Ben McConnell at Church of the customer weighs unwanted marketing in 2008.. It came in at 21.5 pounds a new record. Multiply it times every household in the US and elsewhere and you find entire forests taken down to send us this crap. A fleet of supertankers delivering the fuel to fly it and deliver the drivel to our mail boxes, then into our regional landfills.
Beth Dunn, says she's reading Naked Conversations right now, something I haven't done for a couple of years. She makes reference to Claire, the fictitious character who blogged for Vichy, a L'Oreal Cosmetics brand. I had forgotten about old Claire, who we covered in a Chapter Called Doing it Wrong.
Beth used Claire to illustrate her views on what brands are and are not, a conversation that keeps popping coming up over here. I loved not only the clarity of her thinking, but the way she articulates. For example:
"A brand isn’t my friend (or fan) on FaceBook. A brand isn’t someone I will follow on Twitter. A brand isn’t, in short, a person. It’s an abstract idea. Same goes for a product. A car is a car. A pipe is a pipe. A cigar is, in fact, just a cigar.'
I wish I had been so articulate when I was debating with a couple of weeks back when I was debating with Jeremiah Owyang. I objected to his even asking if brands should have Twitter accounts. My simple answer is: "Of course not. The entire concept is entirely lame.
Beth does an excellent job of telling you why.
According to CNET's Alex Moskalyuk, US Ad revenue will grow to $152.3 billion in 2007 a gain of 2.3%. Internet of course will enjoy the biggest gain of 16 %, but according to the ZDNet Research, Cable network advertising will grow by 5.9 % and consumer and Sunday Magazines will grow by 5.9%.
Maybe, these guys know what they are doing. Maybe not. They just might be stuffing a dead horse with dollars.
I was just giving a client some advice and actually I thought it was pretty good advice, so I thought I'd blog about it. He just paid for the advice, but you guys can have it for free, but let's keep it a secret a from him, okay?
We were discussing competitors. He has a startup and has not yet come to market. So it's frustrating when there are competitors who are already out in the marketplace, making announcements and getting customers, while we fine tune the 1s and 0s that will become his product.
He's like to take a swipe at them, and I counsel heavily against it. It's likely that I'd council against it even if he had a product.
Years ago, I had a client who was very sharp at marketing. He used to tell me: "Love your competitors. Look at them as a prospect would look at them. Look at their product, their web site and find every reason why someone would want to be their customer.
Now, shut up and sit down, until you have that something and the market can use it. Look at their website and find every reason why someone would want to use it.
Then make yours better. Do not come to market until you can make yours better.
The idea is not to beat the competitor. The idea is to help the customer win.
It's a lethal strategy.
Alex, the Scrapblog Community Guy has taken it on himself to send an orgy of link love to the bloggers who helped us get ready for prime time by trying out the product last week.
What a great idea, Alex. Thanks all you bloggers out there.
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Alex, the Scrapblog Community Guy has taken it on himself to send an orgy of link love to the bloggers who helped us get ready for prime time by trying out the product last week.
What a great idea, Alex. Thanks all you bloggers out there.
Technorati Tags: scrapblog
In a Businesswire announcement this morning, Soundview, the executive book summary organization has named Naked Conversations to its list of 30 best books of 2007. We were selected, the release says, from 1200 business books.
Soundview offers newsletter summaries of books to busy executives.
They also provided professional studio time for Robert and me to read excerpts from our book for a CD that they are also marketing. I was impressed at how adept Robert is as a voice narrator. If the video podcasting thing doesn't work out, maybe he can get a job as studio talent.
This is our second citation. Earlier, Amazon named us #6 on its list of best 2006 books in its technology and internet category.
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I've been reading Presentation Zen, lately, Garr Reynolds blog on presentation and the language and look of it. He is a veteran of the world of corpspseak. He sees the elegance I see in simple presentation and articulation. It's a good read. Give him a glance, when you get the chance.
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David Parmet, Brian Oberkirch and I have a few things in common. We are all recovering publicists, having spent significant portions of our professional lives practicing traditional PR for agencies both large and small. All three of us are also completely immersed in social media and all three of us try to consult for food mortgage and other sustenance.
David and Brian have begun to consult PR agencies on why they need to adopt social media and how they should go about doing it. I have agreed to join in this endeavor on an as needed basis. All three of us have done a fair amount of this sort of work over the past year. I have been in talking with companies like CNET, Wells Fargo and Hitachi data Systems to discuss blog strategy and I am eager to do more of this sort of work.
By focusing on PR and advertising agencies, I think David and Brian are choosing a prime market. The role of the PR practitioner is changing on a fundamental level and the ad agencies already know they are being challenged to find new strategies appropriate for the interactive world. I look forward to working with them and their clients.
One additional note--this is a non-monogomous relationship. I have previously announced that I will be available for clients of Hubbub, a next generation agency formed by Giovanni Rodriquez, yet another recovering publicist. Likewise, Joseph Jaffe and Shel Holtz, two more social media savvy communications professionals have formed Crayon offering similar next-generation services.
We all know and respect each other. We all see huge opportunities and expect to be joined by many other quality consultants.
While some are these days declaring an end to blogging and social media, others see new beginnings as the new, improved ways for business communications swim into the mainstream.
I have long been pleased that most of my Comment and Trackback spam has not been from legitimate companies but from your usual run of the mill slimeballs. I'm fearful that this is about to change. For the past few days, I have had several Best Western Hotel Messages inappropriately attached to this blog apparently by Best Western Hotels.
I sincerely help that this is being done, not by the chain itself, but by some subcontractor who is running amuck and needs to be hauled in. I hope that hauling comes soon. If legitimate companies start stooping to littering the blogosphere with unwanted and ineffective crap, it will be a sorry day indeed.
Is it just me, or are others of you having similar experiences?
My old friend Don Thorson, who's now VP marketing at Jajah, a new telephony company, expressed some frustration with putting me into the right box. In an e:note he wrote:
I don't know how to treat you these days - as a consultant or a blogger. So here's the question. We have some cool "phone industry news" going out on Monday. It relates to your Dec 2nd / "The importance of Cheap Talk" post and the recent Skype announcement about raising prices.
I understand Don's frustration. We live in an era when many of us wear multiple hats. Jajah is in a new telephony category, which I am writing about with increasing frequency. I also have a client that is in this category. This is the same for my friend Andy Abramson, who has a very respected VOIP blog and a few clients in the same category.
Last week I sat down with Carnet Williams, who had been given old data points on me. He sat down to hear what I could do for him as a PR guy. I sat down, primarily to cover the fund raising technology he was launching. I couldn't figure out why he was giving me his product and financial plans. He got pretty confused when I hauled out my camera, and asked him if everything he had to say was on the record.
Gawd, I feel like I have multiple personalities. Transparency gets tedious. But it is so important. And if I am confusing friends like Don, then I am confusing lots of other people as well, so let's see if I can give you an executive summary of who I am and what I do.
Actually, I have three roles and they are all pretty much interdependent of each other:
Toward the goal of all three of these endeavors, I prefer a face-to-face meeting in which we have a simple, interactive conversation. I hate PowerPoint and monologues. I hate the implication that I should listen up and write this down. i think this makes me a great deal more like my readers.
It is sometimes hard for me to keep things straight. I know a great deal of confidential information that I will not write about until it is made public. I sometimes have competitive information on a client's competitor and I keep it to myself, because it was given to me as a writer and my credibility is my fundamental religion in all the things I do.
I hope this helps, Don.
One of my favorite ways to support my writing habit is coaching startups selected to strut their stiff for six minutes on the DEMO stage. Over the years, I've coached quite afew company executives and a significant percentage of them went on to either win DEMO god awards or somehow or other wildly succeed because of their DEMO experience.
I have attended over 15 these events and I know what works and does not work. I've also worked with more than 150 startups, so I know about all the focus and resource issues.
I use a process that has proven pretty effective and the greatest success comes with about six weeks of preparation, although I am available for shorter stints including a single afternoon crash course.
Demo is usually in the middle or end of February. This year it starts Jan 31, approximately six weeks from now. If you are presenting at DEMO and would be interested in my services, this would be a good time to contact me through email here.
My friend and former client Gibu Thomas over at Sharpcast has been in start up launch mode and has invested a fair portion of his company's resources in presenting at some of the major tech conferences. Most of us know that people pay to go to these top tier industry schmoozes and companies pay to present.
Wat most people do not realize is the chasm of difference that goes into the production. Some producers, such as DEMO, go through agony to select the best possible companies and guide them toward making the best possible presentations. Others, apparently including Web 2.0, seem more intent in getting the money and letting the companies flounder through an experience that would make Kafka wince.
Gibu has a long and passionate post of the differences in his personal experience. Any tech entrepreneur should read it. Any conference attendee should read it and keep it in mind while watching some company founder struggle against the demon of shoddy production at their own financial expense. Mostly, producers should read this and be called upon the carpet for it.
I spent years covering conferences for Conferenza, one of the best resources on the topic. This was among our hot buttons, getting us on the dirt list with many producers for pointing out their shoddy preparation of presenting companies and we lauded Chris Shipley and DEMO for precisely the same reason.
For producers, there is not that significant a cost for building quality in. All three of your communities deserve it.
Chris Barrows, The Business Coach cites a portion of Naked Conversations Chapter 3 where Yossi Vardi tells the story of how his son and three friends founded Mirabilis, whose product ICQ became AOL Instant Messenger. He uses it to frame a talk on Conversational Marketing
In comments, Beverly Hamilton [link is to her promotional website--not a blog] braids conversational and viral marketing as one and the same thing. Lots of people do this and it always makes me a bit nervous, even though I'm going against conventional jargon.
The two have many similarities. They both leverage word of mouth in the hope of low cost, high return product or service adoption. But it seems to me that they are separated from each other at inception.
Lets look at the generics first:
I've also had quite a few conversations in my life and blogging has increased both the quantity and quality of them. Many conversations have enriched me. others have entertained me, redirected me, led me to valuable information, saved me money, warned me out of dangerous waters or urban neighborhoods. Some have hurt my feelings, inspired me...Quite a few are very forgettable but only one a mugger in New York City in 1968 threatened my health.
I've had a few viruses in my day and all of them threatened my health. While people invite me to join a conversation, virus carriers attack me, often surreptitiously. In a few cases, they laid me down for several days with fever and other nasty side effects. Worse, I inadvertently infested people I loved. When I was done with these viral intrusions I was weakened by the experience. I could extend this observation into computer viruses as well, but let's leave that aside for now.
Instead, let's look at conversational v. viral marketing. While they often appear in the same manner, they really are quite different or so it seems to me.
A viral marketing campaign may start on a whiteboard. They want to take something and push it out one-directionally. They hope to infect customers with something; to inject an additive into word of mouth engines. In almost all cases, the objective is money or getting someone elected. If they give you something, viral marketers are measuring that in terms of cost of goods sold.
By contrast a Conversational Marketer's objective is to establish a mutually beneficial dialog. They also want an ROI but they understand that it is easier and faster to achieve this by being generous in conversation, by establishing credibility, transparency and trust. They understand they can make more money from better products and services by listening to customers and prospects some of whom may enter the conversation passionately filled with rage. By listen to the enraged and the impassioned, conversational marketers figure out how to adjust course and give people what they want, rather than try to persuade them to buy something they don't want.
If you have not yet figured out why I post nearly 1000 times a year, let me explain that I am a conversational marketer. I'd love it if every reader buys my book, hires me to consult or pays a conference producer because I'm speaking at their event. But if you don't do that, then it's nice when you just come here leave comments here, or pick up what I'm talking about on your own blog or at your water cooler or in your car pool or over your backyard fence. Yes, I'm marketing myself, and I'm trying to build a personal brand. To do this, I try to be generous as often as I can.
But the only virus I want to spread is enthusiasm for the emerging social media.
It was just a few months ago, when I first discovered Kami Wilson Huyse. She started dropping comments onto my blog when I wrote on marketing and PR-related subjects. Sometimes she agreed with me and other times not. But each time, she added something of value to the conversation.
Now and then, she took the conversation over to her own blog where she took it in new directions. That started me reading her other posts and I was impressed. When I thought she had something useful or interesting, I started pointing my readers to it as a service to them.
Kami seems to me to be a glowing example of how a latecomer gains topical prominence in a short time in the blogosphere. She may never rival Scoble in mass audience headcounts, but if you read blogs and care about PR chances are more likely than not that you will find Kami and continue to read her.
That's why she's the third of five interviews I'm conducting as I revisit the issue of PR and blogging in preparation for my Ottawa speaking tour. Here is what she has to say:
1. Can you tell me something about your background and career before you got active in social media?
I spent most of my 12-plus year career on the client-side of public relations, working for America’s Charities and then the Manufactured Housing Institute. Both are large national organizations, where I served in many functions, from media spokesperson, to running major national public relations campaigns and performing issues management. I opened My PR Pro in 2002 to serve both local and national clients, including the Red Cross pro bono, MHI, SeaWorld San Antonio and Time Warner Cable.
2. How and when did you get into social media and blogging?
I started Communication Overtones in early November last year as a sandbox to build on my skill in social media and to transfer this knowledge to my clients. In music, an overtone is higher acoustical frequency than the fundamental note. I felt social media was becoming the overtone to communication and felt that I needed become proficient in using the tools and in understanding the culture around it.
3. Your blog seems to have very rapidly risen to prominence. What did you do to make this happen?
"Prominence" is a big word. My goal is just to share the things I learn as I go along, and to record them for myself as well. I am glad that it resonates with a few people out there and that people come to read and comment. My goal was to build relationships with other PR professionals around the world, and I have found the blog an ideal place to do this.
4. What has this blog done for your business?
It has had an immediate impact. My business has already expanded by 30 percent this year alone as a direct result of the blog, and I have contracts in hand that show at least a 50 percent increase next year. I have also been able to sufficiently grow my network to implement the virtual agency concept that I envisioned when I launched My PR Pro. I am now working with a number of talented independent practitioners and agencies across the U.S. and the world. The Internet and social media tools have made possible a distributed workgroup of specialists that stretches across geographic boundaries.
5. What advice do you have for PR practitioners?
I have three thoughts about what make someone great at public relations:
(1) a willingness to learn;
(2) the heart of a public advocate; and
(3) trusted and perceptive counselor to top management.
6. What is you vision for the future of PR?
I see the role of the PR practitioner as a facilitator, making sure that access is granted to those who need it and that the public gets what it wants from the organization. My vision is that public relations will live up to its definition as a two-way exchange of information between a company and its stakeholders. Arthur Page was the first VP of public relations for AT&T, and I see PR through his lens. Somewhere in the 1930s, he wrote, "So we, like all other companies, live by public approval and roughly speaking, the more approval you have the better you live. This is the fundamental reason for seeking public approval. The fundamental way of getting it is to deserve it.” Amen to that!
7. How has blogging changed your perspective on business? On life in general?
I feel like I have been in an aggressive graduate-level study program for the last year, I have learned so much. One of the biggest challenges I faced was the notion that I would have to be up-front and center about my opinions. Being able to learn how to do that effectively has helped me to have more confidence.
8. Do you have some useful do’s and don’t for getting started on a business blog?
Yes, I have a three-step social media process that I advocate to my clients: Active Listening, Outreach, and Engage. In the first phase, I recommend they spend a lot of time monitoring, listening, reading and learning. Then they formulate a strategy to reach out to other bloggers in the segment in which they hope to build a presence. Last, they can engage by launching their own blog.
9. Do you feel social media is an extension of a corporate PR program or something entirely new?
I want to emphasize that I think social media strategies aren’t for every company. However, I do think that an active listening program is essential, so I guess I fall in the “extension of PR” crowd with one important caveat. At least for now, social media is the way that some influential consumers have chosen to voice their opinions. It pays to keep your eye on what is being said about you and your company. If we subscribe to the two-way version of communication, we have to listen. You can ask a number of companies and individuals that have been involved in what I have dubbed a “firememe” if social media is a force to be reckoned with: Kryptonite, Dan Rather, Dell, McDonalds, the New York Times and the list goes on. Like it or not, social media and its effects have become a part of our job
.
10. What sage advice you can add to what you’ve said above?
Get some sleep. Don’t let this stuff keep you up at night. Social media is time consuming and the immediate feedback aspect can be addictive, make sure to keep it in perspective and set limits. Your comments will wait until tomorrow.
It should be noted that Kami's written responses to my questions came in at 10:45, her time, once again indicating that none of us always follow our own advice.
Is it just me, or has Hugh been hitting it out of the park more often lately? Maybe he's inspired by all the Stormhoek I suspect he's sampling. I wonder if he just gets paid in product.
Anyway, I felt this new label design is just brilliant. I want to drink deeply of what's inside.
When I first met Brian Oberkirch, I had no idea how much we shared in common. He was sitting on a panel between executives from the Washingtonpost.com and the Austin Statesman and he just took the show away from them as he discussed his experience as a citizen-journalist with his Slidell Hurricane Damage blog. I've since come to know him well and respect both his vision and professionalism.
He's the second of at least four people I'll interview on the issue the changing role of PR in the social media age. I am working this issue in part, because in Naked Conversations, our chapter on PR depicted the profession in a change or die situation, which was perhaps just a bit harsh I'm preparing for a series of talks at the end of this month in Ottawa and Toronto where I'll be speaking to PR, marketing and government communications officers. I'm using that talk as a chance to revisit the issue, asking people who I think have changed and are flourishing as they figure out how to stitch new businesses with their traditional training.
So, in that light and toward those goals, heeere's Brian:
1. Brian, for the benefit of our studio audience can you give us a little professional background on yourself.
Sure. I've done a number of things that revolve around my main passions: coming up with ideas & writing.
I've been a reporter and radio news guy, literature professor, ad agency strategist and creative, PR guy and marketing consultant. I've worked for international brands like Pergo, Nokia and Samsung, sexy tech startups and staid, successful mid-sized companies. I started an agency devoted to social media last year, and now consult companies on marketing, social media and web application development.
2. You have described yourself to me as a fellow “recovering publicist.” What made you decide to get out?
I never had a 'Road to Damascus' moment, nor was I ever really a publicist, per se. I started incorporating blogs and other forms of social media into my marketing program recommendations in late 2000 (spurred on by the success 37 Signals was having with their company blog, Signal v. Noise). By 2003 or so, people were actually saying yes to such projects and, gradually, I started to de-emphasize traditional forms of PR. Stepping back, I think as PR pros, we've put way too much emphasis on media relations. I understand the economics of that practice, but with the new tools available I wonder how long the old models will be attractive for either client or agency.
3. Can you describe your current business?
I work in three areas:
(1) Unmarketing--growing a tribe of passionate users by making remarkable things that speak to real user issues
(2) Social media programs--using blogs, wikis, podcasting, feeds and other tools to have better conversations with those who matter to your business, and
(3) Consulting on the development of Web applications (user needs, features, marketing, etc.)
4. Can you tell me how and when you got into social media?
I've been on the Web since there was a Web. (Remember how cool Gopher was at the time?) As far as getting into blogs, like most people, I started reading a ton of them. Camworld and Signal v. Noise were probably the first that I read routinely. I started blogging in 2003, got serious about using a feed reader to track things, and started podcasting and video casting just this year. To my surprise, podcasting has much more impact than I would have thought. Seems like I hear more back from people about pod casts than blog posts.
5. What’s your take on the future of traditional PR?
Well, I have a skewed view of traditional PR (since I spent most of my time at bigger agencies like Public is), but I would say that we'll see diminishing returns. Just as traditional advertising packs less wallop, it makes sense that mass media relations will start to be less central. At the same time, I expect the PR function to increase in importance as analysis, interpretation and timely response to the market will be more needed. I think PR people have a golden opportunity to take a more central role if they don't cling to old-fashioned publicity/gate keeping/messaging models.
6. If you ran a traditional PR agency, what would you do to adjust course because of the social media?
I think the best agencies have always been open to incorporating new stuff and cross-pollinating their work with great ideas from other disciplines. One thing I'd do is have my team become much more net Native to use Fred Wilson's term. Having an Internet Guy (and they are usually guys) is all well & good, but is the whole shop reading relevant blogs? Are they watching feeds for their clients? Are they up on how wikis are becoming a real alternative for internal communication? Take it beyond the brown bag lunch stage and make sure everyone is getting cozy with these new tools.
7. How should PR people deal with bloggers and blogging?
By soaking in it. When I say 'don't pitch bloggers,' what I mean is don't pull 100 blogger emails from your Bacon's list, spam them and think you're doing outreach to those folks. Of course they want relevant information. But they don't want to feel like you're selling them. And don't waste their time. The nice thing is, it's a corrective medium. Your bad pitches will be posted and mocked immediately, so you'll learn quickly. If you spend anytime in the medium, you'll get the ground rules. Be open. Add value to the conversation. Give it away. Talk back when people comment and ask you something. Link. Link. Link. I think PR people mess up most when they just pop in to a blog neighborhood to see what they can get out of it, with no sense of setting up shop and sticking around. People don't blog in their spare time to give your client more coverage.
8. Do you see a future for traditional PR and marketing folk who continue to practice PR as they always have?
I know we talk a lot about dinosaurs and how everything is changing, etc., but I think it will be gradual. If you don't eat well, keep smoking, never exercise, eventually that will catch up to you. Same thing will apply. You'll be able to get away with it for a while, but there will be a tremendous opportunity cost.
9. How does traditional marketing move from monologue to dialog?
Simple: listen.
Then incorporate cues into your product development and your marketing communications that show you're listening. If your products are worth talking about, people will tell you most of what you need to know. In a way, I don't think any of this is new. But now, word of mouth is much more visible, to marketers and to other people who might want your products or services. Your community is much smarter about what they want than you are. Humble yourself enough to pay attention and respond.
10. Say something else that is pithy, witty or brilliant, that would look good on a powerpoint slide.
Social media is about connection, not content.
Social media is about them, not you.
Social media may be cheaper initially, but it takes far more homework.
Get small fast. (Niche is nice. Think smaller feature sets, more targeted audiences, less chatter from you, and so on.)
Kathy Sierra has both with and wisdom. I've been quote her Clueless Manifesto since she posted it last February. Now she's outdone herself by explaining why good marketing is like a good lover.
As I've mentioned, I am going to be doing a series of talks to PR and marketing executives as well as government communications officers in Ottawa and Toronto at the end of this month as the guest of Joe Thornley.
I'm going to ask PR people who seem to me to have made the transition from strictly traditional to social media, to give some advice that my audiences may find useful. David Parmet was among the first who came to mind.
If you think you have something to add to this conversation, please join in--or email me here.
1. David, for the benefit of our studio audience can you give us a little professional background on yourself.
After casting about for a career I discovered a talent for media relations while working on NY Mayor David Dinkins's re-election campaign in 1993. Since then I've worked in the public and private sector - mainly in agencies and mainly for technology clients.
Completely apart from this - I've been on the Internet since the days of BBSs and dial up with 300 baud modems. My wife and I were members of Mindvox - one of the first ISPs and Internet communities in New York in the early 1990s. I've had an email address since 1993 and been blogging since about the turn of the century. But it wasn't until a few years ago that the convergence between social media and marketing became apparent to me.
2. Who do you currently represent?
A handful of small start-ups with a focus on social media. Currently, I'm working with Coco Myles, BackBeat Media and BlogTalkRadio. I'm also doing some work with a firm involved in book and author promotions to bring them into the social media world. I also consult with agencies on specific projects and provide general advice on developing social media programs for their clients.
3. How do you get new business?
A combination of word-of-mouth, my blog and aggressive networking.
4. Your blog got you the legendary EnglishCut account. Can you briefly tell the story of what happened and what you did for them?
Hugh MacLeod and I know each other through our respective blogs. Hugh was working with Thomas Mahon, a bespoke tailor who began blogging about the culture and history of Savile Row in early 2005. Hugh suggested I could take advantage of Thomas's blog and see if any of the NY area fashion and style press would be interested in speaking with him.
We got hits for the blog in Boing Boing and Fast Company as well as an interview on the BusinessWeek blog. What was even more interesting was coverage in places like the NY Times Style Magazine and Men's Health that had nothing at all to do with the blog - but the fact that a Savile Row tailor was so open and willing to talk about his business made Thomas a natural source for these publications. The Men's Health article was very interesting - the writer was doing a piece on 'how to spot a cheap suit and since Thomas was unavailable at the time to talk, quotes were pulled out of the blog and run in the final piece.
5. Exactly what happened to make you give up on traditional agencies?
I faced a combination of not being able to work with the kind of clients I wanted to and not being able to develop and execute social media plans for any clients. Unfortunately, these sort of clients and programs can't work in agencies since they don't pay very well - the companies are too small and the programs too ill-defined (at least in ways traditional PR would define and invoice them).
When I jumped, in February 2005 I had a fairly well-read blog about my family life and I was very interested in blogging about PR and ways PR and social media could work together. However I was working with an agency that viewed blogging as no more than a fad. So after a heart to heart with my wife, a gut check and a long argument with my boss - I took the plunge. I've never looked back.
In retrospect, leaving agency life was the best thing for my career.
6. If you ran a traditional PR agency, what would you do to adjust
course because of blogging and social media?
I would encourage everyone in the agency to blog, podcast, whatever..
about anything at all that occurred to them. By immersing everyone in the agency into social media it will become a natural way of doing business, not something they add on at the end of the program.
I would also make sure that social media is integrated into every plan - and not viewed as a separate practice. I would also reward employees for social media hits as they would be rewarded for mainstream hits.
7. What should traditional marketers do to adjust course?
Understand that social media is not something some strange tribe of kids or hipsters is doing but that it's now something so common to so many people that it's no longer 'new' or different. Many people go to Google before going to the Yellow Pages. In a few years that will be most people.
Traditional marketing is not going to just go away, but it's now part of a larger field. There are more options open to marketers than ever before, so look at this as an opportunity and not a threat.
8. Do you see a future for traditional PR and marketing folk who continue to practice PR as they always have?
Yes. There will always be a market for traditional big-brand PR as practiced by the big agencies. Fortune 500 companies with big ad and PR budgets aren't going away.
I would however see a great deal of money coming from those Fortune 500 companies now spent on social media campaigns in addition to traditional marketing. If the big agencies are smart, they will see this as an opportunity and develop plans to incorporate social media into what they do - otherwise folks like you and I are going to get very rich.
9. What's your perception of how blogging impacts media relations?
As I mentioned, I will be Joe Thornley's guest at the end of this month in a series of presentations to PR, marketing and government communications officers. I'm asking a few of the PR practitioners I think have done a superior job of integrating social media with PR.
David Parmet was among the very first to come to mind and I will use some of what he has to say in my talks. If you think you can add to this conversation, please email me at shel@itseemstome.net.
They are now so intertwined that to see them as separate or different is missing the point entirely. If you are in tech PR how would you define Mike Arrington, Charlene Li or Om Malik? If you are pitching celebrity news, would you put Gawker or Jossip on the 'b' list because they are just blogs? (FYI, I know agency folks who do exactly this.. but I digress)
For smart PR people, this just means many more targets to pitch our clients. For the rest it means a lot of missed opportunities to get their clients some ink.
David Meerman Scott announces on one blog that he will be writing a book on the new marketing and PR on his personal blog. He says his publisher will be Wiley, who was our publisher, and the first publisher to ever allow and encourage authors to write a book by blogging it.
This is a subject that needs a book on it. So many marketers have lost there way, and can be helped by a new guide. While Naked Conversations had a chapter on PR and the problems it faced, we left lots of room for consructive advice n how to be effective and credible in the new Conversational Era.
For Scoble and I, the experience was terrific. With the blogosphere as our collaborator, we wrote a much better book than we would have done without it.
Good luck, David.
Well, I'm back from my spontaneous Tahoe weekend and I've woken up to the reality that I have nothing on my appointment book until Sept. 24. Last week, a couple of people had asked me if I could help get them ready to present at Demo and I declined because I was headed out on the this world tour.
If either of you are reading this blog, my message is this: "Come back. Come back."
I have time and inclination to help companies get ready for Demo. It's something, I'm pretty good at. Last February, I coach three of the 70 companies who presented. All three got Demo God Awards.
I also:
I've posted about my availability once before and the results were quite strong. I'm hoping that history repeats itself. If you are interested please email me. An operator is sitting by.
I was recently fairly harsh to a couple of mass marketing blog attempts by McDonald's and Procter & Gamble. More than one reader took me to task saying I would be more credible if I toned down.
Of course my first instinct was to prove that I was right and to defend my edgy style. But, in the end, I swallowed a pride pill and took my own advice to listen--really listen--to what sincere bloggers were telling me. They were saying that while I might have useful advice to give corporate and mass marketing companies but I was damaging my credibility by shouting at them.
They were right of course, and I've tried recently to state arguments on this blog from the same balanced tone that Robert and I used in writing Naked Conversations.
The fact that large corporations and mass merchants are dipping their toes into blogging's sea of change is good news in a great many ways. The pioneers of blogging should hang out a sign saying, "Welcome, big guys. Seriously."
But we who have perhaps overdosed on the glories of blogging get possessive over this channel even as we try to evangelize it. We are fearful that the big guys, the clever marketing and advertising folk will game the system, will start cramming it with the kind of crap that screwed up email, web sites and so any other "message deliver systems" because they do not yet comprehend that this is not a message delivery system, but a conversational mechanism.
And candidly, just about every mass merchant's attempt I've seen so far--at least from American-based corporations has failed because they are filled the kind of gimmicks they use in advertising--loyalty rewards, characters, fake comments and other gimmicks. None of these will gain much for them in terms of the relationships, loyalty and word of mouth generation they want to get in the blogosphere. At least I hope not.
On a global scale, there are several examples of mass merchants who have done remarkable things with blogs. France's ME LeClerc, the head of the leading independent retailers association blogs personally on his views of life and politics, showing his readers the heart and soul of the person running the association. In Japan, Nissan let a product manager blog about their new city car, in the first person present voice. This was unheard of in Japanese culture. Yet it worked and the car is a success. Even P&G had a success in japan. They asked housewives to vote on what they wanted in a new detergent and then they created it. The product, I am told, is a success in the market.
Most mass merchants have yet to learn that the power of the blog is in the simple, interactive conversation between real people in the company and in the market the people in the marketplace whom they'd like to attract and retain as customers.
They will. To use a quote from my favorite book, "They will try and fail, try and fail again, then finally succeed." They'll be made wiser for the experience. And their customers will be the ones to make them wiser. That's what happened over at Vichy, l'Oreal skin care division, who started with a character blog that got shouted down by French women, then came back with sonmething mreauthentic and received cheers from the very same audience.
Even the Juicy Fruit people, whose brief contribution to the blogosphere is often singled out as the worst blog ever can learn from blogging. But instead of deceitful and lame gimmicks, they could start a blogging authored for a real person, who could learn from audiences--I'm sure their are many people passionate about gum, although I am not among them. What's the best wrapper? Is gum better in a stick or another shape? Is sweeter better? How important is long-lasting? How do you get gum off of clothing? And so on.
Sooner or later the people at Juicy Fruit, P&G, McDonald's and elsewhere will get clueful. They have lots of time, money and patience. And it is encouraging to see them dabbling their toes in the water, sidling up to ankle depth. They may have entered the ocean at the wrong point, but they'll keep coming back until they get immersed.
While I continue to harbor concerns I think this is a good thing.
And I'm sorry I shouted.
Joe Nocera writes in today's New York Times Business Section about the frustration and anger Apple Computer has stirred in him in its customer support-avoidant policies. He has become aware of them by investing over $10,000 in iPod related stuff then getting told, it will cost at least $250 for the company to fix a broken $300 iPod.
He talks about trying to find a human to contact but was unable to do so from the website or by pricing up the phone. Much of his column seems stirred by the apparent Apple attitude of, "The human you have tried to contact is no longer in service. Please stay on the line..."
Joe, I feel your pain. Too often large companies have used technology to get further away from the customer, and that is a good part of why I'm so heavily on the blogging bandwagon. Blogging is an affordable way for companies to talk with their customers.
