Strategic Public Relations

Public Relations and Spam, er, E-Mail

The ad nauseam industry discussion around e-mail has taken the topic from tired to expired. The latest focus is spam filters.

If your communication with a journalist cannot get through a spam filter, it does not deserve to get through. If the editor does not recognize your e-mail address, your subject line should communicate the value you offer them—a story.

How many media use e-mail? Who cares, it does not matter. How often do you read in EVERY SINGLE article on media relations techniques that you should customize media pitches? Our job is to get the media customized information based on their personal preferences. This will not change—regardless of technology. Faxes did not change this fact, e-mail did not change this fact and, more obviously, IM, blogs and social networks will not change this fact.

Communicators try and make e-mail do all of the work. Instead it causes all of the problems.

From html vs. text and attachments to mass e-mail pitches and spam filters. Stop trying to make e-mail do more than it should.

The 13 Billion Dollar Brand

Procter & Gamble receives gushing praise from Ad Age in this report. Heck, even I find myself writing about them frequently despite my heavy business to business emphasis.

Why?

"P&G sells nearly 300 products in 160-plus countries in five sectors. Half of its sales come from 13 products with $1 billion-plus in sales."

Check your pantry. Odds are good that you have products from one of the following brands: Bounty, Charmin, Pampers, Always, Olay, Pantene, Ariel, Downy, Tide, Crest, Iams, Folgers or Pringles. This translates into brand brilliance, or just plain old marketing smarts, that we can all learn from. So take note.

Google Research

Mediabistro reports on the sad trend of journalists using Google searches to support their assertions.

My favorite quote:

"Sad to say, plugging Google in a story has become almost a telltale sign of sloppy reporting, a hack's version of a Rolodex. Journalists, especially ones from highbrow publications like The New Yorker, should be sourcing hard stats, not search-engine evidence, to bolster their stories."

The examples given in this article are innocuous enough, but hopefully this approach will not escalate or become a public relations tactic. Anyone understanding search engines at all knows this is a completely inaccurate approach to measurement.

In other Google news, the search engine aims to increase its competitive lead by adding a billion Web pages to its index. This puts 4.28 billion Web pages in Google's index. Some estimate this is not even half of the Web pages out there.

This news makes me hopeful that Google is also developing new search algorithms. More Web pages guarantee quantity, not quality. Keeping Google searches fast and relevant will be key.

What to do, and what NOT to do, in Public Relations

Here's a new gimmick for Strategic Public Relations: Are you Goofus or Gallant?

For those of you that do not get the obscure reference to Goofus and Gallant, I suggest you subscribe to Highlights magazine. Goofus shows us what not to do while Gallant shows us what we should do. As current events present themselves, I will point to examples of what we should, and should not, do in public relations.

Take hitching your product to a popular song. Outkast offers Polaroid some easy, slam-dunk publicity as it sweeps up Grammys left and right. Polaroid is Gallant to an unknown consumer product company’s Goofus.

This personal care product company wanted to use one of Johnny Cash’s signature tunes, Ring of Fire to promote its hemorrhoid-relief products. Oh the humanity. Thankfully, the Man in Black's estate is taking issue with this.

So are you Goofus or Gallant?

Industry Fails to Measure

At a 4A's conference this week, marketing giant P&G gives industry attempts at measurement a C minus. When you spend billions on advertising each year, you are allowed to take an entire industry to task.

One of his quotes says it best:

"This is a $450 billion dollar global industry and we're all making decisions with less data and discipline than we apply to $100,000 decisions in other aspects of our businesses," Mr. Stengel said. "We lack an industry standard for measurement. We need a method to determine the effectiveness of our efforts. We need to measure how effective our advertising is at influencing purchase intent -- the ultimate goal."

In the past, we would always wave this aside and note that we are the creative side to the business and operate by different rules. Not anymore. Particularly in business to business markets, everything is engineered to specifications and run by processes. You can no longer risk running marketing programs without measurement. Beyond that, your measurement should be tracking how you help impact sales.

we interrupt this program...

i'm out all week due to medical reasons--more of an inconvenience than a cause for concern. since my typing arm is directly impacted, it might be another week until you see fresh content here. sorry for the delay.

At least the game was good

You would think plunking down $2.3 million just for the airtime would spur some creativity in this year's Super Bowl ads. But alas, the pressure was too much.

The reviews are in and I have to agree with them—the game was better than the ads this year.

Overall, there was just nothing that really stood out. But you can be the judge as MSNBC has a ton of the commercials for your viewing pleasure right here.

Apple’s 1984 Commercial

Tomorrow we’ll see plenty of roundup stories showing which Super Bowl commercials were entertaining and which ones were off mark. Well, all of them are held to a standard set by Apple's infamous Super Bowl commercial, entitled 1984.

After 20 years, this commercial is still brought up as the :30 second Super Bowl spot heard round the world. This year, USA Today and Houston Chronicle look at the impact this ad still has.

Apple claims the commercial has been voted the best ad of all time by advertising professionals. Well it certainly started the annual Super Bowl commercial buzz. You can even vote for your favorite ads.

I like the commercial as it is a great example of why the Apple computer platform has survived. Apple is still around despite the leviathan market share of, and industry support for, the Windows platform. Why? Creativity. From a :30 second spot that is pointed to each year by sports, tech and marketing folks alike to stylish computer designs, iTunes and iPod....Apple knows this game.

But don't forget, in addition to a great commercial and a year, 1984 is also a great read.