Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

PR Executive, one of the most stressful jobs

Career Cast has come out with “The most stressful jobs of 2012” and to my surprise, Public Relations Executive followed not far behind Police Officer.

At #7 on the list, PR Executives even come before the Corporate Executive on the stress test. This doesn’t mean that every Public Relations Executive is going to have an extremely stressful job; it just means the majority of them do. Just the same, the police officer who sits behind a desk for eight hours a day isn’t going to be as stressed out as the one who patrols the streets.

Why is the Public Relations Executive so high on the list? PR Executives are in charge of maintaining the positive image of the corporation, company, person or government entity they represent. Sometimes this is a difficult task, especially when the client is involved in any type of scandal or controversy. Being the intermediate of communication, the PR Executive often acts as the voice of the client while interacting with the media and the public. In a very competitive field, meeting deadlines and making speeches is a large part of the job.

Ironically, the Event Planner comes in at #6 on the list, which is often categorized as a type of Public Relations. Moral of the story… If you’re looking for a place to relax, the Public Relations industry is probably not for you. But if you’re looking for a career that is going to keep you on your toes and give your something different to do everyday, then you’re on the right track.

PR Executive, one of the most stressful jobs

The 'Missing Link' of Marketing Strategy

Really, what’s in a name? Kellogg‘s, Hershey, Johnson&Johnson, these corporations, no matter their product or name, exist today as strong leading brands, intertwined to the vernacular language of a family. It is this type of intangible marketing of these companies that creates their success: the word of mouth, the blogs, the clients, the consumers. Those who don’t know them have been living in a cave, literally.

We, the public, recognize good quality by not only the popularity of the brand name but also its age, or rather its long-term success. Several of our mothers and grandmothers, fathers and brothers, used such products and in turn taught us to understand their value by their name. Only recently, in the science of marketing, financial strategists have discovered the connection between maintaining a strong ‘brand’ in the economic sphere, and increased financial success of the company in question.

In a recent study, the market measuring company known as CorpBrand identified this ‘link’ so to speak, between the profit of a strongly marketed corporate ‘brand’ and its validity/profitability. Their methodology dictates that strong corporate brands are underestimated in terms of potential profit, meaning that the face or product marketed by the company increases in relevance to the present and future finances.

To prove this new approach, CorpBrand tested several companies, all of which compared their marketing strategy as well as their steady authenticity to their financial gains. They came away realizing the importance and validity of the company’s intangible sphere.

Using the authenticity or ‘good name’ and the product of a company to further increase profitability, is the goal of any marketing strategy. But first, the company must gain that ‘good’ name in order for it to be of use. CorpBrand’s studies show that maintaining a ‘strong’ brand, one which promises only what it can deliver, increases the validity of the company and creates a completely new cash flow to be pursued, that intangible sphere by which most of us associate good products.

Marketers who support their business passionately know how to sell their brand; however, using manipulative means to create say a ‘false’ name could lead to decreased profit, and create irrevocable damage, if proven invalid.

This marketing strategy, created through that connection, merely highlights the importance of spreading the word about your company. They say any press is good press, and sometimes they’re right. But it’s important to remember that companies thrive through the promise established between the company, the product, and the consumers. Up until the last few decades, housewives, business men, and TV ads circulated the validity of a company through word of mouth. Nowadays, with the endless social circulation that is the Internet, a combination of bloggers, online consumers, critics, and marketers are responsible for the creation of a ‘brand’, virtual brands especially, and contribute to the overall increased profitability of any business.

5 Mistakes In Your Forum Marketing Strategy That Cost You Money (famousbloggers.net)
How To Incorporate A Content Strategy Into Your Marketing Strategy (borderswebdesigner.wordpress.com)
The Definitive Word Concerning Internet Marketing And Also Search Engine Optimisation (thediamondringreview.com)
Just a thought… (towriteperchancetodream.wordpress.com)

Why PR should own social media

Here at Abraham Harrison, we know the importance of social media in a Public Relations campaign. Many PR agencies use social media in their campaigns to help gain awareness for their client’s brand and product. However, campaigning through social media cannot simply be done by just anyone with a facebook account, at least not successfully. You need to have a Social Media Strategy, know the people you want to connect with, and not under or overload the public with your message.

With social media booming as a way to market to your publics, PR needs to own up to the responsibility of integrating social media into their campaigns. PR and Social Media go hand in hand; you can’t be successful with only one. Just because social media is a newer marketing tool doesn’t mean you can throw all the old tools out the window; just the same, you can’t get away with only marketing through events and advertising without using social media. From the World Internet Stats, 30.2% of the worldwide population is using the internet. With this number continually growing every day, why would any PR professional pass up this ideal platform to market their client’s product?

Many people don’t know how to successfully market online. You have to develop a strategy to promote your client; you can’t just blindly create a twitter account and expect it to have a positive impact on the brand. With a social media strategy you want to connect with the early adopters, the online creators and the critics. These are the people who are going to write about your client’s product and help generate awareness. Word of Mouth Marketing is one of the best ways to market a product, and the people reading online reviews are more likely to believe the average blogger than a company representative. Therefore, the PR agents need to connect with the bloggers, creators and critics as they test out and promote the brand and product.

Social Media Specialists are taking over the PR world. They are gaining awareness about their client’s brand and products, most of the time with a cheaper price tag then the “old fashioned” PR tactics. It’s time to reposition yourself in the PR world and try some new tactics, if you haven’t already. Familiarize yourself with this online world. Embrace it. Accept it. Social media is the new now; don’t get left behind.

7 Stellar Social Media Marketing and PR Business Tips I Stole

After doing social media client service work for many clients over the last four years and especially in 2010, we at Abraham Harrison have a lot of tips to give businesses when it comes to leveraging Facebook and Twitter — and social media in general — for business and for our clients and it seems to me that Webbiquity B2B Marketing Blog is in our head! Here’s there most excellent Seven Ways to Use Social Media for Business:

1. Share content (your own and others’). Producing and sharing content with your market both attracts prospective buyers and educates them, potentially shortening sales cycles. Content marketing doesn’t always produce immediate or direct results, but it does increase brand recognition, credibility, online visibility and yes—sales—over time. In the research cited above, 74% of marketers who have been using social media for at least two years report that it has helped them close new sales. Social media marketing requires a commitment over time; it’s the not an approach where you can dip your toes in the water and expect immediate success. But for those marketers willing to produce and promote their own content (building credibility) and valuable content produced by others (expanding their influence network), social media pays off.

2. Get ideas for product development. Ultimately, no one knows the challenges that your prospects face better than your prospects themselves. And no one knows the benefits and shortcomings of your current products better than your customers. There’s no better source of information than your prospects and existing customers to help generate new product ideas. Marketers no longer have to rely on expensive, contrived focus groups; social media provides a vastly larger, richer, more real-world source of information.

3. Provide customer support. Customers are increasingly seeking support through social media channels, as well as complaining via social media about poor product and service experiences. Smart companies are providing social media support options and actively monitoring social media networks for brand and product name mentions. (For example, DirecTV is good at this; JustHost is not.) Using social media channels for customer support can both improve a company’s image—by demonstrating, publicly, responsiveness to customer issues—and reduce customer support costs.

4. Perform competitive and market research. The prospective buyers in your market have been talking about their challenges, and the relative merits and shortcomings of alternative solutions and vendors, for as long as your market has existed. Social media brings these discussions into the open. Marketers no longer have to rely on expensive research methods or proprietary data sources to get this information. Tracking mentions of competitors and industry terms using social media monitoring software provides a vast trove of inexpensive, real-time competitive and market intelligence.

5. Answer prospect questions. It’s no longer the biggest ad budget that wins. People want to buy from companies that are smart, helpful and responsive. Social media provides the mechanism to demonstrate those qualities. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn groups, community sites (e.g. Toolbox.com, Focus, Ulitzer) and specialized discussion forums all provide opportunities to respond to questions and demonstrate industry expertise. You probably can’t be everywhere, but again social media monitoring tools can help set priorities and provide notification of situations to address.

6. Develop relationships with influencers. Third-party validation has always been more valuable than advertising or other types of self-promotion. Traditionally, customer case studies, PR and analyst relations have filled this role. Social media provides a more direct path to identifying and building relationships with a variety of voices in your market: analysts, journalists, customers, bloggers and other key influencers. If you build and nurture this network, these people will help amplify and validate your message.

7. Facilitate offline connections (e.g., promote events, meet up at trade shows). As valuable as social media is for building and engaging online networks, there is still tremendous benefit to meeting with people IRL and deepening relationships through offline conversations. The social media “big four”–Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs–as well as specialized social event tools like Lanyrd, Meetup.com, Eventbrite and Amiando can all help with arranging and promoting offline opportunities to meet in-person with your online social acquaintances.

7 Stellar Social Media Marketing and PR Business Tips I Stole

The Link Between Business and People – LinkedIn

Whether a business wants to connect to employees, showcase its products and services or seek out new workers, LinkedIn provides services for every business that fit these simple needs. It’s also a place in the social network sphere where job seekers and employers can meet. A good tool for both of them. Christopher says on his “LinkedIn is going to kill your corporate website. (Don’t be scared, it’s good for you.)” :

As you already know, every company can have its page on LinkedIn. What started as a simple company profile / glimpse at your company’s activity and employees is increasingly becoming a fully functioning and social media integrated corporate mini-site. LinkedIn recently launched the Product and Services page where companies can showcase their core products and services to carefully targeted audiences. Overall, LinkedIn is now getting closer to offer companies pretty much everything they would expect from a corporate website:

- Brand/company presentation
- Product and services showcases
- Careers portal
- Analytics

But the main strength of LinkedIn company pages resides in the very essence of social media marketing: targeting and reaching people who matter. For employees or job seekers, for potential customers or purchasing managers, for industry influencers or interested observers, LinkedIn is not only a broadcasting/showcasing tool any more , it’s a precisely targeted and easily trackable multi-faceted branded engagement tool.

Even though Company pages don’t allow you to directly sell your products/services or to publish your financials and still lack appeal when it comes to personalised branding and mainstream B2C retail activities, LinkedIN is still becoming increasingly essential for companies whereas the good old corporate websites are losing reach (the SEO power of LinkedIn is amazing) and relevancy (the lack of social media integration often hides the website away from non-obvious stakeholders).

Even small companies can take advantage of the site’s features, they can find competitive individuals easily while as for job hunters it is a good hunting ground for there are endless opportunities waiting for them.

The Link Between Business and People – LinkedIn

Propaganda, PR, Business, Edward Bernays, And Us

I’ve been reading through Edward Bernays‘ 1928 book “Propaganda” and I’ve really been enjoying it. Now, the word “propaganda” has been given a bad reputation, but really it’s what PR, marketing, politics, and the world is all about. As old Edward says, “The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.” Of course when you’re trying to promote a person,. product, company, or brand you’re working in propaganda.

Bernays would have been right at home in the digital era, working to influence the top bloggers. Even in 1928 he pointed out, “If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.”

The business world may have forgotten it for a while, but what Bernays wrote so long ago still rings true, “Business realizes that its relationship to the public is not confined to the manufacture and sale of a given product, but includes at the same time the selling of itself and of all those things for which it stands in the public mind.” A company or brand has to sell itself to the public before it can hope to sell its product.

It seems that Bernays would have loved the social media revolution that the business world is taking part in. As he said, “Business must express itself and its entire corporate existence so that the public will understand and accept it.” What better way for a business to do that than to reach out in the most direct and social ways possible.

The father of modern PR is still kicking around and still completely relevant.

On Transparency in Social Media Engagement

John Cass from PR Communications and I had a contentious conversation about social media enagagement transparency, technique, strategy, and rules of engagement. When Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog and he planned on writing a blog post on this issue John approached me to ask me if I had any input. Instead of being contentious again, I thought I would ask one of my staff to address the question and then post about it, unedited and unmolested by me — and here’s what Ellie Brown came back with, Is Your Agency Showing?:

Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog and John Cass from PR Communications recently sent out a request for readers to give their thoughts on content writing and social media engagement on behalf of clients and whether or not this brings into question the issue of transparency.

Recently, there has been a tremendous upswing of companies and organizations adopting some sort of social media in their marketing portfolio. And with this growth, more and more of these companies are hiring agencies to implement social media initiatives. As Toby says: “Social Media is a beast that needs to be fed.” And sometimes the only way this can be done is to hire someone to do it.

The potential problem with this model is that the public could feel they are being misled by these companies and the agencies they hire to represent them. The beauty of social media is the ability to listen, learn, and build honest relationships; but if you don’t know who you are interacting with, the relationship could be sacrificed.

However, I don’t think it matters who is doing the responding, as long as they are responding. The goal of social media is to facilitate discussion and generate attention through tweets and posts by real people. The company name on that person’s business card doesn’t matter. The agency is an extension of the client, and as long as the agency is well-informed, genuinely interested, authentic and responsive – everything should be good.

I recently started doing some blogger outreach for Abraham Harrison and I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance and impact of transparency in the work I’ve been doing. Here are some things I’ve learned so far, both from training and from actually doing it:

Be responsive, friendly, authentic and apologetic (if necessary).

Respond with personality, not like a robot.

If asked, be honest about who you are. If necessary, respond with something like this: “I work for a PR company called Abraham Harrison and we are helping Company X spread the word about such and such cause.”

Know how to answer questions, respond to comments but also when to ask your contact at Company X to step in and provide information. Don’t make things up if you don’t know; better to just ask and find out the answer.

I’ve noticed that people really don’t care that they have been contacted by a PR company on behalf of so and so company. Most are just impressed that there is an actual person behind the message.

I think that if there are people out there who can outsource their online dating successfully a la Tim Ferriss (I mean talk about transparency issues), then outsourcing your social media implementation shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m looking foward to see what Toby and John compile about this topic from all the experts in the field.

On Transparency in Social Media Engagement

The Holistic Nature of digital Advertising and digital PR

Holistic Nature of Advertising and PR

View more presentations from Chris Abraham.

The Holistic Nature of digital Advertising and digital PR

UNICEF Landmine Stickers Amazing Awareness Campaign

I love the folks over at Survivor Corps Née Landmine Survivors Network — we did some great work for them last year — and I thought of them when I saw this amazing “landmine sticker” campaign over at I Believe in Adv:

Bravo to Andreas Heinzel, Peter Steger, Andreas Pauli, and Kerrin Nausch of Leo Burnett, Frankfurt, Germany.

“In many countries, landmines are still an insidious danger to civilians. That’s what we wanted to show to anybody who walked pass the UNICEF information booths. We placed „invisible“ Landmine-stickers on the floor: Their self-adhesive topsides looked exactly like the floor. When people walked over them, they stuck to their feet. While removing the stickers, people discovered the picture of a landmine on the bottom side. They were also informed that in many other countries, they would have been the victim of a landmine just at this moment. At the booths, people could get further informations and donate to UNICEF.”

Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Frankfurt, Germany
Creative Directors: Andreas Heinzel, Peter Steger, Andreas Pauli, Kerrin Nausch
Copywriters: Florian Kroeber
Art Directors: Claudia Boeckler
Photographers: Heine, Lenz, Zizka
Others: Jeanette Bohné, Eva Muenstermann, Tobias Nientiedt

UNICEF Landmine Stickers Amazing Awareness Campaign

Making News in the Digital Era by David Henderson

In a world in which everyone seems to be a chicken little speaking of the end of traditional journalism, PR and advertising, there are very few people who are working towards guiding the industry towards success in new new media. Some interesting books about “what’s next” that I am reading are The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield and Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. Add to this list David Henderson’s new book, Making News in the Digital Era, a book that is part analysis, part briefing, and part pathfinder, explicitly guiding readers through the very confusing social media landscape.

In the 170 pages of Making News in the Digital Era, David E. Henderson personally walks his readers safely through the mine field that is new communications, digital PR, and social media marketing. Essential reading.

Making News in the Digital Era explicitly answers some very important questions: how to make your organization heard above competitors’ noise, how to capture new media’s attention when then time is right, how to increase the “Googleability” of your organization, and how to have a more meaningful conversation with key stakeholders and audiences. These questions are essential in the context of the near-future:

“For many agencies and PR departments, change is either too slow in coming or is not happening. There’s a communications tsunami rolling our way, and many of us are not sure what to do. Sure, we see the tide going out fast and far. It’s fascinating and scary at the same time. Standing on the beach and waiting for it to roar back in is not an option.”

To give you a real taste of the answers these questions, here’s some of Henderson’s sage advice: Advocate change in your agency — champion change, embrace storytelling — honestly and without hyperbole, use plain language — accessible to everyone, reach out to a few to achieve more — influence the influencers, start marketing and promoting — start listening, and become the credible voice and face of your organization and industry — become the online influencer.

Part of Henderson’s research into Making News in the Digital Era included reaching out to sundry experts in the field, asking them questions such as what works and what is no longer effective; how to communicate with reporters, bloggers, and key audience; what is the definition of journalist in a world of online citizen reporters; how beneficial is online strategy for strategic communications; and how will new media effect the effectiveness of traditional media kits, new conferences, and news releases.

The unique thing about Making News in the Digital Era is that is it not written to much to the neophyte or to the small business expert but rather to the died-in-the-wool communications professional — be it journalist, PR or advertising exec, communication director, or business consultant who wants help transitioning from “traditional” marketing and mass media strategies to what’s next. This book speaks “our” language as communications professionals and is illustrative using case studies and best practices examples from the world of brand promotion and reputation management and not just the general pie-in-the-sky spitballing that tends to come from visionaries and futurists.

OK, I don’t want to transcribe the entire book — that would not serve David Henderson very well — but I will boil it down as best I can to one pithy sound bite that explains how companies, brands, services, and organizations need to evolve into the next generation: brands need to become as charming, engaging, and responsive as humanly possible — to offer a story that is captivating and appealing enough that your consumers feel compelled to come to you. Or, to quote the king of communication, Mike Deaver (who I got to meet during my short stint at Edelman Public Affairs), “know who you are, be open and transparent, and be ready for change.”

One of the most valuable parts of the book that I found — and something you will surely consider invaluable if you’re shopping for a PR shop — is a list of new PR-savvy questions one must ask potential firms to make sure they’re set up to handle a new media and a social media world of communications. I can’t tell you how many clients and prospects I have spoken to who are just winging it when they becoming big enough to start thinking about retaining a communications consultant — this questionnaire should be de rigor when shopping.

From chapter six through ten, Henderson explores the tools of the social media marketing and digital PR trade, pointing out one needs to offer much more than lip service to transparency and authenticity. “To have meaningful conversations online, a company needs to do the following: articulate clear points of view on the things that it cares about the most, identify its own experts and champions to tell compelling stories to advance its case and strengthen its market position, create ever-evolving public platforms and forums where it con consistently and frequently showcase its views, along with other respected industry experts and thought leaders, and create a forum for sharing comments, generating a conversation and listening.”

I am not even on page 57 yet and I could keep on quoting and sharing, so I will suffice it to say that there’s amazingly practical advice on every page, most of which are unspoken rules and intuitions that most people in the space have learned through intuition and experience — things that need to be said explicitly and clearly, something that David Henderson does with aplomb. Not only does the book offer advice on how to bullshit-check your PR firm but also do the same sort of check on your social media guru and your blogger and your Twitter expert as well. The book spends a lot of its column inches on not getting saddled with some lame “experts,” something that is essential when everyone, including yours truly, professes himself to be a Social Media Expert (SME).

Some other important issues Henderson addresses is whether you actually need — or are ready for — a CEO or corporate blog. What do do with Twitter once you have become obsessed with becoming a resident of twitterville, how best to wade into web 2.0 and how to develop an online digital communications strategy — essentially “everything you ever wanted to know about new media communications but were afraid to ask.”

Chapter 13 is titled “Crisis Never Takes a Day Off” and addresses the 800-pound gorilla in the room: online reputation management and online crisis response in the “new era of openness, timeliness, responsiveness, and truthfulness” that “had truly become 24/7.” This, in a world where it is still possible to assassinate someone’s brand as long as you attack it on a Friday afternoon because said brand most likely won’t even notice it until 10 on Monday morning.

When it all is said and done, David Henderson tells the truth, even though it’s a bitter pill to accept, “no one cares about you.” In Making News in the Digital Era, David Henderson works real hard to try to knock it all into our stubborn heads. If you want to remain in denial about the current state of the Internet, new media, digital PR, and the post-PR and post-advertising world, then don’t buy Henderson’s book; however, if you want to sort our your own personal brand story and develop some narrative game, then you really had better grab a copy and read it through and then share it around the office.

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