Strategic Public Relations

TidyCat's Social Media Team Stops a Stink Over Its #lifestinks Campaign

TidyCats latest ad campaign spans online and offline to get consumers sharing about what stinks in their lives. But one of their ads created its own stink. To the brands' credit, they were listening and responded in less than 24 hours to stop a possible catfight with consumers.

Billboards localize the campaign by referencing what stinks in each market. I'm imagining traffic in Los Angeles, rain in Seattle and there are plenty of opportunities for the NYC subway. These examples are all harmless, even humorous, locally relevant and make TidyCats' point that #lifestinks.

Don't Trash the the Nati
If you were cooking up the ads for each market, would you make a joke about a city's neighborhood? In this case, a Cincinnati neighborhood that Wikipedia will tell you:

• has a rich history
• serious art community
• the most Italianate architecture in the United States
• and has been compared to Greenwich Village, NYC; Savannah, Georgia; Charlseton, South Carolina and New Orleans French Quarter?

As a proud resident of Cincinnati, I'm one of more than a few locals that aren't happy about the billboard. Tony Blankemeyer tipped me off to this bad ad on Friday night. And while the ad clearly sucks, I'm pleased to note TidyCats is taking steps to rectify the situation. After more than a few comments across Facebook, Twitter and the TidyCats campaign site, the brand replied less than 19 hours after I first saw the billboard.

"We appreciate your comments, Kevin. Our billboard mentioning OTR was meant to be humorous. We understand that to many of you, it wasn't. We will be taking fast action to correct our error. Please accept our apologies. - TidyCats Team "

Listen, Learn and Build Loyal Fans
This is a reminder of the importance of social listening and having a response plan in place to engage with consumers and address any unforseen concerns. It doesn't matter if social media is part of a brand campaign. In this case, it was an offline billboard that drew well-deserved ire. Social media is simply where the complaints took place.

TidyCats showed they were listening and taking action against a campaign that was raising a serious stink with Cincinnatians. And in in doing so, they stand to create more friends than foes. Full Disclosure: I'm a dog person. But I'm a fan of TidyCats now based on how this misstep was handled -- and over a holiday weekend no less.

Consumers will still vent their frustrations. But by acting quickly, TidyCats avoided consumers getting organized and the resulting brand pile on that can take place. It makes it much tougher for a brand to change the tone of the conversation.

Hunger Games' Social Media Lesson? The Need for Real-Time (Data) and Longer Lead Time

The word of mouth and promotional frenzy around Lionsgates' Hunger Games has been deafening. It helped the film break box office records -- before it even opened it seemed.

While I may never see the movie (I'm not the target audience), one thing I'm first to admit is that I really like how the movie was marketed.

According to this article in Forbes, the key to The Hunger Games' social media success can be attributed to the use of real-time input from fans and a healthy lead time to build momentum for the film.

"Lionsgate adopted a ongoing continuous process for  improvement based upon user data from their social channels. This is part of a trend where smart marketers are adopting a new approach, one that leverages dynamic customer input instead of the old style of phased, programatic marketing campaigns," says Vince Broady, CEO of thismoment.

Built for Change
It's easy to say, and no secret, that planning cycles and other operational processes need to be more flexible. We need to plan for change. And a steady stream of relevant data makes a more iterative cycle possible.

Whether they're in the digital or offline worlds, our efforts can be optimized for effectiveness and efficiency through real-time data much in the way Lionsgate did.

My data and analytics co-workers take this a step forward and suggest that data equates to a digital persona of the consumer. In a recent presentation entitled, "Humanizing Big Data for Insights & Action," they note that marketers must humanize this data if they are going to learn from it and act upon it.

Whether You're on Real-Time or Internet Time, Social Media Takes Time
For me,  the best part of this article is about midway through when the 10 month promotional build was revealed.

"It was back in June 2011 that Lionsgate and thismoment launched a series of social promotions on YouTube, Facebook, and other social sites to begin the social drumbeat around Hunger Games."

10 months. More than three quarters, but just shy of one full year. We've discussed the need for a committment as opposed to a campaign approach for social media. You cannot flip the switch in the way you can with paid media and create instant engagment with consumers.

So while people may tout social media's role in the success of The Hunger Games, I hope those same people acknowledge that it takes time to build a sustainable level of momentum.

Old Spice All Over Again?
The marketing sex appeal of the Old Spice case study created unfortunate misinformation shortly after Isaiah Mustafa took YouTube by storm. But P&G and its agencies worked long and hard to get things in place ahead of the online campaign. This includes a TV spot on the heels of the Super Bowl and its agency team embedding themselves in Reddit to build the street cred it takes to float a URL there with any success.

Tone Down the Infographic Pr0n
The 10 month factoid may not sex up "that infographic" you can bet we'll see wallpapering Pinterest as soon as I hit publish, but it's critical.

It's also another facet of social media's paradox. Real-data may be more important than ever to inform ever-changing marketing efforts, but it can't speed up the amount of time most marketing efforts require to get results.

5 Examples of How Social Media is Changing the 2012 Elections

There are plenty of ways you can use social media to follow the long march from the Iowa Caucus to the November Elections. Several sites, including Instagram and Tumblr, are being used by candidates for the first time to engage and inform citizens.

From behind the scenes access from the media and each candidate's content to larger sites tracking how the candidates are doing overall, here are just a few sites to check out.

1) 2012 Elections Site | Google: By far, Google does the best job of a non-news organization tapping its products to bring you a complete destination for bipartisan election content. It's using search, YouTube, Google+ and even Google Calendar to fuel its efforts. And in addition to covering the elections, it has a toolkit to get voters engaged in the process.

2) Media Mentions | Washington Post: Media Mentions tracks how candidates are doing in news coverage as well as on Twitter. And The New York Times, with the help of Big Data, will tell you that candidates who do better than expected will get more media coverage as a result.

3) Tapping Klout to Rank Candidates? | CNN: CNN using Klout is a big win for the polarizing ranking site. I'm hoping someone also comes back to note how well ALL of the platforms did as a predictor of candidate success. As we've already seen, unexpected outcomes are standard fare. And we're already seeing folks use a single social platform to make assertions about which candidate might/could win. UPDATE: Mashable asserts Twitter can predict who's winning the GOP presidential race.

This is uninformed and it's already being seen that the correlation between quantity of Twitter followers, Facebook likes and YouTube views does not necessarily correlate to the number of votes. In fact, this gets back to the discussion of influence. If someone has all the social buzz, but not the votes....

4) See the Elections Unfold | Instagram: The "niche photo site" points out three major news organizations using the platform to augment their coverage. And it gives me a wicked idea (evil laugh).

5) Politics & Election News | New York Times: Book-ending our examples is the New York Times who is devoting significant resources above and beyond curating their own news to cover the election. In addition to a mobile app, its bloggers and interactive team are going deep to deliver some interesting insights and examples of social's impact in the 2012 elections.

Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn

A scan on my part shows nothing of permanent of note from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn just yet. Twitter is showing folks how to live tweet for a better election experience, noting how Twitter and live TV go together like peas and carrots. But based on its White House Town Square effort, I'm sure they're capable of a more substantive offering.

Facebook is being tapped for live chats as well. It's good to see an engagement platform being used more for, uh, engaging with voters.

Instant Social Traction
It's wild to see how quickly and thoroughly single moments in an election, or other nationally broadcast events, can unfold through social media. From Santorum's unfortunate shared meaning of his last name (no link, just trust me) to his fashion choices.

Social spoofs will be an interesting sideline to distract from the carpet bombing of political ads we'll see online and offline increasingly over the following year. In a year that election spending is touted as helping to save big media, you know we're in for some serious political noise this year.

But based on the above alone, I'll note social is helping bring a new experience to the the 2012 elections -- online, offline and on TV. It's early and we'll surely see more interesting examples of how it's used to inform and engage voters.

Foursquare's Fight for Relevancy

We’ll continue to see geo-location grow in 2011 as its impact as a shopper marketing tool continues to emerge.

Clearly geo-location, mobile and the in-store experience can be a potent mix for retail brands to create a strong link between their online and in-store presence.

Recent geo-location news shows how quickly the space is emerging -- and how Foursquare is fighting to maintain its relevancy.

Brightkite Checks Out, Gowalla Turns Tables
Brightkite is hoping small is the new big for social media by eliminating the ability to check-in and focusing on group texting instead. Brightkite joins the growing “anti-social trend” we’ve profiled in the past.

Gowalla tapped into the power of its competitor’s APIs for its latest upgrade. Gowalla now allows you to update multiple geo-location platforms from one handy interface.

By integrating with its competitors platforms, According to Gowalla’s CEO, it aims to become a “socially-curated guidebook” instead of delivering promotional deals or using game mechanics to maintain user interest.

These might seem like obvious signs Foursquare can claim the geo-location crown. But Facebook has nearly 600 billion reasons you’d be wrong. While Facebook Places experience may be ham-fisted in comparison to Foursquare. It’s user base dwarfs Foursquare’s five million users and it creates an insurmountable delta between the two platforms. But Foursquare is iterating and innovating to stay relevant in the geo-location space.

Foursquare TV and Online Ad Integration
Foursquare has teamed with Bravo (the breakout brand for social TV in 2010) and other networks throughout the year to gain more awareness and income via partner badges. Recently Foursquare announced it’s working on a game show or other TV show to further engrain its service into mainstream media. 

Working with brands like Gap, Foursquare is also focused on offering more utiity by integrating into ads. Incentivizing users to create a shopping list is a smart way to complement the online to instore experience. Both of these moves are smart and underscore how quickly Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite are iterating to maintain relevancy and user attention.

The Geo-Location Challenge in 2011
It will be interesting to see if the luster of game mechanics can be maintained in 2011. In Drive, Daniel Pink refers to stick and carrot management. Game mechanics are an extension of the stick and carrot strategy. And the Havard Business Review is already suggesting consumers won’t want to eat their vegetables in 2011.

Cross-Posted to my work blog, Social Study

Starbucks' In-Store Wifi Leveraged Into Branded Media Network

UPDATE: See the end of this post for a link to screen grabs and first impressions of the Starbucks Digital Network experience.

Starbucks is giving customers one more reason to stop in, and to stick around, with Starbucks Digital Network. In a partnership with Yahoo, its taking exclusive content and free downloads that are only available to customers tapping into the wifi at one of it's thousands of retail locations.

Double Shot of Content
Customers with wireless devices are typically pushed to a branded site to accept terms of service before hitting the web. What was once a unavoidable nuisance is now a digital destination.

According to Starbucks: news, books, video and music will be available including free subscription editions of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today, exclusive iTunes downloads and unlimited access to Zagat reviews and ratings -- all for free.

Rise of In-Store TV Networks
Starbucks joins Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy with their branded media platform and it's a natural extension of Starbucks music label. It increases each brand's co-marketing opportunities and gives customers a reason to linger in-store.

But Starbucks wifi delivery allows for more personalized and engaging experiences. It's one more way technology like smart phones are bridging the online and in-store experiences. Is it paid or owned media? It's a little of both and another example of how media is changing as brands becoming media platforms. 

UPDATE: Here’s my take on the Starbucks Digital Network experiencebelow and by Flickr screen grabs. Attempts to do a video screen cast/walk through.using Screenr bombed after several attempts. :-(

Upon arrival, there is no trace of the network in-store. With thousands of stores it will probably take some time to ramp up this as an in-store promotion. The wifi page does not even tee up the network. This surprised me as most users click through here with a specific destination in mind.

It’s clearly designed to keep people in the store. Even the downloads take awhile due to the wifi. Commuters getting coffee en route to work won’t get as much from it. And most of the content that is featured features ways to purchase it via iTunes or other third party sites.

Brands can look at this for a host of ideas and there are a variety of advertising and content partnership opportunities that come to mind based on the six sections it has for content, including News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business and Career and My Neighborhood.

There are some improvements that should be made over time. But for the most part, it’s great. I give it an A-. In-store support will definitely help.

Related: Behind @Starbucks digital network with @stephengillett
Cross-posted to my work blog, Thought Leadership

Defining Paid, Earned and Owned Media

At SummitUp yesterday, I discussed integrating paid, owned, earned and, as a result, social media.

Media Mash Up: Integrating Chaos** -- became a fitting title for my presentation as I've realized how much change is threading through media. Classifying media types by silos, buckets or Venn diagrams is no longer possible. Even AdAge refers to it as "whatever it is that we're defining as media these days."

To integrate across media, marketers must be more flexible about how content, consumers and technology connect with a brand.

Serious karma found Pete Blackshaw laying groundwork for my presentation when he presented the following slide in his keynote presentation earlier that day. "His We Can No Longer Silo Media" slide details how a brand can drive earned media through paid or earned channels. This is something we've been discussing for awhile and it's interesting to see how it's evolved in just a year's time.

Clear as Mud
Social Media can be triggered by paid, earned or owned media. And social media can also be paid, earned or earned media. It's clear that social media is messy. It disrupts silos -- media silos as well as operational silos in a company. Social media is not linear. It is a paradox. Is it shared media? Yes. Spreadable media? Yes. But it's not something a PowerPoint slide can capture with some Smart Art. Not yet. 

As consumers, content and technology continue to change, we need to spend more time studying our audience as well as their online and offline behaviors. Mapping this against the sales funnel makes it easier to consider how various media can connect with customers through this cycle.

Iteration or Irrelevancy?
To better integrate something seemingly amorphous, we must plan for ongoing change. We must set aside resources, time and talent that can test and learn from the shiny new. If something new impacts business goals, it gets further consideration. Otherwise we risk losing focus on sites and technology that are getting a lot of industry attention. Planning for a constant of change is not second nature. It's not easy. But it's also the going premium for irrelevancy insurance.

** I kicked off the presentation with a mash up of Aerosmith and Alicia Keys to underscore how content and technology are meshing together to create some emotional connections with consumers. And I ended the presentation giving out examples of the first mash up we experience growing up. Music and candy go a long way to impact your speaker feedback forms.

Cross-posted to my work blog, Social Study.



 

Vote for Bad Girls with Good Ideas

You do not need coffee in the morning if you run into Candace Klein first. She's the force of energy behind Bad Girl Ventures a microfinance organization that is designed to literally invest in woman's dreams.

"Bad Girl Ventures believes that women should have the chance to build a business. Our role is to help women realize their dreams and build sustainability and growth into their own business models."

Candace just launched Bad Girl Ventures and is already getting national attention. She is in the running to get her own show on Oprah's OWN network. But Candace needs your help. I could give you ten reasons to vote for her**, but I'll let her video do the talking.

If you decide to vote for her? Pay it forward and share her story with someone else.

**Candace met two of her first Bad Girl Ventures applicants by attending a Cincinnati Social Media event. It’s #CincySM’s mission to help shine a light on the vibrant social media/business scene in Cincinnati. So I'm twice as excited for her success.

Before Apple’s 1984, There was Daisy in 1964

Before every Super Bowl, over the last 25 years, we inevitably point to Apple’s 1984 as the “one-run” commercial that sets the bar for all other Super Bowl commercials.

But there was another one-run commercial that did more than build buzz off a major TV event -- it helped Lyndon Johnson stay in the White House. And it aired 45 years ago this week.

According to Time magazine:

”The most famous political campaign ad played only once, during a September 7, 1964 NBC Monday Night at the Movies broadcast. Referred to as "Daisy Girl," the ad — Lyndon Johnson's response to a statement by Republican candidate Barry Goldwater that he would consider using nuclear weapons in Vietnam — created an immediate controversy and was pulled from the air.

“But news organizations picked up the spot and ran it in their nightly news segments, increasing its influence by an order of magnitude. Daisy Girl is now credited with helping Johnson defeat Goldwater in the 1964 election.

The Stuff of which “Mad Men” is made
In researching this post, I found a web site that digs deeply to explore the history behind this ad. It feels like an episode of Mad Men just waiting to happen. Ad history buffs should check it out.

People still wonder aloud if another 1984 spot will grace the Super Bowl -- where a single :30 second spot will cost $3 million this year.

But media and consumer habits have changed too dramatically in the last 10 years to get a one-run hit. Media fragmentation alone has impacted the likelihood of a TV event locking in an audience large enough to warrant a "one-run" investment. It will never happen.

Or will it?

The One-Run Misnomer
These one-run examples took place before an ad could go viral. But Daisy Girl and 1984 arguably did just that. How? The media helped propel Daisy and 1984 to their now historic perches in the :30 second spot hall of fame. Daisy Girl even wound up on the cover of Time magazine.

One-run is a misnomer when describing these ads. 45 years later viral also tends to be a misnomer. Much like one-run ads, viral is often pointed to as a goal. But viral is not a goal or a strategy. It's an outcome.

So we may see more examples of Daisy and 1984. But more than anything else we'll see examples of failed attempts at going viral...examples that probably failed for all the right reasons.

Walter Cronkite | Sharing Video on Twitter | Costs of Meetings | Mommy Bloggers | Four Links | 07.19.09

1)

Cronkite's Greatest Hits | Mediaite:  These highlights from Walter Cronkite's career remind us why we want need journalism to survive. Cronkite was so Super Bad he had chunks of guys like Michael Arrington in his stool.

2) 5 Ways to Share Video on Twitter | Mashable:  This post raises my iPhone 3G-S envy. But more importantly it shows one way how videos are being made more shareable.

3) Calculate the True Cost of Meetings | AdLab:  A meeting cost calculator? This tool should be a mandatory Outlook Calendar plugin.

4) Mommy Bloggers Fight Back | PR Newser:  The title of the post sounds like a B-Movie. But PR Newser details the latest dust up in the blogosphere to ignore PR for a week straight. As Susan Getgood notes, the boycott misses the point.

Walter Cronkite, 1916 - 2009uploaded by John McNab

The First Mash-Up, Circa: 1977

The AP tells us that "some retailers are giving vinyl records a spin" (get it?).

This reminded me of another long-lost recording format. As I wistfully combed the results of a Google Image search for the perfect image of an Eight Track, I found evidence of the first mash-up.

The interactive 8-track looked like the average 8-track, except at the bottom, where the Atari cartridge was connected. These 8-tracks, or "double-enders" as the music/video game fanatics called them, were an instant success and proceeded to change the music industry for at least a couple of weeks.

The double-ender was a hit. Magazines like Rolling Stone and Gamers Monthly hailed the Foghat Live 8-track as the start of the new music and video game revolution. And it was, for the next four years at least, but in the end it was not enough to save the interactive 8-track from the trash heap of nostalgia.

-- Via The Van Gogh-Gogh's

Is it me, or is that guy so beyond smiling that he looks in pain? UPDATE: Yeah, it's a joke. But a guy can dream, can't he?!