Social Media

Speaking of Airliness in social media…

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Just noticed another fact about Southwest’s blog, Nuts about Southwest.

Nuts is just one year old, and (says Brian Lusk, Corporate Comms manager, in an interview) has used the blog for discussting sticky issues such as assigned seating.

Delta Ailines, on the other hand, is using Twitter in for a variety of things. Posting tinyurl’s of Delta Ads on YouTube is just one of the more obvious ones. (Using new media to get more attention to old media, via new media!) But how about this clever way of getting the word out in the twittersphere (if that’s a word):

@SteveJobs – thanks for the iPod seat connectors. testing some out right now.

Or engaging Stve Rubel in  a tweet…

Or apologizing to a customer for a bad United experience, because:

"The industry is broken. We’re working hard to fix it…"

And then there’s the Unofficial Richard Branson blog, that’s has plenty of plugs for the Virgin brand…
 

Continue reading →

Blogging Phoenix-based pilot — Southwest airline’s new brand voice.

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

Southwest_plane
Who wouda thunk! Your captain, as he prepares for takeoff, is also making mental notes for his blog.

Not sure how many airlines are doing this, but it’s hardly a surprise from a company such as Southwest Airlines, that consistently allow their employees to impact their brand voice. Ray Stark, a phoenix-based captain is doing just that.

A great example for those who are in trepidation about alllowing
those without the title of communictaion or marketing in their titles
to actually have their say.

Would, say, a pizza company let it’s truck drivers comment on the
freshness of its toppings? I’ve heard many a marketing director think
only certain employees ought to be allowed to be spokespersons for the
organization. So back to Southwest. Would you allow a pilot to comment
about tornadoes he may be flying into? Ray Stark says things like this:

The moving weather depiction shows the weather just
west of MCI and heading toward the airport. Hopefully, we can arrive
(and depart) before the worst of it arrives.

But it lends a perspective that no communicator in a corporate
office would have a clue about, which is why employee blogs are so
valuable. We communicators may know a few things (or not) about split
infinitives or RSS feeds, but we could never come up with stuff like
this:

Due to the curvature of the earth, the cloud tops
were hiding out of sight over the horizon as we left PHX. We can now
start to see the mass of moisture in our path.

Which is another way of saying, kudos to Southwest Airlines! They
did break Stark’s long post into three, but they allowed him to be
himself! I used to like their cool ads.

But these are way more valuable. What do you think?

(Cross-posting this from ValleyPrBlog)

Continue reading →

MyRagan set to be the Communicators’ MySpace

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

It’s barely 24 hours since I created an account with social media site, MyRagan, and the interest groups are swelling up at a fast clip.

Within a few hours of my post on ValleyPRBlog, I had people linking to me. The Ragan brand name certainly helps, because like IABC or PRSA, you know what to expect.

Many of us, who have ventured into MySpace have found out that’s while
there a lot of cool things going on there, it’s not exactly our space.
Ergo MyRagan, a service whose time has come, where people in PR,
marketing, media and communication feel more at home with the social
media architecture.

MyRagan’s architecture  still needs some work. It’s more like scaffolding, but that’s Ok with me. Building this place must have taken a lot of planning, and as we all know, social media is a work in progress.

Some features are very good. The People Search feature brings up thumbnails of members, and tells you who’s online, so you could IM them, or send them a message from the site.

But competition will be nipping at their heels. I just heard Neville Hobson on FIR, mention that Melcrum, in the UK is set to launch it’s own social media portal. Melcrum has been watching this space carefully. In March this year, they conducted a social media survey that reported how among 2,100 executives, 55% were using blogs, and how RSS and social networks were very popular.

Continue reading →

Friday Survey – Search Engine Usage

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Pssst! Could you spare another 1.8 minutes?

This week, I would love to hear about your preferences when using Search.

We always wonder how we ever lived without Search. There are lots of
stats on browser usage, and debate about the 80/20 rule of Natural and
Paid search. But this week I like to get a snapshot of usage among PR,
Marketing, Journalism and Advertising people.

Click here to take survey.

Results will be posted here on Wednesday, May 16th.

(Cross posting from ValleyPRBlog.com)

Continue reading →

Listening to articles –and I don’t mean podcasts!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Integrating audio into an online format is getting to be easier now, with text-to-speech, audio icons and their close cousins screen readers.

Check this article out. It’s the Associated Press story on ASU, featured in the International Herald Tribune, on March 25th.  When you click on this link, to the right, is a small box with eight options, one of which is to ‘listen to this story.’ Clicking on it opens a proprietary audio player from the Tribune.

Why is this important to us? Consider this. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is the web’s arbiter of standards, protocols and guidelines has been pushing the concept of ‘interoperability’ has been calling for better accessibility and navigation to all users, including those with disabilities. Voice browsers and something called VoiceXML is a part of it.

Who knows, there could come a day when someone may be able to subscribe to a page via RSS (say ASU News, or Knowledge@ W.P. Carey) and have the text feed translated into audio.

Sounds futuristic? It’s already being experimented with iNewscaster, from a company called Magnetic Time. (Thanks to For Immediate Release, for this cool tip).

Distribution? Access? On-demand information? It’s another channel that’s worth looking into. Now!

Check this cool demo of how text-to-speech works when mashed up with RFID, from Make Magazine.

Continue reading →

Election Advertising

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Lest we forget, amidst the embarrassing campaign ads we had to stomach during the U.S. elections, there were some high points.

Take this copy for Mini Cooper:

“Let’s always be law-abiding liberals on the gas pedal and ultraconservatives at the pump….Let’s lobby Capitol Hill for more twisty highways. Let’s all skip the mudslinging and stick to the road ahead. Let’s motor.”

7-Election

Then there was the 7-eleven coffee promotion, called 7-Election. It was as simple as offering customers a choice of a John Kerry or George Bush coffee cup in the chain’s 5,800 stores in the U.S.

The race, predictably, was neck-and-neck –with 65.4% of coffee ‘voters’ undecided. But when the results were tallied, Bush got 51.08% of the votes! It may not be a scientific poll, but as this story shows, considering that a million people a day drink 7-eleven coffee, it’s a promotion that’s got some clout.

As for Brand Bush and Brand Kerry…

Since several other marketers had joined the brand-wagon, Landor Associates interview 1,262 registered voters and found that:

Bush was associated with Bud Light, IBM and Ford (“reliable”, “humble”, “heritage”, “solid”)

Kerry is associated with brands such as Heineken, Apple, and BMW (“high-quality”, “high-performance”, “hip”, “young”)

Among undecided voters: Kerry was Starbucks while Bush was Dunkin’ Donuts.

Continue reading →

Inventing the ‘new media’ all over again.

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Last month, I featured a story about how Macintosh users and Ferrari fans have been considered a target market –by a cell phone company and a sports car respectively. I know it gets confusing, when products target products. But the fact is that in the over saturated media space, the quest for the holy grail of attention, is leading marketers to invent their own media.

Take this quote from the VP of Lifetime TV network, Catherine Moran. (Quoted in Advertising Age, Aug 2, 2004)

“We’re all out there trying to find new media environments..Beaches do seem to be on everybody’s hit list.”

Hard to miss the irony of a TV network (the media) seeking a ‘new media environment’ to market itself.

Here’s another similar story. A Magazine using a Retailer as a ‘media environment’ instead of the other way around. A new magazine, called “All You” by Time Inc, will launch in Wal-Mart. Here’s what the publisher, Diane Oshin said about using Walmart.

“All You gives marketers the opportunity to target the ever-growing population of value-driven consumers in a high-quality environment that speaks directly to them,” said Oshin. “And, with initial distribution in Wal-Mart — where this customer shops — this magazine will be an extremely efficient way to reach her.”

Continue reading →