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January 25, 2006
WOMBAT presentations available
By David Binkowski
WOMMA posted all of the presentations from last week's WOMBAT conference, which includes the two presentations I gave: "How to Sell WOM to Your Boss" and "How To Create Great Blogs That Get People Talking." The first takes on four major hurdles you might face when trying to convince your boss that your company should be involved in WOM. The second is a primer for companies looking to understand more about what makes a great blog.
Posted by staff at 11:29 AM
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January 24, 2006
I want to read Ron Artest's blog
By David Binkowski
For those of you unfamiliar with the NBA and Ron Artest, he's a talented, troubled basketball player for the Sacramento Kings Indiana Pacers. Ron has had problems with officials, other players, teammates and coaches, stemming from his quirky and volatile personality.
Ron needs a blog.
Imagine if, rather than running into the crowd on the night of November 19th, 2004, (a night I vividly remember because I took my son to that game and was leaving when the madness ensued), Ron ran had an outlet to vent his frustrations. Knowing that he could head back to the locker room, grab a Blackberry and compose a blog entry might have, just might have, helped channel that energy into a wonderfully written, passionate post about fan involvement at games getting out of hand.
Or last season, Ron could have blogged about his decision to take time off from playing basketball to promote his rap CD.
Or he could have let us know what he was thinking this past season, when he decided to announce that he'd be better off on another team and was suspended from the Pacers indefinitely (until today, when he was traded to the Kings).
As I said at my "How to Create Great Blogs That Get People Talking" WOMBAT panel, great blogs are an open conversation about great products and fascinating topics, written by a strong author.
People want to know what's going on in Mr. Artest's head, and what better way than a blog for us to find out?
Posted by staff at 04:47 PM
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University group challenges campus MSM
A Michigan State University instructor and her students have created the SpartanEdge, a new web site to challenge the MSM – in this case, the State News.
In an interview with Editor and Publisher, instructor Bonnie Bucqueroux says the site will feature video and podcasts and demonstrates the future of journalism. And the future of journalism (and all other media as we know it) obviously includes blogs. The site includes 17 blogs and four forums so far, including Bucqueroux's publisher's blog. One blog that has raised ire is the Spartanette, whose upfront blog has tongues wagging on and off campus.
Launched on Jan. 16, SpartanEdge and two other campus publications are requesting that the university-subsidized State News drop its requirement that student reporters promise not to write for other campus publications, at the risk of being fired.
It will be interesting to see if SpartanEdge keeps its edge and how the campus paper will respond.
Posted by at 01:10 PM
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January 20, 2006
WOMBAT recap
By David Binkowski
The Word of Mouth Basic Training (WOMBAT) conference in Orlando is wrapping up today, where I had the pleasure of presenting at two sessions (How to Sell Word of Mouth To Your Boss and How To Create Great Blogs That Get People Talking). The turnout has been fantastic, with over 450 attendees learning, interacting, teaching and, yes, schmoozing.
My first presentation, How to Sell WOM, was on Thursday with Dan Buczaczer from Reverb. The presentation was centered around four types of resistance you might encounter when trying to present a WOM campaign or idea to your boss. Dan presented a case study for a WOM campaign that helped launch a new whole grain-enriched white bread from Sara Lee. The strategy was to make people think of more than white bread, to focus on their children's health. They created a microsite within the allrecipes.com web site, sponsored by Sara Lee. The site was an online community that accepted and posted recipes submitted by users of the site.
Our session triggered several questions that allowed attendees to get specific, expert advice and answers to help them sell WOM. Very successful.
The second panel was on Creating Great Blogs, hosted by Michael Wiley, Director of New Media at GM (and FastLane blog fame). The panelists included PR/media/blog expert (and famed Micropersuasion blogger) Steve Rubel, Jason Woodmansee of Taylormade adidas Golf, and me.
Steve's presentation focused on his firm’s approach to creating a blog. Here's the Reader's Digest version of their four steps (longer version here;)
1. Find - Seek out conversations online / identify your influencer online evangelists. Technorati's a great place to start.
2. Listen - What are they saying about you? Be an active listener. Steve touched on a company's higher holy calling (see: white bread & kids health) Formulate your strategy for step 3 here.
3. Engage - Pretty self explanatory -- launch that blog!
4. Empower - Use the blogosphere to empower your evangelists to tell stories.
Jason's story was pretty amazing -- he started a no-holds-barred blog without corporate permission that six months later became an accepted corporate tool to connect with their customers. He went through the evolution of their blog (which, technically, started as a blog before there were blogs) and gave some extremely positive testimonials that were posted on the blog.
I presented our "lessons learned" from the FastLane blog (including other examples of great blogs, like Steve and Jason's blogs) and went through a list of components that all great blogs have in common.
After finishing the presentations, Michael moderated an active Q&A session that involved questions about maintaining blogs, content creation, earning blog comments, comment spam and fake blogs. I’ll post a link to the audio once it’s available.
Posted by staff at 01:56 PM
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January 12, 2006
Best blog post ever
Jeneane Sessum writes "The Top Ten Lies of Blogging Consultants." Excellent list. Hugh MacLeod has 10 blogger lies, followed by 43 comments and other suggestions. Here are a few more consultant lies:
- Every corporation should have an executive blog. As long as you have a fascinating executive, a thick skin and a great product.
- Business blogging is huge. We're hoping to get a client soon.
- Our Powerpoint, downloadable for $149, spells out our 10 rules for corporate blogging. We're making this up as we go, just like everyone else.
- We have a comprehensive employee blogging policy. We haven't caught anyone posting nude photos yet.
- As I was saying to Scoble last week ... I heard him speak at the last conference.
- We can do a corporate blog for you. We'll show you GM's FastLane blog and duplicate it.
Posted by at 10:14 AM
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We're a PR Week finalist
Our agency is a finalist in the following six PR Week Award categories:
Best Use of Internet
PR Innovation of the Year
GM FastLane Blog
Hass MS&L in Ann Arbor developed the GM FastLane blog, which is written by GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other executives about its cars and trucks. The blog attracted 1.3 million visitors in its first year, hundreds of links from other blogs, and has been called “a case study for corporate blogs.”
Best Use of Research or Measurement
Promotional Event of the Year
Take Back Your Saturday Morning (P&G Mr. Clean Magic Reach)
The New York office worked with P&G to launch the all-in-one bathroom cleaning tool by entering the marketplace in a credible and innovative way. MS&L created a strategic platform, which consisted of seeding (influencer understanding and mailing) and the launch (which included a 10-city tour and local promotions). The team connected with its primary prospect (active women) and generated 16% awareness before the start of advertising, 164 million impressions during launch and 98% product believability and purchase intent among the target.
Public Sector Campaign of the Year
Army Medical Department (for Recruiting Command)
U.S. Army Health Care and MS&L Chicago sought to address the recruiting challenge by revisiting an opportunity that has become a relatively low priority in the marketing mix: conventions. MS&L developed an overarching strategy that worked with the Army’s marketing campaign and local recruiters. The results: MS&L doubled the recruitment leads generated at agency-supported conventions from the previous year, while generating more than 585,000 impressions.
Large Agency of the Year
MS&L
This past year has been a year of firsts for MS&L: The agency became the dominant hub of the Publicis Public Relations and Corporate Communications Group; Mark Hass was named CEO; the agency appointed its first-ever global management team and created its first-ever strategic business plan, Five in Five. MS&L has won major, highly competitive new accounts; organic growth has increased sharply; and it has aggressive expansion plans in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. In the words of one of our biggest clients: “MS&L keeps building on its successes.”
Posted by at 08:30 AM
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January 05, 2006
Broaden your blogroll
There isn't an easy way to tell people how to find new blogs. Sure, you can use search engines, but how do you find the good ones? If you have some time to kill, the best place to start is the blogroll of the sites you already read. And if you find a new one, check out that blogroll, too.
John Wagner says to watch the little guys, too:
Open your eyes to the next wave of PR bloggers These bloggers are leading the next wave, with analysis and insight that is unique to their particular backgrounds and experiences. And their content tends to be more applicable and accessible to a wider audience than the heavy tech focus of the first-wave "A-listers."Yet they are often overlooked.
It's time to widen the circle a bit and give some room to the "next wavers" of PR blogging. They deserve recognition and respect.
And the New Persuasion blog lists the Ten Blogs I Would Pay For.
And here's a new blog to keep your eye on: The Holmes Report blog.
Posted by at 12:33 PM
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January 02, 2006
Cowboys and their trucks
So what kind of truck is that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are leaning against in that publicity photo for Brokeback Mountain? I ask because pretty much every time I see a car or soft drink in a movie, I assume a producer hit up the manufacturer for advertising dollars. Some products are placed more skillfully than others: the retro Chevrolet ad flashing in Times Square while King Kong ran amok was nicely done, but Club Crackers digitally added to the coffee table in the TV series “Yes, Dear” are just tacky.
This truck is so old and beat-up, it’s surely not an advertisement, and it may well be a GMC pickup truck. But wouldn't it be ironic if the gay cowboys drove a Ford? You remember, of course, that Ford was in trouble recently with gay and lesbian groups for dropping Jaguar and Land Rover advertising from GLBT publications under pressure from the arch conservative American Family Association. On Dec. 12, after Ford Group Vice President Joe Laymon met with members of seven gay and human rights advocacy groups about the issue, CEO Bill Ford affirmed the company’s “commitment to inclusion.”
And two days later, Laymon released a letter he wrote to the coalition he had met with, in which he promised that Ford Motor Company will run corporate ads (as opposed to ads promoting specific Jaguar or Land Rover vehicles) in gay and lesbian targeted publications in 2006.
You gotta wonder what Jaguar and Land Rover were thinking by dropping their decision to stop advertising – did they calculate they would gain more sales to conservative families than they would lose to gays? And why did the AFA pick on Ford in particular? It’s not the only automaker to discover that gay people have money to spend and prefer to spend it with companies that market to them. Gaylinkcontent.com has a fascinating survey of automotive advertising in the gay market by HIM Corp., beginning with Subaru ads appealing to lesbians in the early '90s. This summer, Subaru also became one of the first car companies to advertise on the 24-hour gay cable channel LOGO. Jeep, Cadillac and Lexus have advertised recently on Gay.com. See lots more about gay (and anti-gay) advertising on The Commercial Closet. And then there's Gay Wheels.com, a "gay-friendly automotive resource."
Planet Out Inc. tells advertisers that U.S. gay and lesbian consumers are 15 million strong and have $610 billion in buying power. In these days of declining market share, those are numbers no American automaker can afford to ignore.
Posted by Laurie Mayers at 01:14 PM
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