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Have you seen this article in your local paper? If not, keep an eye out for it. In keeping with the Mission Statement of the Association and the objectives of its Strategic Plan to “Educate the public as to the unique qualifications of our members,” the AAA-CPA has launched a public relations initiative via print communications. The print article was developed by Schramm and Associates, a Washington, DC-based advertising and public relations firm and is being disseminated to approximately 10,000 papers throughout the country via the North American Press Syndicate (NAPS). A clipping service will be used to track pick-ups and traffic to the Association’s website will be monitored by the Association’s staff.

The article is intended to raise awareness of the unique qualifications of an Attorney-CPA and the services they can provide the consumer. The article encourages the consumer to visit the AAA-CPA’s website to find and Attorney-CPA in their area with the result being potential new clients for members of the Association.

Association members can help in this endeavor by forwarding a copy of the article to their local papers and encouraging them to run it. If you would like a .pdf version, please call Clark Mulligan at the AAA-CPA office or e-mail at cmulligan@attorney-cpa.com. A copy is also available in the “members section” of the website for download.

LOS GATOS, Calif. — Sterling Communications Inc., an independent, full-service high-tech public relations agency, today announced that it will partner with IBDNetwork, producers of the acclaimed Under the Radar conference, to sponsor the Momentum Growth conference, September 27-28, 2006, in Mountain View, Calif. This year, the invitation-only event will focus on the digital convergence ecosystem and feature participants from industry-leading companies such as Discovery Channel, Fox Interactive, Google, MTV, Microsoft, MobiTV and Yahoo!. Sterling will provide the conference with public relations expertise and assistance, including strategic messaging advice, media outreach and marketing services.

“It’s critical that growth-oriented companies have the opportunity to share and gather information with an appropriately focused audience of potential partners, investors and industry influencers,” said Debbie Landa, CEO and Founder of IBDNetwork. “Momentum Growth Conference provides these companies with this targeted platform. We’re honored that Sterling has joined forces with us this year to significantly enhance the promotional and public relations value this new conference extends to participating companies.”

Companies recognized by IBDNetwork as part of Momentum Growth demonstrate the revenue, customers, partnerships and vision to grow exponentially while gaining rapid traction in the market. Through keynotes and panels on market trends, breakout sessions on issues concerning growth-stage companies and various product showcases, Momentum Growth provides its attendees with a forum for meeting with potential customers, partners and investors and identifying new business opportunities.

“Momentum Growth showcases companies that have the potential to make a significant impact on their markets in the very near future,” said Elke Heiss, Vice President of Sterling Communications. “We look forward to leveraging our extensive digital media technology experience and close ties with the press and analyst community to bring attention to these future market leaders. Together with IBDNetwork, we are committed to producing a high-value show that will facilitate the advancement and growth of these promising startups.”

VANCOUVER, British Columbia & LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. — The Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) announced today that it has retained Mobility Public Relations as its agency of record for worldwide communications. Mobility Public Relations (www.mobilitypr.com) was selected because of the expertise and experience of the principals in the wireless industry having managed media and analyst relations programs for such companies as Cisco Systems, HP Mobile Bazaar and iPass.

“We were impressed by Mobility Public Relations from our first conversation,” said Caroline Lewko, CEO of WIP. “The team we are working with understands the technologies and business issues across a wide swath of the broad wireless industry spectrum. We were also amazed at the great ideas we heard from Mobility Public Relations in virtually every conversation.”

The Wireless Industry Partnership is a new business development service and resource for wireless businesses across the globe. WIP promotes innovation by networking together the various links in the wireless industry value chain from ideas, to capital, to development to distribution channels.

“One of the important distinctions between Mobility Public Relations and other high-tech PR agencies is a structure that allows us to create synergies across our accounts,” said Melissa Burns, principal at Mobility Public Relations. “Our focus on mobility technology businesses helps us leverage activities on behalf of one client for the benefit of many. WIP is a perfect fit for our agency as it touches so many parts of the mobility landscape.”

WIP creates market efficiencies in the wireless industry through its network of members and easy access to the human resources, capital, tools and information necessary to quickly create, fund and bring new and advanced wireless technologies, products and services to market.

The L.A. office of 5W Public Relations has won two new clients: Emak Worldwide and Davidandgoliath Advertising. The publicly traded Emak is a trio of marketing agencies. Davidandgoliath is an advertising agency for clients Kia Motors America Inc., Universal Hollywood, Outback Steakhouse, DishTV and Re/Max.

Nothing rails the American body politic like foreign competition for jobs. Today’s outcry over offshoring reflects a realization that there is no longer a clear limit to the level of job function that can be outsourced overseas–college degree or the color of one’s collar notwithstanding.

Decades ago, foreign competition steel–think Japanese cars or imported steel–worried both workers and their employers. But that common purpose was severed in the 1990s, when manufacturers began sending work to factories in Mexico. Companies also began outsourcing–first, Nonessential functions like maintenance, and, later, repetitive back-office jobs–to U.S. companies that could do the work more efficiently.

Those trends had thoroughly blended by the late 1990s, when programmers in India first gained widespread attention for helping U.S. companies run a round-the-clock race against the Y2K deadline.

Offshoring has come a long way since then. So has the resulting animosity between workers and companies. That was what initially prompted CFO to examine the practice. After all, as the following pages show, weighing to promised cost savings against public anger is tougher than most CFOs want to admit. But the outcry also distracts companies from questions about the risks of sending any part of a business overseas to be managed by someone else. And the same global competitors that make offshoring necessary are likely to make misjudging those risks costly indeed.

Veteran public relations guru Sy Schwartz, executive vice-president of Rubenstein Associates, has died at the age of 70.

Schwartz, who had just celebrated his 40th anniversary with the powerhouse PR firm, died in his sleep of a heart attack at his home in Manhattan, his family said.

“He was a terrific writer and a really good guy,” company founder and President Howard Rubenstein said.

“Sy organized many great stunts over the years. He once brought a rubber alligator in front of City Hall to say the mayor was taking a bite out of taxpayers.”

Rubenstein said Schwartz was the first employee he hired when he began the firm, and was an integral part of its growth.

“In the beginning, it was just me, Sy and a secretary. Now we have over 200 people,” Rubenstein said.

Before joining the company, Schwartz worked as news director at Yeshiva University and as publicity manager for Public Information Associates.

Prior to that, he served in the Air Force in Korea.

While Schwartz saw many changes in the world of public relations over five decades, he still maintained some old fashioned habits.

He shunned computers for his old manual typewriter, insisting that he always did his best work on the old machine.

a new PR staff member working with a high-tech team of marketing and engineering professionals was caught off guard when she heard one engineer say, “Let’s take that on a bilateral bus off-line.” Translation: “Let’s talk about it after the meeting.” Or as someone else who lives in the jargon-as-English camp might have said at the same meeting, “You know, I just don’t have the bandwidth to go into that space right now.” Translation: “I don’t have time to explore that issue at the moment.

By the way, just for accuracy’s sake, my engineering friends tell me that “a bilateral bus off-line” isn’t exactly correct usage. And they’re only too willing to offer me the correct technical way of delivering that simple, yet very complex, message. But the point I’m trying to make here is that jargon has so infiltrated a number of professions that it is used not only to explain technical data in unintelligible ways to the uninitiated, but also to communicate basic everyday messages in ways that frustrate and alienate those who aren’t part of the inner circle. In short, it has become a public relations nightmare leading to misinformation, disinformation and misunderstanding by journalists, customers and the public.

Another popular form of “jargoneering” is what I call “the parade of acronyms.” It includes terms like BIOS, PCMCIA, RAM, ROM, USB. The list is endless. The third type of jargon, which is probably less harmful but still quite irritating, is the rampant use of cliches, such as “latest and greatest” and “the goodness of the PC.” Excuse me for being impolite, but I wasn’t aware that the PC holds moral sway in our society!

the problem

Jargon in the high-tech world, where I spend most of my working hours, has reached epidemic proportions. It’s used indiscriminately and pervasively without careful-consideration of whether or not the person hearing the jargon understands the messenger. If you do ask someone to explain what a jargon word means, you’re likely to be met with more jargon in the explanation. The poor receiver of the message doesn’t know where to begin deciphering the terms.

Perhaps the saddest part is that the person using the jargon often doesn’t realize that he or she is being misunderstood or written off as yet “another geek” who can’t communicate. The well-meaning communicator, in opting for jargon, has lost a valuable opportunity to communicate about his or her passion with a potential customer base. In short, jargon has become another way to separate “the in-group from the out-group.” Knowingly or unknowingly, jargon has become the lazy man’s way to avoid wrestling with how to communicate clearly, concisely and with passion to others who may not understand the concepts that some of us live and breathe each day.

The result? Multiple missed opportunities for educating customers, consumers, journalists, investors and the general public. In the case of journalists, if corporate spokespeople use jargon, it’s left solely up to reporters, who may or may not be technology experts, to define these words for their readers. Take the combination of a potentially less than adequate understanding of jargon with a race to meet story deadlines, and you have a recipe for inaccuracy.

In the case of potential customers, poorly defined jargon can easily result in a lack of appreciation about what the product or technology can really do for them. If they do not understand the terms being used to describe its advantages, it’s hard to get excited about the breakthrough that it represents. There will very likely be missed opportunities to sell products, technologies, ideas that could benefit both business and personal users. Ultimately we all lose out when we do not clearly understand what these terms mean and, more important, what benefits they will bring to our lives.

the “so what?” solution

The solution to this sorry state of communication lies in a simple notion: Know Your Audience. Effective communicators in any environment must understand the knowledge base of their audience; they must know what the audience is interested in; and they must be capable of stating clearly why a particular audience should actually care about the topic. In other words, what are the specific, tangible benefits that are available to this audience if they buy this product, technology, specification or idea?

A senior-level public relations professional from a leading high-tech organization I’ve worked with takes great pride in calling herself the “So What? Lady.” In her organization, when people come to her with what they consider to be a great new story idea they want her to promote, she puts it through the “So What?” test. “So What” will it do for the people we are trying to target our communication toward? “So Why” should they care about this new idea, product or technology?

Just imagine if we held ourselves to this same practice when it comes to using jargon! “So What?” I would ask you when you spout off your latest technical babble. What if you were to exercise the discipline to explain that word clearly and concisely — not only what it means, but why I, your audience, should care about it?.

Shlomit Weisblum has been hired at Carter Ryley Thomas Public Relations and Marketing Counsel’s Los Angeles office as an associate. Weisblum will help expand the public relations company’s presence and serve accounts including ITT Industries Night Vision, VHA, Medic Alert Foundation and the Westside Children’s Center.

Previously, Weisblum served as a senior account executive at the Toronto office of Hill and Knowlton.

Public relations professionals long endured the stigma of being the ugly stepchildren to their ad agency brethren. Not anymore. The pr business is booming, and public relations agencies are at last getting respect. The following panel comprising Edelman Public Relations Worldwide president and CEO Richard Edelman, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide CEO Chris Komisarjevsky, Weber Public Relations Worldwide chairman and CEO Larry Weber, DeVries Public Relations CEO Madeline DeVries and Porter Novelli International CEO Robert Druckenmiller explores the changing landscape in the pr biz with Adweek/Brandweek contributing editor Michael Schrage.

Brandweek: What do pr agencies understand about brands and the branding process that is unique and has put you in a better position, relative to advertising agencies?

Edelman: Advertising is great if you’ve got a single stake holder–if stake holders are consumers. We’re great at the orchestration among stake holders because in a message for a technology company or healthcare company, it is more complicated. It’s just who you talk to, when, what you say, how fast you say it. I don’t think advertisers are very good at speed.

Druckenmiller: I agree, but I think there are other elements, which are trust and credibility. I think they’re paramount to technology and healthcare companies. The two-way communication and ability for us to build relationships with those audiences, particularly in the cynical environment surrounding communications today [says] anything packaged is suspicious.

BW: So advertising is packaged, and pr is not?

Druckenmiller: We are delivering our messages through third parties–whether it’s reporters or journalists or other ways in which the credibility is enhanced. The credibility of those media are at stake as well. So yes, we’re not as packaged.

Komisarjevsky: I think the issue here is that you have to look at the cost/benefit tradeoff and the speed in which you can create a brand, whether for an existing company or a newly formed entity In today’s market, if you can’t create a brand quickly and you can’t demonstrate there’s some equity in that brand, then the ability to continue to get funding is very limited.

Weber: I don’t believe the ad business and the pr business necessarily agree on what branding is. What has moved to the center of branding is the relationship with the constituencies.

BW: From branded product to branded relationships?

Weber: All product is the fulfillment of a promise you make with the constituency. So I find an extremely tactical thing is going to be happening. Television has been the primary road for traditional ad branding. It’s at an all-time low in viewership. That’s not a trend; it’s a behavioral change. You start looking at what is the key core competencies of affecting constituencies. That’s dialogue. It’s interactivity. And who better than pr professionals to try and get an influenced opinion? Whether that be to buy something or to get a vote.

DeVries: Because they’re number driven, agencies are concerned about who’s reading everything, who’s viewing everything; they’ve stopped looking at content. So if you’re dealing with a healthcare brand, they’re not reading what the health editors are writing to consumers. The media planners and the dollars are driving what media exposure that brand is going to get. I think pr people who consume media all the time have a better feel for what people are getting to see and what they really need to hear or read.

BW: Is the brand steward the agency or is it the people or some intersection?

Komisarjevsky: The brand steward should be the CEO of the client company.

Weber: Ultimately, it’s the CEO. But…I think you’re trying to put a round peg into a square hole. We can’t all line up right now like it’s either an ad guy or a pr guy who’s going to carry the football when the client isn’t looking at it that way. I think the CEOs of the more enlightened companies are saying, “Look, give me a mix. I don’t care what you call it, but I’ve got to have the best relationships with the constituencies who are going to buy my products, affect legislation and vote for things. You tell me the balance–if that means there’s advertising, if that means there’s public affairs or lobbying. You work on that mix.”

BW: Your best clients are saying, “Give us a buffet?”

Komisarjevsky: I think at the end of the day, as public relations professionals, we’re striving for some sort of integrated approach because we think the combination of techniques and implementation is absolutely essential to what has to be done today. So in an ideal world, the client is saying, “Bring a team. Whether that’s from one holding company, Interpublic, WPP or Omnicom. What difference does it make? But bring me a team, or I’ll create the team. I’ll bring my own advertising. I’ll bring my own pr people. I’ll bring my own direct marketers, bring my own Internet people.”

BW: Are they challenging you to be integrated or saying “Please reduce other costs because we have neither the time, the energy nor the brand wit to cope with 10 points of content?”

Gina Lang has been promoted to director of publicity at Levine Communications Office, an entertainment public relations firm based in Los Angeles. She will be overseeing all of the company’s accounts while expanding the company’s presence. She previously worked as the publicity coordinator at the firm.