Lovell’s Insider Look at Healthcare Policy

One of the best parts about working for Lovell Communications in Washington, D.C., is the proximity to Capitol Hill. Even if you’re not a political junkie, you can’t help but get caught up in the conversation about the latest controversial legislation, political gaffe, or the looming “crisis” our country is facing during any given week.

But once a year, I get to go a little deeper and get a true Inside-The-Beltway look at the world of healthcare policy by attending the Nashville Health Care Council’s Leadership Health Care delegation to Washington, D.C. This annual trip offers emerging leaders in Nashville’s health care community access to thought leaders, administration officials and policy makers who are shaping the healthcare industry.

This year’s event was held in March and focused heavily on prospects for entitlement reform. About 80 delegates from Nashville and beyond had the chance to hear from members of Tennessee’s Congressional Delegation and speakers such as Gail Wilensky, the former administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, and healthcare scholars at think tanks American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Of course, Lovell didn’t just sit on the sidelines during this event. Our partnership with LHC had us taking copious notes and live-blogging the event for those who couldn’t make the trip. To read the coverage and find out what we learned during the trip, check out the blog posts from Day One and Day Two on the Nashville Post’s Business Blog.

For those of you who were in attendance, let us know your thoughts about the trip and what you learned – by leaving a comment below.

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April Fool’s PRanks – Worth it? Or too Risky?

April first doesn’t simply mark the first day of the month, but more importantly a day filled with pranks providing comic relief to the workday.  There’s your traditional harmless office prank, like flipping offices around, changing your co-workers office signature, taping a colleague’s phone handset down to the base, sticky-noting cubicles, and the list goes on-and-on. But, on the rare occasion, some companies have tricked thousands of people into believing some truly bizarre things. 

Top PRanks of all time:

1.       Taco Bell’s “Purchase” of the Liberty Bell—In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page ad in six major daily newspapers stating that it had bought the Liberty Bell to help reduce the national debt. The ad said: “It will now be called the ‘Taco Liberty Bell’ and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country’s debt.” People responded very confused and upset, even members of Congress made phone calls in disgust. Taco Bell followed up with a second press release later in the day acknowledging the prank and despite negative comments they defended the joke by saying that it brought attention to a real issue at hand for the need to better preserve our national monuments. They also donated $50,000 to the upkeep of the Liberty Bell, as well as landing themselves a whole lot of attention.

2.       Burger King’s “Left-Handed Whopper”—Finally, some respect for the left-handed folk.  In 1998, an ad was placed in USA Today about their newest menu item: The Left-Handed Whopper. As noted in a press release, the burger was said to contain the same ingredients, but was redesigned to “fit more comfortably in the left hand.”  “This will result in fewer condiment ‘spills’ for left-handed hamburger lovers,” the press release said. “The new Left-Handed Whopper will have all the condiments rotated 180 degrees, thereby redistributing the weight of the sandwich so that the bulk of them skew to the left.” People lined up in stores to try the new burger, completely ignorant to the fact that a burger is circular and will fit exactly the same in the left-hand as it does in the right.  Burger King issued a press release the following day acknowledging the new sandwich was a joke.

3.        Gmail’s Vowel Outage—On April 1, 2010, Gmail’s Engineering Director, Sam Schillace, posted a notice for Gmail users stating: “If you logged into Gmail over the last hour (or visited the Gmail homepage), you probably noticed that something looked a bit off: all the vowels are missing. We realize this makes things difficult for all of you who rely on Gmail — whether at home or at work — and we’re incredibly sorry. We take morphological issues like this extremely seriously, so we want to let you all know what happened and what we’re doing about it.” Throughout the day, updates were posted to the Gmail blog: Update (7:30 am): We’ve determined that the letter ‘y’ is not impacted. Update (3:02 pm): This issue has been resolved. Update (12:01 am): Also, this issue never happened. Happy April 1st. Quite Clever, Google.

Although April Fool’s Day jokes can provide a few good laughs, they can also have extremely negative implications and backlash. Protecting the reputation of a brand is a full-time job, and cannot “take a holiday” on April first.  Did your office participate in April Fool’s Day? What are some funny jokes you’ve played on your co-workers?

 

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Celebrating 25 Years: Looking Back & Paying It Forward

Of the lessons learned from our recent global recession – and its slow moving recovery – the importance of small business on the U.S. economy is near the top of the list.

The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that small businesses represent more than 99% of all employer firms, and provide approximately half of all private sector jobs.  Half!  Imagine how that impacts local communities in the way of local spending, home purchases, educational investments and charitable donations.

As our firm celebrates its 25th year in business, we have taken an inventory of the organizations to which we have provided either financial or pro-bono donations.  We’re proud to have supported the more than three dozen local and national charities and non-profit organizations listed below.  “Giving back” has been a keystone to our firm’s culture for the past quarter century, and a tradition we intend to carry forward into the next 25 years!

Abe’s Garden

Affordable Housing Resources

American Cancer Society

American Heart Association

American Stroke Association

Belmont University PR Department

CABLE

Federal Reserve Bank

Friends in General

General Commission on United Methodist Men for the United Methodist Church.

Homework Hotline

International Association of Business Communicators – Nashville Chapter

Jason Foundation

Junior Achievement

Leadership Nashville

Lymphoma Society

Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force

Middle Tennessee Boy Scouts of America

Nashville Chamber of Commerce

Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival

Nashville Downtown Rotary

Nashville General Hospital

Nashville Health Care Council

NFL Yes

Public Relations Society of America – Nashville Chapter

Public Relations Student Society of America – Nashville Chapter

Soles4Souls

Strength for Service

Tennessee Breast Cancer Coalition

Tennessee Breast Coalition

Tennessee Leukemia Society

Tennessee State University

The McWhorter Society

United Methodist Church

United Way of Middle Tennessee

WPLN – Public Radio Nashville

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Pinterest Makes A Few Tweaks

Pinterest announced this week that it is making some tweaks in an effort to further engage its more than 40 million users and make the discovery process more enjoyable. The grid layout will be similar but will feature larger images and a new navigation bar. The most advantageous changes for Pinterest and users like me are:

  1. The back button will now return you to the same spot no matter how far you drift from your original pin.
  2. When you select a pin, you will see other pins from that board and source on the right side of the page so you don’t have to navigate away from the page.

As users, we will no longer suffer the frustration of losing our place while browsing and pins will contain significantly more information, which will keep users on the site longer so we keep pinning and repining.

If you are a Pinterest user you should receive an email this week inviting you to check out the improved site or – if you can’t wait – you can visit the site, look at your newsfeed and look for the “Preview our new look” box in the upper left corner.

These changes come just on the heels of the site’s new web analytics product that launched last week, which helps website owners better track how their pinned content is advancing through the millions of pinboards.  The analytics help websites better understand what content users find most interesting. The analytics product is free for now but could eventually be another way to generate revenue for the thriving website. If you are interested in setting up Pinterest analytics for your company’s website, this article is a great resource.

Let the new, improved pinning begin!

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The Inspiration Behind Lovell Communications: Part 4.

Laurel Staples’ Better Woman blog is casual and informative.   She does a great job with her video and audio production.   Check out some of the successful businesswomen she interviews.

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In Public Relations: Why Do Women Outnumber Men?

While catching up on some reading recently, I stumbled upon this video from Ragan.com in which three New York City public relations professionals – all women – discuss why they think women dominate the public relations industry.

In their answers, the three indicate that they think women have some innate qualities and interests that match them to the profession. “Women are passionate about communication, and passionate about connecting,” one says. Another cites expert skills with multi-tasking: “It’s one of those myths that is true,” she says. The third indicates that a trend of strong women mentoring other women has helped grow the number of women in the field.

Depending on your source, women account for as many as 85 percent of those working in the public relations field, up from 27 percent from 1970.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything I saw in the video – including the assertion that men’s interest in going in-depth on a topic vs. multitasking explains why there are more men in journalism than in public relations – I think the demographic shift is interesting. My less-than-scientific research on the matter turned up a number of other articles and blog posts that suggested other reasons for the gender imbalance in public relations. Among them:

  • The idea that women are perhaps more empathetic and have better “people skills” than men.
  • Women’s ability to build and maintain relationships.
  • The disproportionate number of women graduating from college with degrees in communications and the liberal arts.
  • The portrayal of public relations in the media (Samantha Jones, etc.).

I can’t speak for anyone else, but it was a combination of skills, interests and experience that led me to the public relations field. But I’m interested in hearing from our readers, both men and women: Why do you think women outnumber men in the PR field? Do you agree or disagree with any of the above assertions?

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The Inspiration Behind Lovell Communications: Part 3.

Laurel Staples’ Better Woman blog is casual and informative.   She does a great job with her video and audio production.   Check out some of the successful businesswomen she interviews.

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Does Your Writing Need a Tune-up?

Determining what represents good writing is somewhat subjective, but good writing should always be free of misspellings and grammatical and punctuation errors. These “mechanics” of writing are fundamental to effective communication and your mastery of them – or lack thereof – creates a certain impression of you when people read your work. Technical flaws in your writing style may distract clients, employees or customers from your message and cause you to appear less credible as a source of information.

Here are a few reminders to give your writing a tune-up so the substance of your written communications can better shine and – for those of you writing for media – be consistent with AP style.

A hyphen is not a dash. Hyphens are joiners. Use them to avoid ambiguity or to form a single idea from two or more words:

Proper hyphen use:

  • Small-business owner – The owner of a small business is different than a small owner of a business. (How small is she?  Is she short or thin or both?)
  • Full-time job
  • Fourth-quarter comeback
  • Two-thirds full
  • A 10- to 20-year prison sentence

Dashes are used to indicate an abrupt change in a thought or sentence, to create an emphatic pause, or before an author’s name at the end of a quotation.

Proper use of a dash:

  • They drove – but not together – to the meeting.
  • He prefers primary colors – red, blue and yellow – to secondary colors or pastels.
  • “The virtue of books is to be readable.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a correct way to write clock time. Use figures with a space after the last figure but no space in the abbreviation, which should be lowercase. Don’t use figures for noon or midnight.

Proper use:

  • 6 a.m.
  • 10:45 p.m.
  • Noon

Incorrect use:

  • 6 AM
  • 5pm
  • 12:00 p.m. or 12:00 midnight

How to use apostrophe placement in decade references. An apostrophe should replace omitted numerals in decade references, but should not be used to show plural. To show plural, simply add the letter “s.” To indicate a relationship between a decade and the noun or phrase that follows it, use an apostrophe after the “s,” not before it.

Proper use:

  • The ‘90s
  • The 1860s
  • A 1950s’ era vehicle

Incorrect use:

  • The 90s
  • The 1860’s
  • A 1950’s era vehicle

I hope these tips help you tune-up your writing. Please share your own punctuation tune-up advice and pet peeves.  And don’t forget to spell-check!

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The Inspiration Behind Lovell Communications: Part 2.

Laurel Staples’ Better Woman blog is casual and informative.   She does a great job with her video and audio production.   Check out some of the successful businesswomen she interviews.

 

 

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Have it YOUR way: Take a lesson from Burger King to avoid being hacked

Last week, Burger King was no king in the social media realm. Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked which led to an avatar change featuring McDonalds as well as posts with racial slurs and other obscenities.

Social media is fast-paced and doesn’t provide much time to react before news like this goes viral.  To protect your brand reputation, it’s important to plan ahead.

Here are five tips for social media managers to avoid being put in a scenario like Burger King:

  1. Change your passwords regularly. You can have the same key phrase but change the numbers or symbols every month. The strongest passwords contain letters (both capital and lowercase), numbers and symbols.
  2. Minimize the number of people who have access to your social media accounts. The more people you let control your accounts the more accessible your account is to being hacked.  Cell phones are easily lost or stolen, which could grant access to your social media accounts to perfect strangers. That being said, also make sure the people who have control of your accounts have passlocks on their phones.
  3. Pay attention to announcements about password breaches. On February 1, 2013, Twitter announced that cyber attackers may have stolen user names and passwords of 250,000 users. They weren’t sure what accounts had information leaked; therefore everyone should change their password as a precaution.
  4. Change your passwords every time someone leaves the company. Whether it’s amicable or not, you don’t know a person’s intentions or the grudges they hold when they leave. They can easily write down passwords or make a copy of a password sheet and take it with them as they leave the office.
  5. Monitor your accounts. Have your retweets, favorites and replies emailed to someone who currently works at the company. This way, if you are hacked, you can catch the attacker within the first few minutes, rather than find out after it goes viral.

If there is anything positive to pull from this situation it’s that all the publicity that Burger King received did grow their followers by about 30,000. What are some tips you use to protect your accounts from being hacked?

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