PR

#pepsifail/#pepsiwin

Pepsi costumesThere is no shortage of ways to offend people.  If I switch the font on this blog to a serif font tomorrow, I will get a couple emails from people who are offended (or at least disappointed).  To go through your entire existence without offending someone is probably impossible and would almost certainly lead to a forgettable existence.

Naturally, there are degrees to offensive behavior and expectations on certain entities for what is acceptable from them.  I can get away with saying a lot of things that someone like President Obama would be criticized for.  Generally speaking, stereotyping large segments of the population is offensive to many but it comes down to context.

The #pepsifail phenomenon is an interesting case study in how brands can walk this fine line.  Pepsi released an iPhone app, “AMP UP Before You Score,” targeting prospective AMP energy drink consumers by stereotyping women in a humorous way, presumably to build a preference for their brand.  When all was said and done, it probably ended up being more popular in social media circles than the target market due to the technology involved (iPhone) and the fodder it provided the blogging/microblogging echochamber.

But was it offensive?  That’s a two-part question.

Culturally speaking, I don’t believe it was offensive.  Profiling women as “Cougars” or “athletes” is not culturally edgy.  It is a staple of prime time television humor and a convention used by advertisers regularly.  It certainly doesn’t offend the target demographic, who will probably either think it’s funny or dismiss it altogether.  Whether or not it works as a word-of-mouth device is questionable.  Could you see a group of guys at a bar standing around an iPhone trying to decide if a girl at the other end of the room was “Married” or “Out of Your League”?  Maybe, but I hardly consider this to be a burgeoning cultural phenomenon that will have any effect on the way men interact with women.  It’s possible that this could be more offensive if it was more mainstream, as opposed to just being targeted at college aged men.

The larger question here is whether or not it’s appropriate for Pepsi to act this way.  Almost immediately in this debate, the conversation moved away from the AMP brand to the Pepsi brand.  While this probably isn’t fair since they both have very different markets and messaging, a brand has to react to the response from the marketplace.  The response suggests that consumers do not expect Pepsi to be involved in stereotyping women in this manner.  A beer company or an energy drink (or even a hosting company) might be able to get away with it but a large portion of Pepsi’s core consumers would be turned off by this and, whether it was fair or not, it has been tracked back to the master brand.

So while I do believe it was a mistake for AMP to assume that this couldn’t be tracked back to Pepsi, I don’t think this was an unforgivable offense.  In fact, it’s one of the more clever attempts to engage with this kind of audience in a way that has the potential to gain WOM traction.  Regardless, a response was warrented.

Pepsi’s response came through Twitter as follows:

“Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback. #pepsifail”

I think the response is perfect for many reasons.

  1. The backlash came through social media, not mainstream media, so it makes sense to respond within the channel of origination.
  2. The response clearly and concisely (thanks to the character limit) explains what the purpose of the initiative was, which most would agree is not offensive.
  3. There is a clear apology to the segment of their stakeholder that were offended.  This is important because it shows that they can defend their decision without alienating the opposition.
  4. It show that they’re listening and willing to engage whether or not it is on their terms, which humanizes the brand.

Overall, I deem this a #pepsiwin.  It shows that the brand wants to innovate but it’s not it’s not going to ignore the way the market reacts.  Most importantly, it proves that, if this were to happen again to a different degree, their response will be measured and the company won’t ignore their target to put out a fire.

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Earned Media: Certified Organic

OrganicThere is a lot of talk about the “fine line” in PR now that social media has been pushing the envelope on what is acceptable to traditional PR practitioners (read: media relations).  You’ll hear that there is a “fine line” between PR and advertising now that PR is incentivizing non-journalists to broadcast various messages on behalf of their clients.  There is a “fine line” between Pay Per Post and paying a PR agency to try to get placements for you.  There is a “fine line” between sponsored posts and banner ads.

The lines get less fine when you revert back to definitions that few will disagree with.  You generally won’t get into a big argument when you separate PR from advertising as the difference between paid media and earned media.  Paid media has certain benefits, like being predictable, as does earned media, like generally being more trustworthy.

If you’re paying for placement through a company like Izea, Pay Per Post or BlogHer, you’re not doing PR…or you’re just doing it badly.  Clients pay PR people to craft persuasive messaging and develop assets to support this messaging, which can then be used to reach influencers and shift sentiment around an issue or news item.  These services aren’t necessarily immoral (thought I don’t personally like them) but they are paid media and should be purchased by media companies and advertisers and held to the same standards as other media buys.

Why is this an important distinction to make?

Put simply, it’s because organic impressions are worth so much more than manufactured impressions.  Social media, blog-related media in particular, is going through something that search engines went through a little while ago in that they’re trying to figure out the right place for sponsored content among organic content.  Today search is a more mature industry and the brands that are investing in SEM have a clear understanding of the difference in value between paid search and organic search results.

PR can play a very strong role in organic social media marketing if it’s willing to distance itself from paid media.  I won’t argue that paid media doesn’t have a place in this mix (in fact, this looks about right to me) but public relations needs to take it’s discipline a lot more seriously before someone else steps in and becomes a better resource for working your brand into this media segment organically.

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Mommy Blogger Boycott? Sign Me Up!

momYou may not have heard but one of the denizens of mommy blogger communities that have popped up to exploit marketers’ fascination with this fashionable demographic have declared that August 10-16th will be the first official “PR Blackout,” because mommy bloggers are “simply doing too much.”  While Momdot may not have the influence of larger blogger networks that more successfully pimp out mommy content to the highest bidder, the initiative has gained some steam, at least in the insular worlds of PR and mommy blogging.

I’m with the mommies on this one.  I propose that PR practitioners join this fight and show their support by taking it one step further and blacking out mommies for the remainder of 2009.  No more free iPods or trips to LA to demo your client’s product.  No more free rides to the BlogHer conference from their hotel or subscriptions to services they would never pay for.  Just flat out cut them off and give them the freedom to resume their non-branded activities for the remainder of the year.  They’ll be better off, you’ll be better off and your clients will be better off.  More importantly, maybe somewhere a child will get a little more attention.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t hate mommy bloggers.  In fact, I think mommy bloggers are one of the most closely knit online communities that have emerged from the social media cloud.  They understand the tools at their disposal and have been great at building a network that is obviously very attractive to marketers and, subsequently, PR people.  They’re often smart women that control substantial portions of the total household income.  Moms buy products for their sons, daughters and husbands so they super consumers, right?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Yes, mothers are extremely important, if you can reach them in a meaningful way.  The marketing data doesn’t lie about the role these women are playing in thier families.  For me, the part where the fog starts to roll in is with the mommy bloggers and what weight they hold with larger networks of mothers.  I’d argue that the influence of mommy bloggers is completely overblown for a few key reasons:

  1. Echochamber – Mommy bloggers are read primarily by other mommy bloggers.  They are all fighting for SOV so they all link to each other, follow each other on Twitter and, in many cases, click on each other’s ads.  Sound familiar?  Yes, this is the same thing that happened in tech until the industry realized that Robert Scoble‘s endorsement isn’t going to make anyone buy stock in your company.
  2. Oversaturation – Mommy blogs and the networks that pimp them out have created a totally oversaturated media segment that makes NASCAR look organic.  Brand sponsorships of confessional parenting diatribes that range from voyeristic to flat out spam are not only bad media buys but also put an ugly tint on your brand.
  3. Trust – Because you can buy a mommy blogger from a variety of different networks and get them to do just about anything, a mommy blogger endorsement isn’t exactly what it appears to be.  There have been so many glowing endorsements of Swiffers and Tide that people who read these blogs have trained themselves to ignore them and treat them like banner ads.  When you lose the trust of editorial content, you can’t claim the same value as editorial content (regardless of your disclaimer).
  4. Numbers – Since mommy bloggers live primarily within the world of social media, they’re subject to all the meaningless friend/fan/follower numbers that boost up people with limited influence in the real world.  You can get a lot of Twitter followers if you have a few hours of free time every day but that doesn’t make you influential.

There are plenty of exceptions to this rule.  Only a fraction of moms who blog end up falling for the blogging-for-dollars schemes but it is a very vocal minority that does and that affects the whole segment.  Mommy bloggers are right to step away from PR people for a while and PR people should do the same.  It’s fad PR and there are better way to spend your client’s money.  Maybe there is a creative way to connect with the 99% percent of moms who don’t blog.

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How Coraline Redefines Influencer Engagement

97815_coraline1Coraline may be a movie about a young girl trying to escape a parallel universe but the marketing behind the film is something potentially even more compelling.

Tasked with promoting what is being called by many a “small movie,” the film’s ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy, came up with a very unique way to engage with influencers in the animation industry, who are most likely the ones to inspire the most sustained conversations about a film like this.

The agency produced briefcases that themselves became storytelling mechanisms for the film (Ad Rants offers a couple good examples here).  Each box was different and sent to a different blogger or esteemed member of the animation community.  Some people posted pictures and some posted videos of the unboxing but very few people ignored them.

While ad agencies are generally the poster children for transparency gaffs and ham-fisted mailings, W+K added an element to the film that appeals to the nature of the kind of stakeholders they want to reach.  The campaign itself is worth following and there are people this morning that are searching the Web to find out what was in the other boxes and who recieved them.  When you read about the unboxing on different blogs, you generally find out more about the film and the creativity that went into it.  It opens up a level of stakeholder engagement that never would have been achieved with an email and a YouTube video.

Far too often, influencer outreach becomes an extension of traditional media relations and never gets beyond the “smile and dial” mindset.  It’s great to see companies like W+K get involved and (hopefully) begin to raise the bar.

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It’s 2009 and Social Media Releases Are Still Terrible

under-constructionI hate to be the bearer of bad news for PR people (ok, I actually like it a little) but those social media releases you’ve been pushing aren’t any use to anyone.

You could make a larger case that press releases themselves are of little value any more but what I’m more concerned with is how some wire services are repositioning press releases, marking them up and selling them as “enhanced” releases for “social media.”  Yes, just go ahead and ask any blogger what they want more than anything else in the world and they will most certainly tell you “press releases, more press releases please.”

It’s easy to poke fun at the worst releases but for this example I will use something that is being positioned as best-in-class by some.  One of my favorite PR bloggers, Todd Defren, recently posted a case study where Shift Communications, the poster child for the social media release and IMHO one of the best tech PR firms out there, was hailed for a campaign in which this social media press release played a supporting role.

Really?

Let’s take a look at some of the “social media” features that are so valuable in this release:

  1. YouTube videos.  Great, everyone loves YouTube videos and you can grab the code and insert them into your blog posts.  Well, normally that’s true but Marketwire shrinks the YouTube videos to a size where the button for links and the embed code are eliminated, forcing you to click the video itself to go to the page on YouTube where it is available (you have to figure this out for yourself, Mr. Bloggy McSmartypants).
  2. Head shots of the founders.  Nothing wrong here, except for the fact that the image is 800×530.  It’s too big for any blogger to use and too small for anyone in print to use.  If you want to use this picture in your blog, you’re going to have to resize it.  Add another step.
  3. The obligatory social bookmarking links.  If Steve Jobs issued a press release about how he was the offspring of two government baboons, I still don’t think enough people would Digg the release enough to drive any traffic.  I still don’t understand why these social bookmarking sites are being pushed on people when the content doesn’t justify it.  Case and point: the total amount of people who click “Digg” for this release is a whopping zero.  Want to know how many “Technorati‘s on this release”?  Spoiler alert…zero.
  4. Search stats.  Yes, the search stats…finally, it all makes sense.  That is until you actually look at the results and see that it’s all just a bunch of sites that regurgitate news releases.  Hardly the big influencers of social media.
  5. SEO?  You’d think SEO would play a major role in a social media release platform but I’m giving this release a C- in that category too.  It’s nice that they have a descriptive page title and everything but what about the URL?  Is Google going to fall in love with “http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Mobilesphere-880759.html”?  Where’s the product name (“Slydial”)?
  6. Content.  I’m not sure what happened to Shift’s original model for the SMR but this release looks a whole lot like a regular old press release.  Apart from the quotes being broken out, I’m not really seeing the bulleted information that is going to eliminate barriers to publication.

Of course, the results of the campaign were still impressive.  The company was covered in 381 blog posts and they attracted 200,000 beta testers.  I think that Shift is a great agency and they probably played a direct role in driving those results.  I just don’t think a social media press release had anything to do it.

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MicroPR, MegaIdea

Not much to say here except that you should score another win for Brian Solis for his MicroPR idea (credit is also extended to Stowe Boyd and Christopher Peri).  The idea behind MicroPR is that a Twitter account is setup to enable all interested stakeholders – PR, journalists, analysts and bloggers – to communicate through a simple non-interruptive channel empowered by Twitter.

From a more high-minded standpoint, this is, as Solis says, a way to “compete against the amplifying volume and frequency of information” in our evolving world of PR.  Where this differs from a system like HARO is that there is no filter or gate keeper, only social technology powering the machine.  Time will tell if this will be subject to spamming and if there really needs to be a filter beyond the limited policing that the creators of this idea have in mind but it’s certianly worth a shot.

I think I may wait until tomorrow and query the MicroPR community to get suggestions for panelists for my SXSW panel.  I’ll be interested to see the difference in quality between that tweet and my general tweet sent out a couple weeks ago.

The Real Opportunity for the Evolved PR Agency

Jeremiah Owyang has stirred up the debate on what PR agencies need to do in order to survive in the future following the Horn Group’s recent event titled “Is Social Media Killing PR?”  He offers a variety of different options ranging from becoming a social media filter for clients to moving into a wider range of marketing disciplines to help fixing the agencies’ own reputations, which are often much worse than that of the clients.

Charles Cooper over at CNET also chimed in, saying that “PR is killing PR?”  He states that social media isn’t really playing as big a role as empty messaging and weak products/services that are being pushed by PR.  He doesn’t outline an opportunity out of all this except to suggest that if PR goes back to doing the fundamentals of their business better than maybe there will be more success.

Although Owyang touches on it, neither of these points of view go back to the original definition of PR, which is the greatest opportunity that social media has opened for PR agencies.  It’s pretty simple, PR agencies need to teach companies how to RELATE to the PUBLIC using these new channels.  Your grandma probably doesn’t know how to talk to people on social networks and neither do these big brands.

It’s obviously more complicated than just being an individual with few or any stakeholders.  The way a major company handles itself online has major repercussions but that’s the main reason there is an opportunity for experts.

This isn’t just social networks and Twitter either.  PR agencies should be taking over online pressrooms and how the company tells their corporate story through their Web site.  Like I say in most of my new business pitches against bigger badder agencies, your ad agencies can push content and your interactive agency can find new ways to engage people but it’s your PR agency that you’ve always trusted to manage your most important relationships.  Sure, it’s a sales line but there’s some truth in it.

Then, of course, there is the fake New York Times, which predicted the end of PR, as well as the Iraq War.  The prank was trying to show how the world gets better by July 2009, and the demise of PR is part of that Utopia.  Maybe Jeremiah was right, PR should focus on its own reputation too.

PR’s Field of Dreams

We’re halfway through August so it’s time for the semi-annual “Your Specialized Marketing Practice is Now Dead” meme.  Horray!

Yes, all the hard work you’ve put into learning the ethics, strategies and tactics of PR are now dead because some bloggers don’t find press releases helpful.  May I suggest a career in tasty soy snacks?

Oh wait, it’s just sensationalist blog fodder by people who are acutely aware that PR isn’t going anywhere.  Whew!

There’s a special wrinkle this time though.  The argument is framed as a “doesn’t good technology sell itself?” debate.  Fortunately, if you were born after 1999, you know that the answer is no.

I call this the Field of Dreams theory.  The assumption is that if I have a product that’s really cool then I will sell a ton of them and there will be no reason to promote my brand or “if you build it they will come.”  Isn’t that how the iPod blew up?  Those Hush Puppies that Malcolm Gladwell talks about?  Google?

No, no and no.

Yes, great design can feed demand and generate word-of-mouth.  I don’t think anyone can argue against that.  Unfortunately, none of these products or companies would be able to stay alive without marketing because there’s (thankfully) more to marketing and PR than selling out your warehouse inventory.  Apple would be crippled if they didn’t have a PR team to field inquiries about shipping delays and malfunctioning chips or else misinformation would run rampant and kill their brand.  Yes, Apple.  They have a PR team.

What about Google?  Could they make the acquisitions that have strengthened their business against the will of multi-billion dollar competitors without the help of good PR?  No, they couldn’t.

The list goes on and on.  Bad PR will always exist but the entire industry doesn’t depend on bloggers finding press releases helpful.

So PR isn’t going to die.  And neither will this meme.

The Julia Allison Guide to PR

Julia Allison isn’t selling an iPhone.  She’s selling Julia Allison.  Julia Allison is pretty, writes well, can hold the attention of a camera, is stylish and has a social interest in Web 2.0 companies and their scruffy founders.  On paper, you probably wouldn’t want her as a client because you wouldn’t think there was much you could do with her.  There is no shortage of pretty girls who can write and look good in fancy dresses, right?

That why I think other brands need to study how Julia pulled off one of the best PR success stories in digital media.

Ms. Allison will grace the cover of Wired this month, talking, presumably, about this very same topic.  Granted, this isn’t exactly Time Man of the Year but it’s certainly the kind of PR hit that could sustain a high tech client for about six months.  But yet, she didn’t discover a faster processor or start a company that allows you to cook an egg on your Blackberry.  She’s promoting her new Web idea, Nonsociety, but she’s really just promoting Julia Allison.

She did it the (new) old fashioned way too.  Julia jumped on Tumblr when it was new and hot and hit the ground running.  She also regularly puts up videos on Vimeo (it never hurts to have dated one of the founders) and she regularly responds to commenters.  When she sees people trashing her on Gawker, she doesn’t sit back and check with her legal team…she responds.  When she’s writing an article for Time Out, she asks her readers for feedback and they give it to her.  She puts it all out there and accepts the consequences.  This is not paid media, it’s PR – the new way.  The result is that she’s found her audience.

She’s also found people who take a lot of offense to the fact that she’s famous for doing nothing.  Although she’s been silent since June, the woman who anonymously writes the Reblogging Julia blog spares no amount of venom in ripping anything that Julia publishes.  Loren Feldman has also taken an unhealthy interest in her, but that too has tapered off once he actually met her.  There are other detractors now too, just as there are legions of people that hate the iPhone, but she’s being sustained by the people that support what she’s doing, which quickly cancels out the naysayers.

The reality is the Julia is one of the best PR minds of a new era of digital media.  Imagine if she put this energy into your crappy product.

Update – As expected, Jason Tanz at Wired covered this in a little more detail, with an interesting twist on why people are really interested.

The Nelson Award: PR People Impersonating Rabbis

You almost want to let this one slide on the basis of pure hilarity but, alas, you cannot.

We’ve all been there.  You toil away on your kosher slaugherhouse account, putting your heart and soul into every deliverable when, completely unbenownced to you, one of your “interns” jumps on Failed Messiah and starts impersonating rabbis to further your messaging and respond to critics.  Oy vey!

Unfortunately for the otherwise legit PR firm 5W, that’s exactly what happened.  Regardless of what you may think of their CEO or Gawker’s characterization of him, 5W is probably one of the better pure media driving PR firms out there and they have lots of good people at every level.  However, I don’t think “the intern did it” is a viable excuse anymore.

Social media is a minefield so people rely on their professional services firms to help protect themselves.  If PR firms can’t train their employees from top to bottom on how to navigate a modern media landscape then they are in the wrong business.  I know it happens everywhere but that doesn’t excuse it.  Everyone needs to know the risks and take responsibility when things go wrong.  5W, this Nelson Award is for you.

As a side note, this is a immensely comical thread to read through, if you have a few minutes.  I’d start with the Failed Messiah post that outs 5W and then continue on to the follow-up.  It’s not just the scandal that makes it a good read but the comments are priceless.  I particularly like when they get off topic and start arguing about whether or not Jack Daniels is a bourbon (it’s not).

L’Chaim!

Update: It gets worse.

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