Northeast Treaters transforms 35,000 square feet of roof into a solar photovoltaic power plant.

We’re accustomed to absorbing discouraging news in the national and regional press. Teeth-gnashing politics, tear-gassed protesters, sex abuse scandals, devastating storms… we need to know.

News for trend trackers

But there is more to the news than imminent doom. There’s problem solving. van Schouwen Associates’ team provides client media relations, so our relationship with the news involves dealing with the nuts-and-bolts (and electrons and microchips, etc.) of business trends and challenges. When a company engineers a way to deal with a business or environmental challenge or harness an opportunity, talking about it in the press helps effect change.

This time, a client is harnessing sunshine.

We’re working with client Northeast Treaters, which has good news stemming from a forward-thinking project. Belchertown, MA-based Northeast Treaters has developed a 35,000 square-foot solar photovoltaic plant that generates 80 percent of the electricity used by the company. It was built by local and regional workers, with materials from the region and the U.S.

Local green jobs, local green energy.

Last week’s open house to celebrate the solar endeavor drew customers, influentials and the media. The press so far has done the project justice, and we extend our appreciation to Springfield, MA NBC affiliate -Channel 22, Springfield, MA CBS affiliate Channel 3 and The Republican (among others who will create a story about the project) for taking the effort to highlight how one company can make a difference in the local economy and to the environment by putting action behind its commitment to both.

Isn’t it great to see good news for a change?

Icon from the AMC show MadMen

You might be surprised. You’ve worked on your company’s SEO and are feeling pretty good. (Or moderately good.)

But hang on a minute… you may be missing something.

Take our own firm’s experience as an example. Differentiating a marketing firm in a few words (e.g. search terms) can be surprisingly difficult. Standing out in online search engines from the four zillion competitors within Western Massachusetts (even just greater Springfield) is an ongoing, albeit fun, project.

One reason? The search terms people use to search for a firm like ours are not always words vSA would first or ideally use to describe itself. In MadMen days, a firm like van Schouwen Associates was almost always called an advertising agency. Despite the fact that now vSA provides value through more holistic business-to-business (B2B) strategic marketing including interactive, public relations, media relations and a whole host of other stuff that is more effective than ads alone, we find that many prospects still type in the search term “advertising agency” or “ad agency” when they Google. Even though they don’t want 20th century-style straight-up advertising, but instead maybe a grassroots communications program, or eblasts or consulting. Even though they may be searching for what vSA does.

Do you know what search terms your missing prospects are typing in – and then finding your competitor? There are many tools you can use to find out – or, hey, just ask your “advertising agency”!

“And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick,” proclaimed our president this morning in an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show.

Some people may object to this remark because it is coarse. I object because it is disingenuous and clearly the brainchild of a media relations team. “President Obama! The American People think you’re an effete intellectual. They think you lack emotion. They want to see you get mad!” And, “The American People do not want to hear about experts or scholars. They want you to get out there and KICK ASS!”

President Obama, polls or no polls, please speak with your authentic voice. Work with BP, work with everyone who can help clean up this terrible mess, build some regulations, kick some ass if necessary, but don’t talk to us as if street fightin’ is your way of life. Get real.

To read or not to read...

… and I’d like not to be worried. After all, for me, the smell of a Barnes & Noble is nearly aphrodisiac, and I consider the buying, reading and piling up of books and magazines my birthright. I confess to not having a Kindle or similar device yet, but I know that’s coming. To me, format matters, but content matters more. That’s why I found Fortune’s cover story The Future of Reading particularly thought-provoking. I can’t believe it… could it even be possible… that people will ever lose interest completely in reading? Let it not be so.

Fortune, of course, is speaking largely from a business perspective, especially regarding journalistic concerns. I noticed that I couldn’t find the text of that March 1 lead article, which I first devoured in print while waiting at my allergist’s office, online as I wrote this – since it’s this week’s issue, Fortune would no doubt like us to buy the magazine and thus support the advertising. I certainly understand this. After all, a great deal of vSA’s work is in public relations, media relations in particular. If there is no revenue, there will be no publications. Plain and simple. Fortune, and even Broom, Brush & Mop magazine – difficult as it is to believe – are not mere labors of love.

Here’s my educated guess, based on the cosmic and not-so-cosmic shifts I’ve seen in my decades on this earth and at my desk (including the door-on-file-cabinets that served as my vSA desk in those first daring years of entrepreneurship): Reading will not die. The stature of Amazon and my beloved Barnes & Noble are evidence to that. Sadly, small bookstores and publications large and small have suffered and will continue to do so. The media will continue to adapt, with false starts and many casualties, to new models for advertising and other revenue generation. More and more of our reading will be done on notepads and online. People will continue to love video in all its forms, and many – okay, most – will prefer it to the written word.

But there is a magnetism to writing and to reading, and, despite the challenges of doing it well, there is a certain simplicity and joy to creating stories – just think, most children compose tales and essays as soon as they can wield a crayon or navigate a keyboard. We love our news (both the important and the supremely trivial) and we relish our rehashing of information, much of which will continue to be in the form of articles, opinions and other text.

Fortune, by the way, agrees, by and large: Reading – somehow, someway – will live on. What’s your take?

Boston Consulting Group is just one of the voices we’ve heard recently warning us of the dangers for companies of becoming wildly optimistic in the face of a few positive economic signs. Its study Green Shoots, False Positives, and What Companies Can Learn from the Great Depression “warns CEOs to guard against the kind of hasty optimism – based on an excessive reliance on one or two promising indicators – that undermined some companies during the Great Depression” according to a press release from the firm.

American Public Media’s August 3rd Marketplace show featured a segment on navigating the upturn, in which Standard & Poors Chief Economist David Wyss says mistiming the end of the recession can be a fatal mistake. He warns that “The danger is that in some industries if you sort of stay in self-protect mode too long, you’re going to miss the upturn completely and end up losing market share. More companies go broke in the upturn than they do during in the recession.” However, he then goes on to say that he doesn’t think the fabled upturn has arrived yet. Hmmph, he’s probably right.

So, what’s a company to do? We ask our clients to separate risks too big to assume in uncertain times from sensible business moves that have a way-better-than-even chance of paying off. As a marketing firm, we’ve watched with dismay as some clients have chopped budgets and then complained about anemic sales. (In case you wonder, we ourselves have navigated through client budget cuts by taking on a larger number of clients, including a number of new ones, balancing out the reality that most companies are spending less than they did in 2008, and in some cases, probably less than in 1908.) We’ve used more media relations and other PR, more Web surveys, more grassroots marketing, and a lot fewer big splashy campaigns to get the job done for clients.

Where one Downturn Downfall comes in, we believe, is in paralysis. If revenues are shrunken, sure, reduce spending somewhat. But don’t cut off all your outreach or you will be forgotten by an uncaring world. And if your company can’t seem to decide what product to introduce in this tough market, or when to introduce the thing, GET TO WORK ON DECIDING. If sales are down, sell harder. Sweat still works if you combine it with smarts. The fact that the company down the street announces its sales are down 30 percent, or even the fact that your own company’s sales were down 45 percent last quarter, is not adequate reason to assume that you will inevitably match this depressing performance going forward. Expect more, just don’t spend all your mythical earnings yet.

The economy is an orchestra. It does take a combined effort to make sweet music, sure, and we’re an earplug-worthy cacophony right now. But each musician – from Acme Ant Traps to Toyota – has a singular part to play. Your mother was right. Practice your music longer each day, focus, be open to inspiration, and improve your – and all of our – performance.

Enjoying your day?

More smart? Smarter, that’s it.

I guess I knew this, but I forgot. Some of us, and I suspect this includes many entrepreneurs and creative types, work way better under pressure. Not only that, we learn so much more when we suspect it’s vital, not when we’re feeling la-di-da. We also learn more when there are fewer people on hand to help us, like when those people are really busy doing their own thing that we’ve already assigned to them, or maybe they’ve thrown in the towel and moved to a faraway island. (And I’m sorry if I caused that… really I am. You know who you are.)

About learning under duress, stress and the rest. I’m of the generation that grew up not attached to a keyboard. No, I had to learn the hard way – as a young adult. And I’ve gotten pretty good at installing software, troubleshooting, even making an incompatible printer work with my Mac! (Four hours it took, four full hours!) For 2009 business planning in Dismal Economy World, I know it will be important to reach out to clients and prospects in a whole range of ways – from speaking engagements to media relations, mailings to direct personal outreach.

Even as a veteran marketer, I learn new skills when I have to perform unfamiliar hands-on tasks. Like running a slide projector (this is the stuff of nightmares for a verbal learner with no mechanical skills whatsoever). You’d think that the scary part of speaking in front of a large crowd would be… speaking. But for me it’s displaying that damnable PowerPoint presentation. IF I have one.

So, in the perpetual interest of finding something lovely in nearly any situation – just think how much you’ll learn this year! With so little support! How many new horizons! What an enhanced professional you’ll be. Me, too, I hope.