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.
Marketing and public relations go hand in hand, and it is important to understand both disciplines when considering how to best reach your customers. Creating synergy between marketing and PR is one of the best ways to achieve business goals and communication objectives, and successful PR campaigns will often include some marketing aspects.
As we work to build strategic PR campaigns for our clients, we have found it helpful to keep up on marketing news and tactics by reading marketing blogs. These blogs range from critiques of ads and campaigns to tips and tricks of the trade.
Below is a list of hyperlinked marketing blogs we like. Do you have any favorites to add to the list?
Ad Rants
American Marketing Association
Duct Tape Marketing
E-Marketer Daily
Entrepreneur Marketing Blog
Laura’s Marketing Blog
Marketing Journal Blog
Marketing Sherpa Blog
Marketing Vox
Marketing Web Log
Online Marketing Blog
Seth Godin’s Blog
The Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals
A variety of elements determine the newsworthiness of an announcement. As many newspapers and magazines continue to see a decline in readership, they are increasingly looking to achieve relevance with their audience and are striving to publish articles that have a high news value and can capture the interest of their readers.
In order to determine the value of your company’s news, we believe it’s important to look at the merits of the story and evaluate the following elements:
Timing – The word news means exactly that – things which are new. Topics which are current are good news. If it happened today, it’s news. If the same thing happened last week, it’s no longer interesting to many journalists and consumers.
Conflict – Conflict can elevate the newsworthy elements of a story. These can be high profile conflicts or less-evident conflicts.
Significance – Is the story significant? The number of people affected by the story is important. A company that’s preparing to lay off 20,000 people is more significant than a company laying off a dozen.
Proximity/Relevance – Stories that affect local businesses or local residents may be more newsworthy to local outlets – the same story may not have as much relevance to national publications. However, proximity doesn’t always have to mean geographical distance. Stories from countries with which we have a particular bond or similarity can have the same effect.
Prominence – Famous people get more coverage just because they’re famous. If you break your arm, it won’t make the news. However, if the Queen of England breaks her arm, it’s big news.
Human Interest – Human interest stories are a bit of a special case. They often disregard the main rules of newsworthiness; for example, they don’t date as quickly, they need not affect a large number of people, and it doesn’t necessarily matter the story takes place. Human interest stories appeal to emotion. They aim to evoke responses such as amusement or sadness. Television news programs often place a humorous or quirky story at the end of the show to finish on a feel-good note, and newspapers often have an area dedicated to these stories.
Recently, Starbucks announced it will be cutting approximately 6,700 jobs and closing 300 underperforming stores. This announcement is very newsworthy because of the significance of the number of job losses. It is also timely given the recent news about the economic downturn and its effect on companies. It also includes the element of proximity as it affects Seattle residents and employees as well as employees across the nation. Lastly, job loss affects not only the person who is losing their job but also their families. Given the nature of the topic, this announcement also has an element of human interest. Hearing about job loss sparks emotions like empathy and anxiety as people begin to worry about their own job security.
On the other hand, announcements about new hires such as this one from Business Wire, are not very newsworthy because they don’t affect a large amount of people and don’t have an element of prominence, unless the person being hired is a very well known business leader. Although it is not uncommon for businesses to release such announcements, it’s important to note that these are not the most newsworthy announcements and can’t be expected to garner significant coverage.
It’s important to keep these elements in mind when you are evaluating the value of news for your organization. This will ultimately help your company maximize media opportunities and convey your message to the places and audiences that matter most.
Over the past two months I have had the pleasure of working with Mobidia to increase the company’s profile leading up to Mobile World Congress in February. Mobidia’s technology provides mobile operators with a software platform that expands the capacity of their existing networks, and speeds the delivery of data to subscribers. It is a particularly exciting technology which provides mobile operators with comprehensive information about their wireless data networks. The rewards to mobile operators and subscribers are big: wireless operators save money, and their networks are improved for everyone. Data – like videos, images or VoIP – is sent and received faster from smartphones and laptop computers.
Leading up to Mobile World Congress, Mobidia wanted to brief industry analysts to build credibility and create the right perceptions about the company, as well as to generate demand for its technology. These briefings reinforce a positive profile of the company in the research reports written by analysts and purchased and read by potential customers. For more background on why an analyst relations program is important, check out this blog entry.
Chris Hill, vice president of marketing at Mobidia had this to say about our work scheduling analyst briefings:
“As we began the process of driving industry awareness of our technology, we wanted to brief industry analysts about the value of our innovation to gain third party endorsement. Communiqué PR did a fantastic job of reaching out to analysts and securing briefings on our behalf. The insight gained from these briefings and the analyst quotes we received will be instrumental in helping us prepare for our campaign at Mobile World Congress.”
I want to share some of the results we achieved for Mobidia. I hope this will help you gain a better understanding of what can be achieved by investing in relationship building with this very influential group of people.
Mobidia’s technology received a warm welcome from analysts, and we secured briefings with eight analysts, some of whom were able to provide quotes. Here are a few quotes we received about the market demand for Mobidia’s technology:
“Mobile operators’ networks are becoming increasingly stressed as more people send and receive broadband data – such as video, social networking and web traffic – with their laptop computers and smartphones. However the growing traffic volumes are not matched by equivalent growth in revenues, as the trend towards flat-rate pricing coincides with fierce competition. Consequently, there is a need for mobile operators to reduce their overhead costs. Among other approaches, mobile operators are looking at software solutions to optimize their networks, relieve congestion and reduce costs. If Mobidia’s trial results conclusively demonstrate a reduction in costs and congestion, it is likely to be of significant interest to mobile operators.” – Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
“An increase in laptop, video and peer-to-peer traffic as well as the growing adoption of smartphones is placing tremendous stress on wireless data networks. Mobile operators are also faced with managing uneven data usage amongst subscribers. These challenges will only grow as operators aim to increase data users through subsidies on smartphones and data cards. Rather than putting an expensive band-aid on the problem by adding network capacity, operators should look for intelligent solutions to better manage and understand the data traffic on their networks. Mobidia’s technology provides mobile operators with a solution that increases the capacity of their existing wireless networks allows them to monitor traffic to improve the overall subscriber experience.” – Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
“Today’s wireless networks are struggling to cope with the high volumes of data traffic being transferred by an increasing number of smartphones and laptop computers. Mobile operators need to increase 3G network access and capacity while decreasing capital and operating costs in order to meet the growing customer demand, but the high costs to deploy new infrastructure can be prohibitive. Mobidia’s technology addresses the clear need for cost-effective software solutions that optimize data networks without degrading the end-user experience.” – Phil Kendall, Strategy Analytics
It was an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to support Mobidia’s activities educating industry analysts.
In Linton Weeks’ recent NPR article regarding Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Weeks writes that the governor has opted for a strategy of “self-defense by public relations onslaught.” I wonder if this really is a strategic approach to counter the current impeachment proceedings and sway public opinion, or merely the desperate attempt of a man who loves attention.
While public relations is all about shaping public perception, its effectiveness and the final results will be influenced by the strategy and tactics employed. Without clearly identifying the objectives, understanding the target audience and developing a strategic plan, Blagojevich’s efforts are almost guaranteed to be ineffective or in this case counter-productive. Suggesting that he considered appointing Oprah to the vacant senate seat, for example, certainly did not strengthen his case.
If his goal is to change public perception about him and his past actions, it is unfortunate he is using his “15 minutes” of national media attention without having developed a plan or even thought about his desired outcome. Had he sat down and took a strategic approach; he may have been able to avoid some glaring mistakes and achieved his objective of winning public support.
Ultimately, the messages Blagojevich has communicated during his recent broadcast media blitz are simply reinforcing existing perceptions. As an observer, it does not appear to be a strategic PR campaign for self-defense but the behavior of a man who craves the limelight and is trying to hold on to it for dear life.
Last night Colleen Moffitt, Melissa Liton, Paulette Zimmerman and I had the opportunity to attend TechFlash’s launch party at the Palace Ballroom. What a fun night! It was terrific to catch up with the movers and shakers in Seattle’s tech community.
Highlights of the TechFlash event included mingling with Jeremy Lewis of Big Fish Games; chatting up Brian McAndrews before he shared his insights on the future of online advertising; catching up with Ken Myer, WTIA President and CEO; and talking with Blake Cahill of Visible Technologies and Rahul Sonnad and Autumn Radtke of Geodelic, Nick Wingfield with Wall Street Journal as well as countless others and friends.
After the TechFlash launch party, we headed off to Capitol Hill to catch up with Danielle Morrill at Pelago’s Whrrl party. Colleen and I enjoyed talking with Danielle (who is also our cousin) to learn more about Pelago’s Web/mobile application which is designed to leverage an individual’s social network using mobile location technology.
With Whrrl, a person can find out where his or her friends are, determine what they’re doing and where they’ve been. In effect, your friends light up your map with their experiences so you can discover cool places, events and even new people that you might otherwise have missed. You can use Whrrl on a Web browser, via SMS, or as an application on your mobile phone.
All and all it was a fabulous evening. If you were at either of these events, send us a comment we’d love to hear your impressions.