Archive for April, 2009

30
Apr
09

General Mills…to disclose or not to disclose?

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: Ads, Advertising, Blogger, Blogs, Brand Loyalty, Cheerleading, Communications, Disclosure, Endorsements, Ethics, Marketing, Media, Product Placement, promotions, Royal Caribbean and Social Media
Tags: ,

General Mills is now using a blog-influencing campaign to encourage over 900 bloggers to try their products and blog about them. The network, MyBlogSpark, is distributing free product samples for the group to try.

genmillsblogsparklogo

Brandweek’s Brian Morrissey mentioned in his article that, “The company (General Mills) suggests bloggers inform readers they receive products for review, although that is not a requirement for participation in the program. It does not compensate the bloggers in any other way, according to David Witt, brand public relations manager for the company.”

Moving forward, I think corporations reaching out to influential bloggers is a good strategy. However, as we made clear in our previous post (CARNIVAL) it is vital that these bloggers clearly disclose the nature of their relationship with said corporation.

At the present time, General Mills does not have a policy like this in place. I feel they should require their members to disclose their relationship in order to participate in the network, instead of taking advantage of the FTC’s sluggishness in putting forth legislation that addresses this issue.

What are your thoughts on bloggers disclosing their relationships with corporations?

28
Apr
09

social media…does your company “get it”?

By Joshua Woolery 1 Comment
Categories: Ad Agency, Advertising, Best of, Blogs, Communications, Marketing, Media, New Media, PR, promotions, Public Relations, Social Media and Twitter

Adopting social media campaigns can be quite a challenge for many businesses. Leading executives are often hesitant to allow consumers to control what is being said about their brand. Many times, consumers aren’t looking for complete control; they are looking for innovative companies to meet them halfway.

Lee Odden recently posted an article on the Online Marketing Blog titled, “25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips.”  This post provides tips and best practices from major players in the Social Marketing arena, including representatives from Best Buy, Wells Fargo and General Mills.

The post offers great ideas, strategy and direction for companies who have yet to fully commit to pursuing social media in their marketing strategy. Because of the length of the post, I am only going to repost my favorite pieces of advice from Crayon’s president, Joseph Jaffe.  Below he shares five tips for companies trying to make sense out of defining a social media strategy.

1. Don’t cede control completely to your consumers. They don’t want it. Meet them halfway. Partner with them. Work with them.

2. Marketing is not a campaign; it’s a commitment. If you want lifetime relationships with your consumers, you need to invest in them…genuinely…for life. Begin with investing in what we call at Crayon, “commitment to conversation” (monitoring, optimization, response, outreach, etc.)

3. Learn to deal with negativity. You want the love, but can’t deal with the hate. Criticism is not your enemy; apathy and indifference are. Any negative response from consumers (whether by blog, email or customer service inquiry) is a cry for help AND an acknowledgement that they care (enough to reach out to you…).

4. As per my earlier point, think strategically. We’re currently working with some of our clients to define a social networking strategy. (BEFORE cart before the horse deploying a “Facebook App” for example)

5. That said, we also advise companies to invest in “well-structured experimentation”. We distill this into a very real and workable number – 4: 4 experiments over a calendar year. Is one experiment per quarter that unrealistic or irrationally exuberant? I think not.

Joseph offers some really good advice above. Click here if you would like to read more tips that other influencers have suggested.

27
Apr
09

Media on Twitter

By Beth Hardy 8 Comments
Categories: Media and Twitter

picture-2 Many people have been talking and blogging about this. But in the event you haven’t heard, the Web site MediaOnTwitter.com provides a free, comprehensive database of media who are on Twitter.

A team of PR pros developed this database, including Denverite and partner at Digital Idea Media Melissa Hourigan, social media PR maven Sarah Evans, HARO founder Peter Shankman, and TrackVia’s Ed Dunigan, among others.

As Melissa said, “…we were able to create the most comprehensive MediaOnTwitter global database available. There were a few late night work sessions but the opportunity to give the Twitter community something useful was driving the team to get it done.”

The database enables users to locate media by beat, location, name or media outlet on Twitter. And did I mention it’s free?!

I’ve already started using MediaOnTwitter to find and follow journalists, and I’ve discovered the database to be simple and easy to navigate. This is a great resource for PR people and media alike. Thanks to all who developed this database.

To learn more about MediaOnTwitter, read Melissa’s blog post on Twitter Attraction here.

24
Apr
09

Top 50 Publicity Stunts

By Beth Hardy 2 Comments
Categories: Borat, Polar Bear, PR, PR Stunts, Prince, Public Relations, Publicity Stunts, Stunts and Taylor Herring

Taylor Herring, a London-based PR agency known for high profile consumer campaigns, has compiled a list of their favorite 50 publicity stunts. Of course they included a couple stunts of their own. But who can blame them? They’re one of the best!

Following are a few of my picks from the list:

Prince Changes His Name

Following a row with his record company, Prince announced to the world (on June 7th, 1993) that he would be changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol.
3291909003_ca164817d4

Borat At The White House

In September 2006, Secret Service officers denied Borat access to The White House. Sacha Baron Cohen’s creation had hoped to persuade ‘Premier George Walter Bush’ to attend a screening of his film. The antics prompted the Kazakh government to disown the movie, which went on to take more than $248 million worldwide.

Polar Bear Stranded On The Thames

Taylor Herring’s launch stunt for natural history channel Eden.

Which ones are your favorites?

23
Apr
09

Kellogg Company misleads consumers

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: Ads, Advertising, Disclosure, Ethics, Marketing and Press Release
Tags:

miniwheats1Recently, Kellogg Company was handed a wrist-slap by the FTC for misleading consumers during a national campaign to promote its Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal.

According to the FTC, “Kellogg claimed […] that a breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal is clinically shown to improve children’s attentiveness by nearly 20 percent. The complaint alleges that, in fact, according to the clinical study referred to in Kellogg’s advertising, only about half the children who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast showed any improvement in attentiveness, and only about one in nine improved by 20 percent or more.”

As far as I can tell, Kellogg is not going to be fined. Instead, they are being asked follow the rules. According to the FTC:

“The proposed settlement would bar Kellogg from making comparable claims about Frosted Mini-Wheats unless the claims are true and not misleading. It requires that claims about the benefits to cognitive health, process, or function provided by Frosted Mini-Wheats or any morning food or snack food be substantiated and true. The settlement would prohibit Kellogg from misrepresenting the results of tests, studies, or research regarding any morning or snack food product.”

I think that a national brand like Kellogg should be fined because they should have known better. Instead it sounds as if the FTC is just going to give them a warning. This is a great learning opportunity to remind all brands that their advertisements need to be factual and not misleading.

22
Apr
09

earth day

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: Green and PR Stunts
Tags: ,

earthday11

Since today is Earth Day, we thought we would write about a company that is doing their part to make our world greener.

King 5 News (Seattle,WA) reported today that Jones Soda’s corporate headquarters has taken itself completely off the power grid today.  How is this possible?

Jones employees, using a system developed by the applied physics lab at University of Washington, will ride nine bicycles throughout the day to power their office.  The system uses the momentum from the bicycles to continuously recharge numerous batteries.  These batteries direct the power to a main source and this source is essentially what will power their office today.

I think this is really exciting. Especially since they have asked residents of the community to come by and help peddle.

Click here for the video

21
Apr
09

why your business needs twitter

By Joshua Woolery 1 Comment
Categories: Advertising, Brand Loyalty, Communications, location data, Marketing, promotions, Social Media, Twitter and Viral

Restaurants are increasingly using Twitter. Why shouldn’t they? Twitter is an inexpensive medium that can be used to communicate with customers, generate brand awareness, monitor brand chatter etc.

Lisa Baertlein recently reported that, “Kogi, a duo of Korean BBQ-inspired taco trucks in Los Angeles, has “Tweeted” its way to international stardom and is inspiring restaurateurs seeking new ways to tempt diners during a deep recession.”

Kogi could not have predicted the immense level of success their Twitter account would have.  Since November, they have accumulated over 15,000 followers and were featured on Nightline last night.  Before that, Newsweek made this video.

I popped over to their Twitter account today.  The person(s) responsible for maintaining their page is doing a great job connecting with their fans and providing relevant information about the company.

Surprisingly, many companies still have yet to adopt Twitter as one of their marketing mix elements. I believe the ones who adopt sooner than later will be the ones reaping the social media rewards! Not to mention, the price is right to get set up. FREE!

16
Apr
09

you’re such a tweetfreak

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

tweetfreak1

Attention marketers, Adweek has created a new service, TweetFreak, to help you get more out of Twitter.

According to the TweetFreak:

“With this site, we hope to give some structure to the Twitter universe for marketing, media and agency people to get more value out of the service.

At the beginning of each week we’ll recommend five people in the marketing space who are worth following on Twitter. We’ll link to Twitter-related marketing stories daily and track Twitter mentions of agencies, brands and media that are making news on a given day. We’ll host Twitter Q&As with industry people. And on Fridays we’ll recap the big marketing stories that got people talking on Twitter during the week. We’re also developing a Tweet Roll: a list of ad-agency Twitter accounts. Add your agency by clicking on the top link in the left-hand column.”

This will be an immensely valuable service for marketers of all disciplines. I wish someone would’ve created a service like TweetFreak a long time ago.

15
Apr
09

time to start pushing chevy’s

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: Advertising and Brand Loyalty
Tags: ,

General Motors has made national headlines, splitting time between congressional hearing and sluggish sales reports, for some time now. The end of GM as we know it may be closer than I originally thought.

GM has reported that consumers are responding positively to a handful of their brands including Chevy, Cadillac and GMC. However, the opposite is true of the GM brand.

According to David Kiley of BusinessWeek, “GM has been back and forth for 20 years about what to do with the GM brand. Perhaps they are close to deciding. Ditch it.”

Kiley notes that GM may go into a “quickie bankruptcy in June” and that the company may be split into two separate financial entities. Kiley says that GM would create “a good GM made up of Chevy, Cadillac, Buick and GMC; and a bad GM made up of Hummer, Saab, Saturn and Pontiac […]”

He further suggests that GM take advantage of Chevrolet’s strong brand image and rename GM accordingly.

From a marketer’s perspective, it’s a no-brainer to use the Chevrolet brand as the new company’s name. If GM has been getting negative reviews of their brand for awhile, they should have done this a long time ago. Stop pushing GM and start selling what consumers want. Start selling Chevy’s!

14
Apr
09

the end of YouTube?

By Joshua Woolery 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

YouTube as we know it may soon come to an end. The site is currently partnering with Universal Music Group to build a site devoted to music videos.

Vevo, the proposed music site, will make music videos available for free. YouTube users will be able to search for music videos using their engine but; the videos won’t actually be on YouTube’s site. Users will be transferred to Vevo to watch the actual videos.

The Business Insider’s Dan Frommer is concerned that the project could end up hurting YouTube’s long term revenue stream. In his article he said:

“Moreover, without music videos (and TV clips, etc.) what’s left on YouTube? User-generated stuff that Google can’t sell ads on, some leftover pirated content, dogs on skateboards, and… what else? YouTube is popular because it has everything in one place for free. Fragment that into different sites with different experiences and YouTube could lose its status as the go-to place for video on the Web.”

I agree with Dan. I go to YouTube weekly to watch music videos of lesser-known artists. With that said, I am curious to see which of my favorite musicians will no longer be “on” YouTube.  Not to mention, Tracy is worried she won’t be able to watch her precious ABBA videos.

abba

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