Amy Bermar

Corporate Ink

Amy Bermar founded Corporate Ink determined to create the kind of PR firm reporters wanted to work with. She spent her first 10 years writing for dailies and knew that good PR makes for great stories 20 years later – she’s built one of the tech industry’s top boutique firms.

Word-of-Mouth Reaches the Boardroom. And for the Paycheck.

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Posted on 2012-04-24

Verizon is feeling the pressure. One of the leaders in using Net Promoter™ customer feedback to drive customer loyalty and presumably improve service, is now in the awkward position of fighting against its retired employees. (Why? Deep Throat had it nailed: “Follow the money.”)

Verizon’s executive management happens to be right up there in what many would consider stratospheric – and unaccountable – executive compensation. CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg pocketed nearly $30 million last year and more than...

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What if We Never Write Another Press Release?

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Posted on 2012-03-09

We talk about that a lot lately. Mostly to reinforce how much PR is changing – and what passed for ‘savvy PR’ doesn’t cut it anymore. On the bright side, many more companies are actively searching for good PR right now. These companies are smarter and more focused. They want something new, even if they can’t quite define what it looks like. That last point – that no one knows what good PR will look like in the next 15 months – is actually great news, because it’s forcing change.

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How Customer Satisfaction Surveys Tell the Future

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Posted on 2012-01-23
It’s funny – just asking customers what they want more of is one of the best ways to see where the market is heading, and where the pressure is strongest.

We’ve been surveying our customers via Net Promoter® for about five years, and each year, we ask three key questions:
- How likely are you to recommend Corporate Ink to a friend or colleague?
- What’s your primary reason for scoring this way?
- What’s the one thing we could do to improve this score?
Then we ask a few spontaneous questions – to get a better understanding of where our clients are feeling the most pressure (which typically connects pretty tightly to how we can improve), and where they want to grow. As I look back, our clients’ comments...
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Effort ≠ Results

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Posted on 2012-01-13

I saw a blog the other day hyping a whitepaper talking about how marketers can drive revenue – and not just brand awareness. That someone is hosting a webinar to talk about how at least some companies aren’t yet forcing marketing to make the next connection – it’s just not the leads, it’s the revenue.

It reminds me of how we used to do PR – calling to 10, or 25, or even 50 reporters, to persuade our ‘top’ reporters to re-skim their inbox, read our news, and run it. These adrenaline-fueled sprints had the oddly disconnected name of ‘call-downs’ – the pressure was on to get to all of ‘em, and sell a story, and get the coverage. These call-downs are team plays. Inevitably, it’s easy to see who hustles, and who just sweats, or not. We’ve also shared these pitches with other firms.

When it comes time to report, some people like to talk about how many reporters they dialed, and messages they left. Others know enough to focus on getting the coverage, and that three good...

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The ABCs of Selling, from Three Top CEOs

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Posted on 2011-11-10

There’s nothing like hearing a CEO talk about sales. I just heard three of them – all men – talk about the real deal of selling: into CEOs, into IT, and sometimes, into their boards.

PR and sales ought to be joined at the hip – and increasingly, we are. It’s our job to drive more leads that close faster. Building brand is hugely valuable – and certainly part of it. Being able to make the numbers, for marketing and sales, is even better.

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Ten Observations on the Future of Internet Use

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Posted on 2011-11-04

It’s not often I’m sitting at the table with a guy who advises Obama, Google and Sarkozy. But Jeff Cole, who leads the Digital Future report at Annenberg’s School of Communications, was the keynote at a conference I helped organize for Worldcom Public Relations Group, our global network of partner PR firms, and he was primed to talk about what he’s learned studying how we use the Internet for the past 11 years.

That’s actually a long time, in Internet time. Lifetimes, even. He and his team are now tracking behavior in 34 countries, which gives them, and us, a pretty interesting vantage point on change.

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Three Tips for Improving Social Measurement (Part One of Two)

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Posted on 2011-09-26

This is part one of two posts on measuring social media and its return on investment. Find part two, "Measuring Social Media ROI: Can it be done? You Bet.," on Wednesday morning (9/28).

We’ve been writing market briefs and sharing them with friends, colleagues and clients for a couple of years now. It’s time to go public.

So here’s our first publicly available one - Measuring Social Media ROI in B2B: Crossing the Chasm from Traffic to Sales.

It’s one of the biggest issues out there – and will get bigger as budget planning comes into focus.

A recent study of CMO priorities by Marketing Sherpa found that converting social media members into paying customers is the #1 priority of CMOs – with nearly 2/3 putting this as a strategic goal. Another 63% want to achieve or increase measurable ROI from social marketing...

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GM Crosses the chasm

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Posted on 2011-09-06

So when does a Detroit car company act like a software company?

When it has a new service to roll out.

OnStar – the real-time, real-human friend and helper to lost, lonely and injured drivers – launched 15 years ago. Today, it has 4.5 million paying customers. And now it’s aiming for the rest of us: Because this spring, GM made OnStar available to anyone, no matter what kind of car we’re buying, or driving. (As long as your rear-view mirror connects to the windshield, and you’re willing to spend about $20 a month.)

Given the glowing review I read by the consumer tech reviewer this morning – I might even sign up.

So how did this happen? You might say GM – the oldest of heavy-metal companies – tore a page out of Geoffrey Moore’s tech game plan, and is crossing the chasm. First, it innovated. Then it found the...

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