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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.
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.
One of the major challenges facing anyone venturing into the social media PR world is that of how to capture the attention of a critical mass of bloggers. To date, the most effective way to get a blogger to write about a particular product was to offer them an experience of the product by sending them free samples of software, product, music, books or just about anything else not-necessarily-in-exchange for unbiased reviews on those targeted blogs.
For the most part, bloggers strive to keep the process transparent, and usually make it a point to include a disclosure line when talking about a product that they had been given for free. It seems like a perfectly innocuous way to spread word-of-mouth, but how does this practice, regardless of its transparency, affect public perception of those bloggers, and more importantly, of bloggers in general?
Recently, Microsoft flew a handful of bloggers to Seattle for a preview of the new Zune MP3 player. Coolfer, a blog about music and the music industry maintained by Glenn Peoples,
In standard blog form, he was sure to spell out that Microsoft had paid for his trip. His review, for the most part was positive, but pointed out a number of imperfections that could be changed. Having obviously never seen the Zune before, it seemed a fair and balanced review of the product – and chances are, it probably was.
What really made me think about this was when I read one of the comments on the blog from someone named Andrew which read:
It’s a sad day when bloggers become shills in exchange for a free trip to Seattle.
It’s pretty well accepted throughout the “true believers” in the social media PR space that offers from companies should come with few strings attached in terms of the tone of the article – in other words, a free sample can’t come with the caveat that they have to write about how great it is. But for the general public, who doesn’t spend its time thinking about how social media PR works may not understand that unwritten rule, or even believe that it exists.
I can’t say I blame them, personally. Right now, trust of bloggers is high, but how long will that last for? How long before companies who are offering all-expenses paid trips to bloggers start insisting on positive coverage?
The only remedy for this is transparency. Bloggers must continue to keep these arrangements out in the open, letting their readers know when they have accepted a gift of the thing they are reviewing.
Corporations who wish to play in this space have a similar responsibility to keep word of mouth from becoming polluted. My guess would be that Microsoft placed a fairly strict NDA on the bloggers for what they could and could not talk about in terms of the agreement. To my mind, we need to make sure, as much as we can, that bloggers we want to work with to spread the word of our product are legally able to be as transparent as they need to be in order to keep the public trust that bloggers have thus far built up.
(Full disclosure: If any companies want to send me presents, I’ll gladly take them. I do loves me some swag.)
The email server is down at work. For designers, not such a big deal. For the PR guy – it’s like getting your methadone cut off in the middle of detox. As much as I try to ignore the fact that my emails are piling up on the server and there’s nothing I can do about it, I keep being reminded of how dependent on that little beeping device in my pocket and on the soothing blinky notifications in Outlook.
You don’t realize how dependent you are on a tool until you can’t use it. For now, I’ll just bide my time until the server coughs up the 500 new emails into my Blackberry sometime this evening.
As I mentioned in my first post on the subject, I’m going to be spending the next few months helping a great cause called Movember. I also mentioned that I’m going to be using this blog to detail the PR efforts that we put into the event. I’m thinking about this as “open-source PR”. Hopefully, in addition to getting people talking about the event, the next few months chronicled herein will be educational both to my readers and myself.
That said, in this post, I’m going to begin to outline our PR strategy for Movember. Of course, I won’t be going into specifics of things that haven’t happened yet, to avoid putting people on the spot, but this will give a general overview of how we’re planning to make Movember a success. If you’ve got any feedback, feel free to leave a comment or email me (my first name at ryananderson.ca). Or, if you an internet geek, and I’m online, feel free to Skype me (see the sidebar).
So, without further ado, here is the bare-bones Movember PR Strategy for 2006:
Audiences: who are we talking to?
Demographically: young men, aged 18 – 30
Geographically: Major markets across Canada with a strong focus on Toronto.
Psychographic:1. Motivated young men with a sense of humour. A strong sense of social justice and the desire to make the world a better place. At the same time, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. 2. Health-conscious and athletic men willing to devote their time to the cause.
Doers:
- Canadian Men
- Friends and family of cancer survivors
- Already participating “Mo Bros”
Influencers:
- Clubs and Fraternities
- Bloggers
- Media
- Testicular cancer survivors
- Celebrity personalities
Enablers:
- Girlfriends
- Employers
- Sponsors
Targeted Media:
Toronto Newpapers & Magazines: City reporters, health & lifestyle beat reporters as well as weekly papers
National Dailies: Health and Lifestyle reporters as well as pop culture beat writers
Canadian Magazines: Men’s focus (UMM, Toro, etc.) to cover long-lead story, supplement with “best moustaches of all time”
Toronto Local Television: pitch coverage of opening event, plus an advance story to generate buzz
Local Radio: Public interest news story PSAs
Outcomes: what action do we want them to take?
- University dorms, fraternities and groups participate in Movember as a group effort
- Workplaces promote Movember internally
- Mo Bros blog their Movember experience and progress
- Mo Bros recruit other participants
- Bloggers take part in Movember, and link to the Movember blog
- Girlfriends support boyfriends in growing a moustache / helping with fundraising
- Participants spread the word through social media (tag their moustache shots “movember” on flickr)
- Major brands aimed at men sponsor Movember in cash and in-kind
- Celebrity personalities take part in Movember publicly
So, that’s the first part of the strategy. Stay tuned for tactics, which will be coming up soon, simply because I don’t want this to be a 2000-word post.
As I said, if you have any brilliant ideas, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. And, as always, please take a minute to mention Movember on your blog if you have one. We’ll be making some changes to the site in the next week, so stay tuned for that.
Guy Kawasaki, one of my favourite bloggers, writes a great piece on the "Top Ten Things to Learn This School Year." I’ve said many times that the problem with a lot of recent grads I see in any field is that they think that their degree is going to get them a job. Totally wrong. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve not once been even asked about what my degree was in (good thing, too, since mine sounds TOTALLY made up).
I especially like the part on learning how to negotiate. I did a lot of that when I was in school, with the registrar, with the professors of courses I was trying to get into – it was pretty much a daily thing. One of the advantages of going to a school with an utterly incompetent administration, I suppose.
If you do things right, you’ll learn more from your experience at university than you will from your classes. Of course, you should probably learn something from your classes, too.
I’ve been thinking about the press release a lot lately, as, I would guess, have most other PR bloggers traversing this whole online media thing. Todd Defren, the social media release’s daddy, has significantly influenced the format of my own releases – most notably in the inclusion of the "purpose-driven" delicious links and Technorati tags. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve been happy with the results so far.
Dan Greenfield of Bernaise Source posts a great article for PR n00bz and pros alike. His Five Considerations for Better Press Releases are rudimentary, but even the best writers can use a refresher.
Your style – How often do you see a release begin with company X “announces?” Reviewing our releases and those of other companies, more often than I realized. Note to self: STOP. There are times when “announce” is the exact verb to use, but not every time. Be selective. And speaking of verbs – they power your release. As our writing coach told us, don’t let adjectives tell the story for you.
For instance, I sent out a release with this very headline this week. I probably wouldn’t change it even if I could, but the next time I find myself "announcing" anything, I’ll probably stop and think before finalizing it.
Maybe I’m misreading the situation, but it seems like no matter how much I read about PR or talk to the PR people themselves, nobody can agree on whether or not it is okay to call a reporter that you don’t know to follow up on a release or pitch that you’ve sent.
Richard Laermer of the Bad Pitch Blog talks about following up with enthusiasm, and about how many possible stories are killed by a lack of follow up on the part of the PR person.
David Parmet of the Marketing Begins at Home posts a quote from Paid Content about calling journalists to follow up on releases and says "This behaviour is beyond dumb."
I’m inclined to agree more with Richard than David on this one. In fact, from my experience, the idea that once PR people send a release by email that journalists have it and will call you if they need anything is fundamentally false.
In my work as communications director for a theatre company, I had about a dozen reporters who I talked with on a regular basis over the span of five years, and who (for the most part) liked us and what we did. Yet, whenever I sent a release, I would wait a day, and then call each and every one of them to follow up on the release and ask if they needed any more information.
About 50% of the time, I would get… "Huh – I don’t remember getting that. Hold on a second. Oh – here it is! Sure, we’ll send a camera."
That’s a lot of missed opportunities if I didn’t follow up.
Journalists get a lot of email, and will inevitably miss the odd one that is obviously just another release. By following up, we’re at least making sure that the reporter is aware of what we have sent, and if they’re waiting on an editor or are simply not interested, that’s important information as well.
I’m not advocating calling every reporter every time you send them anything, but sometimes, it’s a necessary evil. As long as you are professional, prepared and respectful of the reporter’s time, they should have nothing to complain about.
