Strategic Public Relations

Presentation Trap #234: The (Slow, Boring) Build

A payoff slide kills the boring build, letting you assert first, support later.

There are more than 100 ways to deliver "death by PowerPoint." One death blow I've wrestled with lately is narrative flow.

We tend to build a case for assertions before making them. It's even built into the standard "problem, solution, results" case study. But building up to an assertion risks losing the audience before you can make your point.

The Payoff Slide
Depending on the presentation, I start out with a "payoff" slide in my deck -- not unlike the payoff sentence that kicks off this post. It's my main assertion -- a 140-character elevator speech that can be tweeted by the audience. And I spend the rest of the presentation proving out the assertion. Here's an example on the second slide.

As I've said before, you still need to tell a story that your audience wants to tell after your presentation. So you still need to end on a high note. But if you save it all until the end? You lose the audience before you get there.

Payoff To Stop Walk Out
Losing an audience is literal these days as presentation attendees are more serious than ever about investing their time. An extreme example is South by Southwest Interactive. I've seen SXSWi speakers flame out as people leave during the presentation -- in droves. It's not polite. But it's based on the content they're getting (or not getting) from a presentation. And it reinforces the need to capture and keep the audience's attention.

This guy is boring uploaded by Narisa 

Marketing, Hoarders & Throw-Aways

For one reason or another, I always seem to uncover items that are being kept around even though they no longer hold value. Items become obsolete -- from this diskette I hung onto for years at my last job to time-sensitive marketing materials that have an expired date or use the old brand identity.

But we hoard these items because of nostalgia perhaps or, more likely, because time or money was invested in them. Whether it's a well-intended “just in case” security measure or otherwise, it's usually overlooked or generally accepted.

Loaded Down with Ideas
Hoarding happens with more than just objects. Marketing practices, and internal processes, are sometimes clung to because “that’s how it’s always been done.” It can be understandable due to the success these intangible assets have achieved in the past.

We’ve all been guilty of hoarding at one time or another. Practices or processes don’t take up extra space. But without changing or reevaluating them, they can slow down organizations, impact productivity and over time they can lead to obsolescence.

Stay Close to the Shiny New
I’m not suggesting we change for change’s sake. I’m also not suggesting we flock to the shiny new. But as our industry is in a constant state of iteration, I am suggesting a balance. Even the longest-held practices or processes should not be off limits when considering what’s working, what’s not, what can improve and what needs to be thrown away.

Sound the Bell on Pavlovian Marketing

A professional association in the online industry sent me a white paper -- via postal mail. It’s a printed piece (thick stock with an even thicker cover stock). And it has two small visuals in the entire 12-page document.

What was the white paper about? I’m not sure because every time I tried to read it, I fell asleep.

To be clear, I don’t begrudge anyone from creating, and mailing, a printed piece. There are a lot of good reasons to create a print experience. And even in a world teeming with tablets and e-readers, a print execution can help content stand out – in a good way.

Reflex Marketing
My issue is with Pavlovian Marketing. This is when we use the same old ways to talk about the new --  regardless of how ill-fitting thesee ways might appear – because that’s how it’s always been done.

There are planning rules and guidelines worth their weight in gold (audience/goals/measureable objectives/strategy and tatics). Keep them. They’re valuable. And sometimes there’s a need to leverage new rules for new tools (social media as engagement vs. broadcast).

Pavlovian Purgatory
Pavlovian Marketing is somewhere in between these two extremes. As if on command marketers spit out the same tactics. In this case, a rather academic looking white paper.

Wikipedia claims a white paper "is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem" or make a decision. "In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to documents used by businesses as a marketing or sales tool."

But does the above definiition mean a white paper has to look like the business equivalent of a college research paper? PSFK publishes white papers I'd like to print out and hang on my walls as much as I want to read it.

Far too often, marketers let formats serve as rules instead of guidelines. Take the news release. (No, please, take it. >rim shot<) The start up Square used Instagram to publish a dead simple news release -- with actual news in it.

There are a myriad of ways to reach the same goal. I’m not suggesting everything can be snack-sized into a bumper sticker, tweet, infographic, top ten five list or a 60- 30-second video. I am suggesting that we need to practice what we preach as communicators.

White Noise Paper
As far as the white paper that inspired this post, let me ask you this. If you’re audience is, by default, online and you’re trying to impress this audience with your point of view on the inner-workings of a niche in the online industry, would you use printed materials to accomplish this goal?

A wise then-client once said he knew a colleague with more than 17 years of experience. The only problem was it was a single year -- repeated 17 times. Tune out the din of the marketing bell that sounds clearly as pile after pile of examples bury you (online and offline) ultimately suffering you into a fossil. Take a deep breathe and make sure you're next work is your best work....not simply a rehash of your last work.

Cross-posted to the Bad Pitch blog.

Can Facebook Reinvent Vending Machines?

Maybe the Bad Pitch blog has jaded me, but it's rare for a relevant pitch to ping my email. So when it does -- it sings. The latest siren comes from the National Automatic Merchandise Association (NAMA).

Vend Trend
In 2007, I noticed a lot of interesting vending machine concepts in play.** The above is a PSFK-inspired video for a reader-generated trend discussions. I even did a follow up post on the vend trend. Back then I learned Japan is the vending machine capital of the world, with more than 20 machines for every citizen.

Machines once serving up only shelf-stable snacks and cold drinks are now dispensing everything from gold bars to breakfast meat. But in the U.S., vending machines have less ubiquity than Japan and a bit of a perception issue.

Vend. Love. Win.
The NAMA is attacking this issue, in part, with a Facebook contest: Vend. Love. Win. According to the (good) pitch I received: "This online contest is...the beginning of a larger campaign designed to boost awareness and generate excitement among consumers about the vending experience. 

"The program is geared largely to Gen Y consumers due to recent NAMA research indicating that Gen Y prefers vending over convenience stores and grocery or drug stores."

According to Vending Market Watch a key challenge the research found is the need to overcome the perception that vending does not provide a good value for the money, along with not having the products consumers want and not being able to make a transaction without cash.

Mobile Vending Museum
In addition to the Facebook contest is the Gratitude Tour, "a mobile marketing tour of innovative vending machines that will dispense free products in large urban settings" that will kick off in seven cities in September. A mobile app focused on vending and nutrition is under development as well as games and a component targeting other associations -- Vending Vanguard. NAMA is communicating with Gen Y friendly associations focused on various facets of college.

"Will It Vend?"
Check out the Facebook page. I'll wait. What do you think about the contest and the rest of the campaign's components?

Without more context, the campaign feels more like a lot of stuff. But I will dispense with the criticism (see what I did there?) as I want them to succeed. I'm obviously pro-vending machine. And I'm hopeful there's an integrated thread running throughout the above list -- a thread that will make the campaign results sing to the NAMA in the same fashion as their pitch sang to me.

**Prior to 2007, my fondest vending machine memory was in this NSFW clip from the movie Slap Shot.

Content Is Not King

Guess who suggests content is king and who suggests content isn't king? The answer usually depends on the job of whomever is answering the question.

It seems PR people lean towards giving content the crown. Social media professionals give social the monarchy. And so on.

For my entire career, I've focused on content in one way or another. Content's definition has expanded as the roles involved in creating it and publishing it have evolved. In fact, an entire discipline has emerged just to be more strategic about marketing with content.

And while I've been a defender of content's crown in the past, I've come to understand the truth about the so-called marketing monarchy. There is no king. No queen. No monarchy. The relationship between content, technology and consumer is more of an ecosystem, or perhaps it's just more easily explained using organic terms.

Organs, Kingdoms & Content
Saying that content, or social media or search or the latest shiny new object is king, is like arguing over which organ of the body is most important.

It's actually an old joke where the brain, the blood, the stomach, the eyes and the legs all make their case as to why they are most important. And when the anus makes its case, the rest of the organs simply laugh in disagreement. So the anus shuts down and, a few days later, the other organs apologize and the anus wins the argument. But the point is all of the organs are interrelated and therefore important.

Content, Context, Curation
So whether we're considering paid, owned and earned -- remember the ecosystem. It's all the more critical if you consider the noise consumer's are immersed in through our efforts. And to meet consumer needs and expectations we simply add to the noise.

Brands compete online with more than 1.6 billion messages. EVERY. Single. Day. That's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blog posts and even news releases.

The Business of Content
In Program or be Programmed:10 Commands for a Digital Age, Douglas Rushkoff brings up an even more important point when talking about content's role in capitalism.

Essentially he notes that the internet has helped create a hyper-captialism of sorts wherein the closer you are to value creation the further you are from the money. Just ask anyone writing for Huffington Post (paid or free). There are more examples. But it points us towards the trend of curation.

There are many flavors of curation. And it requires aggregating a good portion of the noise from which to curate the best bits. But it's another part of the ecosystem to keep in mind. We're seeing more examples of media outlets mixing up the ecosystem to provide the best, most relevant product to its readers.

New York Magazine is a great example. It uses original content as a foundation to build upon while curating content and featuring user generated content in the form of web videos.

The King is Dead
Would any media outlet suggest content is king? They'd be ignoring the oxygen paid media brings its brand. And calling it oxygen vs king, queen or court jester is more accurate. So think ecosystem while we dance on the monarchys' respective graves.

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UPDATE: Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik reinforces my point in a Nieman Journalisim Lab article noting how story structure has changed in five key ways: context, social, participation, mobile and personalization. 

Brands & Blogs: Building Better Relationships at Savvy Blogging Summit

It's been almost two weeks since I attended Savvy Blogging Summit with my Empower MediaMarketing colleague, Jessica George. We were asked to speak on building better relationships between brands and bloggers.

Empower's done more than a dozen different outreach projects for clients -- online and offline. We posted our presentation at the Scoop.It page we created for the event.

We learned as much as we taught at #sbsummit. The attendees had to apply to attend and were focused on improving their blog. This translated into a passionate crowd that helped reinforce a few points during our presentation and conversations with #sbsummit attendees.

Make it Easier:We extol the need for a community relations approach with bloggers over a media relations approach, but we don't identify any direct ways for a blogger to contact a brand.

Bloggers are more than familiar with being pitched. We've even counseled them on creating "About" pages and sporting badges if they're "PR Friendly." But bloggers aren't familiar with seeking out like-minded brands. Perhaps we need a page on brand sites for bloggers -- much in the way we have newsrooms for the media. If we're taking a different approach, we should have a designated way for direct contact to the right people (agency or brand).

Broadcast vs. Engagement: It always seems to come back to this topic. If you understand social media is an engagement tool and not a broadcast tool, it's easy to understand how the best bloggers for an outreach project may not have the biggest audience. We don't need the biggest audience, we need the right audience. With the right audience, brands can gain insight into how they can better meet customer needs. And they'll build loyalty throughout their interactions with these bloggers.

After identifying a handful of #sbsummit attendees my employer has worked with in the past, it was reassuring to see that these bloggers were chosen due to relevant content and a high level of engagement. Of the #sbsummit attendees, none of the bloggers we worked with previously had the highest level of reach.

Need a specific example of the potential of relevance over reach? Kosher on a Budget is a well-differentiated blog written by Mara. And in addition to the obvious kosher brands, Mara also knows which mainstream consumer brands have gone to great lengths to gain kosher status for some of their products. But some of these brands are more focused on other niches, tapping the gluten-free consumer perhaps, without realizing the full benefit of their investment in kosher. If they'd like a group of consumers as fiercely loyal to them as their gluten-free consumers -- they should contact Mara. She's got a relevant blog with a loyal readership. And regardless of audience size, I can't think of anyone better to help a mainstream brand do with their kosher products what they're already doing with their gluten-free products. Disclaimer: we cooked up this idea in a quick conversation after I finished my presentation.

Owned Media Opportunities:Tapping into the right niche of bloggers to help create content owned by the brand is an under utilized opportunity. Who better to create content that will resonate with brands' target audience than its most loyal, well-informed customers? This is not paying for a post or a product review on a blogger's site. This is tapping bloggers to fuel your next content project. It's akin to hiring freelance writers and requires full disclosure. Media outlets are already tapping into this at a local and national level. And as more brands become publishers, this is a bigger deal than brand, blogger or agency yet understands. This is due in part to brands and bloggers defining relationships to date, for the most part, as an exchange of access or free stuff for content. We've watched this approach derail some time ago.

The PR Disconnect: One of the big disconnects between bloggers and agencies can be paid media. Many bloggers are treating their blog as a business. As a result, they'll be discussing paid and owned media opportunities with brands. Most PR people conducting outreach are used to working primarily with earned media. In fact, if they've got a media relations background, odds are good they've only worked on earned and owned media opportunities. Any suggestion of paid media can create confusion and incorrect assumptions between the agency and the blogger. But not only do PR people need to get used to this concept, they need to account for it in the budget when planning outreach projects. This is not a free exchange -- free stuff for free content.

2nd Moment of Truth: A brand and a blogger may be perfectly matched. But a poor initial pitch, or disconnects like the one above, can prevent any relationship from being created. Bloggers and brands should give each other a second chance. One attendee told a story of a bad pitch that turned into a business relationship. So instead of the first moment of truth, perhaps we need to put more weight on the second moment of truth when building relationships between brands and bloggers.

The Hypocrisy of Silos:Many of the #sbsummit attendees focus on saving money in some form of another -- from living more simply and being frugal to tapping into coupons, promotions and other deals from various brands. But to mention TLC's show "Extreme Couponing" was the rough equivalent of saying Voldemort to a Harry Potter fan. Why? The show single-handedly has marketers putting all coupon bloggers, savings bloggers, frugal living bloggers into a single, unseemly bucket.

The week we presented, Ad Age's cover story even warned marketers to "beware the coupon mom." But to make such a general, sweeping statement based on the extreme of one "reality" show is foolish at best. It's akin to journalists letting a few PR people making bad pitches color their view of the entire industry. Looking at the attendee's blogs, I saw a more common theme of home, family and wholesome living. The bottom line being that agencies need to spend more quality time developing a targeted list of bloggers. There are many facets to any blog. And while they may have a primary focus, they cannot always be placed into a single silo.

All of the above are either opportunities or reminders of what's keeping brands, agencies and bloggers from doing something bigger, better and more effective for all involved. Needless to say, Jessica and I really enjoyed being involved with the event.

Word Choice, Semantics & Social Media Bullsh!t

Earlier this year I put together some new patio furniture. There were no extra parts, everything lined up as it should. This is not always the case with products noting “some assembly required.”

Anyone who’s purchased items from IKEA or put together toys during the holidays can relate to the feeling when things don’t quite match up.

This experience relates to word choice. During my business to business days, the phrase “aviation tolerance” brought to mind exacting accuracy and surgical precision. Then I visited an aerospace manufacturing facility to see a plane built and I realized my definition was inaccurate.

Close, But Not Close Enough
While aviation tolerance does equate to a high standard of quality and safety, it doesn’t mean that every plane always fits together perfectly. Sometimes more rivets are needed than planned and shims are commonly used when edges don’t meet exactly as they should. The phrase still holds its meaning. Any safety specs comparing flying to driving prove this point. But my definition wasn’t as accurate as the real thing.

In a world of acronyms, buzzwords, text messaging shorthand and slang, the challenge to say what you mean increases. And the opportunity to unintentionally mislead or misinform your audience increases exponentially. Usually if your word choice isn’t lining up with the intended meaning, it simply becomes noise. But if the content takes root and gets attention? A social snowball can increase in size and speed as your message is shared, liked and syndicated across networks.

Social Media – Too Broadly Defined?
We want to avoid either scenario. Judy Shapiro writes about her first SXSW speaking engagement to show what can happen when the snowball hurtles downhill.

“As the session progressed and the conversation heated up, I realized that much of the "tussling" was simply because there was no consistent understanding of what "social media" was. >SNIP< In the middle of this "exuberant" discussion, my frustration with the term "social media" reached a tipping point. I had come to hate the term because it has become so undefined and unusable resulting in much confusion. In short, for me, the term had outlived its usefulness.”

My Own Influenza
That’s where I’m at with the word influence. The topic is important. But the word is misunderstood and misdefined. At SXSW, my panel discussion experienced the same issue as Shapiro. If we’d simply defined terms up front we could have focused more on the topic (and gotten through more content). Panel discussions that require a glossary are a bad sign. But defining terms immediately ensures everyone makes assertions based on the same definition.

More to come about influence. In the meantime, this is another reminder on the importance of clear, concise writing. We risk creating ineffective content -- or worse.

Twitpic, Instagram, Flickr & Facebook - Got the Picture?

For some reason, I know that I started using Twitpic three years ago today.

You could care less and I don't blame you.

So in addition to pointing to my first Twitpic, most viewed Twitpic and one or two others illustrating this post, I'll make some observations about photo sharing platforms in general.

You may not care about this either. But the odds just shifted significantly.

All Bets Are Off
Just a few short months ago it seems we could classify platforms based on what you did there: social networking, photo sharing, publishing. But even then it didn't acknowledge LinkedIn's focus on business, Facebook's ginormous user base, Flickr's deep community and Say Media's killer Ad Network.

And as these sites have evolved, so have consumer habits. Case in point: the second most used search engine is YouTube and not Yahoo. Yahoo's busy competing with AOL as they try to become content players instead of what they built their brands on respectively.

Assumptions Make Us Stoopid
I'm not being nostalgic with the above observations. My point is to dig deeper and go beyond commonly-held beliefs. Platforms evolve quickly...more quickly than the dot com days.

We assume that teens do nothing more than text. That's a safe assumption since the number of text messages sent and received each day exceeded the population of the earth -- in 2007. But it's not safe to assume they don't watch TV. They simply text while doing it. It's called a multi-screen experience.

So while Flickr and the other two top photo sharing platforms combined are dwarfed by Facebook when it comes to number of images hosted, this is more than a quantity discussion. Consider what else Flickr provides its users. That's why they're still around today -- in blatant defiance of The Highlander Complex. And if that reason ties to your target audience it's a viable option for your consideration.

Less is Even More
Twitpic and Instagram are other disruptions in the photo sharing discussion. Suddenly my iPhone can take and edit pictures that look better than the ones I take with my camera. And it's obviously easier to share those pictures. As we see a trend of consumers that are more into documenting the experience than the experience itself, we need to consider what that means.

This is all part of a larger discussion around content and what value it delivers the consumer and their role in creating it. Content is king oversimplifies the discussion. You have to consider the consumer, which then drives how and where you serve up "his majesty." And it doesn't even begin to take into consideration concepts like sharing and curation.

Slowly Unveiling a Story
The short form, heavily-social Twitpic, Instagram and others offer opportunities to tell very short stories. Tagging helps fashion those stories into volumes. Two interesting examples of sites trying to tap into this are Hash Album and a promotional site set up by Brisk for SXSW, BriskPic. It was a crowd-sourcing/packaging test by Pepsi. Did they learn from it? Let's assume yes. But don't underestimate the power of simplicity when it comes to images. Could they replace a news release? Depends on the news. Much like Twitter, it's forcing communications to be stronger, yet shorter. Our skills increase as consumer attention spans shrink.

What examples have you seen of brands tapping into photo sharing in a way that added to their message? 

Influence at SXSWi -- and a #throwdown with Fast Company

Post-SXSWi, I've recovered and even dug out a bit. There's still a metric ton of content I want to post. But I will point you to some posts I wrote as a contributor to The Cincinnati Enquirer's SXSW blog during the event.

During the melee in Austin, David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Saul Colt and I sat on a panel to discuss the topic of influence. Below is the director's cut of slides. We did not get through all of them, so I added a few as well as some links for reference in the speaker notes. I went long in the Slideshare version as we addressed some of the questions folks were asking on Twitter. We just ran out of time before we could answer them.

In discussing what Influence is NOT, we got into celebrity influence. This brought up everyone from Charlie Sheen (popular vs. influential), Ashton Kutcher (broad/absolute influence) and Kenneth Cole (did his errant tweet have a positive impact?), to Klout (one site can't do all the work), Chrysler (a missed opportunity for the brand to be human) and Kim Kardashian (relative influence with a specific group).

SXSW 2011 - Influencer #Throwdown: Defining Influence Once & For All

Fast Company Throws Down
One reason we ran long was a special, unexpected guest. Fast Company Senior Editor Mark Borden discussed the panel singling out the Fast Company Influencer Project in our session description. "Influence 'experiments' like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence." Borden's point is that the project was test and learn...and Fast Company did learn from it. Good point. And in hindsight the fact that we didn't ask Mark to sit on our panel is a miss. We're glad he stopped in.

But we stand by our comment. I have more of an issue with social voting projects as a whole. As I've said here previously "When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can be executed well and can have an impact. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric."

Recaps, Cases & Tweets
In addition to what we did talk about, one case study I wanted to discuss focused on how to find influencers. A team of folks at my employer used a process we have in place to create a blogger outreach list. It was trained on the top 20 influencers discussing DIY, home design/improvement projects. You can see more in the slides on how the list was created and the impact it ultimately had on the results.

We got some great questions and some great feedback from attendees. You can get some more back story from the discussion via our Twitter transcript if you want to dig. Or check out  recaps from Christophe Jammet and Kellye Crane. I'm also looking forward to doing a point/counterpoint on "Content is King" with Bazaarvoice's Ian Greenleigh in the near future.

"Instead of counting the people who reach, reach the people who count
My colleague's quote helps me conclude this post. There's no silver bullet, automagic shortcuts for finding influencers. While we'd (always) love better data to measure at a more exact level -- to identify different influencers at different points in a consumer's brand interactions for example -- it's a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures.

Key influencers are more than likely different for each situation/brand/project. Tie it all back to business goals and you'll be able to focus your efforts if nothing else.

Engagement: Getting Brands and Consumers to Commit

We talk a lot about creating engagement between brands and consumers. And that's because social platforms are an engagement tool, not a broadcast tool.

But after awhile, it can start to sound like we're trying to arrange marriages. Perhaps it's the fact that several of my coworkers were recently married or are preparing to walk down the aisle. Either way, we can over complicate consumer engagement as much as we can over simplify it.

Too Complicated?
When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can do a lot over the long term. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric. This example from TED shows a simple, powerful way to engage consumers and achieve qualitative metrics.

And while this New Orleans-based example might be considered a bit esoteric, it is from TED after all, there are just as many examples online from brands including Starbucks and P&G.

Empower MediaMarketing, my employer, has detailed more than a few simple ways to engage with consumers. There are any number of ways to bring online efforts into the age of participation. and still be able to measure the end result.

Too Simple?
In preparing for an upcoming conference focused on blogging, a fellow blogger remarked that she's "tired of brands puking swag all over bloggers and expecting them to clean it up." She means she's tired of brands taking a one-size fits all approach -- pushing products and logo-laden tchotkes at bloggers and expecting a glowing post in response.

Per usual, whether it's the customer, a blogger or a member of the media, it takes an approach customized to the individual. 


Cross-posted to my work blog.