Gary's article on how communicators can adapt traditional PR strategies to the online environment has been published in Communique , a magazine devoted to healthcare marketing. You can find the article here.

Ajit and Erin’s recent posts about creative uses of text messaging got me thinking about Mozes, a cool texting product I played around with a few months back. In brief, Mozes allows you to create a free account and then register the keywords of your choice. People who send a text message to 66937 (MOZES) with your keyword as the message will get back a custom message of your choosing. In addition, you can use Mozes to encourage users to subscribe to your keyword and you can then send out broadcast messages to all your subscribers whenever you want.

So, I set up an account and registered the keyword “ajitmusic” as an experiment. Ajit is a friend and colleague here at Bivings and, more importantly, a talented musician who plays gigs around DC. Check out his website. Plug. Plug. Plug. Text the message “ajitmusic” to 66937 and you’ll get back a custom message and also an invitation to subscribe to broadcast messages from Ajit (or me I guess - :)). Give it a whirl. (more…)

Fans of the movie Clerks will have an opportunity to make themselves a permanent part of the sequel, Clerks II. The first 10,000 Myspace users who add Mooby Presents Clerks II as a MySpace friend will have their names listed in the end credits of the new movie.

Seems like a great word of mouth marketing stunt to me. Tons of people will quickly add Mooby as a friend to get in the end credits. And then those peoples’ friends will stumble on the Mooby MySpace, which includes trailors and other promotional materials about the movie. Very smart.

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the news aggregation site Digg expand its’ focus beyond Technology news in an effort to reach more eyeballs. We’ve also seen Netscape launch a Digg competitor that is also aimed at a wide audience, covering just about every topic you can think of. The macro approach of Digg and Netscape is a pretty clear attempt to compete with large, traditional media websites. Digg is no longer a niche website aimed at a small community of users. It has grown beyond that and is trying to go big time.

What’s interesting to me is that while Digg and Netscape go macro, you have new super-micro Digg clones popping up every day. There are now Digg clones for sports fans, women, marketers, alternative rockers, American Idol freaks, Spanish speaking astronomy enthusiasts, Mozilla addicts, celebrity gossip fans, the MySpace generation, web designers, medical news junkies, soccer fans, environmentalists, video karaoke enthusiasts and PR 2.0 types.

Anyone reading this can use sites like Crispy News to create their own Digg clone in a few minutes. For free.

This space will be interesting to watch in the coming months and years. For Digg, I guess the question will end up being is bigger really better? By expanding its focus and presumably bringing in lots of new, potentially less savvy users, will Digg end up alienating its’ core community? Will people migrate to more focused, micro communities?

I don’t really have an answer here, although I think it is inevitable that Digg will lose some of its soul by expanding so aggressively. We’ll see.

<Came up with the idea for this post by reading this blog entry by Rohit Bhargava.>

Those polling maniacs over at Rasmussen Reports released a study today that claims that 69% of Americans still have a positive opinion of Wal-Mart, while 29% do not like the superstore. The report revealed the following:

• Americans who are in the lower or middle income brackets are more likely to have a positive opinion of Wal-Mart than those in the upper income bracket.

• Of the 25% of Americans who claim they rarely or never shop at Wal-mart, 35% percent think positively of Wal-Mart.

• Those surveyed say that if given a chance to shop at either Wal-Mart, Target or K-Mart, 48% would prefer to shop at Wal-Mart, 30% would go to Target and only 9% would go to K-Mart.

I’m curious to see if there’s a difference in category. For instance, if someone was asked if they would prefer to buy clothes from Wal-Mart, Target or K-Mart, would they still choose Wal-Mart? Or, if they were given the chance to have a shopping spree at either Wal-Mart, Target or K-Mart, would they still pick Wal-Mart?

Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, a Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusettes, recently published an excellent study on the habits of 74 business bloggers. Here are some stats from the survey:

• 49% of the bloggers surveyed said that the time blogging take is the major drawback to having a blog
• 66% of those surveyed spent less than 1 hour a day writing blog entires; 31% spent between 1-3 hours
• 95% of those surveyed felt their blogs were successful at achieving their goals
• 58% reported that their blogs were llinked to from their company’s homepage
• 89% of bloggers said they got less than 10 comments on their blog a day

If you work at a company thinking of starting a blog, the study makes for an interesting read.

Via Micropersuasion.

So now that we’ve all agreed that The World is Flat and also that we’re a nation of people drowning in debt, Boston Consulting Group senior consultant Michael Silverstein has a new theory for us: Middle class consumers are on an eternal treasure hunt, looking for an emotional connection to our purchases, from mac and cheese to the kinds of pens we write with. So how does all of this effect the way marketers, advertisers and PR people communicate to consumers? Silverstein says this, “If your offering isn’t exciting enough to inspire trading up, but not enough of a bargain to satisfy the treasure hunters, you’ll have no emotional connection with your target audience.” (Keep in mind, this book focuses strictly on the consumer goods category.)

Having seen various “strategy” forms (these are forms that make a PR person answer, in short form, what their goal or vision is regarding messaging and product positioning. For instance, a public relations team member might write something like, “We want consumers to think of Sprinter’s Flavored Beverage as a way to live a healthier lifestyle.” Unfortunately, that’s generally the bulk of it sometimes. They build their powerpoint slides around that pithy wish list.), there is a noticeable lack of actual, thought out market research or connection to the consumer in these hollow, easily replicated messages. Somehow, many PR firms without research arms, think that market research isn’t necessary, outside of skimming through a few articles here and there. (more…)

I recently visited the website of Berkshire Hathaway, which is the holding company controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett that ultimately employs 190,000 people. I was looking for video clips of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual board meeting, which are famous for Buffett’s pronouncements on a variety of economic subjects. It became clear pretty quickly that Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t do multimedia. The site doesn’t even do images. See the homepage below:

The entire website is text based and could be built in under a day by anyone with some basic HTML skills. It is actually sort of refreshing that Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t have some slick website. The site is a reflection of Warren Buffett himself: completely lacking pretension.

“Blogger Jeff Jarvis single handedly brought down Dell! He hurt their stock price! He hurt their reputation! Thus, buy our services! Blog monitoring, blogger relations, blog, blog, blog! Do it now or it will happen to you!”

The pitches are probably more refined than that. But in reading PR blogs, it’s clear that the Dell Hell situation has become a go to case study for PR firms pitching blogger relations programs. I’ll bet it works, too. It’s an easy argument to make.

Backing up, in July of 2005 Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine bought a lemon from Dell. He paid a premium for a four year in-home service plan and Dell refused to live up to their pomise. They refused to come to his house and fix his computer, which is what he paid for them to do. Jarvis got angry and started complaining about it. Other bloggers came forward with similar problems and the blogosphere engaged in open warfare against Dell. You can read Jarvis’ R-rated original posts here and a great case study on the situation here.

You know what though, the “blogs brought down Dell” argument rings false to me. The fact is, Jarvis only resorted to blog complaints after being told to buzz off by Dell customer service personnel over the phone. I can guarantee you he wasn’t the first customer this happenned to. I would also guarantee that Dell was well aware that customers weren’t happy about the in home service plan (and problems with their computers) long before Jarvis started his blogging crusade. Customer service folks record phone complaints religiously. Dell knew what they were doing. They knew they were cutting costs at the expense of customer satisfaction.

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We’ve mentioned our media management and analysis platform, ImpactWatch, several times (in passing) on this blog. Last night, at the 2006 Sabre Awards Dinner in Manhattan, we learned that we had won the Iron Sabre for the Research/Evaluation category, beating out Hill & Knowlton’s Wal-Mart Media Day Analysis case study. H & K has won the category for several years in a row and is quite the formidable opponent. Thanks to tablemates Stanton Crenshaw (received the Bronze Sabre for Best Media Placement: Television) for their hearty congratulations and Denver-based MGA Communications for their kindness and their spirited applause.

We are very proud of our ImpactWatch product and also our work in assisting corporations and public relations agencies with continuous measurement and analysis of their programs and initiatives. The media landscape has been evolving rapidly in the past few years and we have been developing the system so that it reflects emerging media trends and represents each company’s communications goals and objectives, while staying consistent with best measurement practices. Measurement, as so many communicators know, is not very easy and it’s important to assess program measurement in context. Anyway, we sincerely appreciate the honor. (more…)

Back at my Midwestern high school, state law mandated that students could not graduate without having taken a course called consumer seminar. Though a wholly informative course, after college and graduate school, I can’t really remember much about the course or what we learned. I know that I took it during summer school after my junior year of high school and that we spent our last day in class watching this (awesome) movie called “Breaking Away” as a reward for making it through the course. I know that the teacher’s daughter worked in advertising and had written a famous sports jingle, but that’s about all I remember about that class.

Not too long after high school, you find yourself making actual decisions without the benefit of all the information. You sign things because you are either too busy or too visually impaired or too impatient to make out the mouseprint. Sometimes you simply don’t know how to advocate for yourself. You meekly pay your bills, buy your groceries and submit to what companies describe as external pricing pressures. Once in a while you pop open the newspaper to find that a desperate and strung-out consumer has written to a columnist about how her phone company or credit card misbilled her and could the reporter please advise her on what to do? Sometimes the reporter does oblige, and after the whole sordid tale is in print, the PR people usually start looking into this. Things tend to get resolved when bad publicity is at stake. (more…)

Like a lot of people, I have a camera phone. And like a lot of people, I don’t use it. When I first got it, I went through the motions of playing with the camera. I took a bunch of pictures and emailed the better/funnier ones to friends. Cool. Now what? I got bored with it quickly, and I am now pretty focused on using my phone for phone calls (and text messaging) and my digital camera for taking pictures.

Having said that, I’m intrigued by the concept of moblogs. A moblog (mobile weblog) is a type of blog that focuses on content posted from mobile devices like phones and PDAs. Services like Text America and Moblog UK allow you to quickly and easily publish photos from your camera phone to the web via email or MMS. You can also post mobile video clips, assuming your camera phone has that capability. Lots of moblog communities have popped up, with anyone with a camera phone able to contribute. Moblogs are a great way for people to share/report on events in real time as well as an interesting way for marketers/PR folks to hype products and events. (more…)

A strange persona entered and shook up the PR world (at least the part that is online and blogging) rather recently. Strumpette, a blog written by one Amanda Chapel, has inspired a great deal of vitriol from online PR folks such as Steve Rubel, fellow Edel-ite Phil Gomes, the young and ambitious Flackette and even Shel Holtz. A strange site to see, as most PR bloggers are rarely critical of the industry and are genuinely giddy about the power of blogging. But when faced with Strumpette in March, they quickly switched into an attack mode.

The overall response to this particular blog is 180 degrees from what was received by the blogger formerly known as Anonymous Lawyer. Anonymous Lawyer turned out to be a 3L at Harvard Law School with a gift for writing well enough for people to wish he were real.

Amanda Chapel,a.k.a Strumpette, on the other hand, receives constant criticism from industry heads such as Media Orchard’s Scott Baradell who wrote that Strumpette was “pompous and condescending”, “dishonest” and “purposely hurtful to others”because she doesn’t respect the public relations industry enough. (Ironically, the most popular and entertaining blogs necessarily fit the qualities Baradell uses to describe Strumpette. I, for one, am a Denton-media addict and could not do without my daily cup of cynicism.)

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Last week, USA Today published an interesting article about how the television industry is using blogs to provide obsessed fans with loads of extra information about their favorite shows and characters. Blogs are now produced by television shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The Office and That 70’s Show. The trend is for the blogs to be done in character, providing further glimpses into the character’s pysches. Other blogs are written by show writers or producers and provide cool extras like listings of songs played during each episode.

The best example of an in character blog is the weblog written by the character Dwight from The Office. It includes information about a sales piece Dwight is drafting called “How to Literally Kill the Competition”, which features chapters like “The Customer is Always Wrong” and tips on how to seduce the customer with one’s power and to get to know them “Like a small lover”. This blog is written by the actor who plays Dwight while he is on set, sitting at his character’s desk. Most of the other actors on The Office are active on MySpace,including the actress who plays Pam.

Hollywood is also heavily into podcasting. The producers/writers of shows like Lost and Grey’s Anatomy produce weekly insider podcasts that are posted on iTunes. And actor Jack Black is producing a weekly video podcast from the set to promote his new film, Nacho Libre.  It is currently the 5th most popular podcast on all of iTunes.

According to new Microsoft employee Niall Kennedy, Microsoft’s Ajaxy new website, Live.com, will serve as the default homepage for users of Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Kennedy says that hundreds of millions of computer users around the world will visit Live.com when they load up their new version of IE for the first time. Live.com is not an ordinary web page - it is an Ajax homepage that allows users to plug in their preferred RSS news feeds and widgets to create a personalized platform right in their browsers.

For web developers and communicators in general, this is significant for at least two reasons:

(1) This development is going to go a long way towards bringing RSS to the masses, as folks smarter than I have pointed out already. Millions of Microsoft users will be exposed to RSS feeds for the first time when they load up IE 7. This is going to kick start adoption of RSS technology.

(2) Maybe just as importantly, millions of Internet users will be exposed to the possibilities of Ajax for the first time, in the context of a website (I would argue that most people see Google Maps and Gmail as applications rather than websites). Live.com does not use Ajax subtlety - it embraces it full on, warts and all. Page elements can be dragged and dropped. The search includes an endless scroll bar. Htting the back button after searching is an iffy proposition.  The Live.com user experience is fundamentally different from the experience most of us are used to when browsing the Internet.

Internet Explorer 7 should come out in the second half of 2006 (it’s already in Beta) and Vista will be released in early 2007, supposedly. As Gary mentioned, companies and organizations should go ahead and get those website RSS feeds up and running. And web developers should get ready for clients to start asking for Ajax the way they ask for Flash now.