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Even the CEO of one of the largest packaged goods producers in the world realizes that trying to control the message in a world where all it takes to become a broadcaster is a connection to the internet.
A.G. Lafley Tells Marketers to Cede Control to Consumers to Be ‘In Touch’
Interesting times.
I hate meetings, generally. But, one of the advantages of working with close to 100 absolutely brilliant and creative people from different backgrounds, perspectives and even countries is that sometimes you get something brilliant out of a meeting.
I was in a meeting this morning with one of our VPs, and we got to talking about how people are going to consume media in the future, and he said something that made me think about my comments on Second Life, and about the tenacity that many PR people have about moving toward social media and online public relations.
When it comes to technology, people tend to overstate the short-term benefit and underestimate the long term benefit.
I think this is something that every PR pro interested in how technology is changing our business should keep in mind, and a message that should be shared with clients. Is taking the dive into social media going to move the needle in the first year? Probably not… but in the long term, the benefits will be more than just increased traffic and a few more sales. The long term benefits of engaging your customers in conversation are a change in your philosophy toward customer service, an improved relationship with your most evangelical customers… the list goes on.
The same thing goes, I think, for Second Life. As fascinating as I think it is, I still don’t see the short term value that I think is being really overstated by zealous PR people. That said, not much is being said (or at least I’m not seeing it) about how things like Second Life are going to change our lives in the long term – and it was definitely not something I was considering when I wrote about it last.
The car was really hyped when it first came onto the market – but the discussion was all about getting from point A to point B. Few considered the gravity of the long term effects – our move to the suburbs, the creation of cross-country highways, a removal of the barriers of geography.
Those who look at our new set of tools simply as technology are missing the big picture. What we’re doing here is not about blogging, it’s not about YouTube, it’s not even about the social media press release. It’s about a change in the way we think about and talk to our publics, and how they talk back to us.
It’s hard to sell a long term investment to people who want immediate gratification, but those who get it will get the biggest payoff in the end.
Just got the second PSA from our sound editor – check it out and feel free to spread it around!
Now to get it played…
Busy, busy, busy.
If I’ve learned one thing from this little open source project, it’s that it takes a whole lot of effort to involve a whole community in a marketing project. However, I’m going to keep on trucking, and attempt to keep y’all up to date with what’s going on with the marketing efforts.
And, of course, if you want to help me spread the word – feel free to talk about Movember on your blog, to link the Movember site, or to sign up for the event.
In terms of media relations, Movember will be mentioned in the October 10 issue of the Medical Journal, which is fantastic. Now we need to focus on getting some mainstream press in advance of the project. I haven’t pitched too hard as of yet simply because I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of celebrity guests. Around mid-month, we’re going to pitch Toronto media again, and we’re working toward a media event on October 30 in Toronto that will give local news crews something visual – someone being shaved for the last time in a month in an old-fashioned barber’s chair. Fingers crossed for that unnamed celeb.
In other Movember news, we’re going to be sending around radio PSAs for Toronto sports and hip hop radio stations. We got the first one yesterday, and the second is in post production, should be ready tomorrow.
Here it is:
And yes. That’s my voice.
It will be available on the Movember site, but in the meantime feel free to email me at my first name at ryananderson.ca and I’ll send you an MP3 copy if you want to distribute it.
I will be sending out a plea to bloggers in the next couple of weeks to spread the word or participate, so if you’re a male Canadian blogger and you’re reading this – expect an email from me soon. I’ll post a list of those who are helping spread the word once that happens.
That’s all from Movember-land. I also welcome any ideas you might have for making this event a success. We want to raise as much money for male cancer research as we can, so any input is valuable!
Friends, colleagues, compatriots – I have a very important confession to make. One that I hope will not cause you to think any less of me as a person, or as a public relations professional. This is something that has plagued me for months, and despite my best intentions, I could not resolve it. I feel it only fair to all of you that i come clean in a public forum.
I do not understand Second Life.
I know what you’re thinking: “Ryan, you work for a major interactive shop, one that actually develops online 3D worlds and games. You write about how PR people need to get out of the dark ages and adapt to the new media, and let’s face it – you’re a bit of a geek.”
All of these things are true, and make it that much harder for me to admit that the phenomenon that is second life is completely and utterly over my head. I don’t understand the appeal, I don’t understand the culture, and I certainly don’t understand how my PR 2.0 folder in my newsfeeds has 100+ mentions of Second Life and some new brand that is jumping on the bandwagon every time I check it.
I’ve tried to understand. I’ve tried to take the time to explore a new world, and a new culture. but even after taking the initiation course, learning how to pick up a ball and how to fly, after having inane conversations with strangers who dress their avatars like black faeries, after witnessing naked skydiving… I had to pause and come to terms with the fact that I just don’t get it.
Maybe it’s the fact that I barely have time for my First Life, but I can’t see myself spending whatever free time I have online, flying around a computer game. Don’t get me wrong, I like video games, but usually, games have a point. Second LIfe has no narrative that I can see, no goal. Perhaps it’s just my primal alpha-male instincts, but I don’t get why I would play this when I can’t kill anything.
I likewise do not understand the economy that has been developed around this world. People are paying hundreds of thousands of actual dollars for virtual property. I would love to call these people idiots, but they are now worth more than I ever will be, because they virtually developed this virtual property and people bought residences for their online dolls to live in. This virtually floors me.
So, while the cold, calculating marketing grad in me sees that there is a critical mass of people – about the population of a small city now, with about $60,000 USD in transactions every day – I just have a lot of trouble believing that Second Life is the future of public relations and marketing. But then, that’s probably what the PR people that I make fun of today were saying about blogs a couple of years ago.
Our CEO was recently interviewed for a local tech news story on Second Life, despite my assurances to the reporter that none of us used Second Life, nor did we build anything for it. When he was asked what the appeal was, he said, on camera, “Well, I guess it’s a good environment for people with no social skills to meet people in a different forum.”
As PR guy, I of course buried my head in my hand when he said that, but after spending time with it, I’m not sure that he’s wrong. I buy chat rooms and forums – I can see people spending their lunch hour or before-bed time talking to their online friends, but it seems like the only reason that we marketing types have clung to Second Life as much as we do is because it finally presents a way to monetize that interaction. That said, will metaverse marketing ever be able to speak to a large enough sample size to be worthwhile, or is the burst of ad agencies and PR firms plunging into the SL phenomenon just a grab at headlines from reporters who are hungry to write about Second Life.
I, of all people, buy fully into the value of games and experiential worlds as valuable ways to interact with your publics. However, while I can see someone spending 20 minutes playing American Dad vs. Family Guy Kung Fu or Deadwood Poker, Second LIfe is far from being a “casual game.” It is analogous to to World of Warcraft, but it lacks the battle aspect and character leveling that make massive multiplayer online games so addictive. To me, Second Life is just a chatroom with gadgets and while I can see the value in having avatars wear your brand of sneakers, I can’t see it being as huge as we seem to want it to be, and I feel sort of bad for the agencies that are investing as much as they are in Second Life practices, because I think they’re putting a whole lot of eggs into a tiny little basket. Perhaps I’m techno-xenophobic, but I have trouble seeing why people are talking about Second Life as if we just invented the written word.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll spend some more time playing with it, maybe I’ll buy some clothes from the SL American Apparel Store, or maybe even rent out a swingin’ bachelor pad for when I meet a hot avatar at a Second Life club. Maybe then, I’ll get it.
Until then, I’ll be content living my First Life. I hope that my New PR comrades will allow me to continue being a PR guy, even in light of this damning admission.
On Monday, I had the pleasure of hearing Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations, speak at a PR Blogger meetup in Ottawa, thanks to Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis who arranged it.
I talked to a lot of bloggers (as much as I could, as my voice was giving out all day) that I have been reading for quite some time, including Brendan Hodgson, Bob LeDrew (who is apparently good friends with a good friend of mine), Colin McKay, and Aimee, Brett and Steve from Shift-Ctrl, the 76Design blog.
I go to a lot of events where I don’t know anyone, but I’ve always found that events with bloggers who I’ve “met” through comments or just reading are always much easier. As Aimee notes on her blog, in situations like these, the ice is already broken, and the conversation flows much more easily than it would if we had met at a networking event.
It’s not a relationship that bloggers have with one another, per se. In fact, I equate it more with a religious connection than a social one. We are a group of like-minded individuals, who are accepting of each other by virtue of a membership to a group, which we earned through a ritual of writing and reflecting and of sharing our insights with other bloggers. Our beliefs, independent as they may be, are largely influenced by a book that is at the core of the culture. When we come together as a group, there is an automatic acceptance, because we know that bloggers are there not to self-promote, but to share. Those that were there to promote, were kept outside the group because they were there for themselves, not for the greater good.
Okay… maybe I’m stretching a bit, but I think that thinking of bloggers as members of a religion is a good analogy when you’re first starting out. When you decide you want to pitch bloggers by mass emails, first imagine yourself walking into a church during a sermon and giving them the same pitch. Chances are, you’ll get about the same reception if you’re not a part of the community, or at least, the conversation.
It’s not hard, but there’s one surefire way to make yourself or your business look like a complete international asshole – start suing the little guy for using a word that’s already in the dictionary just because you decide you want to use it.
Apparently, Apple, for whom I have extremely ambivalent respect, has taken to issuing cease-and-desist orders to companies who have the audacity to use the word “PodCast,” because it thinks it owns the letters patent to it.
So far, Apple has sent numerous such letters to small entrepreneurs who used the word “pod” in any sense, regardless of whether it had anything to do with MP3s, PodCasting or apples.
iPod has brought Apple from an obscure overpriced graphic designer platform to a household name synonymous with quality, great design and hipness. The company has fuelled a revolution in how people buy and consume music, and in part, how the average person can broadcast themselves to the world with little more than a webcam.
Apple isn’t happy with being a pop culture phenomenon. Their strategy, apparently, is to kill the golden goose and “own” the word “PodCast” so nobody else can use it. The trouble is, it’s already in the vernacular. Hell, it’s already in the dictionary as Steve Rubel (ROO-bell) points out.
Litigation-happy executives are the biggest danger to marketing – especially when it comes to “protecting” irrelevant things like this simply because you can.
The world is getting smaller with every new blog that launches, and acting like a dick is a sure-fire way to get called out for being a dick. If Apple doesn’t abandon these strong-arm tactics and consider themselves lucky that they have enough apostles to start a religion, they’re going to lose that veneer they’ve been able to create for themselves as being a creative, fun company, and end up appearing like a monolithic big-business bureaucracy.
[Wired via Micropersuasion]
Keith O’Brien at Ubiquitous Marketing (and news editor of PRWeek) announces that starting September 28, PRWeek will be featuring free blogs on its site.
The primary blog will be populated by our entire editorial team, giving our audience a chance to get to know the reporters, editors, production and art editors in a new way.
As someone who spends a lot of his time doing media relations, I think this is great – and I wish more publications did it. It’s a whole lot easier to know what to pitch someone, and more importantly what NOT to pitch them, when you can read them on a regular basis outside the formality of AP style.
If other major publications followed the lead of the few blogging publications, I expect there would be a lot fewer complaints about PR people pitching them stories that don’t fit with their editorial coverage.
I was watching the special edition of Glengarry Glen Ross this evening, and one of the special features on the disc is an interview between Jack Lemmon and Charlie Rose talking about “success.”
Success, said Lemmon, is usually judged by what others think of you, rather than what you think of yourself. Real success can only gained by defining it for yourself. While this line of argument probably won’t fly with your CMO when he asks if a campaign was successful, I believe it’s still an important point to keep in mind when planning a project like a corporate blog.
Bill Sweetman’s on the Canadian marketing blog OneDegree.ca covers a pretty thorough list of metrics that can be used to evaluate success, but what’s missing from this list is the fact that the value of a blog cannot be measured entirely quantitatively. To me, a large part of the benefit of a corporation taking up blogging is in the necessary cultural change that a (good) corporate blog requires.
Success for a corporate blog is dependent largely on how you as an organization defines success. For some, it may be by the numbers, but blogging is something that can only be quantified to a certain degree.
I met with a colleague of mind today who just launched a blog for the theatre company that he works for. It has mediocre stats by any measure, but has markedly increased the number of patrons who introduce themselves to the Artistic Director on opening night because their goal was to make a position that is usually fairly stale and almost figurehead-like more closely tied to the community of the company.
I’ve had job offers, made friends, dated, and made business connections as a result of blogging. I’d consider this fairly successful… but to be honest, I rarely check my stats, if ever. Technorati can’t measure these things because it’s not part of the standard definition of success.
Success can be an improved marketing culture, it can be the quality of feedback from customers, and it can be business relationships (monetary or otherwise) that come from adopting a philosophy of conversation with your customers, with your market and with your entire community.
The benefits of blogs for organizations can go far beyond mere numbers, and before you can say whether or not a corporate blog is indeed successful, take a page from Jack Lemmon and decide exactly what success means to you. ROI is important, but if that’s your sole reason for taking up a corporate blog, you’re best to stick with something a little more traditional.
After posing the question of credibility and gifts yesterday, it seemed like the thing to do would be to actually talk to one of the bloggers who were flown to Seattle for the big product announcement of the Zune. I talked to Glenn Peoples from Coolfer, who was more than willing to talk about his experience and his thoughts on the subject of bloggers accepting gifts.
Should bloggers be accepting junkets? According to Peoples, it depends on a number of factors. “First and foremost,” he says, “the blogger should disclose the junket,” something which he suggests does not happen as often as it should.
“Readers don’t want to get the company line. They want honesty. Lately a lot of people don’t think they can get that honesty in the mainstream media. Blogs are expected to be untainted. That’s a reasonable expectation. The less outside influence in blogs, the better.”
While most reputable news organizations have strict rules about what gifts they can accept, bloggers have no such code of ethics. However, asking a blogger who is making little to no money from their site to self-finance such a trip would be impossible. Glenn insists that the trip had no effect of his objectivity, but that without his expenses paid, travelling to Redmond would not be an option.
“To be honest,” he says, “I would have preferred that they all came to my living room and we all did the interviews and presetation right there. I’m in business school and don’t have a lot of free time, nor do I love 7am flights, but I was presented a wonderful opportunity to see an important new product.”
But what about pressure for positive reviews from the company? Peoples says that there was no pressure to be anything but honest with his readers, and that he would not have accepted the junket had the case been anything but this.
“My name is on my blog. My reputation is on it. That’s very important to me. I’m not trying to win favor with anybody in Redmond. My readers should know that. I strive to present a thoughtful, fair and open-minded blog. My posts on the Zune have been and will be fair and objective.”
Because Microsoft was clear that such favouritism was not necessary, he says that he thought the coverage of Zune by and large was fair an unbiased.
“Positives and negatives were brought out into the open. Personally I don’t think Microsoft cares what is said about the Zune. They want people talking about it, and they want feedback. They want discourse,” he says.
He also adds that while some restrictions were placed on the bloggers who visited, (for example, no photography was permitted), he understands why some limitations had to be put in place when dealling with a prototype product.
“I would have preferred to take photos, but the devices I saw were not final and I understand why Microsoft does not want them photographed,” says Peoples. “Had I taken photos, my readers would have seen demos, not the final product.”
As for the commenters who accused him and others who covered the launch of shilling for Microsoft he said that he respects opposing opinions, but hopes that such characterizations would be based on “substantial concerns and objective reasoning.” He also adds that the negative comments did not surprise him.
“I’m never surprised by negative comments in blog posts. People say all sorts of things in comments sections. I would be surprised if a critic took the time to email me and voice his or her displeasure, or said it to me personally. In fact, I would prefer negative emails. That would show me somebody is being more than a troll.”
As for whether these sorts of junkets and gifts to bloggers will pollute the credibility of bloggers in the future, his answer shows a journalistic dedication to his readers.
“If it turns out that readers don’t want bloggers to accept such trips, I think we shouldn’t accept them,” he says. “Until that happens, we’ll have to see which direction opinion goes and what events influence readers’ opinions.”
