Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Last week I had the opportunity to present at a conference held by Insight Venture Partners in New York City. In preparation for my discussion, I began thinking about my own experience working for a start-up company and how the practice of public relations has changed in the last decade.
Twelve years ago I was working for a start-up in Seattle. The company was Tegic Communications, developers of T9 Text Input for mobile phones. We licensed the software to mobile phone hardware vendors and eventually 90 percent of the OEMs responsible for worldwide mobile phone production adopted it.
We worked non-stop to generate significant editorial coverage to drive awareness and demand with the OEMs as well as to educate consumers about the availability of this new text input feature.
In December 1999, AOL negotiated a $350-million buyout of the company. Later, one of the AOL executives revealed to my manager that they paid an additional $50 million just because of the buzz around the company.
I shared this story during my presentation at the Insight conference, because it is a great example of how buzz and PR around a company can impact customer demand as well as its valuation. Clearly, however, with the rise of social media how one goes about generating massive awareness for a company and its products and solutions has changed significantly.
I also shared the following six tips for leveraging social media to build buzz and drive awareness for a company.
1. Take an integrated approach. To do this, we highly recommend developing a story arc. Think of a story arc as a trajectory, extended storyline, or the ongoing narrative that highlights a company’s overarching vision and its journey toward achieving it. Each company announcement, press release, social media update or interview provides the company spokesperson with an opportunity, or an “episode” to put it in television terms, to support the broad narrative or story arc.
Anne Taylor is doing an excellent job in this department. For instance, Anne Taylor promoted its social media sites in a recent e-mail marketing campaign. They encouraged customers to visit them on Facebook in order to receive a special offer. The bottom line is that social media, PR, advertising and other campaigns need to be aligned and integrated.
Another example of a company doing it right is Off & Away, a startup offering amazing hotel suites at unheard of prices with Internet auctions. The company was founded by former Amazon.com and travel industry executives, and recently raised Series A funding led by Madrona Venture Group, the venture capital firm behind Amazon.com, Farecast.com (now Bing Travel) and VacationSpot (now a part of Expedia).
The company is doing an outstanding job of leveraging Facebook and Twitter and taking an integrated approach to communications. You’ll see they have had editorial coverage in The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Tech Crunch and several other media outlets.
2. Establish clear ownership. The second rule for leveraging social media to drive buzz is to make sure the right team owns it. We at Communiqué PR believe social media should be owned at a strategic level by the top corporate communications or public relations officer or manager in your organization. Here’s why:
- Corporate communications and PR own the organization’s external communications and oftentimes the overarching positioning. This puts them in an ideal position for understanding how the company brand should behave on social media platforms.
- Social media is about engaging and developing direct one-on-one relationships with individuals. Typically, the PR team is already doing this with many audiences (e.g., journalists, analysts, investors and other influencers). Given this, the team has many of the skills and expertise required to build relationships via Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.
- PR needs to have a direct handle on how the company is perceived. Social media provides immediate access to this information. Thoughtful and well-managed engagement on social media platforms can provide tremendous positive PR for a company.
- PR often owns content that is ideal for sharing on social networks, including news they can break to their online communities.
3. Use SM to Build Relationships. Make sure you are using social media to build relationships with key influencers. Social media can be a terrific way to reach reporters and garner earned media (e.g. editorial coverage).
When Communiqué PR helped Alaska Airlines with the launch of its Wi-Fi service, we tried to reach Ed Baig at USA Today numerous times via e-mail and over the phone – with no luck. Finally, I reached out via Facebook. He responded immediately and we were able to secure a timely and beneficial article for our client.
So each time you do an interview with a journalist or analyst, make sure you take a minute to connect with him or her on Facebook or Twitter. It is a wonderful, fast and effective way to build and maintain relationships with this community.
4. Merchandise Earned Media. You can and should merchandize editorial coverage that you garner for your company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other places. With more competition between news outlets, journalists appreciate help promoting their articles. And we often find that positive editorial coverage leads to more positive coverage. Think about how print coverage in magazines and newspapers sometimes leads to broadcast coverage.
5. Don’t Forget about Blogs. As you think about the role that social media can play in driving public relations, don’t forget about blogs. Blogs are a good way to publish your own news, written the way you want, about the topics of your choosing, in your own words. They are unedited by reporters or anyone else and you can get your message out quickly to the entire world
Off & Away has a blog and uses it to share news and information about enhancements to its site, comment on travel trends and establish leadership with consumers, journalists, analysts and other writers. Ann Taylor, the clothing retailer, is also going to launch a blog. Its aim is to help readers figure out how to dress for the big interview, share insight into what is inspiring them from books, music and popular culture. As you can imagine, both these blogs will be an excellent repository of information for journalists too.
6. Publicize Unique Activities. If you’re doing something unique or new on social media that may well be news itself; or if you have a unique promotion, you should publicize it with the mainstream media. How do you take the social Web by storm in a day, winning over even the coldest of hearts and gaining international acclaim – with commercials?
A couple of weeks ago, a team of ad executives gathered in Portland, Ore., and produced 87 funny YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time they leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. The videos went viral, and have been viewed millions of times, drawing strong editorial coverage.
At the time of my presentation, more than 240 outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and many other news outlets, had been written about these videos. In a three-day period, the videos were viewed 52 million times and on Twitter, Old Spice went from 3,000 to 48,000 followers.
It was a sincere honor to have the opportunity to share my ideas with Insight Venture Partners’ portfolio companies.
If you have tips for integrating your social media activities with public relations or other marketing campaigns, I would love to hear from you. Clearly, there are significant changes taking place in the world of marketing.
Recently, we were asked whether activity via social media can drive media coverage. The answer is a resounding yes. While it is important to realize that not all social media activity will drive media coverage, there are times when it makes sense to bolster a viral campaign vis-à-vis traditional media.
There are many ways social media can drive or influence media coverage. A reporter working on a story may become aware of a company that can contribute to that article, or a producer may see a post from a company and determine there is a story worth pursuing.
Social media provides another way for organizations and individuals to develop a thought-leadership platform. Sometimes activity conducted via social media breaks as a viral phenomenon and becomes newsworthy. Consider the United Airlines Breaks Guitars video or the Domino’s Pizza video fiasco. However, with both of these examples the activity created negative impressions and was not driven by companies.
This past week one company, Proctor & Gamble, demonstrated how orchestrated social media activity via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, was able to drive media coverage for its brand, Old Spice.
To promote a recent new ad campaign, Old Spice worked with Wieden & Kennedy to develop 185 short videos of the Old Spice Man, actor Isaiah Mustafa, responding to questions that had been posed to him via Facebook and Twitter.
Mr. Mustafa, wrapped in a towel, responded to questions from actors including Alyssa Milano (click here to see follow-up videos to Alyssa: video 2, video 3 & video 4) and Demi Moore as well as Ellen DeGeneres, George Stephanopoulos, and many others.
On Thurs., July 15, The New York Times detailed the initial results sharing that over three days the “videos drew more than 5.2 million views on YouTube, where the Old Spice channel was the most viewed on Tuesday, while the brand’s Twitter followers grew to 48,000, from 3,000.” Old Spice was a trending topic on Twitter driving users to check out the videos.
This overwhelming response drove coverage in more than 500 media outlets including The Los Angeles Times, Good Morning America, CBS News, the Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, MTV.com, Globe and Mail, USA Today and TIME.
Clearly, what companies do via social media can drive media coverage. So the next time you have a clever viral campaign, don’t forget to publicize it with traditional media.
According to a recent article by Games Beat’s Dean Takahashi, the PC gaming business is estimated to hit $20 billion by 2015. Consumers looking for a quick escape or several hours of entertainment are increasingly going online to find games in place of the traditional brick and mortar retail outlet. This trend has been key in feeding the growth of the downloadable games space.
Many of the games are created by indie game developers – think two guys (or gals) in a garage. Once the game is developed, they then work to secure the attention and interest of a game publisher that can distribute the game to consumers. However, there are a limited number of publishers positioned to distribute these indie titles to the masses, and getting on their radar can be challenging.
Melissa Heidrich, studio director for PassionFruit Games, garnered the attention of a publisher through distribution of a press release. Big Fish Games contacted the company after reading coverage of the announcement on Gamezebo and subsequently published the studio’s game.
As Francisco Santos Belmonte, founder of Tip Tap Games shared, “One of the biggest challenges we face as an indie game developer is finding ways to get our games in front of publishers. Indie developers simply don’t have the resources to invest in marketing to gain visibility with users and publishers. The ability to publish and share games via the Web without installs has the potential to completely transform the indie game development community.”
Lawrence Mascia, lead designer of Bewildebeest Games, explains how his team works to grab the attention of a publisher: “What we are doing now is creating a packet of information about the game and a CD of the demo and sending it around to different offices. The biggest challenge we’ve faced is getting people to actually look at what we have, let alone play what we’ve sent.”
Given the difficulty of getting eyes on their titles, game developers are eager to eliminate every possible barrier in the courting process. And now there is a solution that will make life much easier for game developers.
Spoon, a Communiqué client, recently launched the Indie Game Garage, a free service for indie game developers that provides a radically new and simple way to distribute games to publishers and consumers.
The Indie Game Garage lets users play full desktop games directly from the Web, with no installs or downloads. Once on Spoon, games can be shared directly on websites, blogs, and social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter. Potential publishers, bloggers, trade press, and users themselves can test indie titles instantly – without worrying about setup, uninstalls, or dependencies such as DirectX and .NET. And Spoon works with existing, unmodified games.
The Indie Game Garage is available now at http://spoon.net/indiegames.
Attention all tech fans and gadget geeks! We’ve been playing around with a semi-new (launched a year ago) technology site developed by former Engadget editors Peter Rojas and Ryan Block called gdgt (or gadget). gdgt is a social platform that enables users to connect with the community through gadgets, and connect with your gadgets through the community. According to its website, “gdgt is all about providing you with useful, contextual information – both from here and around the Web – to help you get more out of the products you already own, as well as help you discover that next great device to add to your collection.”
Here’s how it works. Users sign up for a free account and begin building their list of favorite gadgets. Once registered, you can connect with friends and other users, write reviews and start discussions about devices. Think of it as Facebook for gadget fans.
Gdgt is hosting a party and meet up on Tuesday, July 27 at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle and some of our team members will be in attendance. The event will feature gadgets and demos from vendors including Belkin, D-Link, Dragon Mobile Apps, HTC, Logitech, T-Mobile, Microsoft Zune and more.
In a recent interview with TechFlash, Rojas said, “The whole concept of the site was really about connecting people to gadgets and connecting people through gadgets, and we really wanted to create an event that brought that to life. The whole point of these events is to really give people who don’t get to go to CES and don’t get to go to press events a chance to actually play with this stuff. This is really for us a chance to democratize that whole experience.”
The event is free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!
To RSVP on Facebook, visit http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135148676504452
Mistakes. We all make them. It is part of human nature. Sometimes it’s unavoidable and other times we just overlook something. Regardless of the mistake, it is how we respond afterwards that sets us apart from one another.
One of the most recently publicized mistakes comes from a company not known to make many mistakes. Apple Inc. released the highly anticipated iPhone 4 on June 24. As quick as the phones were flying off the shelves, reports started flooding blogs and news outlets about usability issues. The most glaring problem was the antenna being wrapped around the phone’s casing. When held in the left hand, the skin can bridge the gap between the two antennas causing signal loss and dropped calls. It has become a major problem for Apple with everyone buzzing about it including media, bloggers and the Twittersphere. Consumer Reports recently offered a fix for the problem by suggesting consumers cover the gap with a piece of duct tape. However, Apple has yet to acknowledge or address these reports.
The problem itself isn’t the issue I find interesting. It is how Apple has handled the response thus far. The company’s official response details that all phones can have antenna problems and it’s just the nature of cell phones. Apple then goes on to suggest that users either hold the phone differently or buy a case. They have yet to admit the iPhone 4 has an antenna problem. Instead they dance around the issue and offer remedies that force the consumer to spend more money to solve a problem that they didn’t cause. This type of response can often cause consumers to lose confidence and loyalty to a company, damaging the brand.
From a PR perspective, one of the most important things a company can do in the midst of a crisis is strategically evaluate the need to respond. We’ve written several posts about how to respond during a crisis and in the case of Apple, they’ve chosen not to directly address the situation. However, we recently learned that the company finally came forward this week and announced a press conference to be held at 10 a.m. PDT today to reportedly discuss the antenna issue.
We want to share a few tips on how to effectively address a problem or crisis.
- Acknowledgement. An organization first needs to decide how (if at all) they want to acknowledge that there is a problem. This can be determined by the scale of the problem or the amount of backlash from consumers. In your acknowledgement, it can often be helpful to apologize for any negative affects. This will notify the public that you identified there is a problem and are working on a fix.
- Don’t blame others. Take full responsibility for your actions and don’t point fingers. If there are others involved, encourage them to follow your lead. For example, when Google launched Google Buzz, people were upset that it made their e-mail contacts public. Instead of blaming the user, Google took full responsibility to fix their mistake.
- Fix-it. If you choose to publicly acknowledge the mistake, you must work on a way to resolve it and communicate that to your key audiences. You want to explain to the public the steps you are taking to fix the problem and when to expect a solution. This will help in reassuring the public and instilling confidence that a company is proactively working to solve the problem. In the Google Buzz case, Google issued multiple updates to make sure users knew of the privacy settings and how to use them.
- Move on. Don’t dwell on what is in the past. Instead look ahead to the future and learn from the mistake.
It will be interesting to see how Apple approaches the press conference. Either way, hopefully consumers will get some sort of fix for the antenna problem. While it’s unlikely that Apple will suffer any major damage to their brand given their stellar track record and goodwill they have established, it’s a good reminder for any organization to take the necessary steps of acknowledging a problem or mistake. This one act can go a long way to building consumer confidence and loyalty.
Next week, Communiqué PR’s Jennifer Gehrt (@JenGehrt) will be in New York presenting to Insight Venture Partners’ portfolio companies. Jennifer will be facilitating two sessions on using social media effectively and strategically.
Jennifer will share real-world examples and case studies to illustrate the impact social media can have for organizations. Additionally, Jennifer will outline best practices for building a presence on a variety of social media platforms.
Insight Venture Partners is one of the most active and fastest growing venture capital and private equity firms focused on the software and Internet verticals. Its portfolio companies include Twitter, Threadless, 6waves, HauteLook as well as a number of others.
The VC firm is hosting a one-day conference for the executives of its portfolio companies to share best practices and learn from industry experts. Jennifer is looking forward to sharing her experience on how both B2B and consumer facing companies can leverage social media to accomplish their business objectives.