It’s an issue many have talked about, even on this blog. Do you claim to be a social media “expert” (insert word of your choice here, i.e, guru, maven)? If so, it’s now time to prove it.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Obligatory Kanye West Reaction Post
The following takes place via e-mail. What you are about to see is a dramatic reenactment of a group of caffeine-depraved flacks talking about the MTV Video Music Awards.
Play nice…unless we don’t know who you are…
In such un-Cog-like fashion, this will be brief. Well, because there’s only so much we all know about The Cog.
I made a comment on Cog’s Gear Grindings a while back regarding the “sheep mentality” in social media, particularly on blogs and Twitter. A little bit of, you can’t possibly love everyone’s blog you comment on, and a little bit of, are we just being nice to each other because life’s tough? Okay, it wasn’t that sour.
Christina’s Coffee Talk: Stephanie Smirnov
This week I had the pleasure of getting to know more about our favorite PR Mama: Stephanie Smirnov, president of DeVries Public Relations. Stephanie relies so heavily on three gargantuan mugs of Starbucks coffee a day that her family is trained to not talk to her until she’s had the first sip. Sounds familiar. She’s a pro at wakeboarding, Wii Resort Wakeboarding that is, and relaxes in her Catskills home with her husband and son “swimming, skiing, grilling and chilling.” Stephanie listens to the best old-school funk, disco, and R&B and reads her favorite mommy blogs (The Bloggess, The Pioneer Woman, and Rock and Roll Mama to name a few) and design/trend blogs—a new favorite Design*Sponge. Okay, enough of the fun stuff. When Stephanie said she would participate for Coffee Talk, I couldn’t wait to find out how she is so successful in her career and also a great mom with a very solid family. How does one find the time for it all? And so I give you, Stephanie Smirnov . . . super mom and PR pro:
PR Time Warp: The Palace
How did social networking get to be known as “Web 2.0”? Somehow it makes the first generation of the Internet seem so unconnected and solitary. Coming from that generation, I can tell you that the Internet was not so solitary but we didn’t necessarily use the Web for our interactions with each other. America Online was its own stand alone service but was so successful because it was all about the chat rooms and interaction, there was IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and there was even a virtual world: The Palace.
The Industry That Cried Wolf—Is the ‘evolve or die’ rule universal?
The press release is dead. The media is dying. It’s beginning to feel like we work for the industry that cried wolf.
While I am by no means saying PR pros shouldn’t be concerned about and keenly aware of the intricacies of the media’s evolution, it’s time we stopped panicking and took a look at the facts. Or more importantly, a look at the newspaper industry’s proposed solution—a new and improved online product. Can it work? Is it a universal solution?
Be Your Own Flack (“B.Y.O.F.”): So what is PR, anyway?
Before I started my business, I thought PR was about getting press. Period. A bunch of my friends are entrepreneurs, and they hire PR agencies to convince journalists and bloggers to write about them, TV shows to feature them, and twitterers to tweet about them. Some of these friends have entirely separate crews to handle their publicity (but isn’t that part of the whole PR thing?). So I sat down and asked some of my most successful small-biz owner friends what they pay for these services. And I about died. Since I’m running a start-up, my PR budget is exactly zero. As I mentioned in my first post, it was about then I decided I’d do this PR thing myself.
Flack In Training – Volume II
After I was “laid-off” from the job that never was, I dove right into my search for a new position. Begrudgingly, of course, since I hadn’t thought I would need to do one in the first place. I was surprisingly optimistic about it, thinking that my experience would help get me a job relatively fast. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After countless interviews and nothing but unexpected disappointments, I came to my senses. As confident as I was in my potential to be an awesome entry-level candidate, I was literally competing for jobs with every other person my age who had graduated with a degree in PR (okay, my degree is in Communications, but that’s besides the point) and lived in the tri-state area. How was I going to make myself stand out and shine?
Your Copy Sucks: Thanks for nothing, Dexter ads
I love TV. I love it so much that I harshly judge people based on their viewing habits. I’ve ended relationships because of disagreements over which Iron Chef series is better (original, duh). So I take TV very seriously.
I also watch a lot of TV online or via Netflix because, you know, geek. I finished Dexter season two months ago and was really looking forward to starting season three, which just came out on DVD. This is all background information for my griping.
My point is, I walk outside my office one afternoon and I see this noise:
Y’all in NYC have probably seen these promos for Dexter season four all over. It’s in the subway and on buses and, I dunno, stuck to the backs of the doors in women’s rooms.
And it pisses me off because it’s like a giant spoiler that’s following me everywhere!
“Teej,” say the unfortunate people who must listen to me whine about this, “it’s not that big of a spoiler. I mean, it’s just Dexter holding a kid. Could mean anything.”
To those unfortunates I say: LOOK AT THE COPY.
Here’s my dramatic reenactment of how this ad campaign came about. Imagine a room full of modern day Mad Men wannabes: Diet Coke instead of scotch, mint gum instead of cigarettes, you get the picture. And GO:
“We can just have the picture of Dexter and the baby. Good image.”
“Do you think people will take it the wrong way? We don’t want people thinking he’s going to kill the baby.”
“Yeah, we definitely don’t want people to think he’s going to kill the baby.”
“Can’t have baby-killing.”
“Nope. No baby-killing. Can’t have that.”
“We need some copy that explains that he’s not going to hurt the baby.”
“Oh, how about ‘This is Dexter’s baby that he had in season three that TJ Dietderich hasn’t seen yet because it just came out on DVD’? Good?”
“Yeah, but ‘World’s Most Killer Dad’ is snappier.”
“Cut! Print! We’re done here.”
End scene.
It’s not like this baby was a secret; I’m told there was a special behind-the-scenes episode about this plot line. But I had gone to great lengths to avoid those things. Copy, on the surface, seems to have very little to do with my spoilery anger. But allow me to make an incredibly far reach.
I believe that all copy, even ad copy, should consider its audience. Not its intended audience, not its target demo, but every single person who’s going to be looking at it. Obviously the ad dudes considered the people who might be offended by the image of the baby with a serial killer (oh, spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen season one: Dexter is a serial killer). Why not also consider the people who would be offended by spoilers? Why not just let that image and the show logo speak for itself? Why the annoying little pun that destroys all the mystery?
Who is this ad for? All the people who are caught up on the show and already know about the baby? All the people who are only vaguely familiar with the premise of the show and love babies? What about me in the middle ground, yo? Where’s my Dexter ad?
Signed,
baby-hatin’ Teej.
[reus id=”1″]
Mobile Technology: The Next PR/MarComm Frontier?
In the grand scheme of things, our constant, seemingly never-ending discussions and Twittering and blogging about the evolution of PR/marketing/advertising and how cool social media is will eventually die down, and we will get back to our normal—albeit now drastically altered (hopefully for the better)—professional and personal lives.
So rather than talk about what is currently going on in the social media landscape (look, a new Twitter app came out . . . and another!), I’d like to actually think about what we *might* be talking about a year, two years, or five years from now. Specifically, mobile technology and just how big of an impact it’s going to have on our lives, particularly in the PR world.
Look around you; the damn things are everywhere. You can even take a cell phone into a delivery room now and tweet while giving birth! Crazy, I know. But that’s just it: The effect mobile technology is going to have on communicators in terms of how we get messages across to key influencers, and how we engage the public, will be enormous. Far bigger than what is currently going on in the social media landscape. We’re talking about a technology that is now in the hands of more than 82 percent (250 million) of Americans and approximately 50 percent of the world!
But it gets even better: A recent MediaWeek study showed that 1 in every 7 minutes of media consumption is now done through mobile technology. Think about that for a minute: That great op-ed you wrote for your client that’s read on an iPhone now by the most tech-savvy around us? Give it five years. Everyone in your community is going to be instantly reading it on their smartphones, tweeting it back out to their followers (if Twitter still exits in five years . . . .), and sending it all over their social media network(s) to audiences you could have never even dreamed of.
Or even cooler, the fact that very soon (as in, it’s in its infancy now in the U.S.), marketers will have the ability to embed special 2-D barcodes into posters, shirts, billboards, practically anything, and someone with a mobile phone can take a picture of it and get all kinds of cool promos, buy movie tickets, or even get train times sent directly to their phone. Don’t believe me? Check out this piece from The Economist for a view into the not-too-distant future.
So what does that mean for you, the PR guy, the marketer, or ad man who is desperately trying to keep up with the current changes? Well, I hate to tell you, but it’s only going to build from here. And that’s actually a good thing. Because while the last five years in our business has seen a rapid growth and movement toward expanding from traditional services and offerings, opportunities are going to continue to arise that will keep us busy—and hopefully—excited for many years to come.
I envision a future in the PR world where certainly ideas like the social media news release, Wikis, and other mobile-friendly formats will become even more prevalent, as brands quickly realize that there are far more efficient and cheaper ways to reach their targeted consumers than the traditional giant, static billboard on the side of the road.
Where do you think the PR, marketing, and advertising industries are moving? Are the technologies and ideas I noted above going to be part of this movement, or are these just flash-in-the-pan ideas? Let me know!
[reus id=”1″]