By Linda Forrest
The Huffington Post is getting a lot of virtual ink about the fact that they are A/B-ing headlines in real time – offering one headline to half their readers, another to the other half, determining which one is the most effective in getting people to click, and adopting it as the one that everyone sees. Brilliant use of real-time analytics and giving the people what they want.
By Linda Forrest
This Thanksgiving weekend, my family attended a pottery sale just outside my husband’s hometown. There were lots of beautiful pieces and the weather was perfect to wander in the outdoor tent, watch a potter at work and debate whether to buy this piece or that for Christmas gifts. How did we hear about it? We have good friends who attend every year and, having admired their bounty from this sale, we finally managed to attend this year. I expect it won’t be the last time we do so.
Similarly, we attended a pumpkin patch to select a gourd worthy of being our Jack-o-lantern. How did we select what patch to go to? We had a recommendation from friends about one they’d been to and liked.
As ardent movie fans, especially of the horror genre, my husband and I eagerly await the showing of the new horror movie Paranormal Activity in a theatre near us. The movie is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project in a number of ways, but for this blog’s purposes the most relevant is the huge word-of-mouth marketing campaign that the movie has undertaken, and the large numbers of people flocking to see it because they’ve heard from their friends and other taste-makers that it’s a rollicking, scary good time. The folks behind the movie used the internet to best advantage, asking for 1,000,000 votes to secure nationwide distribution for the film. It passed that mark on Friday. There’s nothing like a good horror movie around Halloween, so here’s hoping that the movie makes it to Ottawa in the next few weeks.
In today’s day and age where the proliferation of marketing channels and media messages is at an all-time high, it’s interesting to note that our purchasing decisions are still so heavily influenced by word of mouth. The best way to ensure good word of mouth is by providing excellent goods and services along with superior customer service. If you have these elements well in hand, your customers will happily spread the good word.
By Linda Forrest
This week, Amazon announced that it would be introducing its digital e-book reader, the Kindle, to more than 100 countries. Canada didn’t make the cut, much to the consternation of Canadian authors and book lovers alike. What made the announcement even more difficult to swallow is that internationally contentious and little known countries are on the list, yet Canada is not. This is a PR nightmare for Amazon in Canada as every major outlet has covered this extensively.
Why exactly Amazon is so slow to roll out the Kindle to Canada is a matter of much debate – is it our copyright laws? Our telecommunications networks and service providers? The Globe and Mail seems to think it’s our carriers (Bell and Rogers strike again!) No official answers are available. Apparently Amazon says that a Canadian Kindle is coming, but offers neither timelines nor prices.
Our clients often subscribe to the adage “if I sell one in Canada, it’s by accident,” and this Kindle snafu may be a simple extension of that. Our market is relatively small, certainly when compared with the U.S., but if Mongolia and Kirabati (?!?) are getting the Kindle, it can’t be market size that Amazon’s concerned with.
Someone made an offhand comment a few weeks ago, comparing our home and native land with a little, out of the way country in South America. I scoffed a little bit and this Kindle fiasco has affirmed my guffaw somewhat, though entirely counter to what I had initially thought… You guessed it; that little South American country is getting the Kindle, but we’re not.
My family is taking a quick jaunt to the States in a few weeks, to buy things not available here. The purpose of our shopping trip is not to take advantage of the strong Canadian dollar, a nice benefit, to be sure, but to relish in the immense selection that is available in America. We have a particular affinity for a number of clothing brands not available in Canada. Oh sure, we can ship them here from the States, for an extortionate fee, but there’s no brick and mortar or even domestic shipping outlet for these stores. Our only recourse is to gather our passports and make the journey to the U.S. The lower prices, the lower tax rate, and the great selection draw us in.
That said, I’d happily shop at these stores if they were in Canada, pay the inflated prices and hand over roughly 10% more sales tax, in order to support local jobs, infrastructure, etc. But in cases like the Kindle, we’re utterly shafted. There’s no local support, no cross-border option, nada. Zip. Woe is us.
Credit: Image a mashup by Christopher Moran using copyright-free images.
By Linda Forrest
MediaBistro put together a tongue-in-cheek list of the five most prevalent types of Tweets from PR people. While it’s meant to be comical, it hits the nail on the head in most instances. I, for one, have rolled my eyes more than once at some of the more absurd Tweets that fall into these categories.
We inmedianauts will try our best to avoid committing these Twitter sins in future. That is, when we’re not too busy surreptitiously pushing our clients, hanging out at lavish parties, squabbling, complaining or sharing our excitement about the next big thing!!!
By Linda Forrest
I sent out a news release last week for NetCentric Technologies, an Ottawa company launching a new product, their PDF Accessibility Wizard, an MS Office add-in that makes documents accessible to people with disabilities.
I spent spent considerable time developing the right media list, one that contained many niche and specialty publications, so I knew the targets I’d be going after were appropriate and likely to be interested in this new product. Now, NetCentric’s PAW is not page one news and certainly will not be covered by the mainstream media. However, it offers real value, especially to the government technology crowd who are mandated by law to make their documents accessible, and a product brief or technology spotlight, customer case study or product review in a specialty pub catering to this audience would serve the company very well.
Launch day rolled around, the release was sent out, and I began to follow up with the highest value of the media targets to whom we sent the release. Phone calls, emails, Tweets, whatever channel our targets were using, I attempted to make contact. As sometimes happens, it was really (and I mean REALLY) difficult to make contact. For whatever reason, it was really challenging to get hold of people. In a moment of despair, I jokingly Tweeted that perhaps people don’t answer their phones anymore…!
It was time to pull out the big guns. If I was going to get some worthwhile traction for my client, I was going to have to resort to the time-honored, secret weapon that we PR consultants absolutely know will result in coverage.
Much like magicians who condemn one of their own for revealing trade secrets, I’m sure my colleagues in the PR business are going to be terribly chagrined if I expose the secret to success in PR. It’s something we’ve held dear for all of our years in the business, the surefire way to get a response from media targets.
Are you ready? Here goes…
It’s persistence. Tenacity. KEEPING AT IT.
I know, it’s not terribly exciting, but that’s the secret to success. Hard work. Though as my favourite teacher always used to say, “work smart, not hard.” So, rather, it’s smart work … with a little elbow grease thrown in.
There is no magic bullet in PR, it’s just a lot of work, putting the right resources in front of the right targets, in whatever format makes the most sense. Where the worst of our industry all too often falls down is where the rubber hits the road. The release is sent, if it doesn’t click immediately, that’s the end of it. “We sent it out, the rest is up to the media.” Wrong.
If it didn’t click immediately, why not? Perhaps, as in this case, the publications being targeting are part-time propositions, or the person who typically writes about such things is on holiday, or is focused on a deadline, or myriad other good reasons. Use common sense, obviously; don’t fill the inboxes of editors and reporters with umpteen emails and voicemails from you. Rather, be persistent without being annoying.
I’ve had some really high-value conversations in the last eight hours, ones that not only secured my client coverage that will no doubt move their market, but also that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t kept at it. Because of the research we do at the outset of a campaign, I knew that I had the right information for the right targets; it was just a matter of time before it all came together.
