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, our client Digonex Technologies announced its partnership with the Cleveland Cavaliers on a price analysis consultation pilot. This pilot officially marks the Cavaliers as the first national sports franchise to leverage Digonex’s Sports & Entertainment Analytical Ticketing System (SEATS), a dynamic commerce engine that analyzes sales data and provides price suggestions based upon econometric and behavioral principles.
While sports teams and franchises have traditionally used a tiered-pricing structure, which is typically set at the beginning of a season, unexpected factors throughout the season are causing teams to evaluate alternative ticket pricing structures and technologies that enable them to demonstrate their commitment to the fans.
Digonex will perform analysis on fan-based pricing structures for single games and will make instant price recommendations to the Cavaliers for selected games and other arena events. Digonex plans to begin working with the Cavaliers following the All-Star break.
We helped Digonex promote this exciting news through an integrated approach, which included reaching out to a select number of media who cover the ticketing industry and sports business via buddy e-mail. We also distributed the announcement during INTIX, a leading international ticketing conference, as the news was extremely relevant to the attendees given the content of the show. Lastly, we recommended Digonex tweet the news on its handle (@Digonex) to drive viral conversations around the news.
As a result of our outreach, we secured three pieces of coverage in target trade publications, including Sports Business Journal, Venues Today and TicketNews.com. Additionally, the news was widely tweeted about on Twitter by a number of INTIX attendees, ticket professionals and journalists including Eric Fisher of Sports Business Journal.
This integrated approach for distributing the news helped Digonex raise visibility of this key partnership and extend its thought leadership in the dynamic pricing market.
I recently returned from Amsterdam where I attended and presented at Enterprise Social 2.0. What a fabulous experience. The speakers and presentations were first rate. Here are some of the highlights from the gathering.
Ramon DeLeon, Domino’s Pizza (@Ramon_DeLeon). This guy is an amazing presenter with outstanding energy; but beyond his exceptional presentation skills, he shared some wonderful examples of how he has used social media to drive business to his six Chicago stores.
For instance, he told us about a simple, but effective promotion he used to gain exposure for his stores on Facebook. He simply updated his status to say “However many minutes it takes you to respond to this message is the amount you’ll pay for two pizzas.” A woman posted a response on his wall in two minutes and received two pizzas for $2. The benefit for Ramon was that he gained significant awareness / exposure with this promotion by engaging many others in responding and telling their friends about the campaign.
Ramon’s primary goal with social media is to motivate people to tell their friends about his pizza. He wants them to do this via word-of-mouth, Facebook and Twitter, and is a master at creating compelling content and promotions to make this happen. He also understands that “people do business with people they like and trust. Without customers you have no business.” This is a guiding principle for him.
Adam Wallace, Roger Smith Hotel New York (@adwal). In his presentation, Adam focused on showing how they have used social media to generate excitement and enthusiasm for the boutique hotel. One of the key takeaways from his presentation was to make sure the folks on the front line know about their impact on perceptions. For instance, the Roger Smith Hotel became extremely well known with its online followers for its crispy, mouth-watering bacon, but the guy cooking it had no idea. It is important for the people creating the real-world customer experience to understand they will have an impact (good or bad) on what people say on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Click here to link to an interview with Adam.
Ellen Petry Leanse, Google (@chep2m). Ellen is such an inspiration. She shared interesting information about social media. She also delivered her presentation using Google Wave – Google’s personal communication and collaboration tool – which I had not seen in action. She was able to use the Wave technology to integrate links to articles, videos and more. To learn more about her thoughts on Google Wave, you can click here to link to an interview she conducted wih Remco Janssen (@remcojanssen).
Kees Mulder, Kodak (@keesmulder). Another fantastic presenter was Kees Mulder with Kodak. It was interesting to hear how Kodak has reinvented itself in the digital era and how they’re engaging customers. Kees spoke about a campaign they launched to name a new camera where they asked people to send suggestions via Twitter or by posting a comment on the company blog. The winners of the contest were invited to participate in a special launch event in Las Vegas at 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) (this was an all expense paid trip), received cameras and recognition as the contest winners. Kodak also randomly chose 100 other participants to receive the camera. Needless to say, the campaign was a big success. Kodak gained a lot of free publicity via social networks and mainstream media and also got a winning name (The Kodak Playsport) for its innovative camera.
Participants in the panel discussion I led on damage control in social media included Ramon DeLeon, Ellen Petry Leanse and author Mike Moran. We discussed how companies such as Facebook, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota and Dominos have responded to recent crisis situations and shared best practices before, during and after a disaster.
Other noteworthy presentations and discussions were led by LEGO, L’Oreal, Siemens Swift, Vodafone, Nokia, SAP, Philips and Airbus. The conference organizers KGS put together a winning two days and I feel honored to have had the opportunity to connect with so many world-class leaders.
Back in January 2009, we wrote a blog post about our experience working with Mobidia, a provider of data solutions, and raising awareness of the company with third-party influentials leading up to Mobile World Congress.
In the past year, Mobidia has made significant progress and has executed more than 14 network lab and field trials with mobile operators in Europe, Asia and North America. In fact, on Jan. 19 the company announced performance results from recent testing and trialing on a tier-1 European network. The results showed an impressive average of 25 percent increase in efficiency on the tier-1 mobile operator’s network during peak load times.
Given this news, we decided it was time to reconnect with some of the industry analysts following the company’s activities.
Thus far, we’ve coordinated discussions with the following analysts:
- Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
- Abraham Joseph, Inteligentis Limited
- Michele Pelino and Chris Silva, Forrester Research
- Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
- Godfrey Chua, Amy Lind and Elisabeth Rainge, IDC
- Michael King and Sylvain Fabre, Gartner
- John Fletcher, SNL Kagan
- Chetan Sharma, Chetan Sharma Consulting
- Rob Bamforth, Quocirca
Mobidia also will meet with analysts from ABI Research, Strategy Analytics and Rethink Technology Research in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress 2010. It has been a pleasure reconnecting with some of the analysts that we briefed in 2009.
We look forward to connecting with even more analysts and other third-party influentials on behalf of Mobidia. To learn more about the company visit http://www.mobidia.com/ or send us an e-mail at [email protected].
On Fri., Jan. 22 our book, “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR” jumped to the number two spot on Amazon’s most popular books on public relations. While our book has received strong reviews and positive mentions in several publications, including The Costco Connection and PRWeek.com, this was quite a jump in the rankings and it was due to an increase in the sales of our book.
So what led to the sales increase and jump in our book’s ranking on Amazon.com? Our book was not photographed on the floor of Tiger Wood’s car, nor was “Strategic Public Relations” selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
Instead, as part of our integrated communication strategy, we decided to advertise the book on Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO). In the ad, which Peter writes himself, Peter included the following testimonial about our book,
“Check out Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR – A new book that I read, liked, and recommend. The principles in the book are straightforward and simple, so they can be applied to any business.”
The HARO e-mails reach a targeted audience of more than 100,000, many of whom are focused on public relations and communications. This, coupled with a 75 percent open rate, ensured the message about our book was going to reach individuals interested in strategic communications.
The HARO e-mail helped spread the word about our book and Peter’s endorsement influenced readers to purchase our book. The day our ad appeared on HARO’s morning e-mail, sales of “Strategic Public Relations” significantly increased.
We are thrilled with the results. We anticipate January will see our highest number of sales from Amazon since the book was published last year. We have also seen an increase in Web site traffic.
The bottom line is that we are huge fans of Shankman’s HARO. If you have a product or service that is relevant to his audience, we encourage you to reach out to HARO as it can be an excellent vehicle for increasing visibility and driving awareness.
Differentiating your company and its products and services from the competition can be critical to the success of your business. Consider wireless service providers. AT&T Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint work hard to differentiate their service based on price, network coverage and their selection of phones.
As you work to thoroughly analyze your competitors’ product and key messages, and develop effective positioning, consider these five tips:
- Know Your Competitor’s Product. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein recently found himself in a pickle when he divulged to Kara Swisher of All Things Digital that he had never used an iPhone, the largest competitor to the Palm Pre. Rubinstein commented, “We don’t pay that much attention to Apple – I know it sounds really strange. I don’t have an iPhone. I’ve never even used one.” One of the key elements to differentiating your products and services from the competitor is to have a firm understanding of the key features and functionalities of your competitor’s offerings.
- Understand Your Competitor’s Claims. This will enable you to analyze your company’s key messages and vision, and develop messaging that demonstrates how your products and services differ from competitive solutions on the market.
- Determine Your Key Points of Differentiation. Next, begin to craft effective messages that will resonate with your key audiences. These points of differentiation could include cost, quality, performance, technology, leadership, service or customer support. Whenever possible, include supporting data points to help reinforce these points of differentiation.
- Be Realistic. It’s important to be realistic in understanding how your company stacks up to its competitors. Otherwise, you’re doing your company a disservice and potentially making claims about your product or service that are misleading or simply aren’t true. Having a realistic outlook on your product/services’ strengths and weaknesses will enable you to set achievable expectations and goals for the future.
- Test Your Positioning with Third Party Influencers. Once you have your competitive messaging in place, test it with a third-party influencer to ensure it resonates with potential audiences and validates your company’s messages, market strategy and overall product and service outlook.
Having a thorough understanding of your competitors’ messages and products will enable your company to develop clear and concise messages and effectively differentiate your company from others in the market. Ultimately, this will help you take market share from competitors and relay a unified image to customers, investors and business partners.
To learn more about distinguishing yourself from competitors, send us an e-mail at [email protected].
The e-book market is hot and there’s a pricing war on the horizon. The wild popularity of the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s recent launch of its e-book reader Nook, and talk of Apple joining the game with its Tablet service has caused the publishing industry to take a closer look at pricing strategies for e-books in an effort to maximize sales of both hardcover books and e-books.
Communiqué PR’s client, Digonex, a provider of real-time pricing solutions recently offered its perspective on the e-book pricing war in a recent guest column in Publisher’s Weekly. Digonex’s CEO Jan Eglen and economic consultant Rafi Mohammed argue that while the publishing industry has cause for concern over the pricing of e-books, dynamic pricing technology provides a viable strategy for publishers to effectively navigate these new waters and continue to maximize revenue opportunities.
Eglen and Mohammed state, “The publishing industry is right to be concerned over $9.99 price tags for bestselling e-books. One price has the potential to disrupt the current publishing model, as well as change how books are marketed and priced in the future. The good news is that pricing techniques can be used to effectively manage this transition.”
The bottom line is it’s impossible to set one price on a vast catalogue of products such as e-books that is right for all. According to Eglen and Mohammed, “as the marketplace has learned through iTunes, all music isn’t worth the same price, and all e-books aren’t worth $9.99.” A dynamic pricing strategy can give publishers the flexibility to price e-books based on consumer demand to maximize revenue opportunities.
Apple’s entry into the e-book market could be a major game changer leading to a publisher-driven selling platform that would allow publishers to take back the pricing power that Amazon currently holds. One thing is clear, the e-book pricing war is just heating up and I anticipate we’ll be hearing the roars get louder in the coming months.