Lost among the alarm bells heralding the death of news media is this interesting finding from the Pew Center for People and the Press, reported in L. Gordon Crovitz’ September 20 Wall Street Journal column: people are consuming more news, not less.
According to the Pew study, Americans are spending more time accessing news than a decade ago. The difference, unsurprisingly, is where they’re getting that news.
Among those in their 30s and 40s, as many people now read news through social networking sites as those who read newspapers. Rather than let an editor they’ve never met decide “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” they’re looking to friends and followers to filter the news for them.
I still enjoy both. I read a hard copy of the paper each morning, but I also fire up my iPad each day to see what friends are sharing on Twitter and Facebook, and to review the online edition of the Wall Street Journal.
The Pew study tells us that while traditional media continue to struggle turning a profit with all these new distribution channels, they are anything but dead. If anything, the news they produce is being seen by more eyeballs than ever before.
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a Guerrilla Marketing workshop at Full Sail University by Mario Saccamango and Wagner of Beloved Experiential.
An old Chinese proverb best sums up their discussion on experiential design:
“Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.”
Unlike traditional marketing which persuades people with ration and facts, experiential marketing takes this a step further and modifies consumer behavior through visual, emotional, mental and physical appeal. The key is to engage them on all these levels to establish relationships and convert consumers to be brand ambassadors. Mario and Wagner further illustrated this phenomenon with a pyramid diagram that showed the growth as each brand ambassador converted and created their own sub-groups of brand ambassadors creating a domino effect. They also show a series of examples.
A powerful example given during their lecture was the Sony VAIO marketing campaign. Sony VAIO wanted to take their stylish laptop to another level beyond just a piece of technology. So they hired models wearing the latest high fashion designer clothing, sporting the trendy Sony laptops and released them on the streets of Manhattan, and in Grand Central Station to pose as live mannequins. This attracted a lot of publicity to the point that Fashion Week eventually picked this up as an installation.
Another example a little closer to home is Beloved’s experiential marketing campaign for Barnie’s Coffee and Tea Company called “Favor Flavor.” This five-phase guerrilla marketing campaign consisting of brand ambassadors donning mobile media units, a street tagging session and more is currently underway http://www.facebook.com/belovedexperiential#!/event.php?eid=146346258729172. It will be interesting to see such a non-traditional marketing campaign hit the streets of Orlando.
Experiential marketing is all about connecting with your consumers by engagement that go above and beyond expectations providing intangible, memorable and most importantly personal experiences and interaction.
I’ve long been bothered by college courses titled “Writing for Public Relations.”
Now I’m seeing conversations in the blogosphere about “Writing for Online Consumption” or “Digital Copywriting.” Yuck!
There’s only one kind of writing … writing for understanding.
Sure, you have to fit your thoughts into 140 characters on Twitter, and twice that in the space allotted by Facebook … but the job of the writer is now, always has been and will forever more be to communicate a message.
Search Engine Optimization forces us to identify and include the words that people are searching for as they surf the Internet in hopes of finding a nugget of information important to their life. Inherent in that science is understanding what people are really looking for. Beyond a word there is a phrase that is used to make up a sentence that conveys a message.
When we write something as part of a public relations program – whether for a news release, a blog post, a newsletter article or a speech – the first job is to assure we’ve conveyed a message. Then we have to look at whether the way in which it is written will fit in the medium through which it will be delivered.
Good writers who have honed their skills can often make that appear to happen in one step … but the truth is that their brains are multi-tasking and the first task is producing a message people can comprehend.
This may be either an amazing demonstration of candor or a powerful example of the danger of digital freedom. In a blog post, Orlando Sentinel editorial cartoonist Dana Summers shared an unpublished cartoon “canned because of the sensitive nature of SeaWorld’s problem.”
Summers is one of the brightest editorial cartoonists in the country and the Sentinel justifiably takes great pride in his work.
Referring to the tragic death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was pulled and held underwater by a killer whale, Summers says “when there’s a death involved it’s best to play it safe.”
As reader comments on the blog post suggest, this could ignite quite a debate over editorial freedom.
We set the entry point low ($1 a day) to encourage the team to participate, but made it strictly voluntary.
I have to say, it was fun watching our team relax a bit this summer, and even more fun to break out the denim on any given day. But, the greatest fun came the first week of September when we broke open the piggy bank to see how far we’d come.
With a little added generosity from the company’s coffers, we were able to donate $250 to the Coalition … this fun campaign made it easy to lend a hand.
On page 54 of the Boy Scout Handbook is the explanation of why “Be Prepared” is the organization’s motto, in which Scouting’s founder Robert Baden-Powell said you had to be prepared “for any old thing.”
I was never into Scouting, but this month is National Preparedness Month and I’ve interestingly found myself talking to three different clients about crisis communications planning … reminding me that while a crisis communications plan can never cover every old thing it must be so flexible that the plan’s principles can be applied to any situation.
One of those discussions was with a prospective client who at first seemed to have confused a crisis communications plan with an operational plan for managing a crisis, but then it became clear he was confused by our insistence that the communications planning include physical assessment of the company’s property.
“Why would that matter … and do you actually have people on your staff who are experts in that field?”
Good question. The answer was “No, we’re not facilities experts, but we certainly look at points where your facilities have the potential to provide a window into a crisis and how that could be exploited by outside interests … or serve as a potentially dangerous gathering spot for curiosity seekers in a crisis. And, you have to understand that your stakeholders are concerned and you’ll need a manageable window to help the news media tell the story in a safe manner.”
No organization should exist without a crisis communications plan. The cost of preparation is cheap insurance.
Here’s some heartening news, shared by former Orlando Sentinel Op-Ed Page Editor and Editorial Board Member Mike Murphy. The Durham, NC, Herald-Sun has pulled the plug on its online comments feature because the discourse was “devolving,” saying “users who would prefer to discuss ideas or the content of the news are being drowned out by a few participants who lob insults at their fellow users.”
The paper suggested people write letters to the editor. That all papers would realize this is only a dream … but certainly worth wishing for. Newspaper comment sections are the sewer of the Internet.
Murphy was managing editor of the team that valiantly tried to provide an online community known as FloridaThinks … an Internet site designed to chronicle some of the state’s most important issues and invite reasoned conversation. That it couldn’t find financial success didn’t prove there isn’t a need for civil discourse … perhaps just that civil people have grown accustomed to the flame throwers who camp out in comment sections.
Responding to an invitation from a colleague to join their professional network on LinkedIn today I browsed the familiar list of “People You May Know” the networking site always encourages you to peruse to see if you should expand your circle. Eighth on that list was the name of a dear recently deceased friend and it made me wonder how long our digital fingerprints live on and whether surviving loved ones can access accounts like this … either to delete them or to update them to inform those who might not have heard the sad news.
Another of my colleagues shared this Orlando Sentinel blog post on the subject that gives some good tips on what to do about the online presence of someone you’ve lost.
While we’re all barreling down these social media tracks at such incredible speed, I wonder if anyone has taken a step back to look at the role our mortality plays in the digital world. I’m sure the folks at LinkedIn don’t intend to make anyone uncomfortable but suggesting I might want to create a relationship with someone I’ve lost isn’t necessarily a welcome message.
In a meeting with a prospective client wanting help in the creation of a crisis communications plan, an intriguing question was asked. “Is there a greater or lesser requirement of private organizations to be forthcoming with information in a crisis than is the case with public institutions?”
The question arose from a discussion of how well the University of Central Florida seemed to have handled some recent very difficult situations. Full disclosure here, UCF is a client of our firm and we are proud of how they have responded in times of crisis … a particularly good example being when a body was discovered on campus on “move-in day” as thousands of students and their parents navigated the campus of the nation’s third-largest university.
As soon as the UCF Police Department confirmed there was no threat to others – that, in fact, the death was an apparent suicide – UCF’s News & Information team moved quickly to spread the word that the campus was safe. They turned to Twitter and other social media, quickly informed the news media and maintained a flow of information that was critical to keeping the public informed.
Imagine how fear could have prevailed had they not acted so quickly.
But what if this had happened on private property? What if there were thousands of people milling around a corporate office park or one of the region’s theme parks or a shopping mall? Would there have been any less of a need for action?
Absolutely not. In today’s world, we told the prospect, your future depends on being proactive and transparent from the minute a situation begins to unfold. The public demands it.
Just think how much more comfortable parents and friends of students moving onto the UCF campus were that day because word got out quickly?
Like many of my peers, I’ve stood behind the need for clients to maintain a “graphic standard” as long as I can remember. “You can’t just let people monkey with your image,” I’d tell them. You have to stand behind your graphic image just as strongly as you stand behind the vision and mission of your company … just as you stand behind your product.
Then along comes Google, which successfully and playfully alters its trademark with what it calls Doodles on an almost daily basis and generates huge brand awareness doing so. There’s been a Google Doodle for almost every holiday or special event imaginable; today they took it up a notch.
Some suggested that today’s interactive Doodle – a collection of colorful dots that scattered when you rolled your cursor over them – was simply to celebrate the company’s 12th birthday, but a Huffington Post story suggested there was more to it. Whether Huffington was right or not, you can see on YouTube that, as often is the case, Google created quite a buzz … as in Brand Building 101.
So while it may be too early to suggest throwing away your graphic standards manual, it is clear times have changed and there’s more than a little wiggle room in how you use your logo these days.
Posted by thestrategicfirm 
No Comments, Please
September 9, 2010by Roger Pynn
Here’s some heartening news, shared by former Orlando Sentinel Op-Ed Page Editor and Editorial Board Member Mike Murphy. The Durham, NC, Herald-Sun has pulled the plug on its online comments feature because the discourse was “devolving,” saying “users who would prefer to discuss ideas or the content of the news are being drowned out by a few participants who lob insults at their fellow users.”
The paper suggested people write letters to the editor. That all papers would realize this is only a dream … but certainly worth wishing for. Newspaper comment sections are the sewer of the Internet.
Murphy was managing editor of the team that valiantly tried to provide an online community known as FloridaThinks … an Internet site designed to chronicle some of the state’s most important issues and invite reasoned conversation. That it couldn’t find financial success didn’t prove there isn’t a need for civil discourse … perhaps just that civil people have grown accustomed to the flame throwers who camp out in comment sections.
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