By Linda Forrest
I watched a fascinating documentary last night on the CBC called The Selling Game, which talked about the changes in the marketing and advertising landscape, consumer-created content in advertising and myriad other issues that both marketers and consumers are facing in the digital age. Custom made television advertisements that factor in your preferred hotel chain, credit card, airline, and hobbies are already airing, created by an ad agency called Visible World. This sort of narrowcasting is doubtlessly going to be even more pervasive in the years ahead.
It was interesting that experts in the documentary said that studies have shown that the “big brother” aspects of marketers and advertisers having access to personal information and the inherent privacy ramifications are really only perceived as a problem by those in their 40s and older, whereas the younger generation is used to living their lives online, providing immense detail about their lives to whomever wants to see it, via social networks like Facebook, myspace, twitter, Flickr and so on. The convergence of mobile technologies and social networking certainly change how marketers reach their intended audience. Consumers can expect to be the targets of much more sharply-focused personal campaigns that will reach them where they are with marketing messages tailored to their specific buying habits and personal preferences.
By Linda Forrest
Unlike a few of my colleagues here at inmedia, I fell backward into public relations. The first professional internship position that I held just happened to be in publicity and I quite unintentionally ended up staying on this career path. For the duration of my career, I have been working in media relations. And I have thanked my lucky stars day after day that I’m doing this job in the Internet age.
There is plenty of talk about the future of the PR business given the advent of social media. Some would even have you believe that PR people like myself are nearing extinction. This post isn’t meant to inspire people to take sides in a “where do we go from here?” conversation. Instead, for a moment, I would like to contemplate how PR was done in the past. Francis, our managing partner, tells us stories of his reporter days, typing with carbon in between sheets of paper to make copies. The hubris of my ever-receding youth screams aloud in my head, “you had to do WHAT?!?” Meanwhile, it boggles my aging mind that the younger generation can’t grasp the ethical connotations of the financial relationship between copyrighted material and the consumer. Kids today… but I digress.
I spend my work day in front of a computer – developing material, typing and editing, changing words on a whim, spelling things incorrectly (only very occasionally, of course…), absorbing the day’s news, researching material, learning about various subjects, blogging, reading RSS feeds and more. Now, remove the computer and the Internet from these activities. Truthfully, I have trouble even comprehending the mechanics of my job outside of the context of the Internet and computers. How would one do adequate and up-to-date research? Or develop an accurate and appropriate media list? Or not plough through large swaths of the rainforest because of the reams and reams of paper used every day? Or not constantly struggle with spelling and typographical errors?
Let’s say that one did, miraculously, develop and manage to type an error-free news release that took into consideration the information already published in the media marketplace, then how was it distributed? Sometimes our media lists have hundreds of contacts on them. Did my predecessors spend two days by the fax machine? What about in the time before fax? It is too much for me to comprehend.
I’m so glad that Al Gore invented the Internet. I would be lost without it.
By inmedia
Do you ever wonder what the media are reading? The staff at PC Magazine have put together a list of their favourite blogs. Click here to see which blogs made PC Magazine’s top 100 list.
By Linda Forrest
This past week, Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about global warming. No recount was necessary.
The blogosphere’s response, as is often the media’s reaction to anything pertaining to Mr. Gore, ranges from adulation to vitriol.
We have had the pleasure of doing some work to promote local presentations of Mr. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth slide show about global warming, as presented by the Delphi Group’s president and CEO, Mike Gerbis. The Delphi Group is a strategic consulting firm operating within the spheres of health and the environment, clean energy, climate change, environmental technologies and organizational sustainability.
Mr. Gerbis was one of 1,000 people and one of just a few Canadians who were selected to train personally with Mr. Gore as part of the Climate Project and is officially sanctioned to give his slideshow presentation as seen in the Academy Award-winning film.
Mr. Gore, who sits on the board of directors for Apple, has had more than his fair share of trouble with the media, but that hasn’t stopped him from spearheading a novel approach to television with Current, a web site that has for the past several years accepted submissions from professional videographers and as of Monday now asks viewers to submit content in order to create broadcast news. Read more here.
While it appears that the site incorporates some elements of other popular video sites, the real distinction is that the best of the online content runs on Current TV, a cable and satellite TV network that according to the site airs in 52 million homes around the world. As with YouTube and Joost, content will determine the success of the site itself but if Current can bridge the gap between video on the Internet and content on the television, Mr. Gore will have another winner on his hands.
By Jill Pyle
Yesterday, Google acquired Jaiku, a tool for sharing your online activity stream or, as some have come to call it, lifestream. With Jaiku, you don’t have to bounce around the internet to see what your friends have been up to. Instead, you can view their latest Twitter status, flickr photos, Google Reader shared items, blog posts and Facebook updates all in one place.
Jaiku has decided to focus on innovation instead of scaling and is currently not accepting any new users. Once their doors reopen, I’m sure lots of people will be eager to create lifestreams. With Google backing a service like Jaiku, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see lifestreams go mainstream.
