Strategic Public Relations

The Web Browser's 11th Birthday

A great CNN article, "The Internet transforms modern life," reviews some of the changes we've seen since the web browser became mainstream.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, fewer than one in seven Americans were online in 1995. Today, Pew says, two out of every three Americans spend time online.

The Web has added plenty of words to our lexicon, although some have yet to make the dictionary. If you had talked about Googling or blogging 10 years ago, you might have had a lot of listeners scratching their heads.

Heck, I remember the first time I heard about Yahoo! and wondered Ya-WHO? I also remember the first White House web site which, in turn, taught us the subtle but important distinction top level domains play in a URL. And the final memory I will foist upon you is literally typing in the URL for a site and walking down the hall to get a cup of coffee while the home page loaded into the browser.

Good times.

PR Tactics Offer a Tool for Every Job

OK, the hard part about trying to catch up in the blogosphere is deciding whether or not to weigh in on a topic that has been covered, linked and discussed ad nauseam, er, thoroughly.

As the blog vs. press release discussion quiets down, I get the luxury of commenting on what everyone else has said and the challenge of adding something substantive to it.

After reading the first few posts, I was going reference the golden hammer concept. But Shel Holtz beat me to it with a quote that bears repeating: “When you are a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.”

Different tools are used for different jobs. But somewhere in the raft of posts on this subject, that’s also been noted.

So I will add this quote from Salon to make a point:

“New media technologies almost never replace old media technologies. They merely force the old to adapt and find new ways to connect with their audiences.”

At the end of the day, we’re here "to connect with their audiences." There are endless combinations of strategies and tactics that help us do this. Hopefully new technologies like blogs and other consumer-generated media will always push us to learn, grow, evolve and do our best work.

tags: public relations, media relations, PR, consumer generated media, hammer time, maxwell’s silver hammer

The VHS, DVD Marketing Story

Somewhere Sony founder Akio Morita is smiling. As the world baby steps to a completely digital format for movies, music and other entertainment, VHS is slowly being left behind for the DVD format.

No surprise here. But this news reminds me, and those old enough to remember, of VHS and Betamax fighting to become the videotape format of choice.

Betamax is a superior technology; Beta SP is still used by professional videographers. But what Betamax really needed was market share. Morita blames Betamax’ eventual defeat on insufficient licensing. Despite the fact that it was the better product, Betamax never achieved a large enough presence to create consumer preference. VHS had gravity and won the battle.

So what's the moral of the story? I’m a firm believer that the best marketing in the world will not make a sub par product successful. Betamax, however, reminds us that even the best product can be defeated by better marketing.

tags: public relations, PR, marketing, DVD, Target, Wal-Mart

Cell Phones Tune Into Satellite Radio

"Tommy can you hear me...now?”

Wow. While I was wondering aloud about linking iPod to satellite radio, Sirius and Sprint teamed up to offer some of Sirius’ programming over Sprints wireless network. “The agreement will allow Sirius, the No. 2 U.S. pay-radio service, to sign up wireless phone users to its radio service. Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile-phone carrier, is the first cell-phone company to agree to offer satellite radio over its network.”

Sprint may be first, but I am willing to bet they are not the last. Considering the number of cell phones in circulation, we will surely see more partnerships like this as everyone pushes to make the phone a more multimedia device.

How long until Sirius and others also offer ring tones for download? This could help maintain the revenue in this billion dollar marketplace.

tags: public relations, satellite radio, PR, marketing, iPod

PR Compensation & Job Satisfaction Survey

Ian Lipner, of YoungPRPros, has launched a compensation and job satisfaction survey for North American public relations practitioners. Survey respondents will receive the full results of the survey—free of charge. Everyone else will get an executive summary. ALL responses will be completely anonymous and individual responses will NOT be shared with anyone.

The driving factor behind this is that most junior pros can't afford/shouldn't have to buy information like this to valuate themselves. In the past, some of this information has been made available for free, but I haven't seen it lately. It is our hope that the results of this survey provide a helpful benchmark for North American public relations professionals in regard to their compensation, benefits, vacation and general job satisfaction.

And do not let the name YoungPRPros fool you. Lipner is looking for responses from all levels of experience. As a member of YoungPRPros, I can tell you a full range of folks participate.

I’m hoping the results will be analyzed against previous studies or secondary research that might be found online. If not, this year’s survey won't tell us much and we'll have no idea how accurate or representative of the industry it might be.

The more responses, the more accurate the results. So be sure to stop by Surveymonkey (my favorite monkey next to Brass Monkey, Curious George and a Barrel of Monkeys) and take the survey.

tags: public relations, PR

MarketingSherpa's Best Blogs of 2005

Congratulations to Media Guerrilla for winning MarketingSherpa's 2005 Best PR Blog award.

MarketingSherpa sums up Mike Manuel's blog best:

"Even if you're not into PR, definitely check out Mike Manuel's Media Guerrilla Blog to see one of our fave Blogger self-photos. If you're going to post a photo of yourself on your Blog -- which is a great idea -- this is one to be inspired by. Also, the writing and hotlinks rock. Mike deserved this award win."

Strategic Public Relations won an honorable mention—which means I suck the least.

Congratulations to all the winners.

tags:public relations, PR

PRSA 2005 Bronze Anvil Awards

Pardon the back patting, but I have to note that my team won a 2005 Bronze Anvil from the Public Relations Society of America.

This was one of my final projects on the agency side before coming to my current job. It is a custom publication for CONTECH Construction Products entitled, Site Solutions. It won in the “magazines for external audiences” category.

According to PRSA, the Bronze Anvil was “created in 1969 to recognize outstanding public relations tactics, the individual items or components of programs or campaigns."

Congratulations to the entire team…especially whoever put the entry together.

tags: public relations, PR, PRSA, marketing

Intelliseek Upgrades CGM Evalution

On the heels of Pub Sub's new free link analysis tool, Intelliseek just announced an upgrade to one of its paid services, BrandPulse. According to Pete Blackshaw, BlogPulse may be offering a skinnier, free version for bloggers in the near future.

tags: public relations, PR

Blog Elevator Speech

We need to position blogs correctly, now more than ever, as businesses realize their potential.

Nearly two years ago, I crafted a blog elevator speech—the quick pitch on why blogs matter to public relations. It needs updating to better reflect the evolution within the last 20+ months. Assuming a blog fits into the overall strategy, this speech may be helpful…either to manage expectations or to persuade opponents.

Blogs' Importance to Public Relations 2.0

• Engage Customers to create a dialogue, gain their insights and spot issues early on.
• Amplify Messages through highly-networked blogs. Search engines, links, aggregators and RSS make your messages contagious.
• Gather and Distribute News. RSS makes it easier to know the news and distribute our own.

Too simple? Well, the above is already twice as long as it should be. Keep in mind the attention span of the elevator speech audience. Time is short and you need to persuade.

We could also use an elevator speech for Wikis and podcasts. Anyone?

tags: public relations, media relations, PR

Extreme Makeover: Brand Edition

PSFK’s new blog, IF, points us to the brand equivalent of a Phoenix rising from the flames—Rebrand. Rebrand is an international competition that notes “evolving brands prosper.” More on this theme to come from my Brand Design conference notes.

The competition is focused on the repositioning, revitalizing, or redesign of existing brand assets to meet strategic goals. The site includes case histories with some before and after visuals. An interesting mix of organizations, including the Alzheimer's Association, are profiled.

Thanks to the ever-feisty B.L. Ochman for the IF link.

tags: advertising, marketing, branding, brand