By Francis Moran
I heard the saddest story the other day.
A few years ago, we worked on the launch of a new personal finance website developed by a veteran personal financial advisor. The site was detailed, secure, incredibly useful and solved a sharp, expensive and disruptive pain that the advisor had been running up against his entire professional life.
Our media launch went well. We got some decent coverage, both in mass media and, more valuably, in the trade media reaching financial advisors. Although the site was designed for individual subscriptions, advisors were identified as its most important channel to market since they were expected to counsel their clients to use it.
We were a little confused when the campaign was not continued past that initial launch, especially since some of the best opportunities we generated for the client were over the long term, including, for example, an agreement to have the site’s creator contribute a regular column to one of the key trade publications in the space. From the other folks working on the launch we heard encouraging news about the possibility that the site would be white-labelled by one of the largest firms of financial advisors on the continent, and other early signs of traction. So we were at a bit of a loss when everything went unexpectedly quiet.
Still, it wasn’t the first time that a client had invested in a launch only to tell us they would be unable to continue funding the program so we moved on, occasionally curious about what had become of the endeavour.
Then, last week, I heard the full sad story.
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By Alexandra Reid
Yesterday’s Zone5ive was a hot ticket. In fact, the near-capacity crowd Tweeted about it so much it trended on Twitter. The event’s success can be owed to the fact that co-presenters, our own Francis Moran and Kathryn Schwab of Cyan Solutions, demonstrated what they were talking about by producing a content-rich presentation that they – and attendees and event organizers from OCRI – promoted aggressively, predominantly through social media.
In their presentation, Moran and Schwab laid out the necessary ingredients that companies need to garner media coverage in both traditional and new media. According to Moran and Schwab, the two key elements are strategy and content. Companies must have their PR resources – either internal or external – research and then target relevant media and provide them with irresistibly rich content in order to ensure their stories get told. Blasting news releases out in hopes of getting covered simply don’t work. The media landscape is shrinking, budgets are being slashed, and the pressure on journalists to produce unique and brilliant stories is weighing down more than ever before. Don’t make them do any more work than they have to. Plan out your story and package it for them. By providing the right journalist with the right story at the right time, you can vastly increase your chances of getting your clients’ story told. New media channels are no different. By providing the right audience in the right forum with the right story at the right time, you can help ensure your content gets shared through reposts, retweets, comments and mentions, which can also boost the relevance of your content in the eyes of journalists.
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By Linda Forrest
…rather than what they need?
This question is inspired by Starbucks‘ announcement that Trenta-sized iced drinks are being introduced as a result of customer demand. These 31 oz. caffeinated beverages are still dwarfed by other options on the market – the Super Big Gulp comes to mind – but the supersizing of these drinks begs the question posed in the headline. As you can see in this handy illustration, the Trenta contains more liquid than the human stomach can readily hold.
In addition, it sees people drinking up to 230 calories in the sweetened versions of the drinks contained therein, and because they’re consuming caffeinated drinks rather than the water our bodies need to operate optimally, their nutritive value is almost nil. Yet, Starbucks claims the product meets an unmet customer desire. One could read into its siren logo: Is the company beckoning a customer base with dismal health, weight and fitness with yet another BIGGER option that isn’t good for them?
Ellen Degeneres has a funny take on the introduction of the Trenta.
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By Alexandra Reid
Last Saturday, I experienced one of the greatest excursions of my life: dog sledding down hills, through forests and over a frozen lake for an entire afternoon. It was a very cold day with heavy snowfall, so my boyfriend and I bundled up accordingly in balaclavas, long johns, layered shirts, snow pants, heavy jackets, double socks, high boots, thick mitts and scarves. All prepared and tucky-warm, we ventured out into the rolling, snow-covered hills of Quebec’s backcountry.
It was here that we experienced our first roadblock. Our car is rear-wheel drive and struggled to get up the hills. We spun out, slid side-to-side and nearly ended up in a ditch before we made it to the final and steepest hill before our destination. We looked up the hill and admitted our defeat. I called the folks at Nordik Adventures to tell them we couldn’t make it.
“That’s not a problem at all,” said France Robertson, co-owner of the business along with her husband, Eric. “I’ll come and pick you up in my truck. Be there in five.”
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By Leo Valiquette
More often than not, clients of inmedia will set their sights on coverage in a flagship business publication like the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s or Fortune. Sometimes a client has a story that would appeal to such a prestigious publication, other times they do not. There is also the matter of whether such publications fit the bill as Tier One media targets for a specific client, but that’s a different post.
Regardless of the respect commanded by such publications, their writers and editors, struggling with fewer resources and tightened budgets, are as prone as anyone else to occasional inaccuracies and errors in their work. Perhaps they even, on occasion, fall prey to temptation and give their copy a little extra sensationalist spin to grab the attention of fickle readers.
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Some words hurt. Does that mean they should never be used?
January 14, 2011 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran I really don’t know what I think about the recent editing of Mark Twain’s classic American novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to replace the offensive word “nigger” with the more prosaic “slave.” The objectionable word was common parlance when Twain wrote this masterpiece of life along the Mississippi River in the southern […]
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Questions about Quora’s usefulness for B2B companies
January 13, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
By Alexandra Reid Quora’s rise to popularity is abuzz on Twitter, blogs and other media sites as a surge of people are trying out the social networking tool for the first time. Poking around the site myself this past week, my first impressions found it to be rather unintuitive. It seems that I am not […]
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Are trade shows “back”?
January 12, 2011 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest It’s been busy around these parts the past few weeks as we had several clients exhibiting at marquee trade shows, and our own Francis Moran attended these shows to support our clients and get a finger on the pulse of our clients’ industries. If his Tweet, upon experiencing Retail’s BIG Show, the […]
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Facebook: ‘Irrational exuberance’ all over again?
January 10, 2011 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette The verdict is still out as to whether Goldman Sachs’ investment in Facebook heralds an IPO, but the $50 billion valuation it places on the popular social media platform is nonetheless a scary portent. While Alex blogged last week about what this deal could mean for those who use Facebook and other […]
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inmedia at CES and NRF
January 06, 2011 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest It’s a busy few weeks for inmedia, as our managing partner, Francis Moran, and several clients attend various conferences and trade shows. I expect Francis will write a blog post about his adventures at these events upon his return. I plan to write next week about whether the tradeshow, a marketing program […]
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Facebook friends Goldman Sachs and the rich get richer
January 04, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
By Alexandra Reid Facebook has raised US$500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, according to the New York Times. The injection of cash values Facebook at about $50 billion. The social network now has a bigger capitalization than Boeing, at $48.7 billion, and Time Warner, at about $36 billion. The deal has […]
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What do a Christmas tree farm and a mortgage broker have in common?
January 03, 2011 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette First up, a very happy New Year wish from all of us here at inmedia Public Relations. Many of you were no doubt in the same boat as my wife and me over the holidays, at home with one or more young ones to entertain for two weeks during their break from […]
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In defence of Mark Zuckerberg as Time’s Person of the Year
December 22, 2010 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest That title alone is probably enough to put me in the crosshairs of many a critic of Time Magazine‘s selection of Facebook’s inventor and leader as its person of the year for 2010. But personally, I think that the selection is merited and that the vitriol detractors have spewed in light of his naming […]
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I heard the saddest story the other day.
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The Future of A&R – Walabe : [...] http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/top-10-questions-every-strategic-communicator-should-ask... [...]
Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]