Strategic Public Relations

Four Links for Tuesday – 03.21.06

Just when I think I have nothing to post about, it looks like my Four Links for Tuesday might become a recurring post.

Teens Wireless Use is Off the Hook: Ad Age
Ad Age profiles “The Nearly Bionic Relationship of Teenagers and Their Cellphones.” Oscar Goldman would be proud. (reg. req.)

PR is Hard Work: Phil’s Blogservations
When someone goes all the way and redefines client service, against stiff competition I suspect, it deserves special recognition. Phil Gomes brings us this hands on example of someone really getting behind a project and bending over backwards to get the job done. This person should be commended for taking a safe approach to their work and not laying down on the job. This is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Phew. I’m here all week folks.

Mark your Calendars for FPRA Blog Week: FPRA Blog Week
I’m a big fan of event blogs and even more of a fan for blogs covering the broader realm of public relations. The FPRA blog is both of these things and it’s gearing up for a week-long event April 10-14. Mark your calendars and set your feeds to read. In addition to getting new voices out there, it might become an interesting case study on rallying PR association chapters together for a common goal. More at Hyku.

Proud to be in PR? The Bad Pitch Blog
Yes, I’m pimping the OTHER blog. We’re using Frappr to highlight public relations professionals from around the world that take pride in their work and are good at what they do. Stop by and sign the petition if you fit the bill.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | good pitch | bad pitch | bad pitch blog | advertising | blog | fprabw | Phil Gomes | global pr blog week

Nike and Google Team Up

Just Google It?

BusinessWeek kicks us news on Joga.com. It looks to be Nike's co-branded approach to creating a social networking site.

"Nike and Google, hoping to take social networking to a new realm, have quietly launched the first invitation-only Web site for soccer-mad fans around the world. Joga.com went live late last week and will soon be running in 140 countries and 14 languages.

"The two companies have been working on the site for the past eight months and are expected to publicly unveil it this week, BusinessWeek has learned. Nike is supplying the content, and Google is the technical partner. But the site looks similar to other social-networking outlets such as MySpace."

MySpace meets soccer? Uber brand Nike meets Google? Holy cow.

tags | social networking | Nike | BusinessWeek | social media | Google | MySpace | advertising | marketing | branding | brand

Goofus & Gallant: Business Ideas

Seth Godin’s book, Free Prize Inside, looks at creating "ideas that make our products and services remarkable." This Goofus & Gallant unwraps a free prize and a booby prize.

Free Prize, Free Coffee  As Starbucks grows exponentially, their cool factor is being called into question and Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s are taking aim at the Jolly Green Siren.

To keep things interesting, the highly-caffeinated brand held a National Coffee Break. For two hours, Starbucks served free coffee. Did this win over new customers? Did this increase sales? Dunno, but the buzz keeps "brand fans" excited, reinforces a Starbuck’s experience and differentiates them from competitors. They've since announced other efforts with similar goals in mind.

Into the Black, $15 at a Time?   The airline industry is hemorrhaging money. Chief among the bleeders is bankrupt Northwest Airlines. They’re "testing a $15 fee for customers who want to reserve aisle and exit-row seats on U.S. flights…to increase revenue."

Which employee of the month decided to start charging customers for something that’s always been free? You can change customer habits, Delta’s self-check in kiosks are a blessing, even though they make you do the work. It’s a small trade off to avoid the line hassle, making this small use of smart technology a big plus for time-starved business travelers. But Northwest isn't testing a trade off here, they're testing a turn off.

If the only idea Northwest has to emerge from bankruptcy is finding ways to charge us more money, they're sunk. Northwest takes home the Goofus, but we’re charging a new fee for the award. Great idea, huh?

tags | public relations | PR | Starbucks | Northwest Airlines | Free Prize Inside | Seth Godin | marketing | brand

PR in the Age of Consumer Control

Google. The effusive praise this deceptively low-key search engine elicits is maddening. I used to mock Google. Now I seemingly won’t go to the john without it.

Luckily Pete Blackshaw is helping me look at search in a whole new light. “In categories such as automotive, electronics, and healthcare, most purchase behavior starts with search,” says Blackshaw, chief marketing and customer satisfaction officer for Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

In a recent presentation to PRSA’s Cincinnati Chapter, Blackshaw compared search to what P&G calls the first moment of truth, or the first interaction a customer has with a product. More and more, this moment takes place online before a consumer steps foot in a store. Search engines can commoditize any product or service—consider a six-figure machine tool. Based on a few key specifications, a company can whittle down a list of vendors before ever contacting a manufacturer.

Searching for Brand Equity
The above supports the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), but the real opportunity for public relations lies in social media relations. Consumers are creating the first moment of truth online. Jupiter Research notes that 26 percent of the top search results for the world’s 20 largest brands is consumer generated.

Pontiac, or their agency, knows this and had the chutzpah to push customers to Google to learn more about them. The Iams Company and Wal-Mart won't follow Pontiac's example anytime soon.

Bottom Line?
As consumer-generated media continues to morph and challenge mainstream media, we risk serious impact on our clients’ brands and our own future if we do not engage this audience.

Edelman’s over-analyzed interaction with bloggers on behalf of Wal-Mart is simply online media relations in a Web 2.0 world. Blackshaw calls it “PR in the age of consumer control.” I call it social media relations. Edelman’s actions were above board. The industry’s ad nauseam discussion over this just shows how much we have to learn.

There is also a PR opportunity in SEO, but it's a subset of what we do online. Search relevance is a benefit of strong messaging. SEO should be a gut check that your content is on message. The danger in SEO is it tends to focus more on a client’s site and its competitors. We need a broader view of SEO that includes employees and customers; each audience can impact search results. Public relations can easily bring that broad view to this important discipline.

Blackshaw offers more insight into the impact search has on brand in his recent Click Z column on defensive branding.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | consumer-generated media | social media relations | Pete Blackshaw | blog | Google | advertising | marketing | branding | brand | SEO | Wal-Mart | Edelman

Will VNU’s Buyout Impact Public Relations?

Sorry to bug you with mainstream media news, but a tectonic shift is underway with the proposed $9.8 billion buyout of VNU.

Who’s VNU? If you’re in the U.S. or Europe, odds are good that you’ve interacted with one of their properties. VNU owns market researcher ACNielsen (who owns Nielsen Buzzmetrics), as well as more than 140 print publications, web sites and 150 trade shows.

It remains to be seen if shareholders will approve this offer. But no one spends $8.9 billion to preserve the status quo. Changes are afoot.

Hopefully these changes will inject new technology into our mainstream friends to make them better. As I said before, technology is changing the way we consume media. It’s even changing the way we promote it. There are plenty of untapped opportunities to enhance their value.

The buyout's impact on public relations, and VNU, remains to be seen. But look sharp and remember that change is good.

UPDATE: McClatchy's purchase of Knight-Ridder adds to the mainsteam media changes we need to consider. I've compiled a ton of links, and a few original thoughts, around many of the MSM changes, including the alarming issues facing print media. More to come.

tags | VNU | Nielsen Buzzmetrics | public relations | PR | media relations | media | advertising

Amazon Considering Downloads

Things just got interesting.

The New York Times reports that: "Amazon.com is in talks with three Hollywood studios about starting a service that would allow consumers to download movies and TV shows for a fee and burn them onto DVD's."

Wow. Technology is really, finally allowing companies to meet the consumer's on-demand needs. This leads me to predict/hope that, by 2007, the family van will come complete with a hard drive and USB ports. All the downloadable, digitized, fluid media options afforded us makes me want to download the right mix of tunes and movies for the next road trip instead of rounding up all of the discs.

tags | Amazon | gadgetry | download movies | iTunes killer | download music | DVD

Goofus & Gallant: Content vs. Context

Our latest installment of Goofus & Gallant tries to answer the question: "is it the medium or the message?" Strategic Public Relations thinks it’s both. Trying to pick one over the other reminds us of the joke about bodily organs arguing which one is in charge (hint: the winner is a pain in the ass).

Goofus: Seth Godin and AdFreak bring us two examples of how NOT to place an ad.

Pepperidge Farm’s online ad is served up next to an eating disorder article. This is unfortunate for any food brand, but especially one famous for its line of comfort food. There are plenty more examples of this phenomenon as many online ads are served up based on keywords.

The Sony ad pictured here tells consumers to go take a running jump. This would be fine if the ad were not placed in a subway station.

• Gallant: Kellogg's All-Bran Plus cereal gets the Gallant by showing us the “impact” context can have on an ad. Kellogg's chose bathroom humor to get their point across very effectively. This example also, somehow, proves out the above punch line.

tags: | media | advertising | marketing

Mobile Marketing Revs Up

One sure sign of summer is the up tick in mobile marketing news. The latest is from the Delaware News Journal.

I'm interviewed for the piece. It was an impromptu, phone interview. The reporter found me via a Google search on the topic, called me yesterday and we did the interview. My quotes prove this out.

In addition to the classic examples detailed in the above links, we're seeing new mobile marketing efforts unveiled fairly regularly.

Perhaps it's the time of year, but I'm curious if the increase might also be tied to the waning effectiveness of traditional advertising?

We're also seeing more examples of pop-up retail as retailers try and differentiate their brands by providing new, unexpected experiences. Both tactics generate a lot of excitement, even though one sells product and the other simply markets it.

Either way, it looks like we're in for a fun summer, brought to you by...

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | advertising | marketing | branding | brand | design | retail design

Tom Foremski is Wrong

The news release is dead…here we go again.

The latest swing of the hammer comes from Silicon Valley Watcher’s Tom Foremski in his article Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!. It has elicited more discussion on the tired topic and more Google Juice than an A-Lister's link blog.

Strategic Public Relations disagrees. EVERYONE trying to nail this coffin shut and bury it is missing the point.

It's the content, not the format, that's the problem.

Change the format by adding tags or taking an entirely new approach and crap will still be shoveled into reporters’ email/voicemail/landmail inboxes. GUARANTEED. (Not to mention, tagged blocks of copy ensure content can be used out of context.)

This is why the Bad Pitch blog was created. We’re trying to help people out by showing them the right and wrong way to create and distribute this content.

If press releases are dead, someone should tell CBS. CBS issued a news release when they filed suit against Howard Stern. This news release was also used in a news story…which is how I found it in the first place.

One thing we do agree with Foremski on is this quote: “Things cannot go along as they are…business as usual while mainstream media goes to hell in a hand basket.”

But blaming the current state of PR on the news release is like blaming Enron on faulty calculators.

Tom is on a panel tomorrow at the New Communications Forum. I hope he has better topics to discuss than this tired dog. It won't hunt.

tags | good pitch blog | bad pitch blog | good pitch | bad pitch | public relations | media relations | PR | Tom Foremski | New Communications Forum | New Comm Forum

Cross posted at the Bad Pitch blog