One-dimensional executive bios give way to dynamic, multimedia packaging

by Gordon Curry/Newsroom Ink

Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, immediately realized the importance of the executive bio page and had one done for key members of his staff.

Click on the corporate link for most executives. What do you come up with?

More often than not, it’s a short bio and head shot – offering the perfunctory and staid, one-dimensional profile.

Now, imagine a sharp, online news magazine format featuring executive viewpoints, media stories, FORTUNE 500 photography and video interviews that bring an executive’s brand to life. Everything the executive wants you to know about his or her personal brand is there ­– all in one place.

“Our goal was to break the stranglehold of traditional PR tactics and tell the executive’s story in a more engaging way,” said Ed Lallo, founder of Newsroom Ink. “By packaging that story within an integrated, online news format, the web’s the limit as to what you can do.”

This multi-dimensional approach offers tailor-made possibilities for profiling executives, working in tandem with social media and traditional PR channels to draw in those interested to a fuller view.

“It’s about content and packaging,” said Springfield Lewis, who developed Newsroom Ink’s Executive Positioning Page. “Essentially, we build a microsite around the executive. But it’s not just a container to fill with everything in sight. It’s all carefully orchestrated – from the copy to the photos to the actual content featured – for maximum impact.”

There’s no doubt some executives – because of the organizations they run – stand to capture more media attention and public exposure than others. With the right eye, expert storytelling and thoughtful positioning, executives can create a brand of their own – rising to even greater industry prominence.

“The team at Newsroom Ink interpreted my personal brand in a dynamic way that clearly says who I am as a professional. It’s now part of my email signature, LinkedIn profile and is on our company website,” said Kathy Leonard.  Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

“Personal branding is more important today than ever before,” said Kathy Leonard, president and co-founder of Freeman+Leonard, a marketing services agency. “One’s brand not only impacts the ability to be positioned for career success, it also affects the ability to recruit top talent.

“The team at Newsroom Ink interpreted my personal brand in a dynamic way that clearly says who I am as a professional. It’s now part of my email signature, LinkedIn profile and is on our company website. It has helped to quickly establish credibility, for myself personally and for my company, with new clients and with job candidates.”

So, why wait for that invitation to important interviews or speaking engagements, when you can engage target audiences now, creating demand and increased visibility for your executive and company?

Executives can start telling their stories now in their own prime-time, business forum. These stories can be repackaged for other communications channels and form the basis of relevant conversations in the “chatosphere.”

Newsroom Ink’s Executive Positioning Page gives structure to once-scattered leader news and thoughts. It produces a complete picture, generating much more interest than any corporate head shot or bio ever could.

View:

• Kathy Leonard’s Executive Bio 
• Ewell Smith’s Executive Bio
• Kristin McLaren’s Executive Bio
• Ashley Roth’s Executive Bio

For more information on Newsroom Ink’s Executive Positioning Page  contact Springfield Lewis  at Springfield@NewsroomInk.com.

Familiar with the terms hacks and flacks?

The hack is a journalist pounding out copy as a deadline approaches. The flack is a PR pro trying to promote a client for positive mention in the copy being written.

These signifiers deny any space for qualification by implying all journalists are hacks and all PR practitioners are flacks. In actuality, their co-existence comes from a symbiotic relationship that draws them together every day.

Just as journalism has evolved into the digital era, PR professionals also must adapt. PR is now about continually telling a company’s or brand’s story to diverse audiences – employees, customers, partners, shareholders, reporters and analysts. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

This relationship, however, has faded in recent years as fewer PR professionals enter their field without the benefit of first being reporters. Because of this shortcoming, it’s more important than ever for PR professionals to reconnect with working journalists.

Contrary to what keeps getting churned out, public relations is not about a sending out cut-and-dried news releases, or putting on show-and-tell media events.

Just as journalism has evolved into the digital era, PR professionals also must adapt. PR is now about continually telling a company’s or brand’s story to diverse audiences – employees, customers, partners, shareholders, reporters and analysts.

In a world gone digital, brand journalism – told credibly by an organization – can create influential news stories through an online newsroom. Done well, these stories go far beyond traditional newsrooms wallpapered with releases that read: “XYZ Company announced today.”

Visualize a communications triangle, where journalism, public relations and interactive media all merge to tell a greater story. Such integrated storytelling creates a powerful, business narrative that better connects a brand with its stakeholders – inside and outside the organization.

New Age and Old School

The key to this strategy is both new age and old school. It calls for digital delivery and the revival of journalistic standards, which were diluted as PR became a marketing tool for many companies.

An example of the successful merging of PR and journalism is found at Intel Free Press. It is staffed by Intel communicators, all of whom have prior journalism experience. Executive editor Bill Calder and managing editor Ben Tomkins oversee a news operation there that generates unique content related to the company and technology industry.

According to Calder, the goal is not necessarily to drive readers to their pages. Rather, it’s about getting the material either reused or picked up by other news sites, while also creating content that benefits journalists and other stakeholders. Intel Free Press is different in this regard, with a focus on search engine optimization and social media distribution.

It also has a separate newsroom, where media releases and other traditional PR material reside, freeing up Intel Free Press to focus more on storytelling. To date, Intel Free Press articles have been republished and or have influenced news in a variety of other publications.

To achieve credibility, Intel’s news is developed within the content of the bigger technology story – as told by the company and others respected in the industry.

Calder and his team know that PR is no longer about pushing a corporate story for its own sake. Rather, it’s about having it told through the valued voices of others – such as employees, clients and their customers, business partners and outside industry experts. The result is a blended brand that people want to read about and can believe.

Reaching A Wide Variety of Audiences

Intel’s work finds itself in good company with a pioneering brand journalism site, Louisiana Seafood News. Located on Lake Pontchartrain, the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board staffs one of the first journalistic, online newsrooms.

Created during the height of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the newsroom gave a voice to an industry devastated by the tragedy playing out in Louisiana’s prime fishing waters.

During the crisis, the newsroom received more than 15,000 unique visits each month, resulting in more than a billion unique impressions certified by Csion.

Three years later, the newsroom transitioned out of crisis mode into a seafood news and educational mode, producing informative pieces picked up by such media outlets as NOLA.com, Perishable News and Fisherynation.

In addition to being sent to news media, the site’s stories also are distributed to Louisiana and Gulf state legislators. They are added to Facebook pages of companies featured within a story, as well as related commercial fishing and Louisiana websites.

On Linkedin, each new story is posted in seafood groups. Interest and analytics for the newsroom remain strong, with more than 45,000 unique visits to the site since its redesign in September of 2012.

Content leaves the seafood newsroom site at an average of more than 400 times a month, bound for printed publications, blogs and other destinations.

As journalists rely more heavily on the web, hacks will need newsworthy stories and ideas from flacks to fill an insatiable, online news hole.

Now is the time for flacks to embrace new age and old school – combining online dynamics with journalistic fundamentals to create sought-after news sources and credible stories for their clients.

You can call the Louisiana alligator a lot of things. But, an environmentalist responsible for saving the coastal wetlands – really? Louisiana Seafood Board/Facebook

Alligators Are Helping Save Louisiana’s Coastal Wetlands

Louisiana Seafood News

You can call the Louisiana alligator a lot of things. But, an environmentalist responsible for saving the coastal wetlands – really?

Yes, really.

The alligator is one of the prime reasons driving the conservation of coastal wetlands, according to Mark Shirley, specialist for Louisiana State University (LSU) Agricultural Center (AgCenter) and field agent for Louisiana Sea Grant.

“One important aspect of the Louisiana alligator program, both farm-raised and wild harvest, is the idea that it is environmentally sustainable,” Shirley said. “It is a renewable, natural resource.”

“One important aspect of the Louisiana alligator program, both farm-raised and wild harvest, is the idea that it is environmentally sustainable,” said LSU AgCenter’s Mark Shirley. “It is a renewable, natural resource.” Photo: Mark Shirley

The alligator’s economic value, in turn, gives much greater value to the wetland habitat, where the reptiles breed and reproduce.

The wetlands act as a storm buffer, bird habitat and are filled with aquatic life. Without the alligator, there would be less incentive to protect these areas.

Gator Income Protects Wetlands

“Coastal wetland owners have to pay land taxes like everyone else,” he explained. “Our wetlands are threatened with coastal erosion caused by storm surges, manmade problems, and of course, there are the hurricanes.”

The income from alligator farming gives landowners good reason to protect their wetlands, and in some cases, try and restore it to prevent further damage

Coastal wetland owners are paid by alligator farmers for the rights to harvest eggs on their property. State law requires the farmer to return 12-percent of all hatched-eggs back into the wild once the baby has grown to four feet in length.  This allows the wild population in the wetland areas where eggs were collected to be compensated and insures lasting sustainability.

Survival rate for gator eggs hatched in the wild hovers only around four percent. So, this environmental/business arrangement benefits both gator farmers and landowners.For instance, landowners across Louisiana are concerned with salt-water intrusion. Installing structures that stop it is expensive, such as building or repairing levees. The alligator resource provides money for stewardship for their wetland habitat.

And, if alligators ever become endangered again and wetland landowners lose that source of income, coastal erosion could increase at a lot faster rate, said Shirley.

In the 1950s and 1960s alligator harvesting was haphazard and unregulated. In the mid-60s, the state saw its alligator population decrease. Then, in the late 60s and early 70s, an environmental emphasis began to protect and harvest gators.

Call to Action for Environment and Economy

“The state developed programs from the approach that the alligator was a renewable, sustainable natural resource – setting a defined, wild-alligator harvest season and the development of the farm-raised gator program.”

If alligators ever become endangered again and wetland landowners lose that source of income, coastal erosion could increase at a lot faster rate. Photo: Louisiana Seafood Board/Facebook

“The protection of alligators during the 60s and 70s allowed the population of to build,” Shirley explained. The first, experimental alligator harvest occurred in 1972 in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes. A few years later, it spread statewide – set for the month of September

Shirley has a definite call to action to preserve the fragile and vital coastal wetlands.

“People who want to be green and eco-minded need to purchase more alligator products,” he said. “Wear your alligator shoes, purses, belts and watchstraps. If you can’t afford that, at least eat alligator in a restaurant.

Wearing and eating alligator creates a multiplier effect, benefitting Louisiana’s economy and ecosystem.

“By doing any of that, you are supporting the alligators, the people who grow and harvest them, the coastal landowners, and most important, contributing to conservation of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.”

As chair of Edelman China, Tom Mattia will be 9000 miles from his retirement home outside of Austin. Photo: Dan Stroud/Newsroom Ink

Tom Mattia, former Global Head of Communications for Coke and EDS and Chief Communications Officer at Yale University, sat down with Ed Lallo of Newsroom Ink to discuss public relations and  communications before heading to China as chair of Edelman China.

The lamps sitting in living room near the picture window overlooking the almost dry Pedernales River have yellow stickies hanging from their shades as if prepared for a garage sale. So do the tables upon which they sit, as well as the picture window itself. Scribbled upon each sticky is not a rock bottom sale price, but instead the name of each in Chinese Mandarin accompanied by a phonetic pronunciation.

This is how Tom Mattia is preparing to come out of retirement a second time and return to China as chairman of Edelman China.

Mattia, who retired from Coca-Cola as Senior Vice President of global Public Affairs and Communications in March 2009, has served as the senior communications officer of two Fortune 100 companies, directly counseled four CEOs and managed reputational issues for four major global brands — Coca-Cola, Ford, IBM, and EDS.

Tom Mattia, Edelman China’s new chair,  was formerly Global Head of Communications for Coke and EDS and Chief Communications Officer at Yale University.  Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

Shortly after retiring from Coke and purchasing the retirement home on the banks of the Pedernales outside of Austin, he was enticed out of retirement by Yale University to become the chief communications officer and special advisor to the president.

A native of New Jersey, Mattia graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in journalism. In 1973 he started his career along the boardwalks of Atlantic City working as a reporter for the newspaper covering local government.

“I studied journalism because at the time Rutger’s only had two co-ed majors, one was journalism and one was landscape architecture.,” explained Mattia on his career strategy. “I actually started in landscape architecture but I couldn’t draw a tree.”

After working for more than 10 years as a journalist, mostly in the northeast, he answered a blind ad in the back of Editor and Publisher and ended up at IBM for ten years.

Mattia views journalism like the river flowing outside his window – “an inch deep and a mile wide; that is the nature of the business.” Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

The job turned out to be an important career opportunity for him.

“IBM at the time, and even today, has a wonderful, strong rich communications department.” said Matia. “It is where I got my business degree.”

“It took me about three years to transition from being a journalist who decided to do in-house communication to someone who considered himself a corporate communicator, a public relations professional,” he explained. “I was very proud of my years as a journalist, but once I got into corporate communications and public relations and saw its connectivity to the larger enterprise, I felt very proud of the role I played in that environment.”

Mattia views journalism like the river flowing outside his window – “an inch deep and a mile wide; that is the nature of the business.” Journalists have a broad knowledge of a wide variety of subjects, but rarely the opportunity to drill down deep into a specific subject matter.

PR professionals, on the other hand, are given the opportunity to drill down and understand how the core business runs and learn what it is about. According to Mattia, “to be successful and advance your career, you have to take your skill set and match it to the business.”

After leaving IBM he turned to the agency world, running the Asian operations of Hill and Knowlton from the Hong Kong office. He returned to the US to work for Ford, doing mainly international communications.

As the new century began so did a new chapter in Mattia’s life. In 2000 he became Vice-President of Global Communications and Advertising for Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

His five years at EDS, a company established by H. Ross Perot in 1962, could be summarized as a roller-coaster ride. He oversaw the company reputation from meteoric rise to crash and return.

In 2002, EDS had a year from hell and a CEO in turmoil. In the weak economy its stock headed down instead of up; the company got hammered by the bankruptcies of WorldCom, US Airways, and United Airlines; and in the third quarter it had a disastrous earnings miss that sent its already battered stock from $36 to $12 in two days.

Understanding the fundamentals of a business for Mattia is the cornerstone of communications. Over the years he has come up with four guiding principals:

1. First and foremost, understand the business.
2. Create a central storyline with a core message that is delivered from pixel to the big picture.
3. Develop an integrated communications plan aligned with/endorsed by senior management and followed by every communicator in the organization.
4. Communicate from the inside out, ensuring that employees are the first to be informed and engaged.

It was during his time at EDS that he launched an effective tool for communications that has remained central to his core communication philosophy – storytelling.

Understanding the fundamentals of a business for Mattia is the cornerstone of communications. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

“It is really critical to get you people onside early,” Mattia said. “It is what we did at EDS which at the time was 260,000 people, almost all of them working in a client setting so it wasn’t as though they had a corporate home or even a branch off that was EDS branded. Storytelling for us, telling the story of what our people do and how it helped other people, started to build a esprit decorps about the good work going on all over the world that had been overlooked before. It is what brought us back from the brink.”

Often businesses, especially those that have been established for a while, go along with the assumption that everyone in the business knows what the business is about. According to Mattia, “What you end up with is six blind men and an elephant, everyone knows about their portion of the business but cannot see the elephant in the room – the big picture of what the business is and where it is headed.”

To accurately tell the story of a company you must first engage its people. At Coca-Cola that meant giving everyone in the business an understanding of the five “P’s” – Profit, People, Plant, Partners and Portfolio – and how they interact with each other.

From these “P’s” the strategic communication plan is created for the company, telling its story one, three and five years into the future. From that plan comes the basic messaging set that has a crisp central theme running through all communications.

According to Mattia a company needs only one or two key messages that everyone has to bake into their messaging set. This allows a big diffuse organization to have focus, putting its throw weight in a position to have real impact.

Correctly positioned, a strategic communication plan having a unified theme gives communicators in the various businesses a lot of flexibility. The importance is in the end the centralized message is carried through all of the companies various business units.

“Successful communications understands and defines the DNA of a business,” Mattia said. “What is it that makes us who we are, and makes us different from other players in the field?”

In her Ig Nobel Prize acceptence speech, Dr.Elana Bodnar credited her husband for design input for the easy opening clasp on the RAD Emergecy Bra.

When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant ruptured in Ukraine in 1986, Dr. Elena Bodnar was brought in to treat victims of radiation poisoning and to study the consequences of radiation exposure.

The level 7 International Nuclear Event resulted in an explosion and fire at the plant releasing large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe.

At the time of the disaster a thriving population of more than 50,000 lived in the nearby city of Prypiat on the Belarus board. The event began on an April Satuday during a systems test on reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant.

Dr. Bodnar discovered while treating patients affected by the accident that particle inhalation was as detrimental to the human body as the radiation exposure.

Convinced that gas masks could have saved lives, she decided to create a simple, inexpensive device that would always be close at hand –The RAD Emergency Bra.

Dr. Elena Bodnar holds an ‘Emergency Bra’, as John Durant (R), Director of the MIT Museum, and Gus Rancatore wear the bras as facemasks during event a MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA.  Photo: REUTERS/Adam Hunger

According to the Ukraine native, after a year of “safety engineering, economical design, and aesthetics,” the bra was finally ready to enhance cleavage and save lives.

The stylish bra is meant to be removed and then separated into two cups that can be used as two facemasks. When placed over the nose and mouth the mask can filter out chemicals as harsh as the ones found during the Chernobyl disaster. The bra also contains a radiation sensor.

The design of a brassier has always been the shape of a face mask. By adding a few features the common bra turns into an emergency respiratory device that achieves tight fixation and full coverage – minimizing contaminated bypass airflow.

“Isn’t that wonderful that human’s have two breasts not just one,” said Dr. Bodnar during her 2009 Ig Nobel Public Health Prize acceptance speech. “We can save not only our own life, but also a man of our choice next to us.”

Ig Nobel Prizes pokes fun at the Nobel Prizes and awards inventors and scientists who work on projects outside of the mainstream. They awards go to innovative inventions that make people laugh and think.

The event is organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research and is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students, the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, and the Harvard Computer Society.

Photo: Ebbra.com

The unique respiratory device has also been displayed at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA.

Dr. Bodnar is currently the founder and President of the Trauma Risk Management Research Institute in Chicago. She is an internationally recognized scientist with over 20 years of experience in clinical research and development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic modalities. She managed the Electrical Trauma Research Program at the University of Chicago, and collaborated with the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency on projects related to the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

“It was important to me that the culture of Louisiana Foods remain the same,” explained Jim Gossen. “We are known for the best quality of seafood, and I didn’t want that to be lost with the transition.”  Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News

by Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News

As Jim Gossen got older, his sleep patterns changed. No longer a night owl, these days Gossen prefers to have an early-morning coffee on the docks with local fishermen near his Grand Isle, La., camp.

And while his sleep times are switched, the 65-year-old Gossen still maintains his around-the-clock energy and enthusiasm for seafood, especially Louisiana seafood.

In 1978, Gossen bought a truck and started to drive back and forth to Houston from Grand Isle, Pointe a la Hache, Empire and other Southern Louisiana cities. Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News

His life, in fact, has revolved around seafood as chairman and founder of Louisiana Foods, a Houston-based seafood distributor that is the largest in Texas.

Last August, Gossen sold Louisiana Foods to industry leader Sysco Foods – and it is now called Sysco Louisiana Seafood. Terms of the sale included him staying on as the chairman.

“It was important to me that the culture of Louisiana Foods remain the same,” he explained on why he agreed to stay. “We are known for the best quality of seafood, and I didn’t want that to be lost with the transition.”

Born in Lafayette, the bayou state native worked in restaurants during high school and while attending University of Louisiana – Lafayette to pay his bills. Soon after graduating, he was asked by Bill and Floyd Landry to help open a Don’s Seafood in Morgan City.

The Morgan City restaurant was the start of a lifelong partnership with the Landry’s.

In 1934, the Landry family started Don’s Seafood in Lafayette. The business expanded to restaurants in Beaumont, Shreveport, Baton Rouge and Morgan City.

“They were big, high-volume seafood restaurants at the time,” Gossen said. “In 1972, I had a little pickup truck for the Morgan City restaurant. I started to buy red snapper and shrimp and sell it locally to other restaurants.”

Becoming a Texan

At the age of 30, Jim on one of his trips to pick up food products along with fish, shrimp and oysters in Louisiana. Photo: Gossen Archives

In 1975, he moved to Houston. Landry’s early Texas operations consisted of five restaurants and a wholesale Louisiana food company, which Gossen was responsible for starting.

“I opened Don’s Seafood, Magnolia Bar and Grill, Jimmy G’s, Landry’s and Willy G’s, as well as Louisiana Food,” he recalled.

In 1978, Gossen bought a truck and started to drive back and forth to Houston from Grand Isle, Pointe a la Hache, Empire and other Southern Louisiana cities.

“When I first started Louisiana Foods, 100 percent of the seafood I sold came from the Gulf of Mexico, and most of that from Louisiana,” said Gossen.

Crossing the Mississippi River on a ferry going to Point a la Hache to pick up oysters. Photo: Gossen Archives

“I would drive to Houston, sleep in the truck, make my deliveries in the morning and then go back and do it all again. I would bring Leidenheimer French Bread, Camellia Red Beans, Barq’s Root Beer, and of course, stop in Baton Rouge and pick up Community Coffee – that is how the name started.”

For more than a year and half, Gossen would drive ten hours on the daily, 800-mile trip roundtrip, which included two ferryboat rides.

“I realized this was actually a business when I started to have receivables,” he said. “At first, it was strictly a cash or check business that sold fish, oysters and Louisiana foods.”

As the company grew, the focus narrowed to strictly seafood.

Gossen’s Seafood “Child”

In 1978 Photo, Louisiana Foods first plant on Armour Drive in Houston. Photo: Gossen Archives

Louisiana Foods – Gossen calls it “his child” – has grown to surpass the $60 million mark. Customers are throughout all major metropolitan areas of Texas: Austin, Beaumont, Galveston, Dallas, San Antonio, Ft. Worth and Houston, as well as parts of western Louisiana.

Seafood sits in cold storage at the first plant in 1978. Photo: Gossen Archives

“I never wanted to sell seafood that was the cheapest. I wanted to sell seafood that was the best. That is the philosophy, as well as the culture, of the company,” he emphasized.

“We try and find the best products and let our customers decide if they want a quality product or a cheap product. We are not for everybody. Our customers want better quality and a high level of service.”

Louisiana Foods sells to markets and grocery chains, as well as a variety of restaurants – from mom-and-pop, Hispanic to high-end and chef-driven. All of its customers demand on thing – quality seafood that is fresh, safe, sustainable and traceable.

To get the highest-quality product, Gossen is very selective about his fishermen and processors. “We only buy from the best fishermen and processors that can guarantee us quality,” he said.

“When I started in the business, there were no limits on fish caught in the Gulf because frankly the demand wasn’t there. Today, if you don’t have a close relationship with the high-quality fishermen and processors you don’t get the product.”

Seafood Business: A Partnership At all Levels

Gossen sees the seafood business as a working partnership among fishermen, processors and marketers.

Gossen sees the seafood business as a working partnership among fishermen, processors and marketers. Photo: Sysco Louisiana Seafood

“My job is to show the fishermen and processor that if they can produce a higher-quality product, I can sell it,” said the transplanted Cajun. “I am willing to pay more money to a fisherman for a quality product because I know I can get more for it when I sell it. I don’t go and try and beat them down on price because nobody comes out a winner.”

Gossen is afraid that unless Louisiana and Gulf Coast fishing communities are willing to change how they do business, the whole seafood industry could be lost.

Competing on Quality, Not Price

“Bayou Lafourche used to have 16 oyster companies. Today, there is one,” he said, lamenting how Louisiana seafood communities are changing. “You drive down any bayou road and there are all these abandoned plants that used to be vibrant seafood processing plants.”

An employee at the Houston plant holds two black drum caught and landed in Louisiana. Photo: Sysco Louisiana Foods

Louisiana and Gulf seafood can’t compete on price in the open marketplace, and he feels fishermen shouldn’t try.

“We have to compete on quality. We have some of the best seafood in the world coming out of Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. We need to help fishermen learn to fish the Gulf more efficiently, keep seafood fresher and deliver higher-quality seafood to the marketplace.”

He believes fishermen have to reap higher profits so the next generation will want to say: “I want to become a fisherman.”

If the next generation fishermen can’t make a living, fishing communities in Louisiana and along the Gulf will continue to disappear.

Better Resource Management, Less Regulations

Better management of the Gulf is what fishermen need, not more regulations. Gossen, whose relatives have worked in the seafood and oil industries, worries the state is not preparing adequately for the future.

“I love the oil industry,” he said. “It has been fantastic for Louisiana, but what happens when the supply runs out and the rigs go away? We need to start now to nurture our source for renewable seafood. If we don’t, we are going to lose a culture I know I don’t want to live without.”

Filleting fish at Sysco Louisiana Foods Stafford plant outside of Houston. Photo: Sysco Louisiana Foods

At more than twice the size of the state of Texas, the Gulf of Mexico is a fertile source for seafood like no other.

Gossen, a recipient of the EPA’s Gulf Guardian Award, sees a need for creative management of the Gulf much the same way farmers manage their land – rotate crops and farrowed land and keep a constant vigil for unforeseen circumstances.

“If we saw fertile land twice the size of Texas producing fabulous crop slowly disappearing, wouldn’t we do something about it?” he asked. “I think we need to concentrate our efforts on preserving the Gulf, it’s our ‘money tree’ beneath the sea.”

He sees customers having little problem with seafood not being always available. “Take soft shell crabs. A place that has them on the menu year round, I just don’t eat there. I want a place that has them on the menu only during season.”

At the mouth of the Mississippi River, Louisiana is the source for seafood in the Gulf. The river bring the fresh water that nurtures seafood life by creating brackish water essential for shrimp, oysters and other seafood to spawn and grow.

Everything affecting the Gulf is out of sight, under the water. It is important to realize the Gulf has to be managed in a responsible manner. People need to ask themselves: “How much would we miss Gulf seafood if it was not available?”

Gossen believes they’d miss it – a lot. “I know I don’t want this to happen. I don’t want to be eating seafood from China or Vietnam. That’s just not the future I want.”

Speaking up on sensitive ethical issues required courage, study participants said. A few were fired or demoted for refusing to do something that was blatantly unethical; two resigned when their advice was rejected, including one who refused to include false information in a press release. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

Public relations professionals who have provided ethics counsel to senior management are at least as fervent about serving the public interest — sometimes even more so — as they are about their duty to their organizations according to a recent study.

Thirty senior public relations professionals – most of whom had served as an “organizational conscience – ”showed the individuals viewed themselves as an ‘independent voice’ in the organization and not “mired by its perspective or politics,” said study author Marlene S. Neill, Ph.D., a lecturer in the department of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor University‘s College of Arts & Sciences.

The study, published in Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality, was co-authored by Minette Drumwright, Ph.D., an associate professor of advertising at the University of Texas at Austin.

Marlene S. Neill, Ph.D., a lecturer in the department of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. Photo: Linkedin

Researchers did in-depth interviews with senior public relations professionals in the United States and Australia, with an average of 27 years of experience. All but three had served as the chief public relations officers in their organizations, which included corporations, nonprofit organizations and government entities; and two of those also provided counsel in their roles in PR agencies for their clients as external counselors.

Study participants said they often were in the “kill the messenger” predicament, making it tricky to give criticism to people who outranked them and to persuade those people to agree with them, Neill said.

Speaking up on sensitive ethical issues required courage, study participants said. A few were fired or demoted for refusing to do something that was blatantly unethical; two resigned when their advice was rejected, including one who refused to include false information in a press release.

One participant noted that “I can’t afford to lose my credibility . . . As PR professionals, it’s all we have. And if I lose my credibility here, it’s not like I can just go start over with someone else, somewhere else.”

One individual said that the “ ‘yes man’ has no value, no value whatsoever” in PR. Another said one reason for her good relationship with her company CEO is that “he can count on me to not always agree with him.”

Another major barrier was a common misperception among senior executives that public relations is nothing more than a tool of marketing, which limits PR professionals’ roles as problem solvers.

Crucial to their jobs is a sound relationship with their organizations’ legal counsels, informants said. So is access to key decision makers, the better to ensure “fire prevention” instead of “fire fighting” — damage control in a crisis.

Neill said that participants were resourceful about how to communicate to management without seeming judgmental, using such approaches as mock news conferences and the “headline test,” in which managers were asked to imagine a good headline and a bad headline that might result from an approach they advocated.

One participant contrasted her experience at an iron-fisted company — in which senior managers’ attitude was one of “Do what I say, and don’t question me” — with a more effective and positive  experience at another company. There, she said, “Nobody is belittled; the managers and executives don’t feel like you’re questioning their authority. They’re very much into a learning mode. They ask a lot of questions; they very much are information gathering.”

Read the Baylor University/UT Study.

No other chief executive has more experience in crisis communications and rebuilding a brand. As executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, Smith has led the organization through more than a lifetime of crises that played out in only a few years. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink

View Ewell Smith’s Executive Profile.

Hard-won experience has taught Ewell Smith one thing: You can never be too ready to manage a crisis and communicate about it.

No other chief executive has more experience in crisis communications and rebuilding a brand. As executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, Smith has led the organization through more than a lifetime of crises that out in only a few years. played

During the Deepwater Horizon crisis, Ewell Smith (in red), executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, was one of the most respected authorities for developing a better working relationship between the seafood community and the oil industry. His advice and consul was sought by legislators and even the White House. Photo: Irving Johnson III

During the first months of the Deepwater Horizon crisis in the Gulf of Mexico his organization established LouisianaSeafoodNews.com which helped generate more than 3.4 billion -with a B – media impressions telling the story of how the spill affected the  Louisiana seafood community.

At the March 28th IABC Houston monthly luncheon and following workshop – Crisis after Crisis – Rebuilding a Respected Brand, Newsroom Ink will sponsor a unique opportunity to learn how to handle a crisis and rebuild a brand.

Smith will be joined by founder and partner Greg Beuerman of beuerman miller fitzgerald, a New Orleans public relations firm, who was instrumental in helping the Louisiana Seafood Board establish working relations with both Shell and BP that continue to date.

With more than 34 years of experience in media management, public relations and  crisis communications, he specializes in the field of maritime and energy crisis communications and has managed vessel crises and oil and gas environmental incidents around the world.

Smith will be joined by founder and partner Greg Beuerman of beuerman miller fitzgerald, a New Orleans public relations firm, who was instrumental in helping the Louisiana Seafood Board establish working relations with both Shell and BP that continue to date. Photo: BMF

During Hurricane Katrina, Beuerman served as Incident Command Liaison Officer for the  government, managing inter-governmental and community relations for the response to eight major oil spills resulting from the storm.

A native of Nashville, Tennessee,  he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lipscomb University, and was selected as a Fellow of the Loyola University Institute of Politics.  The president of Iceland appointed Greg as Consul General of Iceland for Louisiana.  Clients include Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Valero,  ConocoPhillips, Hilcorp, LLOG, Eni Petroleum and the US Department of Energy Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Beuerman and Smith will talk about the need to:

• Determine your point of view/brand strategy upfront – before trouble knocks at your door.
• Create a clear, credible storyline, with proof points – and stick with it, ignoring the static.
• Make sure your leaders stay on message/know their roles – and speak with one voice.
• Engage employees/customers/partners – encouraging them to tell their supporting stories.
• Do a gut check often. Course-correct content as needed – staying true to your story/brand.

For the past 12 years as executive director, Ewell Smith has led market development, promotional activities and educational outreach for all of Louisiana’s seafood products. He serves as a legislative liaison among industry, state and federal officials, acting as a spokesperson for the industry.

Smith manages the board’s annual budget and strategic marketing plan.

He also serves as producer of the Great American Seafood Cook-Off, which began in 2004 and airs nationally on Food Network and PBS.

Ewell Smith of the Louisiana Seafood Board is passionate about marketing and communications. No other chief executive has more experience in crisis communications and rebuilding a brand. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsoom Ink

Louisiana Seafood represents the diverse and dynamic interests of the state’s $2.4-billion seafood industry – the equivalent of a FORTUNE 1000 company.

As Louisiana Seafood’s executive director, he is home onboard a shrimp boat or walking Capitol Hill.

In his leadership role, Smith and team are advocates for commercial fishermen. They hear their concerns, create a strong public image for them and make their case at state, national and global levels.

After being in and out of harm’s way, Smith now counsels business people, government officials and even royalty, who find themselves in similar situations. They know his expertise is hard-won and worth hearing.

Take a plane, take a train, but if you have to walk get yourself to Houston just the same for this once in a lifetime opportunity to learn how to rebuild your brand following a crisis.

Newsroom Ink’s vice president of strategic communication Springfield Lewis (r) interviews LA Fish owner and former Seafood Board chair Harlon Pearce in a seafood processing room at his New Orleans business. Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News

by Gordon Curry/Newsroom Ink

At first glance, there’s no doubt the annual report for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board looks strikingly different from the usual fare.

Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, brought on Newsroom Ink to revamp his organization’s newsroom. Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News

Produced by Newsroom Ink, this black-and-white tabloid chronicles the many activities in, around and in support of Louisiana’s commercial fishing community from 2011 to 2012. It’s  big, bold and rich in brand journalism.

“When we came up with the final concept, we knew we had something as large as the lives of the fishermen and the stories we were telling,” said Ed Lallo, founder of Newsroom Ink. “We decided on a look that was as unvarnished as the content.”

The newsy-styled, 11-by-17-inch format mirrors the annual report’s journalistic approach. Sixteen pages of articles cover the waterfront, storefronts and social and political venues for the Louisiana seafood industry, highlighting such areas as:

• The work and issues 12,000+ Louisiana fishermen face daily.
• High-profile culinary events, featuring the state’s premium seafood.
• Key discussions with legislators that advance the vitality and sustainability of an industry that employs one out of 70 Louisiana workers.

Developed by a team of news writers, the stories lay out the strategic efforts of the Louisiana Seafood Board in its advocacy of local fisherman, seafood processors, wholesalers, retailers and restaurateurs, while delving into the lives of industry members themselves.

“Reporting on Louisiana Seafood, we track to the business cycles of its diverse industries that range from oysters to shrimp to alligators,” said Springfield Lewis, vice president of Newsroom Ink’s strategic communications. “The stories cover what matter to the board’s stakeholders and their livelihoods.”

A number of stories for  annual report originated from the Louisiana Seafood Newsroom, and original articles for the annual are being repurposed as newsroom content.  A copy of the annual is also available online.

Brand journalism is making its way into the publications and newsrooms of more companies, including The Intel Free Press, The Coca-Cola Company and Men’s Warehouse. It combines journalistic writing with behind-the-scene insights into an organization’s operations and industry-related issues.

Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Board, brought on Newsroom Ink to revamp his organization’s newsroom. He sees it as a dynamic communications platform and business tool to lay out the board’s strategic agenda.

“The newsroom is a forum to address business and industry issues, highlight our expertise and tell the stories we need told. It gives us a greater voice and a place to be heard – loud and clear.”

Louisiana Seafood’s annual report nicely pulls together these elements into a singular package – in print and online – with lots of pass-around and extended news value.

Coca-Cola has introduced another brand to its lineup of iconic labels – brand journalism. With its new Coca-ColaCompany.com, Coke is now the second major U.S. corporation to launch its own brand journalism site. The other is Intel’s Free Press newsroom.

Their work follows a model of brand journalism pioneered years earlier by members of Newsroom Ink for the Imperial Sugar Company (ISC) newsroom out of Sugarland, Texas.

Recently, Newsroom Ink re-activated what’s considered to be the longest-running, brand journalism website in the U.S., which was created for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board – LouisianaSeafoodNews.com. The refreshed site posted its first story as Hurricane Isaac approached News Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Louisiana Seafood’s original newsroom was launched during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Born out of a crisis, the site today continues to report about the people, businesses and events impacting Louisiana’s commercial fishing community

Since 2010, Newsroom Ink has promoted the power of branded storytelling to create credible, influential news sites and stories – giving organizations a greater voice.

Call it an online newsroom, news factory or a corporate website. Ultimately, it is the company’s content engine that’s aligned with the CEO agenda. As a result, the chief executive becomes editor-in-chief of a news operation that covers the company and its customers, as well as industry thought leaders, issues and trends.

Well done, a newsroom can offer an insightful – and often, better-received – corporate point of view in the marketplace. In turn, a newsroom becomes a news source that benefits others.

The digital newsroom developed for the Imperial Sugar Company was recognized by the Corporate Executive Board for “best techniques and best practices.”  The website was noted for integrating “a content and look-and-feel that satisfied not only journalists, but other stakeholder audiences.”

Most organizations have a better story to tell than is being told. A newsroom gives them a dynamic, communications platform to generate legitimate stories.

As Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood board, puts it: “The newsroom is a forum to address business and industry issues, highlight our expertise and tell our stories. We find the newsroom incredibly powerful in filling the media vacuum immediately following a crisis. It gets accurate news out as opposed to news reporters creating news with speculation. It gives us a greater voice and a place to be heard – loud and clear.”