Marketing

Quotes for the week ending 24 April, 2010

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“But it’s when you become the punch line on The Colbert Report that you know you’ve made the big time.”

Bill Goodykoontz, columnist at the Arizona Republic, commenting on Stephen Colbert’s ripping of Arizona’s new immigration bill –that was signed by governor Jan Brewer into law on Friday.

“facebook seems to be down – mass suicides worldwide predicted – story at 11”

Tweet by mmelnick, (musician, vegetarian, animal lover, truth seeker) who also re-tweeted “Attention humans: Facebook isn’t “down”. It’s become self-aware & will soon launch nuclear weapons. I’m pressing the “Lik …”

“Trees are a renewable resource, and paper can be recycled, recovered and used to make paper again. … Make print a valuable part of your communications mix.”

The argument behind Print Grows Trees, a campaign by Print Graphics Association Mid Atlantic (PGAMA) a not-for-profit trade association

“…uncomfortably close to advocating sexting”

The creepy Kin video ad that Microsoft had to pull for obvious reasons

“I think smaller- and medium-sized agencies make the transition from traditional to social-enabled PR much easier than larger agencies.”

Jason Baer, in a Twintervirw with Bob Reed of PRSA, where he also talked about ‘the science and math of social media.’

Plenty of “non-experts” – tons of social media expertise

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

A funny thing happened in the lobby of MADCAP Theater, Monday.

SMAZ_2010_VPRBIt had nothing to do with these two familiar faces. Most of the 400 + attendees at the Social Media for Business event –a..k.a SMAZ –about all things digital, indulged in one of the oldest communication tools, business cards.

I loved how, despite seeing a Twitter handle on the last statutory slide of every preso, this tiny cardboard rectangle still works. It probably illustrates how social practices like this will not go away despite the attention we give to trackbacks, Tweetdeck or Posterous.

PanelIn between working the floors wearing that funny hat, I sat in on some great sessions. The panel on Building Brand Evangelists with Social Media, moderated by Kevin Gawthrope (@gawthrok), was very enlightening.

Then there was our very own Linda Vandrede moderating Social Media 101 a panel that included Amanda Vega, Chris Hewitt, Scott Andrew and Sheila Kloefkorn. Talk about heavyweights! If you’d been to last year’s SMAZ, you would have notices how the audience had changed, even at a 101 level. One of the sticky topics that came up was about outsourcing content. There were two schools of thought here, but both maintained that content creators have to be transparent and committed. Blogola and astroturfing won’t cut it.

As I mentioned earlier, the tone was set by Sitewire president, Greg (“I am not a social media expert”) Chapman but having said that, there was plenty to glean from. Especially in the hallways!

My takeaways (updated):

  • Be the message, don’t just post the message!
  • Don’t treat Facebook like the Yellow Pages.
  • Listen first, tweet, post later. Use Social Media as a listening post.
  • Be cognizant of the ‘channel agnostic customer.’
  • Google handles hyphens better than underscores, so be watchful when you write headlines, tags.
  • “Social media is free” is a huge misconception. There’s a human resource cost attached to it.
  • Social media is not a strategy – it is what you embed into your Comms strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy.
  • Google’s new search engine, Caffeine, will knock your socks off.
  • Think less about the platform, more about the content.
  • Content isn’t king. Optimized content is king!
  • Start with small things. If your boss or client wants to start tweeting, facebooking, start with small goals before the big-hairy-audacious ones
  • There’s a difference between a News Feed and a Live Feed on Facebook.
  • Train others freely. Give away secrets. The rising tide lifts all boats.
  • Differentiate between Goals and Tactics. People mix these up.
  • Just like the way they confuse Strategies and Tactics, I suppose.

If you read other takes on SMAZ , you’ll see that there’s a lot of tech stuff to wrap your head around. But for all the talk about ‘matchbacks’ and Seesmic, Tweetie and Flowtown, I came away with three things:

  • “Social Media is an ingredient, not an entre.” – Jason Baer
  • “Hang out where your customers hang out” – Sheila Kloefkorn

And …

  • Bring a lot of business cards, next time, dammit


Cross-posted from ValleyPRBlog

Quotes for the week ending 21 Nov 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“She is not a girl, and she is not a pinup.”

Susan Estrich, Columnist, on Sarah Palin, saying she hates defending her, but is annoyed at Newsweek for featuring her on the cover in running shorts.

“I am applauding Bebo …I don’t understand the  logic for the others not following suit.”

Jim Gamble, of Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), saying social networking sites need a help button for children to report predators  bullying.and bullies

“we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good,”

Barack Obama, conceding that the Copenhagen summit would not come up with a binding agreement on global warming.

“A portable device with an appropriate wifi connection, and a very powerful browser.”

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt’s definition of a Netbook, in a broad discussion of the future of the internet.

“Huh? If you’re already a Fortune 100 company, ‘brand awareness’ is probably not your biggest problem.”

Fast Company, commenting on a study by Weber Shandwick, that says only about 3/4 of Fortune 100 companies have Twitter accounts, few follow best practices, and most are chasing after brand awareness.

“Would I be cynical if I said I believed Apple was secretly fueling the hype by leaking bits and pieces of information to raise expectations? Does it matter?”

Linda Vandevrede, at ValleyPRBlog, on the role of PR in hype, or whether it evolves in some ‘organic’ way.

Quotes for the week ending 31 Oct, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“The thrill of naked guys in public aside, this marketing scheme did involve a bit of trickery.”

Advertising Age, revealing the story behind the ‘worlds’ fastest nudist’ in New York this week, who turns out to be a guy doing a stunt for Zappos, via an ad agency, Agent 16.

“Look, people the message is this: Do not tell me you cannot do this.”

Josh Bernoff, on how the Groundswell Awards, and how excellence in social media can come from anyone, anywhere.

“If there’s metadata in there, that’s public record.”

Dan Barr, attorney for the Society of Professional Journalists, on the Arizona Supreme Court decision that now requires public entities to disclose Meta Data, the ‘hidden data’ embedded in electronic records.

“A Friday afternoon news dump…”

Huffington Post on the list of visitors to the White House, released on Friday. The list includes lobbyists and prominent people

“It comes down to data and money.”

Story in Fast Company, that ‘Facebook plans to Geo-tag your life’  by linking geo-location information to users actions on the site.

Quotes of the week ending 24 Oct, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Let the little dogs lap, Mr. President. It’s good for the nation’s spleen.”

Kathleen Parker, on the noise from Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on Obama’s attack Fox News

“For Rush and Glenn and Balloon Dad, the allure of media attention is too powerful to be curbed by a sense of social responsibility.”

John Del Cecato, of AKPD Message and Media.

“So there you have it. Ignite a future for the high-profile navel-gazers of tomorrow with your own bottle of Twitter wine, which goes for $20 a pop.”

AdRants, on Crushpad’s use of Twitter on wine labels

“It’s winemaking, which is usually for us a four or five person endeavor, mixed with Twitter.”

Michael Brill, president and CEO of Crushpad, the winery teaming with Twitter and the pro-literacy group Room to Read.

“Let’s hope the Millennial Generation isn’t becoming the latest Lost Generation.”

Chad Graham, in the Arizona Republic, on how graduates are worried about the present job outlook, their future and even retirement.

“My ‘maternity break’ will end in mid-November.”

Charlotte Shaff, CEO of The Media Push (who blogged about her pregnancy) interviewed by Linda Vandevrede at ValleyPRBlog.com, on ‘Pregancy and PR.’

“First, I felt that after five years my blogging was getting long in the tooth….”

Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, interviewed by Tech Crunch

“For the people, for the planet, for jobs, for you!”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on the role of the UN, on the anniversary of the United Nations, which falls today –the day the UN Charter on 24 October 1945 was formed.

What’s the definition of a PR stunt?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Just as the aphorism goes that “there are lies, damn lies and advertising,” I wonder if it’s time for someone to come up with one about stunts –especially the PR variety.

Let me be clear. I don’t condemn stunts. In fact it might be construed as another word for ‘tactic’ or creative attempt to make a point.
So I was about to classify this latest ‘underwater cabinet meeting‘ by the President of Maldives as a stunt, but I thought I’d put the question to my readers to check the pulse first. I won’t go into the details here, suffice to say that it takes a bit of effort to get your cabinet to strip down to scuba diving suits –and anchor desks to the coral– to pull off something like this.

But back to the definition of a PR stunt. Here are some past examples that might fall into this category.

I know, there are more. But for our purposes, let’s ask if promoting a cause or a brand validates the approach. Governments are quick to blame each other when an international or bilateral crisis arises, calling it a stunt, even though there had been no specific public facing activity. Headline writers find it a useful 5-letter word to spice up a story. (As in this one, that was clearly a misplaced use of money, rather than a stunt).

I would think a PR stunt is anything that

  1. Involves an event or a sustained activity that is staged, primarily for gaining media attention
  2. Is unusual or controversial
  3. Is connected with an extended campaign that does not involve PR or advertising. Behavior modification, for example

The first –-gaming the media –can be dangerous, if done to fool the media. If the balloon incident being debated this week proves to be an act of self-promotion by wasting time and money of a sheriff’s department, that’s a dumb stunt, indeed.

The second —is often creative and harmless. The guy who dons a pizza delivery attire and ‘delivers’ his resume (attached to the box) to a marketing director, is clearly breaking out of the old method (email or mail) to get his application to the top of the pile.

The third –wins my approval, hands down. This is what all good (insert the word ‘marketing,’ ’cause promotion,’ ‘advertising’ as a prefix here) campaigns ought to be.

President Nasheed’s course of action seems more like the third category. He has a point to make, and what better way than for a leader of a country surrounded by –and threatened by– water to do this?

Beware of ‘font infringement’

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

You may not often think about this, but there is a branch within intellectual property laws that covers the illegal use of fonts.

Most designers know this, and won’t recommend paying for a font for one use, and copying it for multiple clients. But wanna-be designers don’t always look at the details.

So this case of NBC being sued by the Font Bureau, may explain how tings work.

I found an interesting document at UNESCO, that goes back to 2003, which states that:

“…the most basic legal rule of font copyright is that unless the license specifically allows it, fonts cannot be shared among multiple computers, even if they are all owned by the same person or corporation, and fonts cannot be given away to others. In all cases the EULA is the authoritative source for specific licensing details.”

Just like software licenses, you can’t purchase a single-use license and use ita cross multiple businesses. Time to look for those errant fonts on the computers in your marketing department, don’t you think?

Twinterview with Steve England tomorrow

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Tomorrow at 10 am (Pacific) I will be conducting a Twitter interview with Steve England, of NewMediaMarketing.

If you are not familiar with NewMediaMarketing, it’s a company that does some amazing things in audience engagement, using smart tags.

I won’t try to explain what a smart tag is –except link to this— since Steve will be fielding questions that would clear any doubt you have about this.

For those who folllow this blog, this is the fifth ‘Twinterview‘ in the series. The last one was in August, so it appears I have been slacking. Well, between starting my own consulting gig, and ransiting out of ASU, let’s just say that September whizzed by!

How to follow the Twintervew:

  • You could follow it at @heyangelo, or @englandsc
  • Time permitting, I will be live-blogging the session here as well.

Social media for business conf. brings out heavyweights

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Al Maag, Chief communications officer at Avnet opens the Social Media AZ conference with a keynote that has everyone’s head nodding.

He talks of how he brought a technology company to consider using .social media to communicate, by asking the wrong questions, but being persistent in asking the right people. Turns out it was an integral part of Avnet’s brand strategy. His main approach to the C-Suite : He told then, look, “the train has left the station,” and we are going this route, because guess what, the competition is going to be on this train, anyway.

Some highlights of his presentation:

  • The Avnet’s Facebook program began in Europe. It’s Avnet’s way of sharing knowledge and enhancing talent.
  • The Avnet blog was not even claled a blog when they began
  • If you don’t have guts and self-esteem, don’t be in this job. (“I’ve been called Tweeterdumb” and “blog boy”)
  • Lose the battles …win the war
  • Just bring in a consultant. (Shel Holtz plug here)
  • LinkedIn is the new Rolodex, videos are vital, Twitter is not for everyone

AvnetonDemand.com was created with no budget

Al Maag’s blog is primarily to communicate with the media; he talks of things such as Woodstock (guitars) and

The line up of speakers is like a who’s who in new media, PR, interactive.

Mike Corak and Chis Sietsem on crafting a social media plan were good. Some of this is what we know, but it reassures me to see others think this way. Especially that Measurement, that much maligned word, is not just about traffic but measuring (knowing) engagement, sentiment..

Next session Elizabeth Hannan, says welcome to the hot room (a passing reference to the air conditioning here). It’s all about building community.

Angry mobs or groundswell? Or just paid marketing?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

What do you call a flash mob that has been paid for? Think hard before you answer this.

Now let me complicate it a bit for you:

When connected to a PR campaign, we tend to see it as the evil astro-turfing. Plenty of these examples around us. Those the angry mobs showing up with signs to loudly disrupt town hall meetings as a form of protest against healthcare reform, are suspiciously PR-backed astroturfing practices. TechPresident ‘reveals’ that there is a method behind this madness.

When connected to people protesting against a stolen election, we see it as citizen action —as we saw in Iran. streets

Then there’s the third kind. When connected to marketing, the flash mob could be used to bring attention to a product in a public place. Funny how we have no problem with this, even though it also disrupts civilian life, and appears to be a spontaneous expression of the hoi polloi.


This highly choreographed event earlier this year by Saatchi and Saatchi, for T-mobile at London’s busy Liverpool Street station is a good example of how the lines are being blurred as the radius between sender and receiver gets stretched.