly via a targeted survey effort.

2010’s landmark In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey, the first research project of its type in the legal field, affirmed that client-side lawyers were beginning to dip their toes into the social media pool by using new media technologies for both personal and professional reasons. There was a clear generational divide between younger and older counsel in their use of social media tools, but even a year ago both were taking significant advantage of new media resources, especially law firm blogs.

The results in 2012, by contrast, indicate much wider adoption by in-house lawyers in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, while use by younger attorneys has leveled off. However, you wouldn’t notice this change unless you surveyed the community, because they’re largely consuming information without commenting or providing content themselves.

Read an executive summary of the full report.  Should this summary pique your interest, we invite you to contact us for a copy of the full results.

The 2012 New Media Engagement Survey was developed in partnership with Inside Counsel Magazine and Zeughauser Group.

We look forward to continuing the dialogue surrounding this topic. Feel free to check Current Conversations periodically for further analysis of the data and the implications for marketers within the legal sector and beyond.

Not surprisingly, CEOs voiced strong sentiments that there needs to be a change in Washington. Interestingly, several CEOs believe the media is driving the pessimistic outlook of the general public in the way media report on the world economy. The  focus, these CEOs feel, is on the negative aspects without providing the same amount of ink or airtime to upswings in the economy.

We wonder how many of these CEOs are taking an active role in shaping the conversation around their organizations and the larger economic issues that are emerging throughout the U.S. and abroad.  Our guess is the same executives who voice concerns about slant aren’t willing to take the steps necessary to provide the counter-point to a negative dialogue – until it involves them directly and they have no choice but to participate actively.

This approach has everything to do with what is perhaps an executive’s most valuable commodity – time.  There simply isn’t enough to go around. But, if an organization’s leader is serious about influencing the dialogue, it requires an investment of resources, active participation and close alignment with the communications function.

Imagine if one of the CEOs participating in this survey was willing to make a series of bold, bullish predictions on the near-term opportunities within their industry. The headlines are there to be grabbed, but the cost of entry is often more than these executives are willing to bear.

In today’s media environment where everyone, fans and athletes alike, has a voice and a platform to share a point of view, interesting parallels can be drawn between the challenges facing sports franchises and those facing CEOs, particularly within emerging companies embarking on critical public events like IPOs.

Tim Tebow’s appeal has transcended the NFL and he has become an international phenomenon as a result. But with that comes risk for both him and the Denver Broncos. As a recent Forbes article points out, “Too much of anything, and your brand is under water.”

The Broncos face an interesting challenge that runs parallel to challenges facing two NASDAQ newcomers with high-profile CEO’s – Zynga and Groupon.

Groupon’s Andrew Mason and Zynga’s Mark Pincus have more in common than a recent IPO – they both have a digital information fingerprint that includes numerous blogs, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn profiles, message board postings and other points of communication. Much of the information on these networks dates back to before either were household names, let alone heads of public companies, but the expectation they have set is clear – we expect a level of access that has implications for both their personal brands and the companies they serve.

The challenge the Denver Broncos face with Tim Tebow is the same challenge Groupon and Zynga face with respect to Mason and Pincus – to what extent should access to these individuals be controlled and the information they provide filtered?  What responsibility does the brand have to exert any control over that information, particularly for a public company?  Do the answers to these questions change when you consider that Groupon and Zynga are both largely the product of their CEOs unique personalities?

The answers to these questions aren’t clear but the challenges they create are certainly interesting. It will only get more interesting as we continue to witness an emerging crop of CEOs who are not only used to this level of access, but welcome and embrace it.

In the business-to-business space, many companies are struggling to find ways to use social media to engage their clients in the same way that mass marketers do. There’s a big difference between selling accounting, legal or other professional services and selling a bottle of Coca-Cola…or is there?

Even though professional services and other business-to-business companies may not use mass media in the same way a consumer marketer does, they are using business/trade publication advertising, media coverage and direct marketing to reach their clients and customers. The same rules and opportunities apply, but you rarely see B2B brands engage their clients for feedback in this manner.

The challenge for B2B marketers is to encourage clients to use social media tools as a way of providing perspective and feedback. In today’s global marketplace, in-person meetings are not always possible.  Social media offers another means through which clients can communicate how they feel about something said in the news media, a new corporate image campaign and so on.  It’s also a way to know that your clients are paying attention and they are truly engaged with what you’re saying in the business-to-business marketplace.

One could argue that purchasers of these services are behind the curve and not as active on these networks, thereby limiting the opportunity. But our research suggests otherwise.