Strategic Public Relations

Fight Club 2.0: AdWeek’s Digital Hot List | Brian Morrissey Interview

Reading AdWeek’s “2009 Digital Hot List” it becomes clear we’re in store for a dynamic and competitive digital landscape in 2010.

As the brands on the list fight for market share, it almost reads like a script for Fight Club 2.0.

Brian Morrissey provided Strategic Public Relations his opinion on some of these brands and, in the process, some insight into the Hot List.

1) Social networks are comparable to a bar scene. There's always a hot bar everyone goes to until it gets old and they move onto the next hot bar. How long can Facebook hold onto their hot bar status that, in part, put them in your top spot?
MySpace was 3rd or 4th on this list a few years ago. The same could arguably happen to Facebook. Will it become uncool now that the demographic is expanding? Keep in mind the list is a present to near past snapshot of digital category leaders vs. a forward-looking prediction. That said there’s no reason to believe it will be less popular in the near term.

2) Hulu announced a pay model is forthcoming. With cable TV challenging Hulu with TV Everywhere coming from cable as a challenger, what do you think will happen next?
Hulu has been a trailblazing video delivery platform. They took a lot of heat initially. TechCrunch used to mock them – not anymore. They’re a catalyst for change in an industry desperately needing it. Digital distribution can work well for the television industry. The impact of a subscription on Hulu remains to be seen. But as I understand it, this will be a premium option and the base content will continue to be free.

3) What can mainstream media learn from the brands on this list? Bob Garfield would remind us they're all (f-ing) doomed, but if social is more popular than porn as your article states, can social save mainstream media?
There are challenges facing traditional business models and traditional distribution models. There are some traditional media on the list represented by their digital offshoots...but not many. WSJ.com is succeeding with its subscription/advertising model mix. Other media are now trying to organize around social as a delivery model. Readers are gaining increasing amounts of control based on their recommendations. They are beginning to determine traffic patterns instead of a Google algorithm.

4) Twitter is polarizing to say the least with lovers and haters. Can Twitter make money? It would seem that would quiet both camps and Twitter would settle down into a platform you either use or you do not use.
As far as making money, it’s not a question of if Twitter will make money, simply a question of when. Twitter is sitting on a mountain of real-time consumer intention data. There is a significant business leveraging this facet of Twitter. The recent Google and Microsoft deals underscore the importance of this information. If you start looking at Twitter as an intention data platform instead of a microblogging platform, it gets interesting.

5) OK, Rocky IV reminds me of Google and Bing. Bing seems to be Rocky to Google's Drago...they made Google bleed! Less than 10 percent market share/blood, but still. Is social search the next big fight between the two search super powers?
There was much debate with my colleagues at AdWeek on whether or not the $80 million marketing spend around Bing’s launch also bought it a spot on this list. Will it keep the gains it made on Google? As long as marketers want an alternative to Google, they have a shot. What’s a market without any competition? Bing is hope for marketers. As far as which one will own social search, that remains to be seen.

6) My last fight with a brand on the Hot List is iPhone and Android. The iPhone has more than 100,000 apps in its corner. But Android seems to be gearing up for a serious cage match with iPhone. Will the consumer benefit?
The consumer will definitely benefit by having another alternative to the iPhone. It’s tough to compete with THE mobile platform with 100,000 apps in their store. But if there is a digital war waged in 2010, iPhone and Android will be one of the battles in this war.

Fort Hood, Twitter and Real-Time News

Social media detailed a tragedy today.

 

While I learned of the Fort Hood shootings earlier this afternoon, it was a late afternoon scan of Twitter that connected me to the real-time news source set up by The Austin American-Statesman.

 

@fthoodshootings is an account quickly set up by the paper to create a dedicated line of real-time news around this sad and tragic story. In just a few hours the account already has more than 3,200 followers and is on more than 85 different lists as of publishing this post and climbing.

 

Unfortunately it’s not the first bittersweet example of how helpful Twitter can be in a crisis. Twitter became a lifeline of news and information coming from Iran during their election protests. During tragedy and crisis, a steady flow of information is more critical -- and sometimes even more elusive. The Sago Mine tragedy comes to mind as a time when Twitter might have been equally useful.

 

Statesmen’s Use of Twitter is Second-Nature

It’s no surprise that the Austin American-Statesman decided to report in this fashion. A Twitter power-user, their town is also home to social media festival SXSW and clearly Austin American-Statesman has made Twitter a seamless part of its news coverage.

 

Twitter Lists to Bring More News in Real-Time

For stories that aren’t breaking as quickly, allowing newspapers to devote more resources, you’ll surely see lists created to track story coverage. The Cincinnati Enquirer has already done so to cover its city’s recent elections. And Mashable points to other media outlets using lists to cover Fort Hood from afar. Real-time news is clearly in demand and Twitter lists ability to curate multiple sources in an easily-shared stream brings to mind multiple applications beyond just news coverage.

 

The stories are horrible. And let me note that my thoughts are with the families of the Fort Hood victims. But hopefully, by getting real-time news in this fashion, the Austin American-Statesman is ensuring the right story is told quickly.

 

originally posted at Social Study
24 Hours of FOX News uploaded by edkohler

Storytelling’s Link to Social Marketing Success | SummitUp 2009

SummitUp brought together some of the best and brightest in Ohio's social media scene as well as industry luminaries like Chris Brogan and Bob Garfield. Fueled in no small part by the passion and determination of David E. Bowman, the event was a complete success and I was honored to kick it off with my keynote presentation.

"What's Your Story?" details how the craft of storytelling can help us deal with the challenges social media creates. I consider these challenges a bit of a paradox as my slides and video will explain. But the very technology that is bringing us together with people from around the world also prevents us with truly connecting with people.

My presentation serves as a refresher course on storytelling, gives some examples of how it's being used in social media by non-profits and consumer brands in everything from big strategic plays to the littlest of details. It also gives 12 action items to challenge attendees to apply storytelling to their job and improve social marketing efforts.

Some additional resources from the presentation can be found here.

What's Your Story?

View more documents from prblog.

Marketing Meets Augmented Reality

Like most marketers, augmented reality popped up on my radar when GE used it to unveil its Smart Grid technology.

The ability to create a digital hologram is intriguing, but it always seems to be applied to sci-fi technology or futuristic plans. I’ve wondered how someone might put it to more practical use.

Meijer*, a client of Empower MediaMarketing, answers my curiosity with the “Be Transformed in 3-D” promotion.

Having Fun with Masks
The microsite allows you to try on four different masks – using a web cam and augmented reality. You can record a :30 second video message using a voice to match each mask and send it to someone via email, share it via Twitter or post it to your Facebook profile.

It’s a lot of fun and reminds me of Office Max’s Elf Yourself with an augmented reality spin – a perfect mix for Halloween. But consider the practical implications at work here. Trying on a product in the comfort of your own home using augmented reality could easily become a long term must have for retailers. At the 2009 NRF, some of the latest dressing room technology contained similar holographic options to eliminate the need to change into several outfits.

The end result is a higher probability to purchase a product. Meijer’s site also offers the masks for sale on the site and in stores. There is also a coupon for purchasing a web cam on the site. It will be interesting to see if this use of augmented reality starts a trend of more practical and fun applications moving forward.

*As I noted above, Meijer is a client. I work on the account. I’m posting about it because I’m genuinely interested in this promotion.

AMP, #PepsiFail and staying on brand

There's been lots of discussion around the iPhone App "AMP UP Before You Score" from Pepsi's AMP Energy Drink. Let me see if I can sum it up.

The Issue: The AMP app profiles 24 types of women, from "Cougar" and "Athlete" to "Out of Your League" and "Married."

Each profile provides unfortunate content including pickup lines and other information to help the user "score." It also has a brag function which allows users to promote and share their efforts via email, Facebook or Twitter. The app states: "Get lucky? Add her to your Brag List. You can include a name, date and whatever details you remember."

The Outrage: Needless to say, the immature, chauvinistic app has Twitter frothing. The vitriol is understandable. It even elicited an apology from AMP.

"Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback. #pepsifail"

Whether or not it's a genuine apology, it's smart because it:
* acknowledges the issue
* addresses the issue where the conversation is taking place vs. on the company's web site
* uses the #pepsifail tag to ensure the apology reaches the right people on Twitter. While some feel they should distance themselves from Pepsi, I highly doubt that's even remotely possible.

But AMP has done nothing else. And by not removing the app from the iTunes store, the amount of ill will for the AMP brand and for Pepsi has snowballed.

The Brand: It's obvious and understandable why people are offended by this app. I downloaded it to write this post and will be removing it promptly. But it bears noting that, if nothing else, it appears to be on brand. I'm not the target audience. Disclosure: Starbucks is the only energy drink I consume and have been happily married for more than 11 years.

But the site, including the Yo Mamma Slam and extreme sports sponsorships, seems to be geared to the same target audience. While AMP takes a slightly different approach, it reminds me of the positioning around Axe grooming products. 

The Strategy: The brand claims the app is a lighthearted attempt at humor vs. a misogynistic tool. But the concept and a variety of details in the app are a bit over the top. AMP knew it was competing with 76,000 other apps in the iTunes store. It even created a YouTube video riffing off the Apple "There's an app for that" commercials to promote it. AMP knew it needed to push the envelope to stand out. Perhaps they planned for controversy to fuel that promotion. Mission accomplished.

The Hypocrisy: If AMP had pulled the app, I can already see pundits like myself saying that AMP over-reacted to a Twitter mob mentality. Motrin received a similar rap when it responded quickly to a negative response one of its ads received online. AMP acknowledged the situation, something other brands don't always do, and they moved on.

We criticize brands for not responding online. Do we also get to criticize them when we feel they haven't responded to the degree of our expectations or even exceeded those expectations? Every "social media expert" shaking their head to the affirmative as they read this might also want to consider the cost to develop an iPhone app and then shelve it.

The Bottom Line: Does Motrin Moms set up the expectation that brands must instantly go to extremes when negative conversations first pop up? Perhaps, but I think Motrin Moms did so because its target audience was up in arms – the very consumers they’re trying to get buy their product. And, while I agree that the app is in poor taste, this does not appear to be a similar case.

I'm impressed by brands that use Twitter to monitor the conversation and respond as quickly as possible. But at the risk of increasing ire, I'm not sure AMP should remove the app. I think this is a new wrinkle. Brands might not be able to do everything we want. Or they simply might not be willing to do everything we want -- when we're not the target consumer.

We’re certainly reinforcing AMPs stance by drawing even more attention and Google juice to the application. That’s the real energy drink fueling this conversation.

AMP assumed its app would be ignored during the concepting stage. They designed it to get attention. Perhaps the lesson is that the proper response from Twitter, and consumers like me, is to do the exact opposite of our reaction up to this point. We should move from outrage to silence.

Much Ado About Avatars

From the minutia department, I’ve been talking a lot about Twitter avatars lately. I enjoy swapping out my avatar. It’s my version of a t-shirt --expressing my personality in a small way. And, as I have my pic on my Twitter background, people can put a face with the name the first time a person follows me.

This goes against conventional Twitter wisdom. In Trust Agents, Brogan and Smith recommend using your picture across all social site profiles in an effort to be more human online. Even Twitter notes: “A real picture of yourself is encouraged. It adds personableness to your tweets.”

But avatars are very polarizing. The Bob Ross and Big Boy avatars never fail to encourage Twitter love. While the Charlton Heston and Hanson Brother avatars usually wig people out a bit. The end result is that changing out my avatars has become a great conversation starter on Twitter.

At the same time Trust Agents also talks about the benefit of going against conventional wisdom. The book devotes an entire chapter to making your own game. Now I’m not going to try and tell you that swapping out my avatars is a strategy or a game-changing technique on Twitter. Or is it?

Millions of Mad Men
AMC’s MadMen Yourself is the most recent avatar-swapping craze to hit Twitter. It resulted in 1 million visits to AMC’s microsite and 600,000 avatars have been created. This is a great example of everyone wanting to wear the MadMen t-shirt by turning themselves into an early 60’s cartoon. And it successfully flies in the face of Twitter wisdom. Sure I can see a resemblance between people and their avatars, but only if I already know what they look like.

At the end of the day, I guess I’m saying there’s more than one way to skin your profile on Twitter. Whatever approach you take, make sure your tweets, background and profile give potential followers a good idea of who you are as a person.

avatari uploaded by prblog

A Quick Thought on Mommy Blog (Over)Marketing

Something’s been bugging me about mommy bloggers.

Much more specifically, I have issues with the marketers foisting largess upon mommy bloggers.

Mommy bloggers have become the Robitussin of marketing. Arm broken? Put some ‘tussin on it. New product? Do some mommy blog outreach.

Let me be absolutely clear: mommy bloggers rock. There are a few folks I read regularly and I’ve always been impressed at how much of an impact that many mommy bloggers have in their communities.

But even mommy bloggers are quick to note they’re not a marketing panacea. Neither is the iPhone for that matter.

Participate vs. Pitch
Even the most well-intended blogger outreach with all the right due diligence -- from segmenting their bloggers and targeting their content accordingly -- usually results in sending "stuff." Whether it's product samples for trial, books to review, a USB to hold the electronic press kit or simply a link to a microsite flush with YouTube videos, Flickr images and background information, it all stacks up.

BlogHer offers an extreme example. Enough products are given out at BlogHer that a swag recycling station is set up at the show where attendees can drop off the swag they won't be able to use. This acknowledges that more stuff is handed out than the average attendee can haul home.

This in turn creates another difference between bloggers and journalists. The more stuff a blogger gets, the tougher it becomes to post about it -- if the blogger posts at all.

Less/Different is More
We can keep sending stuff and wondering why bloggers aren't engaging. Or we can accept that swag mail bombs and totchke baths only make sense to the vendors supplying all of the logo-laden goods. I know marketing and PR can get more creative. We can do better than this. To me the most potential lies somewhere in between paid and earned media. But that's a topic for another post.

The Paradox of Social Media

In preparation for an upcoming conference*, I’ve been considering the paradox that social media creates.

The very technology, platforms, communities and widgets being used to bring us all together online can also keep us from truly engaging and connecting with each other.

You start noticing it in small ways. Consider LinkedIn’s invitation to connect. Far too often after I met a person at an event I’ll get the auto-invite and I’m usually glad they reach out and I accept the invitation.

But instead of quickly referencing the context we established a few hours earlier, the person runs with the form letter. Whether or not someone is collecting contacts, the form letter gives off this impression.

This is one of the reasons I tell people to eschew automation like this if they really want to establish a social media presence. The same goes for the automatic direct messages sent to me after following someone on Twitter. It’s meant to say “thank you” or "hi" but all it really says to me is “this is a transaction.”

As you get into larger scale efforts like media relations, databases like Cision can help you quickly pinpoint the people you should be talking to, their contact info and sometimes even their turn-ons and turn offs. Instead it appears far too many PR people simply do a keyword search and send a news release to the search results. It’s the only explanation for some of the pitches I get.

Cheap, Good and Fast: Pick Two
Building a reputation in social media takes time. Using robo-tricks to do this may initially get fast numbers for someone, but it won’t get them influence or a real connection with other members of the site, community or platform they’re gaming.

Impressive social media results do not usually come at impressive rates of speed. True progress with social media usually takes time -- think 401-(k) vs a lottery. But many people don’t want to hear that.

To me the opportunity in social media is knowing when to leverage the art/human aspects of it and when to leverage the science/machine. And yes, that takes time too.


Modern man angle 1 uploaded by GUANOdesign.

* SummitUp is a conference being held in October with a great line up including keynotes from Chris Brogan, Bob Garfield, Artie Isaac and Lewis Howes. I’m geeked out to be kicking off the day with a keynote.

Consuming the News through Feeds, Rivers and Trees

Prior to Friendfeed, one of the easiest ways to follow a byzantine configuration of blogs and websites was to build a list of feeds in a newsreader like Bloglines or Google Reader.

Friendfeed introduced the “river of news” concept. Some call it lifestreaming. OK, but doesn't life happen offline?

Semantics aside, the river of news makes it easier to scroll through blog posts as they're published. Friendfeed works great for browsing the latest. And while it’s not a pass through, it makes it tougher for me to keep up with an individual blogs' posts.  So from an archival standpoint, a feed reader has always been my mainstay.

Get on the Newsmap
When I saw Newsmap for the first time; I was impressed as it allows you to see a lot of news at once. But unlike news sites like Drudge Report for example, you can immediately discern which stories are getting the most coverage. I’d love to have the browsing functionality of Newsmap for something like Bloglines.

When I first read about Our Signal, I realized that my wish list might not be too unrealistic. According to the site,

Oursignal.com looks at currently popular items on the top social news sites (i.e. Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, Hacker News) and mashes it all together in an interactive treemap, very similar to the well-known Google Newsmap. The idea is to allow users to get a rapid overview of what the latest breaking headlines are at the frontline of the intermatubes. The bigger the rectangle, the more relative votes a story has. The warmer the color, the quicker the story is on the rise. Cooler colors denote negative velocity.”

Treemaps, Rivers or Feed Readers?
Consuming the news is getting tougher to do. Sites like Newser are helping with big headlines, but a treemap/feed reader combo would make consuming the news a lot easier.

As news continues to flow, it's key to develop a smart approach to staying informed. What's your best tip for staying on top of the news?

Text vs. E-mail or Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants

Call me Mr. Obvious here, but I had an interesting experience at my coffeehouse recently.

Cashing in a frequent buyer’s card for a free, highly-caffeinated beverage, my barista encouraged me to sign up for information on future promotions and events.

She told me to write down my cell phone or, if I was willing, my email.

This struck me as odd. Personally I’d hand over an email address before I’d give over my cell phone number. My barista noted that most customers don’t consider a quick text (a temporary message passing through their phone) to be as intrusive as an e-mail (a permanent, official message clogging up their inbox).

This makes sense. But it also shows the digital immigrant in me.

Media Post reinforces this, noting “52% of Millennials strongly appreciate communication via cell phone or text message and 55% said the same about social networking sites. This compares with the General Population at 38% and 39%, respectively.”

Bottom line is that yesterday’s approaches are working less effectively today and they aren’t going to work at all tomorrow.

they’re already into texting uploaded by Kendrya