Strategic Public Relations

Seeing is Understanding | Eternal Branding | YouTube Timeline | Self-Defense for the Online Brand | Four Links | 05.12.08

1) NewsWare | msnbc
“NewsWare is msnbc.com’s laboratory for news-infused games, tools and other experimentation.”

The games and graphic news visualizers are fun while informing. Game on.

2) Brands on Tombstones | Ad Lab
From the “ads on every inch of humanity” department, it looks like Mercedes is the car of choice amongst the Russian mafia.

Speaking of mafia, I’ll bet a horse head wake up call you’ll find examples of “eternal branding”(tm) here in the United States. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I’m willing to bet the Scarface character is one of those brands.

3) Timetube: The YouTube Video Timeline | Information Aesthetics
Anything you can do to make information easier to understand and digest is a good thing. This YouTube mash up seems to fit in that category. It looks cool too, which doesn’t hurt either. Bonus link: The Top 10 Brands That Own YouTube

4) Manage Your Online Reputation | Lifehacker
Great article that gives hope to every college kid freaked out that a recruiter might Google them and find “those pics.” Also helpful for us whiny, older folk annoyed that someone found and posted “those pics.”

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | advertising | marketing | YouTube | brand

Getting Social Means Getting Uncomfortable – At First

In the aftermath of a blessed event, Jason Falls asks the question how personal is too much?

We in the social media space offer our professional lives up as open books. Some of us disclose minimal personal information. Others put up boundaries and clearly separate what is social currency and what is not. So long as our level of comfort is supported by our family and friends, I see little concern.

But how much is too much? >SNIP< All of these questions beckon to be answered as we all grow into this still new dimension of the greater media mix. Personal publishing and the social web give us unprecedented opportunity but with equally as unprecedented exposure. Where will the line be drawn to determine what is and is not for the offing?

As I commented on Jason’s blog, I think this is one of the ways communications is changing. As we evolve from broadcasting our clients’ messages to participating more in the communication process, the walls between business and personal begin to blur. How much personal detail marketers disclose will vary from person to person and culture to culture. When doing business in China, for example, you’ll get much more personally involved.

"Enough About Me. Let’s Talk About You. What Do You Think About Me?"
By the nature of our jobs, most of us don’t want to be the center of attention. It makes us nervous and we have to be careful not to make it all about us. So how much is too much? It will vary from person to person. But as Jason Falls shows us the key to figuring it out is based on personal experience.

Image007 uploaded by wallofhair
tags | public relations | PR | social media | marketing | Jason Falls

Biting Hands That Build Feeds

No, it’s not about you.

Props to the ringmaster of reality checks, Jeremy Pepper, for inspiring this cartoon.

Comic via Build Your Own Meat

Can PR Save the Beijing 2008 Olympics?

A handful of PR agencies are up for work around the Beijing 2008 Olympics, including "public relations strategies to be used before the games, media background and market analysis on how China is perceived in the West." Via Mediabistro

OK, before I give my perception, I’ll invoke tenets from two other PR bloggers.

Gomes Eighth Law of PR: "No amount of PR—no matter how carefully or strategically applied—will help a faulty or underperforming product in the long term."

Lally’s Tinkerbell Marketing Principle: "At one point in the play, Peter’s little fairy friend Tinker Bell starts to … well (cover the kids’ eyes) … die. The only thing that can save Tink is if the children believe in her. SNIP That’s the way some marketers think. If you only believe enough, everybody else will believe too. Then it will be true. Then all will be well"

So WTF kind of strategy would YOU propose to sell an Olympics being held in a country where even the Dali Lama cannot intervene to stop the abuse of human rights?

David Parmet notes, "This is not a PR problem, this is a humanity problem. If your clients are in bed with China, don’t be surprised to find yourself covered in fleas."

Yeah, playing off that, the Olympic Committee made their bed when they chose China to hold the event. Short of ending the human rights abuse, what could a PR firm possibly do to solve this problem for China? Some heads of state are boycotting the Olympics. The PR agencies should as well.

UPDATE: The New York Times provides insight into the Pro-Tibet PR strategy in the article Tibet Backers Show China Value of P.R.

tags | public relations | PR | Beijing Olympics | human rights

Get Social | Friday Flickr Fix | 03.04.08

One of the things I (sometimes) miss from my agency days is writing case histories. It was getting tough to spin the problem/solution/results formula after several years, but it gave me first-hand access to my clients’ customers. That access always made it easier to find an interesting angle to the story.

In a recent post at the other blog, I noted that the toys are fun, but social media is more about conversations than technology.

We have to move from being broadcasters, pushing out carefully scripted messages, to being brokers. This means participating more directly than we’re used to, in plain view of our clients’ customers and giving up control of the messages.

Not everyone, or every client, can handle that.

Shake hands, Mo'Fo'! uploaded by nietsdoener/

Got Personality? Interview with Author Rohit Bhargava

Ogilvy PR Guru and blogger Rohit Bhargava just published his first book, "Personality Not Included."

Instead of resorting to cheap stunts to artificially raise awareness (and impose on his network), he’s rolled up his sleeves and is conducting 55 blogger interviews.

1) You've been immersed in your book and now have to tell the world about it. What's your elevator speech?

Great question, and something I've been thinking about. Here's the pitch:

Faceless companies don't work anymore. In the social media era, personality matters. This book is about how to find and use your organizations personality to delight your customers.

In case that's not short enough for you, my core pitch is just two words: personality matters. That's the core concept for my marketing campaign, and will also be the name of my book blog I'll be launching this week.

2) There are lots of business books out there. Complete this sentence. "You should read my book over other business books because:"

Personality Not Included brings together some of the hottest trends in business right now (social media, WOM and authenticity) and offers more than 100 case studies, as well as a unique action guide to put all the theories of the book into action immediately.

3) Some very smart, pragmatic folks suspect the economy will bring a social media wake up call and the conversation will revert to more conventional marketing efforts. What do you think the recession will do to the conversation?

The recession will make personality even more important because the premise of the book is that it can help your brand become more than just something people buy from. Brands that have not connected with their customers will be the first to suffer in a recession. The ones that have built strong relationships will continue to find new customers, enjoy word of mouth, be shared between people.

4) The industry is filled with passionate evangelists and skeptics alike. But the majority of marketers are not "conversing in transparent bliss." Some might be playing wait and see and others might be overwhelmed by all if it. But what are some ways you recommend people get involved to understand the benefits of social media?

The first natural step is to find a way to listen. That's pretty obvious. What people don't realize is that there are now two stages of listening. The first is listening as in monitoring. The second is active listening where you are acting on the listening by tagging information, saving it, posting a comment, or other interaction. Once you focus on that, you can determine the right way to proceed.

The answer for everyone is not to create a blog or slap together a Facebook group. Listening enables you to choose the right thing, instead of starting lots of social media efforts that sound great but ultimately fail.

5) This is your first book. What are the biggest things you learned in this process and are you cooking an idea for a second book?

The main thing I learned was just how much of everything you need to do yourself. I went with a big publisher (McGraw-Hill), but rapidly realized that you need to kickstart all the efforts and essentially serve the role of project manager for all the moving marketing pieces.

The other surprising thing I learned was that I was not able to reuse much blog content. I thought I would be able to do more than that and probably used a max of 2 paragraphs I had already written. The rest was written for the book from scratch. In terms of an idea for a second book, I have a few. I shared in a previous interview that I think it would be great to write a dating book all about how the concepts of marketing can help you find your soul mate. Basically, something a bit more mainstream and less business focused so I can head out to a wider readership.

Congratulations Rohit on the book and on a fresh approach to book promotion.

tags | public relations | PR | social media | marketing | Rohit Bhargava | Personality Not Included

Marketing Turns Me On | LinkedIn Gains Steam | Shankman Helps Out Everyone But Profnet | Print Stays Alive | Four Links | 03.22.08

1) Simple is Good | Pitbulls & Labradors
Dan Lally brings us this Viagra ad via his shiny new blog. If this ad isn’t real, Viagra should steal the idea.

2) LinkedIn Unveils Company Profiles | LinkedIn Blog
Facebook is the best thing to happen to LinkedIn as healthy competition helps push LinkedIn’s evolution.

LinkedIn’s added everything from swag to company profiles lately.

Jeremiah Owyang is already comparing the profiles of Apple, Hitachi, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

3) In Helping Journalists, a Publicist Helps Himself | The New York Times’ Shifting Careers Blog
Profnet is not happy with Peter Shankman, the creator of Help a Reporter Out.

By creating a free, e-mail-based service connecting journalists to sources, he’s disrupting Profnet’s business model. It’s also getting industry folks to ask interesting questions. Not surprisingly, the pitches still suck.

4) How All Magazines Should Be Released | Brandflakes for Breakfast
Magazines are getting more creative in general. Consider Bones Magazine. It starts online, but each issue is offered up as a pdf, podcast and video as well. Rohit points us to Everywhere Magazine which looks like a cross between consumer-generated media and democratized publishing.

And if we’re playing buzzword bingo? You just got pwned.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | LinkedIn | advertising | marketing | Profnet | consumer-generated media | Viagra

Now is Gone: Book Report, er, Review

There are about 20 books piling up at work and at home that have come my way via blogging. It’s a daunting to do list as my intent is to review each one as I read them. It’s good content.

But it takes me twice as long to read business books as it does fiction. It’s an idiosyncrasy of mine and has nothing to do with any of the authors I’ve been reading.

Now is Gone was an exception to the above. It was easy to get through and author Geoff Livingston was kind enough to ask me to provide a quote for the book jacket. Here’s what I said right after reading it.

”Whether you’re experimenting with social media and ready to get serious or starting from scratch, Now is Gone is a smart, strategic starting point. The book is rich with relevant examples of the new ways to communicate – collected from some of the world’s leading authorities on social media.

Social media has quickly brought a metric ton of changes to how things work in marketing and public relations. And while experimenting is half the fun (if not more), it’s also great to have several case histories compiled in one place.

From Ike Pigott’s use of social media for American Red Cross crisis support to blogging success stories from small businesses and more well known brands like SXSW Airlines and GM, Livingston compiles more than a dozen case histories and interviews with people who are putting food on the table using social media to complement their marketing programs.

Livingston also gets a gold star for using social media to help promote his book. The Now is Gone blog serves as an evolution of the book, providing more case studies and promotional resources to get the word out.

tags | public relations | PR | social media | advertising | marketing | blog | consumer-generated media | Geoff Livingston | Now is Gone

Fun with RSS | Less is More | Career Advice from a Comic Book | Twitter for President | Four Links | 02.28.08

1) Fun with RSS | Multiple Sources
Playing around with Aide RSS which instantly tells you the most popular posts on a blog and Friend Feed which looks like it builds on the Tumblr concept. If that made sense, you’ll know I’m oversimplifying. If you still think WTF when you see RSS, click here.

2) Less is More | Murketing
More proof that more bodies calling more reporters at more media outlets is NOT the answer comes to us from Murketing.

Yesterday three publicists at the same PR firm pitched me three different stories in the space of less than four hours. All three were on the same basic theme…it doesn’t suggest a great deal of internal efficiency and coordination, does it?

As I noted at The Bad Pitch Blog, we’re pissing off the media more than we realize.

3) Career Advice from a Comic Book | BusinessWeek
The first business comic book is on its way. In Japan, no subject is too serious or too pedestrian for manga. The >book< arrives at a time when business-book publishers, like many others, are contending with readers who have less time to gather information from the printed page. Already, business books have become smaller, designed to fit in a coat pocket and be read completely during a two-hour plane ride.

4) Twitter for President | TweetVolume
TweetVolume quickly tells you which presidential candidate is generating the most discussion on the trendy little microblogging platform we all I know and love. TweetVolume has interesting potential IF your target audience is using Twitter.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | bad pitch blog | RSS | manga | Twitter

Top 10 Twitter Hacks

With Twitter gaining momentum everywhere from on the field to in the classroom, I thought some tips might prove helpful.

Call it link bait, call it hypocritical, just don’t call it a comeback.

1) Be a Good Twitter Citizen
If you have a primary ID, name or handle that you use for email or social networks, use the same one on Twitter so you’ll be easily recognized. And in your profile be sure to link back to your Web site, blog or socnet page so folks know who’s following them. The more context you can provide the better – especially if you’re like me and don’t update every single day.

And remember that, while it offers the immediacy of SMS texting, Twitter offers the permanence of blogging. What you say on Twitter stays on Twitter.

2) Send Direct Messages Faster
Sending private messages directly from Twitter’s web interface can be a pain if you have to scroll through a long list of mutual followers. Pressing the first letter of the person’s ID while you are in the DM dropdown allows you to page through names quickly and easily. If you want to spam, er, DM a group of people at once, check out Twitter Groups. Just use it sparingly as we all know how it feels when to get too many group messages. For folks using Twitter via IM, there are even more helpful commands.

3) Twitter Karma
The simplicity of Twitter’s interface can sometimes be its curse. To figure out who’s following whom, check out Twitter Karma. Twitter Karma makes it easy to see your overall follow status and add folks as desired.

4) Gauge Topic Traction
Want to see if the Twitter community is chatting up or linking to a certain topic? You should check out any combination of Twitterverse, Twitterbuzz, Twitstat, and/or Tweetscan.

5) Visualize, Data Mine
There are a couple of ways to quickly visualize your Twitter information. Twitter Blocks allows you to visually navigate your Twitter community of friends and followers. Tweetstats is like Twitter CSI. In a few seconds, it makes it easy to assume that Robert Scoble probably used Twitter via the Web to send a note to Eric Rice early on a Sunday morning in November. Or does that read like the game Clue?

Much like Google, Twitter is always tinkering with its platform so be sure to follow their blog to keep up with the latest tweaks.

6) Fun with Twitter
Most of these “twicks” are thanks to Twitter’s API. Some of them seem to be created purely for the (nerdy) fun of it. Twittertale and Tweetspeak are perfect examples of this. Then there’s the guilty pleasure of Twitter Confessions. Or check out Twitterholic and Tweeterboard to see if you know some folks that might need a Twittervention. Yep, two jokes in one hack. Not my first (or best) attempts at Twitter humor.

More productive fun can be had on Twitter, using it to hone your writing skills.

7) What Does Twitter Look Like?
A Flickr search shows a ton results for Twitter and there is also a Twitter Group on the site. But Photophlow takes this a step further and mashes the two sites together.

8) Save the World
Twitter has potential in helping people get targeted information at a point of need. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health uses Twitter to broadcast health messages (via Canuckflack).

The American Red Cross has established Safe and Well through the efforts of Ike Pigott. Safe and Well uses Twitter to notify friends and family of your status in the aftermath of a disaster.

A Reuters article points out that “these technologies all have a possible role to play in the aftermath of a natural disaster or human attack, when the danger is over, but not before. Why should anyone trust their lives and those of their families and friends, to systems which they cannot and do not trust even their credit card details to?”

9) Know the News. First
You can subscribe to plenty of news sources on Twitter, including Reuters, The New York Times, Google News and CNN Breaking News. Twitter tends to be an early warning system when it comes to breaking news and you’ll see many stories there before you will on mainstream sites. Reporters are seeing benefits to this.

10) Take Twitter with You
You can push your Twitterstream to Facebook to replace your update and serve it up on your blog as well. This is good as folks are seeing Twitter cut into the volume of blog posts out there.

Twitter by the Ton
There are a metric ton of good Twitter tips, tools and hacks, with new ones being published almost daily. These are just a sample as folks see new uses for Twitter. If you’re on Twitter let me know what your favorite tip is and I’ll add some to this list.

UGAConnect - Athens, GA uploaded by hyku
tags | Twitter | Twitter Hacks