Recently, in the town of Skegness in England, there was uproar when Italian ‘premium’ beer brand Peroni was accused of snobbery for not allowing its product to be sold in a hotel in the town. The hotel’s manager claimed consultants working on behalf of the brand stated the town didn’t ‘fit the brand’, and implied there was a snobbery issue at heart.
This isn’t the first time that a brand has been accused of trying to dictate who its audience should be. An executive for Cristal champagne hinted that he did not approve of this endorsement of its premium product after it was embraced by Jay-Z and a number of other rappers. This resulted in the champagne being boycotted by the rapper, and no doubt many of his fans. Continue reading →
What time should we be posting our content? What messages are resonating best with our audience? Is there a day of the week where our content performs best? How do we truly optimize our content on Facebook or Twitter? What kind of content generates the most clicks or interactions? How long does it take before we receive interactions after publishing a piece of content?
If you are managing your brand’s social media presence or working for an agency on behalf of a brand, you’ve no doubt heard these questions from your boss. All of those questions are things we’ve helped to solve in traditional marketing and PR for years, but the question of how we “scientifically” optimize our content in social is relatively new. Continue reading →
Some of you know that one of my favorite pastimes is dining out. It’s obvious when you see the anti-Situation abs that I sport nowadays. [I’ve been doing a lot of GTL lately though minus the T so I’m expecting to get my washboard abs back.] Sorry, I digress. 🙂
In any case, one company that seems to be thriving in this awful economy is Groupon. I don’t have hard facts. My opinion is simply based on word of mouth, social media buzz and earned media coverage that I’ve seen for the company in the past couple of years. Most recent was Groupon’s first national launch with Gap where it likely garnered more in free publicity than the amount of Gap Groupons it sold. The company has transformed the way the average consumer saves by featuring mainly half price deals that change daily. The concept is attractive because it builds anticipation from its users on a daily basis, which I believe is a key factor, in developing any successful social media program. It has also changed the average consumer’s purchasing behavior, but it’s also fueled other companies to follow its business model such as Living Social, Half Off Deals, and many others. Continue reading →
Stop me if you have heard this one before from a PR/communications colleague: “Our CEO/Board of Directors (BOD) really wants this hit/newsletter/sandwich/microsite/etc.”
Yeah, we’ve all heard this phrase from some of our PR and marketing peeps, and while that approach to external communications may have worked just splendidly in 1995, heading into 2010, this notion of “we must appease our CEO/BODs first!” is a recipe for a PR/marketing plan disaster, if you ask me. This thought’s been rocking through my mind for a few days now, so I’m just going to come out and say it: Continue reading →
