Non-Profits and Literacy AND Digital Marketing, Oh My!
Today is Youth Literacy Day — a celebration of reading, writing, and self-expression, and of all the organizations, professionals, volunteers and teachers who help children learn and love to read. To celebrate this day, 826Michigan, a non-profit organization several of us at MS&L volunteer for, is partnering with its affiliates across the U.S. for a really cool fund-raising effort — www.826on826.org.
With mounting pressure on school systems and parents, 826 writing centers help bridge the gap for students and families by providing free, one-on-one attention and writing help to all young people ages 6 through 18.
826 chapters are asking everyone to donate $8.26 on 8/26 to support youth literacy in their city. They’ve developed a multi-pronged online strategy to get people mobilized. Here are all the ways they’ve set up for folks to donate:
- Donate via SMS with a mobile device – users can text “WRITE” to 20222 to make a one-time donation of $10 on August 26th.
- PayPal integration at 826on826.org that lets users donate $8.26
- Facebook Donation Application – download the app and enter your cell number to dontate $8.26
826 National is also using Facebook and Twitter channels across all regional 826 operations to get the word out. Participants can like or follow 826Michigan on:
Check out the campaign today and donate if you can. This is a great example of how regional and national non-profits are using social media to secure donations and spread the word about a cause.
To learn more about 826 National and its chapters across the US, click here.
- Date: 08.26.2010
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Return of the Potluck!
Man, been a while since we’ve had a good poluck lunch here at MSL Digital. Bless you, Party Planning Committee, for bringing it back! This one’s theme was Mexican food and as you can see there were many dishes to be had, all of them excellent.
Afterward, gorged on beans, rice, tamales, enchiladas, cookies, we had a go at busting a pinata on our back porch. With perhaps unexpected results. What must the neighbors think!
Part One:
Part Two:
- Date: 07.15.2010
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If You Can’t Take the Heat, Take it to Starbucks.
NEWSFLASH: It’s hot lately. Like, sweltering, fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk hot. Like, your-M&Ms-would-indeed-melt-in-your-hand hot. Like, it’s literally hotter in Ann Arbor than Orlando hot.
Okay, you get the idea.
Days like these are not days anyone wants to be without air conditioning. Unfortunately for our office’s third floor (also the top floor), that very thing happened the other day — it was so hot, our AC went on strike and broke.
Not to be deterred, the team on MS&L Digital’s third floor took it like champs. Some had fans at their desks. Some cracked open cold beverages. Others, the ones with laptops, just moved downstairs to the second floor.
… and then there was Lyndsay Kapurch, who wins the prize for most innovative:
Lyndsay does not have a laptop, but that didn’t discourage her from finding a creative solution. She picked up her entire 27″ iMac, mouse, and keyboard, and just moved into Starbucks two doors down.
Now THAT’S dedication!
- Date: 07.08.2010
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Meet The New Boss
A big MS&L Digital welcome to young Phinn, who spent the day with us today, and who reminded us that everything we really need to know, we learned in pre-school. Pretty sure we’ll all be working for Phinn one of these days . . .
- Date: 06.25.2010
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First Post, From the New Kid . . .
It’s never easy being the new kid. No one likes it. But, as much as I thought I’d hate being the new kid, everyone here at MS&L Digital has gone out of their way to be friendly and to make me feel welcome.
With that being said, it’s still hard coming into an environment, where everyone already knows each other, they already have their own inside jokes, and they already seem to have this sense of community or family.
Seeing as I’ve been the “new kid,” a time or two before, I’ve come up with a few things that can make the transition to “seasoned employee” easier:
1. Learn everyone’s names. You don’t want to be caught in a situation where you should know someone’s name.
2. Invite a couple of coworkers to lunch. It’s a great way to get to know your coworkers. Plus, who doesn’t love food?
3. Be sure to join in the “water cooler” conversations. It’s a great way to let your personality shine through.
4. Do your job, and do it well. It may seem like a given, but you were hired to do a job…so do it!
Follow these tips, and you’ll be feeling less like the new kid, and more like a part of the group, in no time.
- Date: 06.24.2010
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Oh Happy Day: Kim’s Dulce De Leche Bars
We celebrated some birthdays here at MS&L Digital (happy birthday Will, Shea, Marian!) and our own Kim Huston blew us all away with these Dulce De Leche Cheesecake Bars she made. They were, in a word, excellent. They were, in three more words, eaten pretty quickly!
- Date: 06.04.2010
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It’s a Dirty Job But I Pay Clean Money For It
The success of “Mad Men” has been in part due to its compelling storytelling and characters but also, I think, due to an interest in the dinosaur days of American society and how we behaved during the 1950s and 60s. Did PR ever have it’s “Mad Men” era, as advertising did? As a student of these decades and a collector of lore I think the answer is yes. Exhibit A: 1957′s “Sweet Smell of Success.” Written by an ex-PR guy, it’s the story of a Manhattan press agent, Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), whose job it is to place items in the metro rags about his clients. His number-one target is the powerful columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), with whom he has a sycophantic relationship. Its most famous line, amidst other great ones, is “Match me, Sidney,” a gesture with an unlit cigarette Lancaster uses to convey his power over Curtis.
I recently used a reference to this film in a presentation to illustrate how the nature of social media has put the personal touch of desksides back into PR. Obviously, PR these days isn’t all about cocktails, jazz clubs, reefer heads, crooked cops and setting clients up with hookers, if it ever was. But it’s nice to take a step into that neon fantasy land, so if you’ve got room in your Netflix cue, won’t you consider making an appointment with Sidney? And let me know what other movies you know of that fit this genre. Hat tip from MS&L’s midwest director Joel Curran and next up for me is Jack Lemmon in “Days of Wine and Roses,” a film about alcoholism that also happens to involve PR. Coincidence?
- Date: 05.26.2010
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How Much Time Have You Got?
I have spent 10 years in public relations, but even so there are many aspects of PR I’ve never experienced, because I’ve spent all that time working in the unique field of internet based PR, what we these days call social media. My history in this trade has always been characterized by reconciliation of the emergent to the traditional – something I have never minded in the least, as I’m not one of those “bury the old ways” kind of professionals, nor do I think it is the nature of my agency. But I recently got a chance to begin another chapter in that narrative. I got to work my first trade show.
It was one of the biggest shows of the year to my client, and I was there to meet the digital media I had been talking to on a regular basis, a collection of bloggers, writers and other content producers that I’d pitched to, tweeted with, Facebooked and otherwise reached out to. I was also there for an event we were having later with many of these people. But there was no reason I should be sitting on my hands in between those opportunities, so willingly I was taught by my colleagues the practice of accepting media appointments or being on hand to talk with any media that showed up without an appointment, and take them around the booth. Talk. You know, with your face, not from behind a keyboard?
I repeat here what may be obvious to some of the readers of this publication, some of the lessons I learned, that first of all in this situation you have to know your client’s story and sub-plots and your client’s products. You have to understand the geography of the booth and the trajectory of its narrative. But I also learned, both from my colleagues and some of the writers and editors I talked to, that you have to be cognizant of your guest’s time, that you have to identify, quickly, what’s of most interest to them and get them the info they want or connect them with the subject matter expert that will be of most relevance to their writing. Often this means asking visiting media, “How much time have you got” and working around to, “What kind of angle you working on? What’s of most interest to your readers? What would you most like to see?”
Writers hammered this home to me, as I listened to them tell me and the people I worked with how refreshing it is to have someone ask you these things, to understand that they are familiar with your company and your product and don’t need a complete history lesson. Many of them repeated the phrase, “the newest of the new.” “I know who you are. Don’t show me your whole catalogue. I just want to see the newest of the new.”
My colleagues, and my client, assured me this practice of manning a trade show booth was an easy one to pick up, but just the same it was evident how good they were at it, how much better than I the neophyte. Often in my career, because so much of what I do is new or because I am the only person in a room with the depth of experience in my subject matter, I’m the one educating. It was terrific for me to be educated, and I admired watching the veterans work. My client had lost track of the number of times she’d attended this particular show. My agency colleague confessed it was his fifteenth appearance.
I was sitting with this same colleague over a beverage later that evening talking shop, aptly listening to tales of the old days. I asked him what he thought of what I did, this whole social media thing. He said he loved it and felt it was, for him, a much more direct way to reach some of the people he wanted to reach than some of the traditional practices of PR. I have to confess though that I am feeling equally jazzed about our old friend The Trade Show. It’s a lot like what I do – try to reveal my client to its customers or the influencers that affect customer decisions – only it’s done in real space instead of via an electronic conduit. As with so many things in PR it fits what I’ve always preached: social media-based PR isn’t a replacement for traditional PR, it’s a complement. I’d be guilty of gross negligence if I didn’t continue the practice of asking PR to teach me even as I’ve tried to teach it. It’s good to remain a student.
- Date: 04.27.2010
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Kondek Speaks
I was absolutely thrilled to be profiled at Bulldog Reporter. I got to sound off on a lot of things dear to me, not just our business but the future of our industry. For example:
Q: What do you make of the whole “who owns digital” debate?
“Owning digital” is probably the wrong way to put it. I’d say in general PR should own social media and advertising should own online advertising and content creation. But, of course, these distinctions are blurring. Honestly, while the lines between PR and advertising are fuzzy, operationally there are still some very big distinctions between the disciplines that make the separations reasonable and determine that PR, in fact, should own digital. PR is the discipline of participation in media, and that’s exactly what digital or social media is—participation-based. Advertising is the discipline of disruptive media—and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all; the best advertising is a welcome disruption. But in general, these demarcations are pretty fair; advertising builds the cool site, PR extends it into social media.
Those hard, fast lines are really malleable, though. Some ad agencies do great “outreach” into social media and some PR firms (like my own) build great content. Expect this to be a constant adjustment in the years to come. In the short term, it’s clear the best brands get their agencies working together for the best possible mix.
- Date: 02.03.2010
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GM FastLane blog redesign
By Alicia Dorset
WARNING: Blatant self-promotion!
Sometimes a classic needs a new look. After more than three years as the blogosphere‘s “it” example of corporate blogging, the General Motors FastLane blog features a new design by MS&L Digital‘s creative director Jason Julien and graphic designer Josh Weston. Check out this post from Christopher Barger, GM‘s Director of Global Communications Technology, on what to look forward to with the revamped blog.
- Date: 08.05.2008
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