By Linda Forrest
Happy Playbook release day, everyone! Today is the fateful day when Canada’s own Research in Motion begins selling its long awaited Playbook tablet. You might have heard that this was coming, as the media has been very hungry for news on tablets set to compete with iPad; it’s a topic we’ve covered here as well. You might also have heard that RIM has had a series of PR, well, disasters leading up to this release: from on-camera CEO breakdowns, to a cavalcade of bad reviews that suggest the product is not yet ready for market. What should have been an exciting and positive time has instead become a challenging time poised to test the mettle of the company and affect its long-term reputation in a highly competitive marketplace.
The recent PR missteps have been documented extensively elsewhere so rather than repeat them here in-depth, let’s look at the Playbook story as a whole and see what lessons can be learned for other companies bringing technology to market.
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By Linda Forrest
This past weekend, my family went to the Canada Science & Technology Museum. I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t been there since I participated many, many moons ago in Encounters with Canada, but was pleasantly surprised that some of the things I remembered and liked were still there but that most of the museum had been updated since my last visit, nearly 20 years ago.
My young son marvelled at the train cars and the space exhibits, but the display that most moved me and will always stay with me is that of the Phoenix capsule, the feat of engineering and proof of the power of human determination that carried 33 trapped Chilean miners from over 2,300 feet below ground to the surface as the world watched. The men had survived for a record 69 days underground.
When we initially made plans to go to the museum, we didn’t know that the capsule would be there. It’s a travelling exhibit and kudos to whomever was responsible for getting Ottawa on the tour.
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By Linda Forrest
Francis has always been a stickler about not filling client releases with meaningless buzzwords, and rightly so. There are some words and phrases used to market technology that are overused and virtually meaningless. Chief on this list? “Solution.” His dislike for this word is well documented – even on this blog, in this earlier post.
Every time the word “solution” is suggested — and it is suggested almost every time — I implore the workshop participants to imagine the word doesn’t exist. “Now,” I ask them,” What is it that you actually do?” The answers immediately get much sharper and focused and far more meaningful.
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By Linda Forrest
Whenever the concept of influence comes up, I’m immediately confronted with a mental image of Will Farrell positing that he’s “kind of a big deal,” a memorable and oft-quoted line from the raunchy comedy Anchorman. The irony is that in the film, he is, as stated, kind of a big deal. The same is true of influencers, tastemakers, trendsetters or whatever term best describes people whose opinions and actions hold weight amongst your target market.
There is an entire discipline of marketing devoted to this concept called “influencer marketing.” Wikipedia describes it as:
a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.
Influencers may be potential buyers themselves, or they may be third parties. These third parties exist either in the supply chain (retailers, manufacturers, etc.) or may be so-called value-added influencers (such as journalists, academics, industry analysts, professional advisers, and so on.)
A key takeaway is that influence is most effective when it’s not overtly used to deliver a specific result. Rather, influencers affect their markets without necessarily using certain tactics or well-defined parameters to do so. This distinction is what makes the concept of influence measurement so compelling.
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By Linda Forrest
Last week, Chrysler experienced a PR crisis when a Tweeter at its social media agency posted a Tweet that not only used an expletive, but was completely off-brand. From a marketing perspective, this came at a very bad time for the company, which had made a splash with its “Imported from Detroit” campaign launched at the SuperBowl. The company issued the requisite apology, which it later explained in more depth. The employee was fired from the agency, and the agency lost Chrysler’s business.
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By Linda Forrest
