For all PR folk in the valley, a meet-up event next Thursday.
The event is sponsored by PRNewswire.
Author: Angelo Fernando
On Grammar Girl, content is queen
I listen to a podcast of one of the driest subjects on earth, grammar. But what makes Grammar Girl, so extremely listenable /valuable /addictive is a lesson for a lot of marketing communications that’s too self conscious. This short, no-frills podcast never reveals the person behind the mike –Mignon Fogerty — who interestingly is from our neck of the woods –Gilbert Arizona.
But I bring this up because of another reason. It’s a good example of why you should pay attention to content, and not get too distracted with format and style. Grammar Girl has no well-produced intros and outros (the intro is simple and memorable.) Just riveting content. She opens with three words that becomes her de-facto signature, “Grammar girl here,” and leaps straight into the topic.
Topics are those you may be too embarrassed to ask about (but rather look it up on Wikipedia) such as when and how to use an ellipsis … the proper use of bring/take, and things you never new existed (“eggcorns“)! She also responds to reader queries, and comes across as the person next door, rather than some snooty English major or language guru. Give it a listen and you’ll see what I mean.
Desperately needed: creative media buying
Most college advertising tends to be boring. OK, let me rephrase that since I work for one!
Most college marketing tends to follow the same formula when trying to recruit new students. I know this from another perspective, because I’m in the process of reviewing a boatload of marketing aimed at us because of my son’s impending college decision. Of course we try to shake things up here, but the standard elements are postcards, brochures, web sites, invitation to virtual tours, personalized URL’s (PURLs) etc. Bring up Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Delicious and people get queasy, but we try.
But sometimes someone breaks the mold.
I wrote about how one school used an unusual media buy to do this, and why marketers ignore three fundamentals of marketing:
- Exploiting the medium
- Knowing the customer
- Giving them information they could act on
On the first point, marketers seriously underestimate the power of the medium, and that is precisely where the message falls flat. Media buyers and planners are not on the same page when everyone’s trying to hammer out the message.
To use an example from a different, competitive category, most car ads also tend to be extremely me-too and boring. But take a closer look at this “medium” used for Mini Cooper in Germany. Which do you think came up first with the idea? The hotshot Creative guys or the boring media planners?
Pricing as a strategy, Sri Lanka style
If you’ve never heard of this dessert that’s priced at $14,500, you soon will. No after-dinner mint, this.
It’s a special treat that’s designed more to when the appetite for buzz. Served up in a resort set in a colonial town of Galle in Sri Lanka.
If you take a closer look, this is more than what the menu describes as “A combination of a gold leaf Italian kasata, flavoured with Irish cream and served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a bubbly-based sabayon…”
All yours for the $14,500 price tag, but please don’t choke on 80-carat aquamarine. It’s balanced on the chocolate sculptured stilt fisherman that happens to be the logo of the resort.
Ah, the resort. That’s the whole point of this. It’s called The Fortress, because this beautiful city by the sea does have the ramparts and remnants from a Portuguese era that goes back to the 14th century.
Pricing as a strategy is not new.
I came across a similar (fun) ad this week in Time magazine for the Sprint Blackberry,s 8830 World Edition smart phone. It is advertised as “The first$10.5 M Cell Phone.”
To be sure, it’s just Blackberry, but it does have a picture of an exotic island on the small screen, and the “island gift”is described as an optional $10,499800.01 when you purchase a $199.99 phone. The small print is really funny. “Island offer only available to the wealthiest 100 people on planet Earth.” It’s really a waste of a double-tuck ad just to get the headline noticed, but people do try…
Crayon’s critics rush to judgement
So predictable. The ad industry turns on the anti-30-second-commercial guy, Joseph Jaffe, because he is repositioning the company Crayon after several key people departed. In case you hadn’t heard of it, Crayon was the new marketing agency launched in a new media environment, Second Life, less than a year ago.
If you’ve read Jaffe’s book, listened to his podcasts or read his blog, you’ll know that he –an ex agency guy– is Madison Avenue’s worst nightmare. Or if I may rephrase it, Old-Madison Avenue’s nightmare. Indeed, many agencies have embraced new media and new marketing, but for many, new media is still a slide they add on at the end of their presentation. (“vlogs? short codes? What’s that?”)
No mater what Crayon does, you have to agree that this “shape shifter” (their term) has been a pace-setter /embarrassment / thorn in the side / to an industry slow to adapt to new new consumer behaviors & motivations. No different from how Richard Branson pushed a lot of buttons and upset a lot of “industry” apple carts, Jaffe is always challenging the way things have been done.
Conversational marketing is something Jaffe’s upcoming book will be all about. In fact he did a survey earlier this year on just that topic. Critics of this kind of marketing and advertising are probably disturbed by all of this. They are quick to call his repositioning a “fall from grace.”
But there was some vindication last week. AdAge ran a page-one story (“Old-world media starts to feel the pain“) on the shift away from traditional media to conversational marketing.
But there’s something else going on that has nothing to do with the natural rhythms of booms and busts or the fortunes of Madison Avenue’s biggest clients. Simply put, American companies are shifting more and more marketing dollars out of paid media. You see it happening every day as marketers—smart ones, at least—talk about things such as word-of-mouth and conversational marketing…
Did they just notice? Companies have been talking about these ‘things’ –and taking their money with them– for many years now. Jaffe was been of the first to chronicle that shift.
Quotes of the week
“It would be mathematically impossible for us to get into that business, and we have no interest in doing it.”
Google, dispelling a rumor that it had hired former O&Mer Andy Berndt to crush Madison Avenue
“Unlocking a cellphone is copyright infringement. When you buy a handset from a carrier, it has programming on the phone. It’s a copyright of the manufacturer.”
Claim made by Canadian telecom exec, now debunked with the unlocking of the iPhone
“In the fight between authority and rebellion, cops may be (over) relying on tasers, but students are using the viral volts to the max.”
Fast Company, commenting on the Andrew Meyer incident of getting Tasered while attempting to ask a question from John Kerry at the University of Florida.
The days of “whiter, brighter, faster, new and improved” have had their day. Consumers are looking for connections. The stuff that matters. If any one of us can deliver our messages like Mister Rogers – by telling a story, being authentic and delivering a universal truth, we’ve won.
Mitch Joel on The Power of Authenticity in marketing and communications.
Breathtaking blog layout
So many blog designs look so similar that it’s refreshing to see a totally new creative approach. And this is not from any agency, mind you! It’s the blog of a U.C. berkeley professor and writer, Jesús Rodríguez.
I think the search box is neat too! Whoever said it ought to look a symmetric box?
He calls it “a treasure trove of (possibly) worthless intellectual trinkets.” Every page brings up a new collage, and fabulous typography.
Stealth PR from infant formula manufacturers exposed
Some PR agencies will never learn. There have been plenty of cases where ‘flogs’ (fake blogs) have shown up, only to be traced back to PR agencies attempting ‘stealth PR.’ (Google Edelmen + Walmart and see.)
The latest one is for a group calling itself Babyfeedingchoice.org exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy as the front of the Infant Formula Council.
The site is very well done. It has areas such as “Moms and the media” with great quotes for lazy journalists wanting to get the other side of the story –people offended by seeing a mom breastfeeding an infant– and Resources with links to other similar sites. Looks very credible, until you dig around, and compare it to the saga of the fake Walmart blog.
Taser hits wrong nerve. Gets wrong kind of Google juice
Taser is not unfamiliar with controversy, even when it comes to students. But yesterday a Taser hit the wrong kind of target –a student being videoed -and the company has started getting the kind of media coverage and social media backlash it never bargained for.
It’s an incident that shows what could happen when you combine rudimentary citizen journalism and the ability to quickly form an online community around an event.
The Facebook group formed in protest is just one way this incident is getting played out, apart from in the media, with online comments, and headlines not very flattering to a company. But it’s not only how it’s played out. It’s how the story gets enshrined. The phrase “Don’t Tase Me Bro…AHHHHH!!!” uttered by the student Andrew Meyer before he went down is used by the Facebook group. It could live on — right next to say, “Die, Press release, Die! Die! Die!” and “Dell lies. Dell sucks” in a Google search.
There are many interpretations of the several videos taken at the incident, eye wittiness accounts, and some calling this an overreaction. The eyewitness who had also been waiting to ask John Kerry a question makes a good point, wondering why Meyer could not have also waited without rushing the microphone. Some called Meyer a jerk, and another said it was justified.
But if you watch the video, you’ll see there were many cameras on the scene. One report suggests Meyer knew his was being videoed.
All this of course doesn’t help Taser. The company recently announced a ‘subtle shift’ in its positioning, from one of protection to “saving lives.” It’s an impressive technology from an impressive company here in Arizona. But it goes to show what a tenuous task public relations is today.
Facebook president with analog touch
As I have been observing before, McCain’s campaign, after early signs of engine trouble, is now picking up speed. He’s adjusted his slogan from “Straight Talk Express” to “No Surrender” in classic repositioning tactic –no different from the way packaged goods tweak their slogan when sales start to tank. He’s got Facebook profile and a MySpace presence –as do Obama, Clinton and everyone else.
But will next year’s election be decided on the basis of a slogan, the contender’s social media presence or something else?
A recent poll by the Associated Press says that John McCain has a “solid shares of suburban, college-educated and Midwestern Republican voters.” The Washington Post last Sunday was somewhat optimistic too. “No surrender” is well timed, and probably resonates well with the Petraeus decision. But slogans aside, McCain seems to be doing something right. He may be more analog than digital, but in my opinion that could be what’s makes him more like the real thing.
Having watched the genesis of the YouTube debates, and now the Yahoo election debate, this going to be the first social media election where public opinion is sampled, targeted and better understood before the actual polls.
Markos Moulitsas –he of The Daily Kos – had this to say of supporters’ ability to assemble and the candidate’s capacity take charge of their own narrative:
“Because there are now so many more millions of people who are being engaged by politics online than in the last presidential election, our ability to control or fight back against media narratives is much stronger. We can create our own stories and push back against the ones that are BS. To me, the beauty of this medium is that there are so many centers of power in Netroots that no one can ever really dominate.”
In other words, if every candidate is plugged into the social media, a ‘Facebook President’ may need something extra.
To me that could require one thing: Good old-fashioned momentum generated by good old-fashioned face-to-face communication.
Hoipolloireport 