Seven routes to consumer PR fails

Sadly the fails seem to sneak there way into briefs with far more frequency than the wins. Cest la vie. Here they are:

Launching a new ad campaign
A classic, and yet clients are still surprised that journalists don’t really want to talk about ad campaigns (unless that happens to be their beat). If you want an ad in the media talk to the sales team that’s what they’re there for.

Overt marketing activity
A slightly more tricky one but also this little PR troll turns up pretty regularly too. “we’re running a competition to win R10000 / a trip to new york / some shampoo can yo write a press release”. The answer is a big fat no day 1 of journalism school is devoted to shooting down this type of guff.

Me too! product launch
Another one of my favorites: “we’ve come up with a great new mp3 player, with a little scroll wheel and we’re calling it the iBod can you write a press release?” The answer is yes and you will get coverage saying how lame you are and how poorly it compares to the product/service you’re ripping off that launched a decade ago. Particularly prevelant amongst local web companies sadly. A bit of innovation never hurt anyone…

Not news
A great example was Intel who I used to work for in the UK. There chips speed up by a bunch of gigahertz every few weeks. You’d think anyone would realise this isn’t news and didn’t require a six page press release… I reckon about 80% of the things we’re asked to PR contains no news whatsoever.

Too late
This is a sad one. A client has a great product but they went to market with it six months/years ago and now want to launch it. Or more common they’re launching in two months and want to get into the consumer glossies (which have a lead time of three  months). Doh.

Crap product
See Me Too! product. You can’t polish a turd.

Bullshit
There are about a billion people on the internet armed with burning pitchforks waiting for companies to lie to them.

I’m sure there are some more out there but hate to start off an othewise sunny looking Friday negatively…

The 9 paths to consumer PR wins

This is a summary of a presentation I did for ad students at Red & Yellow last week. Getting good consumer PR coverage is tough and requires a bit more imagination than throwing a launch party and inviting some C list celebs along.

Based on ten years of running consumer PR campaigns I’m pretty sure all the things that worked hit one or more  of these  media hot buttons:

A new product/service:
The most obvious one maybe but there are plenty of places to pitch new consumer products to. The downside is if you don’t regularly launch amazing products then you’re not going to be in the media very much…

Example: The ipod/anything Apple launches

Something to visit/participate in:
Consumer journalists are employed to find interesting content that’s relevent to their readers so if your brand can do something that is geniunely interesting and adds value then there is a good chance of getting it covered. Overt marketing activity doesn’t count.

Examples:

• ghd Revelations event (unusual fashion event run for ghd by Atmosphere)
• Best Job In The World (win a job being caretaker of a tropical island)
• The world’s first ephemeral museum (audio tours of urban art in Lisbon)

A new trend:
Same as something to participate in if your brand is involved or kicking off a new cultural trend without hijacking it blatantaly it could be a winner. The key is to empower consumers to experience something genuine and real not just slap branding over something you picked up on a blog somewhere.

Example:

• ghd style lounge (a twist on the pop-up store trend)

Human interest:
A key part of nearly all consumer media content is finding interesting people to talk to. It might be people living a lifestyle that matches the aspirations of their readers or people involved in interesting unusual occupations. The media also love people that have overcome obstacles to achieve success.

Example:

• Triumph Inspiration Awards (we focused our activity on profiling fashion students and their aspirations of entering the fashion industry)

Unique insight/knowledge:
Providing media with relevent information and knowledge they’re just not going to get elsewhere (because they don’t have the time or resources most likely).

Example:

• Capitec Youth Prosperity survey (a survey of SA youths attitudes to wealth)

Public good:
Doing something that genuinely helps society or helps people lead better safer lives is a route to coverage but one to be careful of. Just doing good to get publicity is pretty shallow and will quickly be sniffed out by the media – but doing something interesting that goes beyond just donating money to a good cause can lead to good PR as well as social good.

Example:

• Trapped by a pint glass (campaign to stop drink driving)

Celebrity:
Also a media hot button that is abused all too often. But  like it or not the media are undoubtadly obsessed with celebrities and what they get up to (even with brands). Sadly just getting them to turn up to a party isn’t going to get you much more than a nice photo probably.

Example:

• Kate Moss for Topshop (celebrity line for Topshop in the UK)

A good fight:
The media loves a good fight between rival brands particularly if its a David and Goliath style battle between quick and nimble new brands and bloated established ones.

Example:

• Pigeon vs Telkom (a pigeon races Telkom to deliver data)

Arbness:
Doing something so crazy it’s irresistable to media to come along and cover it. The foundation of many publicity stunts. I’m a big fan of arbness myself as some of the best results seem to come from doing something outrageously off the wall.

• The Beautiful Game (a ballet based on football’s greatest moments)

You’ll notice most of these tick more than one hot button (even better). If your PR idea doesn’t hit one of these categories maybe think again (or leave a comment to update the list).

ZA News bypasses traditional media

I’ve been involved in putting the ZA News media launch together (via client kulula.com) over the last couple of weeks. Yesterday morning at the Grand Daddy in Cape Town we held the very first screening in front of around forty journalists and the show seems to have gone down pretty well. The launch was a bit of a PR challenge as we had several things against us. Firstly nobody from the SABC was going to be brave enough to turn up so that takes off a lot of TV and radio targets. Also the show is being hosted on Mail & Guardian Online which is a competitor to both traditional print and online publishers. It’s credit to Zapiro and team that the concept was strong enough to still attract competitors to the launch (and also says something positive about SA media).

Choosing the online route (even if it wasn’t first choice) takes the show into really interesting territory and makes it pretty unique. The show will go out between Tuesday and Saturday every week so it requires the kind of production team traditionally only TV could put together. I think the show is going to hopefully be seen as the tipping point where this type of content is viable online (thanks to sponsors) and can bypass traditional media (with all the political restraints that go along with it).

Ephemeral museum exhibits street art in Portugal

I came across this award winning (Cannes Gold Lion) campaign fro Pampero Rum while putting together a PR course. A really nice example of relatively low cost but big impact PR based around a simple but very clever idea. The brand created an audio guide to street art in Lisbon (Portugal) that could be downloaded to mp3 players from their website:

Creativity vs sales in marketing plans

Marklives recently ran an interview with Gareth Leck of Joe Public who discusses how local brands are opting for a quick sell over long-term brand building. A very familiar debate that i’ve certainly had with clients more often over the last year. I just don’t get why the two are always at odds: marketing is about commerce and we’re all paid to increase sales. The choice is just do you want to play the short game or the long game. In the short game you focus everything on shifting units now – you run competitions linked to purchases, you discount and  you advertise on price. In the long game you try and build an emotional connection between your products and the consumer and certainly the results can be less immediatly tangible but i’m firmly on the side of the long game.

There are brands that succeed using short-term approach of course and they produce pretty rotten marketing (certain restaurant chains, supermarkets and local clothing retailers spring to mind). My take on this is that they are succeeding despite their poor marketing not because of it – and these brands are very susceptible to cultural shifts and more savvy competition because they have very little real emotional connection with their consumers. Also when the campaign of discounting and promos is over there is little longterm connection with people to keep driving sales? Some examples of why the short game approach is flawed:

• Competitions/promos: the consumer is connecting with the prize not the brand or product in most cases
• Discounts: you are saying your brand/product is not worth a premium price

The long game is admitedly harder. Most people are savvy enough to see through marketing so forging a longterm bond with consumers requires enough creativity to surprise and delight them out of their cynicism. However the results are that there is the kind of loyalty that will see the brand through major market changes (like recessions). Its also worth adding that most of the worlds most successful products are driven by brand marketing that takes a longterm approach: Coca Cola for example.

I’m not saying that short-term marketing tactics have no place in the brand plan but if they’re the dominant force your likely to be building brands on shaky foundations.

Writer in residence at heathrow airport

Heathrow airport, as a creative piece of PR, hired writer/philospher  Alain de Botton to be their writer in residence for a month. He’s just finished his book which looks at the all aspects of the airport and “what it says about modern living”. Nice idea.

As every plane took up its position, a choreographed dance began. A passenger walkway rolled forward and closed its rubber mouth in a hesitant kiss over the forward left-hand door. A member of the ground staff tapped at the window, a colleague inside released the airlock and the two airline personnel exchanged a brief and uninterested hello, the sort of casual greeting one might have expected between office workers returning to adjacent desks after lunch, rather than the encomium that would more fittingly have marked the end of an 11,000 kilometre journey from the other side of the globe. Then again, we are unlikely to hear anything more loquacious in the next century when, at the close of a nine-month journey, our shuttle docks in the eerie red midday light at a spaceport in Mars’s Cydonian hills and a fellow Homo Sapiens knocks at the gold-tinted window of our craft.

Available from amazon. Story via Springleap.

ghd Revelations event video

We’ve just finished editing the video from the ghd Revelations event. This was shot and edited by Simon Deiner from SDR Photography (who we use for pretty much all our photos and filming very recommended). You’ll find more about the event on this blog if your interested in learning more about it.

Burberry’s social media campaign

Still on the subject of fashion Burberry are launching a social networking campaign called Art Of The Trench next month. Its built on a very simple idea (usually a good way to start) that consumers send in photos of themselves wearing a trenchcoat (i assume there will be some kind of incentive?). The brand also is making good use of Facebook and Twitter with interesting multimedia content around the brand and behind the scenes glimpses of their work. For dedicated followers of the brand they’ll also be screening their london fashion week show today (22nd Sept) at live.burberry.com.

This is similar to an approach we took with ghd revelations where everyone attending the event was encouraged to send in photos from the event (with the incentive being a ghd IV styler). The result was great as we were sent lots of great images (shortly to be on flickr) and recieved an unprecedented amount of blog posts about the event (we hadn’t realised we’d invited so many bloggers to be honest).

via psfk

Fashion bloggage from SA Fashion Week

I’m loving ifor1.co.za’s coverage of SA Fashion Week she has produced some really high quality video blogs from the event. A great example of what I was talking about in my last post about why bloggers are starting to get (or should get) VIP treatment from PRs at fashion week (and elsewhere). The coverage is quick, highly visual and in the abscence of  much shortlead fashion press in South Africa probably the best way to get a view of fashion as it happens. Ifor1 is written by (proper journalist) Justine Stafford. Nice work.

The rise and rise of the bloggerati

The death of blogging (under the cute blue talons of Twitter) has been somewhat exaggerated. The perks for being a top blogger these days are just too good to give it up for the ease of 140 character chirrups. Global fashion blog JC Report did a post this week on fashion bloggers in the US being given great seats at New York Fashion Week from PRs that would have snubbed them a year or two ago.

Move over Anna Wintour—Jane Aldridge, Tavi, Susie Bubble and Bryanboy are ready to take your perch in the front row of fashion shows. It’s hard to imagine that just a few seasons ago these internet personalities with an insatiable appetite for fashion had a hard time getting invites. But due to their incredibly large following in the digital space, such new media powerhouses are collectively climbing the ranks in the stratified fashion hierarchy and are making a huge splash during New York Fashion Week.

From: New York Fashion Week: Bloggers take over

Closer to home and also in the fashion world Style Scoop and 2oceansvibe  we’re invited behind the scenes at Elle Magazines cover shoot this week, alongside TV show All Access. And I also see Jon Cherry of cherryflava is being flown to Madrid by Sony for some PR junket. As more and more PRs realise the value and reach of the top bloggers we’ll see more pro-bloggers getting the same treats and treatment that used to be reserved for media. I just hope I too can be a member of the bloggerati when i grown up!*

*the best i’ve done so far is a pass into the student screening room at Design Indaba and a cape town fashion week pass (and that’s only cos i have so much dirt on the organisers probably)