By Francis Moran
I understand very well that setting up straw-man arguments just to knock them down can be a useful presentation tactic and a powerful rhetorical device but at some point, if that’s the only way you can prop up your case, you run the risk of sounding as vacuous and intellectually dishonest as the bleating sheep in George Orwell’s seminal “Animal Farm.”
I’m afraid that’s the chief reaction I was left with following this morning’s Social Media Breakfast Ottawa where presenter Chris Greenfield of Toronto’s Clever Communications had an argument that regrettably distilled into the single phrase, “Old way bad; new way (by which I mean my way) good.” He got a lot of chuckles from the crowd and several tweets hailing him as a fresh-thinking skeptic merely by highlighting the most egregious failings of traditional marketing and communications practitioners and then showing how the brave new world of social media is totally different from how those dinosaur hacks operate.
Here’s the thing, Chris: Many — dare I say, most — of us old-school marketing practitioners understand very well that the opportunity to communicate effectively lives at an intersection of interest between the participants in the communications process. We have been working our entire careers either to build those intersections or to meet our customers at the intersections where they already gather. By definition, this means we must engage — one of your most repeated terms but not an alien concept to the rest of us — in a bi-directional conversation characterised by honesty, openness and the fair exchange of value. For most of us marketers, a social-media strategy is a potent new tool we add to a complete and integrated campaign when they deliver the ability to bring us to the intersections where our customers gather.
For all his social media eagerness, Greenfield seemed to be peculiarly derisive about one tool, Twitter, with an argument that simply left me confused. On the one hand, he told us that social media tools were superb at distributing content through trusted channels to where customers can actually interact with that content. On the other hand, he was critical of Twitter because too many tweets simply parrot content available elsewhere. Huh?
Maybe I started with a chip on my shoulder because I walked in a little late but in time to hear him say that “ad agencies are just like print shops.” They have made themselves undifferentiated commodity propositions that “aren’t partners (with their clients) any more.” Only social media agencies can play that role, apparently. Tell that to the countless stand-out agencies — and yes, Chris, I think there are even some in Toronto! — whose people are creating brilliant, compelling and breakthrough campaigns, many of them effectively deploying social media elements, that are creating massive value for their clients’ brands as well as their own.
Finally, I have to comment on one piece that I think exposes Greenfield’s whole proposition that what he is doing is somehow new and different. “We use 30-second equivalents” to measure the effectiveness of social media engagement, he said, suggesting that perhaps 10 minutes spent on a web site is equal to a 30-second television ad. For as long as I have been a communications practitioner, I have railed against the common and popular but downright wrong and misleading practice of measuring media relations results by calculating ad-value equivalencies. Now Greenfield suggests we take one of the very worst and most discredited practices in measurement and apply it to social media, an approach that fails to recognise that the objectives of the social media component of a campaign are simply not the same as the objectives of the television advertising component of the campaign.
Sometimes, both four legs and two legs can be good. Even Orwell’s sheep eventually found that out.
By Francis Moran
I just got back from CNW’s excellent “Breakfast with the Media” featuring reformed journalist and now digital marketing and social media consultant Mark Evans along with the Ottawa Citizen‘s own Vito Pilieci, who covers business and technology and so is on speed dial here at inmedia. Both had a lot of value to contribute, and you can see a full Twitter stream of their better pointers here.
The bone I want to pick is not with Evans and Pilieci who shared a lot of excellent counsel about, in Mark’s case, what the new social media tools are and how to make best use of them and, in Vito’s case, how best to engage with him as he toils in a more traditional newsroom. Hint: Don’t send him a fax to draw attention to the email you sent to remind him about the voicemail message you left alerting him to the news release you couriered over! It pains me grievously as a 30-year veteran of the journalism and PR game to think there’s anybody in our business still operating like that but apparently there is!
Equally painful, though, were some of the questions from self-professed communicators in the audience who utterly betrayed their abject grasp of the most fundamental principles of effective communications.
Here’s the crux of the issue.
Everybody seems to agree that you can’t engage bloggers and other social media channels in a spray-and-pray approach that spams your messaging out to hundreds or even thousands of targets. Everybody seems to agree that it’s essential you adopt a personalised approach based on a clear understanding of what your target is actually interested in and how that intersects with what you’re pitching. Evans put it well when he said you need to “understand the motivation” of your target blogger who “wants to feel some love.”
What has me utterly gobsmacked is the number of public relations professionals who believe this is a brave new way of doing things and who are having trouble adjusting!
Here’s your knock on the head, people: If you’re finding it a real wrench from how you used to do things to engage on a personalised basis in a two-way dialogue with your target audience, you’ve been doing it wrong all along. How dare you waste your employer’s or your client’s money by reaching out to even a single journalist without first establishing their clear interest in what you have to pitch.
One poor woman talked about her role monitoring media coverage of her organization and how that now needs to be expanded to include bloggers, of which there are many, many more. How, she asked plaintively, do you figure out which bloggers are worth the effort? Well, exactly the same way we always determined who the genuine influencers were in our marketplace, whether they were journalists, analysts or other stakeholders. It’s called “research,” people, and there are no shortcuts and — Knock on the head warning, again — there never have been.
It is not a brave new world out there. But not because there aren’t exciting new communications channels and tools that we all need to learn about and integrate as appropriate into our strategies. It’s not a brave new world because those communicators who have been doing it properly all along are having absolutely no difficulty extending their capabilities slightly to accommodate these exciting new tools.
One final note: Please don’t confuse adopting a personalised approach with a requirement that you have a personal relationship with the target journalist or blogger or whoever. I went up after the session to introduce myself to Vito, whom I’ve never met. In short, he couldn’t pick me out of a line-up. I have no personal relationship with him. But he knew exactly who I was and he knows every one of my consultants here at inmedia because of the personalised manner in which we pitch our clients’ stories to him. We know what he writes about. We know his information requirements. And when we think it’s in his and our client’s interests that he be pitched, we pitch him. It’s the only way we know how to do it, and we’ve been doing it since long before the first blogger ever put pixel to screen.
Update: There is one important way in which the new environment differs from the past. In the old days, if you were a spray-and-pray artist, the peeved journalists whose time you were wasting merely ignored you. Today, you’re going to be publicly outed as the spammer you are.
By Francis Moran
In the near-universal rush to write print journalism’s obituary, it was refreshing this week to hear the perspective of a guy who might otherwise be seen as an active undertaker in the whole thing. Mathew Ingram is an online journalist, editor and Twitterer with Canada’s national — and, I believe, best — newspaper, the Globe and Mail. He spoke to Ottawa’s Third Tuesday gathering, held on the fifth Monday(!) earlier this week, about his paper’s many experiments with various online channels.
As the guy often leading the digital charge at the Globe, Ingram could be fairly accused of seeking to hasten the demise of the paper’s print edition. Except he grasps one fundamental concept that seems to elude many of those who think newspapers are already extinct, and that online — and, probably, free — is the only way to go.
The problem is, this isn’t working for the vast majority of traditional media properties. Their online editions are generating little revenue while their print editions are on life support, having bled too many readers and advertisers.
The Globe, on the other hand, seems to be prospering online and holding steady, at least in its circulation numbers, with its dead-trees edition. Why is this?
Well, in a contention I raised at Ottawa’s Social Media Breakfast a couple of weeks back when presenter Brady Gilchrist likewise praised the Globe for its mastery of the online, I don’t believe the paper is a roaring digital success just because it thoroughly exploits every available online channel. Other Canadian media properties. notably CanWest, are similarly aggressive at adopting new media but with much less apparent success. The Globe generates enthusiasm online because it offers superb content.
(I am not a disciple of Marshall McLuhan. I have never believed the medium is the message. While messages may have to be shaped by and for, or may be better received via, one medium rather than another, I believe content is king, that excellent content will triumph no matter via which medium it is transmitted.)
Now here’s the rub. The Globe‘s online content is available only because much of it was originally produced for the print edition. Expensively and originally produced by this country’s best team of journalists who not only cover the country more comprehensively than any other paper but staff the most overseas bureaus of any media outlet in Canada and more than most media outlets in the world.
How, I asked Gilchrist, is the Globe to continue generating such content when the very pillars of its economic model are being eroded? He had no answer but Ingram took a credible shot at this conundrum. The Globe‘s writers and editors are passionate about creating outstanding journalism, he told me in a brief conversation before his session started. And their readers are passionate about reading it. And so long as passionate readers come together with passionate journalists, there will continue to be a market for excellence.
Damn I hope he’s right.
I did not Twitter the session
Unlike other events I have attended where I have put out a stream of live tweets reporting highlights from the presenter(s), I opted not to at this event. Why? Well, being a Third Tuesday event, which attracts digerati in the city, there was barely a pair of thumbs in the room that weren’t banging away at tiny keyboards and tweeting Ingram’s every word. I didn’t think I needed to add to that.
However, nor did I take any notes. A quick scan of the tweets as they went out told me I would be able to fully rely on them for any pithy quotes or other details I might need for this blog post. So I ain’t dissing those who tweeted.
By Leo Valiquette
What is a brand? As the speakers at OCRI’s Zone5ive event emphasized this week (and anyone in the marketing or public relations space should have learnt long before they ever picked up their first pay cheque in the business) it’s much more than a logo.
Brand is the perception of your products or services in the minds of consumers, customers and clients, a perception that is created, moulded and reinforced at every point of contact with the audience you are trying to reach. These points of contact encompass everything from the treatment a disgruntled customer receives when they call a service agent, the reliability and functionality of your product and the tone of your advertisements on radio and television, to your image as an upstanding corporate citizen who is socially and environmentally responsible.
According to presenters Mike McGuire, managing partner at Wingspan Design, and Dennis Van Staalduinen, founder of Brandvelope Consulting, we tend to buy on emotion, regardless of how we may attempt to rationalize the utter logic and objectivity of our purchasing decisions. How we perceive a brand, rather than how we judge the features and benefits of a particular product, often decides our willingness to put cash on the counter.
However, part of how we perceive or favour a brand will be based on how accurately that brand reflects what we consider important, in terms of features and benefits.
For marketers, the challenge is understanding the consumer’s perspective and conveying that to the engineers and developers, while the engineers … well, the engineers need to listen to the customer-facing folks who are anything but engineers. Somewhere in the middle are the industrial designers, who must look backward from the customer’s perspective and focus on the functionality and aesthetics of a product, rather than whether it meets a certain technical specification. Apple is the perfect example of a company that has taken this to heart with a distinct brand that drools cool and exploits our propensity for emotional buying.
For a company looking to put a product on the market, the first question to answer is “What are people willing to pay for?” What they need, even what can make their lives better, doesn’t mean a bloody thing if it isn’t a product or service they are willing to buy.
The classic example that Van Staalduinen cited is the Segway, that two-wheeled gyro-balanced thingamajig from celebrity inventor Dean Kamen. For months it was hyped under the code names “IT” and “Ginger,” touted by the likes of Apple’s Steve Jobs as a revolutionary invention that would change the world and remake the urban landscape for the benefit of flowers, trees, people and puppies every where. And yet, the public at large had little idea what it actually was.
When it was unveiled, we got a high-tech scooter that did nothing that the humble bicycle hadn’t already done for us for decades, only stripped away the health benefits of physical exertion.
Nine years later, the Segway has sold about 30,000 units, whereas the investors had expected to sell 50,000 in the first month. A failure born of too much hype that failed to ask the critical question, “Will people actually pay for this?”
How about it? As you take stock of your business and attempt to chart a strategy to weather the downturn and emerge stronger on the other side, have you sought out the input of your customers and potential customers? Have you taken to heart what’s important to them, regardless of what’s important to you and your design team? Are you sure what you are planning to put out on the market is something people will pay for?
Think carefully, there’s little room for error or opportunity to beg more money from your investors and go back to the drawing board.
,
