If people don’t like your company, they’re not going to buy from you.

In a new study by my old employer, Weber Shandwick, 69% of participants aid they frequently or regularly discuss how they fell about a product they bought. 70% said they avoid buying a product if they don’t like the company that makes it. And, no surprise, 88% said that word of mouth is still most  influences their opinion of a company.

More can be found here on the Forbes blog.

My take from the study: marketing (brand) and corporate communications (reputation) need to be one, or at least work a whole lot more closely than these organizations do in most large companies.

As the financial statements say, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

People don’t donate to non-profits because they’ve been around for a long time and done great work in the past.  They donate because the organization is providing value that is especially relevant NOW and in the forseeable future.

Celebrating a milestone may be a wonderful idea for those people who have been with an organization for 25 or 50 years. But no one else cares that much. Make it a small, intimate party and keep the costs down.

We don’t buy from a company because it’s been in business a long time. We buy if they fulfill our current needs better than any other company.  In fact, I believe companies with a longer history –think Sears, GM — have to work harder to stay relevant with their customers.  One reason: it’s hard stop doing what was so successful and innovate. The second: it’s hard to change big, old companies.

And third? Did you know that there are more billionaires under the age of 40 than any time in our history?  They’re innovators, upsetting the old dogs. Stealing your market share and redefining your industry while you celebrate your history.  Spend more money envisioning how you can provide more value to customers in the future, and far, far less on banners and celebrations marking longevity.

The past is good for history books. But not for making and raising money.

PS — if you’re moving, send an email to clients, partners and vendors; add the new address to your employees’ email signature, your web site, blogs, Facebook pages, etc.

King of Prussia, Pa., September 28, 2009 – XYZ Group, the premier strategic interactive marketing agency serving the healthcare industry, today announced that it has moved its headquarters from West Conshohocken to expanded professional office space in King of Prussia, Pa.  XYZ Group has experienced significant growth since it started business and is now a leading provider of interactive marketing solutions for the healthcare industry.

XYZ’s Group’s new headquarters office is located at ….  The 31,000 square foot space is an open floor plan with numerous technology advancements to enable increased innovation and collaboration by its employees.

Here are eight ideas to “social mediafy” your campaigns.

1. Know what’s relevant and current: First, know what your audience cares about. What issues, topics, ideas are front of mind.  Not what your company wants to talk about, which is usually your own products and service features/functions (boring), but what people are already concerned about and interested in. Do this by analyzing the digital ecosystem for your category — blogs, tweets, news articles, YouTube videos,  Digg posts/rankings, Google searches, etc. What’s most popular, triggers the most responses?  If you have a corporate blog or a customer forum — what are the most popular topics?

2. What’s the business goal: Before doing anything, clearly understand the intention of the campaign. Is it to develop preference for your brand vs. another? Change a perception about your company? Make people more aware of the company’s expertise in a particular area? Help people understand an issue that is an obstacle to sales? Generate leads? Make your brand more likable?  The more specific you can be, the more effective your program will be — and the easier it will be to measure it.  I see far too little time spent on this important step. “General Awareness” is too superficial — nor does it guide how to execute.

3. Formulate a provocative point of view: What’s your take on a topic of current interest to your audience — and how does your point of view connect with your goal? Make the point of view is fresh, thought-provoking and even provocative.  As word of mouth author Emmanuel Rosen points out in an interview with Sean Moffit of BuzzCanuck, one of the worst practices in marketing is having nothing interesting to say. My research has found that there are nine themes that people like to talk about; here’s more on “The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing” from Guy Kawasaki’s blog.  My favorite is taking a contrarian or counterintuitive view. Done right, this approach creates interest, debate and longevity — and can help address a number of goals.

4. Put that point of view together in a shareable form: Take your point of view and develop it in a form (or multiple forms) that people can easily share with other people — eBooks, videos, ChangeThis manifestos, blog posts, presentations, white papers. And put those not just on your own site but where people are browsing — YouTube, SlideShare, Delicious, etc.  Some recent examples of content easy to share: Disney Park’s “make your own personalized video,” which you can then share with friends. IBM’s “Art of the Sale” mainframe videos by Tim Washer. And a great white paper, “EMC/One: A Journey in Social Media” by Chuck Hollis. Having some thing makes it easier to share. Of course, it needs to be interesting enough that you want to share it with your colleagues and friends.

5. Get your views out into the ecosystem: Now stir things up and let people know about your point of view– and where they can go to learn more.  Use Twitter, Facebook, blogger outreach, Slideshare.net, YouTube, Digg, Sumbleupon and all the many, many other places out there.

6. Stay in the conversation: As people start talking about the topic, stay in the conversation, adding new perspectives, answering questions, providing other people/places about the issue. Set up Google alerts at a minimum to keep up with the conversation and post responses to what;s being said. The days of dropping a press release, talking to some media, and calling it a campaign are over.

7. Repackage: Take the highlights of what ensued and repackage them to further achieve your goals — use for customer newsletters, sales presentations, management reports, in employee communities/Intranets.

8. Measure what sticks: Lastly, learn from all the issues you initiate. Which garnered the most interest — and why? What fell flat? Was it the topic — or was it the execution. This execute-and-measure-and-learn is the only way to find what works for your audience — and is an ongoing education for you.

What gives?   I recently heard that one CEO demanded at least 40 press releases a quarter be posted on the company’s news page to impress potential shareholders. (Are investors so dumb as to make decisions on the number of press releases? Seems so 1999 to me.)  Another PR group said that the product marketing people had a press release quota as part of their performance evaluation. So whether a product was newsworthy or not, the product marketing people hounded PR for their precious releases.

Then I see a silly release that SAP put out last week claiming that customers were migrating from their competitor Infor to SAP. The release is so full of jargon and marketing speak that’s it’s almost a parody of bad PR.

The really funny part was that I was with Infor folks last week in Europe. When they read the release they laughed (and posted this blog response)  because the customers and partners that SAP cited as moving from Infor to SAP  did so many moons ago for reasons that certainly wouldn’t be press release-worthy.   So much for any “news” in this release.

My guess is that some SAP marketing or sales manager thought it a good idea  to do a “momentum release” that they could give their sales reps who are competing in deals with Infor. In other words, press release as sales tool.

If PR gets no respect these days, it’s because too many people mistakenly think that press releases have some magical powers that will cure all types of business issues. If only.

Full disclosure: I’ve worked with SAP and am doing work for Infor. These views are part of my usual rants on dumb company marketing and PR stories.

But Yang’s post doesn’t sound genuine; it sounds like something the corporate PR folks wrote in a committee. Too bad. In today’s world, people want the real language of the person behind the ideas. After reading the post my reaction was, “Does Yang really care — or is this just a PR move?”

A better approach would be to give the CEO a few of the major points that communications thinks should be conveyed — and then let him express it in his own words and style. Who cares if the words and grammar aren’t perfect. Neither are real people.

I’m so honored and thrilled that my book Beyond Buzz has been awarded a gold prize in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards in the Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations category. I’m especially honored to share the gold with Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing. Here’s a list of all the winners.The awards are sponsored by Independent Publisher, Inc, Jenkins Group, and Padilla Spear Beardsley.

• 84% of journalists say they would or already have used blogs as primary or secondary sources.
• 54% of journalists report to get their story ideas from blogs, 51% from RSS feeds

Reporters aren’t opening most emails from PR people or agencies unless they have a really good relationship with them. Forget phone calls. But do remember a blog helps you get good ideas direct to people in your market — and is the new source for journalists.

(Note: Recently reporters from The Wall St. Journal, The Baltimore Sun, Business Week, and The Chicago Tribune have called me based on one of my blog posts. I’m witnessing what Francois writes about.)