Unsolicited Marketing Advice

Responding to Online PR Issues Requires Advance Planning

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:00:05 PDT

How will you respond – or will you?

Every month or so, we hear of another company facing a public relations crisis. More and more often, these originate on the Internet or have a strong online component. Responding in the face of a crisis or criticism has long been a function of the public relations manager. Today, more than ever, PR staff must be equipped to analyze and react to online issues -- or to offline issues using online tools.

To this end, the Air Force has developed an excellent flow chart that helps clarify the decision-making process when responding to public relations issues appearing on social media. The "Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment" (pictured below Link to PDF) identifies four types of online posts: Trolls, Rager, Misguided or Unhappy Customers.

Options for response that are identified by the Air Force include monitoring only, fix the facts, restoration, concurrence, or let it stand. In many ways, this algorithm applies logic similar to what PR staff has long used in responding to criticism in letters to the editor, editorials, or other media reports.

If you decide to respond as part of an online crisis, author Rohit Bhargava provides five steps to apply:

Identify the participants
Evaluate the conversation
Respond authentically
Publish your point of view
Monitor and respond to conversation

Of course, whether to respond or not is one of the critical questions a PR practitioner must answer as an issue develops. When and if to respond to an online issue or criticism is often challenging. Nathan Gilliatt put it well in a post on his site, The Net-Savvy Executive, when discussing blog criticism, "The short answer to almost every interesting question is, 'it depends,' and the question of how to deal with critical bloggers is no exception."

Thinking out possible options in advance and making plans for addressing online issues, as the Air Force has done, is part of the role of a public relations manager -- and one of the keys to success when a real crisis actually develops.

Additional Links

The Air Force's Rules of Engagement for Blogging on Global Nerdy (includes a nice listing of other blogs commenting on the tool)

Blog post about the Air Force's online media efforts lead by Capt. David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon -- by Web Ink Now

Ohio Library Council's Connections Toolkit chapter on Responding to Criticism

Responding to Negative Comments on Your Blog

Helpful Guidelines for Writing Sponsorship Announcements

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:00:08 PDT

Tips on Constructing Underwriting Acknowledgements
For Public Radio & Television

Sponsoring a program on public radio or TV is just one part of a public relations or marketing strategy – the other part is getting public credit for your donation. In commercial radio and television, your investment typically provides you with time for what is appropriately called a "commercial" or advertisement. Public broadcasting announcements are different due to the non-profit nature of these stations -- and regulations imposed by the Federal Communications Commission. For these reasons, nonprofit radio or TV stations provide their underwriters with a short announcement to identify – rather than promote – the sponsor. This is typically placed at the beginning or end of the program and fits the criteria of "brief, descriptive information on products and services."

The station may offer to create this sponsorship announcement for you, but sometimes marketing or public relations staff are called upon to write this script to ensure the tag meets company branding standards and sponsorship goals. As with traditional electronic advertising, you will want to clearly state your brand, keep the message short and concise, and incorporate your company's theme or positioning. These are some additional guidelines that will help you write an effective sponsorship tag without running into objections from the station or the FCC:

Length – 15 to 20 seconds is generally acceptable with most radio stations to meet the criteria of "no longer than necessary." Nationally, PBS limits announcements to 15 seconds, although some 30 second premier sponsorships are available. The longer the announcement, the more likely it will be judged "commercial" in nature.
Names – The business or product name is acceptable.
Contact information – A phone number or web address is acceptable.
Location – Mention of the business location or the area served is acceptable.
Preamble – The preamble is phrasing such as "Brought to you by," "Made possible by," "The weather on WKRP is sponsored by," "Funding for this program provided by," or "Helping WKRP with the broadcast day." Use of preambles is fairly traditional although not strictly required. The FCC has objected in some cases where such wording is omitted.
Logos, slogans and theme lines – These are generally acceptable if as long as the logo "identifies" and the slogan does not "promote." The key here for slogans is that the phrase should not be comparative in nature or an appeal to purchase. The wording should be value-neutral. Well-established company slogans fair somewhat better under review.
Product mentions – Factual descriptions of up to three products or services, the use of the product, what the product is made from, or the form of delivery are generally acceptable. On television, products can be shown but their depiction is an issue since it should not convey product superiority or customer satisfaction (sometimes referred to as "no smiling). Products may not be displayed on children's programming.
Dates – Days of operation are acceptable. Event dates and locations may be acceptable depending on the nature of the event.
Avoid – Wording that is qualitative, comparative, or that urges the listener to buy, call, visit, try, or compare. This means one should avoid superlatives, calls to action, and endorsements by customers or professional groups. Here are some examples hot words to avoid: efficient, excellent, best, premier, number one, quick, prompt, largest, leading, and bigger. Truth of the statement is not an issue; comparative and superlative wording is just off limits.
Avoid – Price information of any type. Words to avoid include: free, sale, economical, affordable, and so forth. Limited time offers, trials and special gifts are not acceptable.
You or Your – Although a favorite of marketers, use of the word "you" or "your" generally causes problems in sponsorship announcements. It may be possible to successfully rewrite the phrase without the word.

These guidelines are a compilation of basic standards and guidance provided by various stations, as well as how the FCC has acted in the past. You will want to consult your individual radio or television outlet for specific requirement that they may have. The station has the ultimate right to approve or reject your underwriting acknowledgement script.

Sponsoring a program on public radio or TV can be an effective way to position your organization with your target audience. Applying these guidelines, good electronic copywriting techniques and some common sense will help your organization make the most of the short on-air time that you receive for your donation. Of course, the smart public relations manager won't stop here. Announcing your sponsorship to internal and external audiences and weaving it into your communication plans will more fully leverage your organization's investment.

Additional Links

The Trouble with Twitter

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:00:05 PDT

In jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, many communicators are forgetting communication basics.

Surveying the use of Twitter by organizations shows many, if not most, are using Twitter exclusively as a one-way communication tool. A prime example of this is when an organization's Twitter strategy is limited to tweeting its news releases. Hello, guys, this is what an RSS feed is for!

The significance of Web 2.0 is that it's social. That means the strength of the medium is in conversations, not one-way bursts. Company news releases, or happy talk factoids spaced throughout the day don't add significant value to the social media universe and are generally unlikely to coalesce into conversations. This isn't to say that an organization shouldn't tweet its news releases, just that it should also have a more mature, robust Twitter strategy.

Another common Twitter tactic has been to develop Twitter "events," especially those that capture media attention such as tweeting during surgery. The first organization to create such an event will certainly get some buzz in the Twitterverse as well as in traditional media outlets. But such an approach is not a really great strategy because it focuses on what the organization wants to talk about and not necessarily what consumers are interested in discussing.

The First Step is to Shut Up

The first step in a mature Twitter strategy should be to shut up and listen. Many organizations recognize the importance of brand and public relations monitoring, but it is easy to push the significance of these efforts aside in the rush to "do something." Yet listening has value and is the first step toward a true two-way communication strategy.

Tools that can help with Twitter monitoring include Twilerts, TweetBeep, TweetScan and Monitter, or Twitter's own tracking feature and search-related RSS feeds. At a minimum, organizations should set up basic alerts to monitor their brand name and keywords of significance to their industry or location.

Stop Thinking of Tweets as Sentences

Next, in order to stop monopolizing the conversation, communicators need to stop thinking of tweets as only sentences. One way to do this is to look for ways to ask "Twuestions." In other words, tweet engaging questions that prompt a discussion (see TwiTip's How to Ask Effective Questions on Twitter).

Or tweet a survey (like twtpoll, for example). Then think about tweets as useful links and tweet about the survey results -- or combine your findings in a blog post worthy of tweeting about. Focusing on questions can help force the one way/two way communication issue, making tweets potentially more conversational. Focusing on links can add value and expand the conversation from 140 characters to something of more depth.

Another approach is to develop separate Twitter accounts or hashtags that will help your organization better focus on an narrower audience or topic. It is unlikely that people will see the value in following @BigConglomerate, but they might find value in following narrower conversations such as suggested by @greencleaningproducts, @coolsportscarmodel or @cholesterolcontrol. Healthcare non-profits may want to pursue a similar approach and segment their conversations on specific diseases or conditions. Of course this requires focus, and some parts of the organization may not get as much attention as those on the priority list – unless, of course, one can train and democratize those smaller units to become their own social media communicators. In general, multiplying the number of Twitter accounts has potential to increase the tweet-stream value as people perceive you are discussing topics of targeted interest to them.

ssss

The cost of entry is low for Twitter, so marketing and public relations managers might be tempted to think that not much return is needed on their investment. But to be effective within this new medium will still require a focus on two-way communications. To benchmark Twitter's effectiveness has to come back to metrics of engagement. One-way tweets don't count as a conversation. And only conversations count as effective communication.

Additional Links

Twitter in Plain English by CommonCraft

Trouble with Twitter from Current TV

Quantcast Audience Profile of Twitter

Graph of Twitter Usage (A downer for those with Twitter obsession)

How Hospitals and Health Systems Should Not Use Twitter

Twelve Ways Newspapers Can Reinvent Themselves

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:00:00 PDT

It is clear that newspapers across the country are in the midst of a crisis. Dozens have closed in the past two years, including some large, metropolitan dailies like the Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Cincinnati Post and Tucson Citizen. Others have threatened to close, sought bankruptcy protection, merged, or moved to partial week publication. A few have decided to cease print operations and serve their news only online. As a Time journalist eloquently said, it is "as if some creeping, flesh-eating virus had got hold of the newspaper industry."

Causes of the Crisis

While the current crisis is clearly influenced by the rise of the Internet as a source of news, a decline in circulation, and a collapse of display and classified advertising, it is actually not an entirely new problem. In fact, newspapers have been experiencing a decline in total circulation for the past 30 years. And newspapers don't have a good track record of adapting to technology, as evidenced by the press-radio war of the 1930s when print media attempted to limit radio's access to news.

In addition, newspapers have not yet adapted to changing audience preferences. Walter Pincus (in Columbia Journalism Review) has pointed out that newspapers have squandered resources "that could have been used to give readers a wider selection of stories about what was going on and that may have directly affected their lives." In the Internet world, this is called "content is king." In other words, "any media venture is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors" (Wikipedia entry).

Many Solutions Silly

A number of solutions have been proposed to address the current newspaper crisis. Unfortunately, most do not make a lot of sense.

Publication cutbacks – Nearly a hundred papers are scaling back the number of days in which they print a newspaper (list of newspapers that have cut publication days). Saturdays and Mondays are the most frequent victims of these cutbacks, although many cuts are even more severe. Other newspapers, such as the Detroit Free Press are still printing weekday editions, but cutting back on home delivery days. Such an approach is expected to help the Free Press save 20 percent of its costs, according to an AP report, while hopefully maintaining most of its advertisers who already prefer other publication days.

Yet, there seems a danger in customers forgetting about you if your contact with them is not on a regular, consistent weekday basis. It's one thing if a newspaper is weekly and I expect it on Wednesdays, but it's another thing if it only comes out on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays while my weekday patterns of life run Monday through Friday.

Content payment or subscription changes – Rupert Murdoch has recently suggested that an newspapers are going to need to seriously reconsider the need to charge for online news content, something few papers except the Wall Street Journal currently do. Similarly, Walter Isaacson (in Time Magazine) has called for movement toward a subscriber micropayment system that incorporates ease-of-use features like iTunes or PayPal. But both approaches seem to be looking backward and akin to closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. It is also worth noting that subscription fees for newspapers generally only covered the cost of newsprint and have never been a key driver of revenue.

In contrast, Merlin Mann and John Gruber (at SxSW 2009) have explained why giving away content often makes good sense for bloggers, often in unexpected ways. It seems a similar logic could apply to newspapers' online efforts, given sufficient time to discover new, perhaps unforeseen revenue options. Admittedly, much of the time for such discovery has already been squandered.

Non-profit status - Senator Benjamin Cardin (D, MD) has introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act into the U.S. Senate that would allow newspapers to become non-profit "educational" organizations. The arrangement would be similar to public television and prohibit papers from making endorsements. Advertising and subscriptions would be tax exempt instead of unrelated business income, as is typically the case with nonprofit organizations.

Overall, this concept seems to be an overreaction which bends the typical understanding of a non-profit, with little historical precedence. Furthermore, it fails to acknowledge that newspapers are still, by and large, profitable enterprises. In a less radical approach, Gov. Gregoire of Washington State has provided special tax breaks to his state's ailing newspapers through 2015. Yet both these approaches follow a bail-out mentality rather than a path that would help newspapers adapt to changes in the environment.

Online-only approaches – A smaller group of newspapers has taken the drastic step of moving to becoming online-only publications. The Christian Science Monitor, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Ann Arbor News are notable examples. While a bold step into the brave new world, online advertising may not yet be mature enough to support these ventures.

Others have also expressed skepticism. Walter Pincus (CJR) has stated that "serious people have proposed what in time will be considered absurd ideas – turn papers into nonprofit organizations; charge for each downloaded story; turn into Web-based publication; make Web aggregators, such as Google and Yahoo, pay for carrying newspaper stories." With the possible exception of becoming online-only publications, these proposals generally seek easy solutions. Unfortunately, this is typically not the way most challenges are overcome.

The Need for Reinvention

There is no doubt that newspapers need to reinvent themselves, although how best to bridge from the past to the future is not entirely clear. The rational answer likely involves strategic creativity and risk taking, such as the effort that created USA Today some 25 years ago.

To that end, it seems clear that newspapers need to make a paradigm shift from printers of news to conveyers of information, at least for those that have not already recognized that further integration with the Internet is essential to survival. Hard work and technical savvy will also be prerequisites, but there will likely be no "easy" way out for newspapers.

Here are 12 practical yet strategic steps newspapers might take in pursuit of such a transformation:

1. Webize the Newspaper Name

Most newspapers have figured out the importance of having the Web address displayed on their pages, and even on the sacred home page. These web address also generally match the newspaper's name (although surprisingly, some don't). But the time has come for total commitment between print and online presence. At a minimum, the URL for the newspaper's online presence should be the largest, boldest item in the masthead after the paper's name. For maximum effect, the URL should become the paper's name. So instead of Smithville Daily News, the masthead reads in big, bold type "SmithvilleNews.com."

2. Print Content Should Always Jump to the Web

We propose at least 80 percent of articles in the printed version of a newspaper should end with a URL. Not just a listing the newspaper's Web address, but providing a relevant call to action with as numeric details where feasible to add specificity:

Comment on the School Board's actions at smithvillenews.com/090423school
View school auditor's report at smithvillenews.com/090423schoolaudit
View video from Sewer Committee consultant at smithvillenews.com/stinky-sewers-cause-complaints
View and purchase any of 50 photos from Raiders vs Chemics game at smithvillenews/sports
Post your opinion on Snodgrass Industry's Plant Closing on our blog at smithvillenews.com/blog.
Read the remainder of reporter Jill Schatinger's story online at smithvillenews.com/pageone (5 paragraphs, 3 charts)

Conversely, online news must also find ways of cross-selling print editions where and when feasible.

3. Flip the Editorial Page

Instead of letters to the editors printed in the newspaper, the editorial pages should print the best of the previous day's reader's comments on stories or editorial postings, as reviewed by the editorial editor. Or perhaps the editor would sort out excerpts from posts into pro and con columns (but without the shouting as one gets on cable television shows).

Another possible approach might be for the editorial staff to interject their commentary into the stream of the conversation as it is reprinted from the web, rather than exclusively in a separate column at the top of the page. The editorial page could become a section that reports on editorial opinion, categorizing, analyzing refuting or supporting points of view in chunks (each attributed back to the poster's username), rather than the traditional display of letters to the editor.

4. Recapture the Classifieds

The rise of Craig's List, eBay, eBay Motors , Monster.com, and other such sites have marginalized the value of traditional classified advertising. The resulting collapse of classified advertising has been cited as one of the key factors in the financial difficulties faced by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe.

Newspaper chains or an industry sponsored consortium should use their resources and national presence to identify ways to compete, partner or buyout significant players in what may be understood as the micro-advertising marketplace. A process is needed where individuals or businesses could post short, text-based ads or modular display ads through the local newspaper's web interface. These ads would then be populated to the newspaper's local or national partner web sites, e-mail newsletters, print editions, and perhaps even traditional online text ad services like Google's Adwords and Overture, or social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.

This new genre of classified ads could also appear next to relevant content in print (not just in the back of the paper where nobody looks), as identified through keyword tagging in the ads and some sort of algorithm that understands the topic of the news article. Such an approach could bring new value to the otherwise exhausted classified concept, especially if space were devoted to explaining the easy steps for advertising and reporting the individual, local success stories.

5. Kill Impression-based Advertising and Embrace PPC

While print ad placements may still need to be sold on a traditional basis, newspapers should shift their online advertising strategies from the old paradigm of pay per impression to the more modern pay per click model. This may cause the demise of most banner ads, and we'll all be glad to see them go. The pricing model is likely one of the few reasons such ads persist in the face of low click through rates and research showing widespread banner blindness.

A move to a PPC model for online display ads will also require a fundamental shift in advertising philosophy. Advertisers will have to think and work harder to get their message across. They will need to be more relevant to the consumer and partner with newspapers to find ways to tie their ads to relevant content through keywords – without destroying the editorial-advertising divide. Finally, advertisers and newspapers will need to find ways to provide value to the reader to earn their clicks, which in the end is a win-win for newspaper and reader alike. More informational, emotional and visual online advertising will likely result.

A PPC advertising model may initially result in lower income, but there should also be potential for increased volume due to this approach lowering the bar for smaller businesses to confidently enter the online advertising arena. Such democratization of advertising will likely have the added benefit of creating new, secondary industries focused on analytical services and tools.

6. Customize Content Delivery

StumbleUpon.com is a potential model for delivering news that is of the most interest to each individual newspaper subscriber. This customized content could be delivered through an e-mail newsletter format, or to a wireless, web-enabled book reading device. In fact, newspapers should be running, not walking, to the Kindle and Sony Reader Digital Book platforms.

In this approach to customized content delivery, the subscriber would give initial input about their areas of interest such as one does on StumbleUpon, which would be combined with the subscriber's demographic information and content analysis algorithms that "learn" what the subscriber is most interested in through how they rate items positively or negatively through thumbs up or down icons, or through their click behavior.

7. Report on Online Activity

Newspapers could do a better job of reporting on what is happening on Internet in their print editions. By this we don't mean more techie stories, but some type of summary display that gives the pulse of news or other online activities. For example, BuzzFeed covers memes and the viral Internet, Google zeitgeist reports search trends, and there are a number of tools that help track trends on Twitter. A good place to start would be reporting yesterday's most popular activity on the newspaper's Web site: what are people searching for, what topics received the most comments or blog posts, which advertisers are receiving the most clicks. A daily or weekly, data-driven content analysis of media coverage –newspaper, radio, Internet, cable and network – could create a new position for newspapers as the rational, data-driven analysts of current events and opinions (i.e. – database journalism).

8. Make Newspapers Clickable

Alltop.com aggregates news stories in categories (and by source) and displays the results as clickable headlines. The whole page is filled with clickable headlines. This concentrated approach to news is like a newspaper with hundreds of sections, quickly scanable, and more appealing than an RSS feed reader. If newspapers were clickable, this would be an appealing format to make papers more valuable. QR Codes have the potential to make newspapers clickable.

QR codes are two dimensional bar codes that are already popular in Japan. There you can take a camera phone photograph of such a code – on a handout, a mailer or even a billboard – and be transferred to a corresponding Web site on your web-enabled cell phone. Thus either camera phones or some new type of pen-like input device could be used as a bridge between printed headlines accompanied by such a code and Web-based reading devices like a tablet PC, e-book reader, iPhone, or a customized e-mail newsletter.

Interactivity is one of two attributes that newspapers currently lack, according to Andrew Davis, President of the American Press Institute (see Time Forum). The newspaper industry should aggressively pursue the implementation of QR codes and related technology which have the potential to make the printed word interactive.

9. Become the Celebration

Births, engagements, weddings, anniversaries and deaths are a significant part of local newspaper coverage. A few national Web sites like our365.com (for births) and legacy.com (for obituaries) are in this market space, but it seems there is a opportunity for a newspaper chain or consortium to develop an innovative Web concept that combines aspects of photo sharing, local directories, retail sponsorship and sales.

Of course, an online version of newspapers' social pages sounds a lot like Facebook, which has itself been struggling to find a sustainable advertising model. This suggests that there may be an opportunity for collaboration where newspapers become the local on-ramp for social news and in turn funnel local, targeted and relevant advertising from small businesses back to Facebook or similar sites. In this way newspapers would become the intermediary between highly personalized online and local advertising revenue opportunities.

In a similar way, concerts, plays, lectures and sporting events also get hometown press attention. Eventful.com and Ticketmaster are key online players in this market space. While some newspapers are "reverse publishing" event calendars from their websites in weekend media & event-focused print editions (Example: Bay City Times's Let's Go Section discussed at :33), a better option is likely to find a way to partner with Web ventures that already have a wide national presence, commenting or voting capabilities, social networking aspects, and other linkages that already give it high value in the eyes of the consumer. For example, it might be possible to publish print listings of eventful.com events and collect a fee from that website for measurable increases in web traffic or ticket sales that can be attributed back to the newspaper promotion. Today's Internet-based economies will require newspaper's acceptance of less control over the means of production and more innovative collaboration.

Such an approach to event publishing could also overcome a common reader complaint: that newspapers cover interesting events after the fact, but don't do a good job of advance notice of community activities, presumably because they consider pre-event publicity "advertising," not news.

10. Consider Hyperlocalization

Hyperlocalization is the concept of focusing on community news. While the Web is outstanding for delivering national and international news and information, it still can't compete with newspapers for breadth and depth of local coverage (see PBS Frontline: "Should newspapers go hyperlocal?"). Unfortunately, some early examples of hyperlocal approaches such as backfence.com and LoudounExtra.com have been less than successful. Nevertheless, the strategy may yet have merit if and when the correct formula is applied.

Ethnic newspapers are another example of focusing on an audience subsegment. While not unaffected by the recession, many ethnic newspapers are growing (example: El Diario La Prensa), and such papers are surprisingly popular (NYT article), making them worthy of further study by an industry that needs to better focus on their readers.

11. Partner (or Compete) with the Post Office

Newspapers are unique in that they operate a home delivery network. While the United States Postal Service has exclusive legal rights to deliver first and third-class mail, newspapers have a potential opportunity to provide an alternative way for advertisers to reach their target audiences. Furthermore, lobbying for readjustment of the changes made to the second class postage rate structure in 2007, which favored media conglomerates over smaller publications, could help papers take further advantage of postal delivery options.

12. Take a Contrarian Position

If all else fails (or even if it doesn't), newspapers could consider a "Good News Page," that compiles user-submitted, positive stories from around town for exclusive publication in their print editions. Of course the axiom is that "Bad News Sells" (Pew Research supporting this), but perhaps it is time for print media to find a way to establish a unique, contrarian media position that could attract hometown advertisers interested in good public relations as well as an audience of eyeballs who would appreciate this material in an otherwise discouraging world of news.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The crisis faced by newspapers across the country should be of concern to all marketers since printed newspapers and their accompanying Web sites are still valuable vehicles needed to effectively reach the marketer's target audiences. Furthermore, marketers within the newspaper industry have a role to play in helping reinvent newspapers for the future – a role that will serve their own careers as well as helping shape the newspaper industry for decades to come.

Additional and Related Links

America's Press-Radio War of the 1930s: A Case Study in Battles between Old and New Media (PDF)
Motown Madness: Home Delivery Cut – Why Detroit Newspapers' Approach Will Fail
Washington State Papers Paid Dearly for Tax Cut Estimated to Save Only 15 Reporters' Jobs
Guy Kawasaki (co-founder of Alltop.com) on Obstacles to Innovation (Kawaski on Twitter)
BBC Report on QR Codes (video)
Newspaper Death Watch blog
Journalist Jeff Jarvis on the Future of Newspapers (video) (bio & blog)
How Newspapers & Magazines Can Benefit from 2D-codes like QR-Code, BeeTagg Code and Datamatrix (video) (Swedish)
Maybe Google Needs Newspapers
Make Your Own Newspaper Circulation Trend Gauge

Why Graphic Artists Have a Difficult Job

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:21:16 PDT

In a word, clients.

These videos give us a view of the world from the graphic artist’s perspective. Sorta like the animals at the zoo looking out at the funny homo sapiens with their noses pressed up against the glass. Remember, humor is funny because it is truth delivered in a well-timed fashion.

Designing the Stop Sign

Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Package

Correcting Your Company's Brand Name or Location on GPS Systems

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:33:46 PDT

Misspellings of brand names, mislocation of buildings on a campus, or just plain incorrect data on GPS systems can be frustrating.

The two main map makers for GPS devices are Tele Atlas (www.teleatlas.com) and Navteq (www.navteq.com). Both offer ways to submit updates to their maps via their Web sites.

Map Feedback for Tele Atlas
http://mapinsight.teleatlas.com/
Teleatlas' Map Insight™ application walks a user through the process of submitting a correction. The company states that "by leveraging user perspectives, our data will become even fresher and more valuable to consumers, developers, and enterprises alike."

Give Map Feedback for NAVTEQ
http://mapreporter.navteq.com/
NAVTEQ Map Reporter™ provides a method to submit a correction, catogorize it by type and make additional comments. The company states that it makes "every effort to ensure that our map data is as fresh, accurate, and up-to-date as possible by employing full-time staff in more than 130 offices around the world."

Both systems provide a view of their map that you can zoom in on until you find the point of interest. You can then "thumbtack" the location (a thumbtack icon in Teleatlas, a more obscure target circle icon in NAVTEQ) before submitting the item with your e-mail address. NAVTEQ provides a way for registered users to track the status of their submission.

Making Corrections to Other Map Systems

In addition, Garmin (who uses NAVTEQ data) provides a (complex, hard-to-use) map error feedback form on the Garmin web site. Magellan points users to NAVTEQ's map feedback. Tom Tom promotes a "real time" map correction feature that you can enable on your device, although the video demo only shows a road construction/detour example. TomTom has turned over millions of correction suggestions from the system to Tele Atlas (Read article on GPSReview.net).

Google Maps provides "edit" option you can use while viewing a map (View video showing how) as well as a way to submit Google Map corrections as part of Google Maps Help section (Note that Google Mobile uses TeleAtlas map data. Web-based Maps uses NavTeq map data). Mapquest provides an "report data errors" option on their contact page, while Yahoo Maps are built upon NAVTEQ data.

If you've had success or frustration with using these or other methods of correcting GPS data from a marketing or PR perspective, please use the comment link below to share your experience.

Could .TEL Spell the End of Yellow Page Advertising?

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:46:29 PDT

The new top level domain .tel is uniquely positioned to change the face of yellow page directory advertising. It may also have significant impact on search engine optimization and will likely better serve mobile devices than the .mobi top level domain has heretofore done.

For background, the Internet has numerous “top level domains” or TLDs such as .com, .net, .edu, .gov and so forth. Telnic’s introduction of .tel is the most recent addition to the domain line up, but is significantly different than previous TLDs. This is because .tel isn’t tied to traditional HTML web pages, but rather is only a repository for data that is stored at the DNS, or domain name system, level.
Once your register and configure your company’s .tel domain name (using a standardized backend tool provided by Telnic), you may load information like phone and fax numbers, web site, Facebook page, GPS coordinates and so forth into the .tel system. There it is available for retrieval – although retrieval by whom and how is yet to be fully realized.

For now, anyone can type the .tel domain into their browser to receive a standardized display of the contact information that you entered for your company. This will likely be an immediate application for phone-based mobile devices and more convenient method for finding phone numbers and for GPS identification of locations and than a .mobi page, which is essentially just a stripped-down version of your web page for cell phones. The real future for .tel is likely hidden within the potential for the aggregating of .tel information by search engines like Google or other yet-to-be-developed online applications (Others are more skeptical about the potential for SEO benefits).

.TEL Impact on Traditional & Online Yellow Pages

Yellow page advertising is another service that could potentially be in .tel’s crosshairs. Obnoxiously overpriced and notoriously confusing, yellow page advertising is a bane to most marketing and public relations managers. In addition, online “yellow page” web sites are frequently inaccurate and difficult to correct.

Enter .tel domains, which allow a company to control the accuracy, level of detail and keywords associated with their contact information. Updates can be made immediately instead of waiting up to a year for the next directory to be issued, and everyone has the most recent version instead of a 3-year-old spaghetti-splattered tome that Mikey is using as a booster seat. Plus, as life moves to the Internet, it is reasonable to assume that thick directories will give way to the more portable web-enable cell phone or the kitchen-based family computer.

As some have pointed out, it will take a critical mass of business adopters to make .tel a success --and a true threat to the yellow page status quo. In the first month, business adoption appears brisk although press coverage is still modest. As of this post, major firms such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, GM, Bank of America and Exxon do not currently have live .tel domains. On the other hand, Apple, Cisco, Amazon, Toyota and the White House do.

New .tel addresses have the advantage of being relatively inexpensive since domain registration is the only cost; there is no web page or web server involved. Furthermore, MySpace will be promoting .tel domains to its members, potentially tapping into individual and social networks as a strategy to bootstrap broad acceptance and implementation of the domain (this is the approach registrar Domain Monster is taking with it's video below).

The jury is still out on the brand new .tel domain, but marketing and public relations professionals would do well to take steps to protect their brand names, configure basic contact information on their .tel domains and be watchfully waiting for further opportunities within the .TEL marketplace.

Video Information about .TEL Domain

1. Bloomberg News interviews Telnic CEO Khashayar Mabdavi about how the new domain could “spell the end of the old style directory services.”

2. Telnic’s official demo for business explains the domain’s potential in a 4 minute video overview.

3. This humorous promotional video for Domain Monster suggests how .tel videos can be used for social networking. You can even follow the ben.tel URL from the spot to learn more about UK actress Laura Haddock.

Additional Links

Telnic example of a large business with nested levels of contact information within a .tel address.

.TEL discussion on BBC television (Video).

List of domain name registrars through whom you can register .tel domains

Telnic launches iPhone application

The .Tel Search Engine Factor

Yellow page consultant list - Reduce your traditional YP expenses (These consultants specifically have hospital or healthcare experience).

New Tools and Social Media Cause Practitioners to Sound Warnings about the Future of Public Relations

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:00:00 PST

"The Future of PR" is the subject of a video compiled by the Council of PR Firms with commentary from various noteable principals and practitioners within the field. Although not a structured presentation, the video does touch on some of the major forces influencing the direction of public relations today, the majority of which are influenced by the growth of new and social media tools available to practitioners, their clients and the public.

Points that he speakers touch on include:

Social media's effect on journalism
Media fragmentation
Changes in value relationships between clients and PR firms
Need for client education due to new and social media growth
Talent recruitment
Diversity
Increased need for authenticity
The speed with which PR tools are developing and changing
A need to refocus on the basics principles of PR in light of the rise of new media and tools

Additional Links

PR Industry Leaders Put Their Feet in Their Mouths at Critical Issues Forum
The Future of Public Relations
Students: The Council of PR Firms asks, “What is the most dangerous idea in PR today?”
Dangers Equal Opportunity for Smart Marketers, PR Firms

Developing a Culture of Giving within Your Organization

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:30:00 PST

Employees and internal stakeholders should be a cornerstone of your non-profit organization’s fund development efforts.

Yet the Spirit of philanthropy doesn’t necessarily come naturally to the human soul, even if they’re employed by your 501(c)(3) organization; work on your board of directors; or teach, heal or pray in your corridors.

As organizations grow, they have a tendency to begin to resemble their for-profit counterparts. As a result, and over time, it is not unusual for the charitable focus that may have been at the core of the founders’ vision to become hazy or even fade away altogether. Fortunately, developing a culture of philanthropy within your organization can serve more goals than just assisting with fund raising. A philanthropic employee base is more likely to be committed to the organization’s mission, to the team effort, and to bringing a positive attitude to their work.

Here are a dozen tips for developing a culture of giving within your not-for-profit organization, whether it is a para-church ministry, a hospital, or a university:

1. State Your Mission ― Again
Employees need to understand your organization's non-profit mission and be regularly reminded of what they come to work to accomplish. It is natural to expect that the worthy nature of your mission will lead to employees making a personal financial commitment. It's not about requiring employees to give, or browbeating them, it's about employees coming to a place where they internalize your mission and want to participate more fully with it through voluntarily giving back something to the organization and its causes.

2. Start with Small, Non-Threatening Opportunities
The opportunity to give small gifts can help employees become more comfortable with giving to your organization. A common approach that fits this criterion is a holiday "lights on the tree" appeal. This type of appeal gives Niece Sally an opportunity to make a donation in honor of Aunt Suzie’s recently deceased husband. It helps both the donor, who doesn’t know what to get Aunt Suzie, and your organization.

Likewise, your organization could ask for an extra dollar, or to round up the employee’s purchase to the next dollar when they visit the gift shop or cafeteria during a special celebratory week. Bringing in Jewelry, Uniform or Book Sales to the workplace for employee's convenience and your organization's benefit also fall in this category ― especially when your communication efforts make clear that your organization's share is going to a specific, worthwhile cause.

3. Talk about It
If other departments are on the agenda for presentations to management groups or to employees, so should fund development. Upcoming appeals and plans are strategically important to the organization just like a new advertising campaign, or the introduction of a new service. Discussion of fund development plans with employees should be done openly and naturally, not hidden from view.

4. Ensure Executive Giving
Your organization's C-level executives should already be giving back to your organization at some level. If not, it's unlikely that they will have the necessary commitment to support the development of a culture of giving within your organization. A fund development director will need want to take on stragglers as they would any potential major donor. If nothing else, recognizing executive giving may help your PR efforts when the press gets a hold of your 990s.

5. Recognize that Some are 'Takers'
Your fund development and executive leadership should recognize that Americans by nature ― and many people by personality ― are "givers." In service industries and non-profits, more than the average number of employees may already be receptive to supporting your cause. Fund development is not about pulling money from someone's hand, it's about providing people the opportunity to partner with your organization's mission to do something important that impacts people's lives. If staff are upset that you're asking, they likely don't understand your non-profit status and mission.

6. Develop Social Networks at Work and then Tie to Your Cause
People you work with often become like "family." Nurturing this can benefit morale and teamwork, as well as providing another avenue for you to share your mission with your own employees. Traditionally, internal giving by departments can be encouraged through holiday appeals or memorial opportunities that employees can mutually contribute to as a natural unit. Online social networks like and Facebook and LinkedIn are additional ways to create a network. Start by making sure your organization has a Facebook page or group that employees can affiliate themselves with. Then consider that Facebook also provides a way for members to support "causes" – information about which can then be distributed virally to your employees’ friends.

7. Celebrate Volunteerism
The spirit of volunteerism is akin to the spirit of giving. They are often the same constituency. Celebrate even if the employee's volunteerism is elsewhere in the community, not just within your own organization. It is the same spirit regardless of where expressed.

8. Encourage Volunteerism
The next step after celebrating volunteerism is to encourage it through providing opportunities, requiring community service for managers, requiring it for promotion, providing time off, flexible scheduling and so forth.

9. Encourage All Types of Giving
A culture of giving that encouraging employees to give to worthy causes is good for the employee, good for the community and good for the organization. Some ways to do this include United Way campaigns, providing a matching gift program, or participating with national organizations with which your non-profit has affinity (for example, a hospital putting together a team for the Alzheimer Association's Memory Walk). Selfishly avoiding providing employees with such outside giving opportunities doesn't make sense. Rather, develop a spirit of philanthropy among employees and watch for downstream benefits to your organization in the form of new donors or planned gifts from those employees.

10. Acknowledge Internal Donors
Acknowledging internal donors internally can express the organization's gratitude to them and be an encouragement for other employees to give as well. Admittedly, this requires some finesse to come across in a positive manner and not as cajoling non-givers. Summarizing employee giving and reporting the aggregate results in newsletters and easel posters can be an effective first step. In addition, major internal donors might be recognized at board or foundation meetings where other major and external donors are present.

11. Make Internal Giving Easy
Payroll deduction can make employee giving easier. Also splitting a pledge across multiple paychecks provides an opportunity for employees to become regular donors and reach larger giving levels.

12. Ask
Unashamedly ask your employees and related internal constituencies to support the strategic needs of your organization with their charitable contributions. If your needs ― and their support ― weren’t important, you likely wouldn’t be a non-profit organization to start with. Your board members and employees are likely already giving elsewhere, as are physicians within your hospital or health care organizations, or the professors on your teaching staff. Why shouldn’t – why wouldn’t – they also be interested in giving back to the good work being done where they work? You’ll never know, and you’ll never develop a spirit of giving, until you ask.

Update: Calendar Marketing Approaches

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:00:01 PDT

In an update to our earlier post, "Getting Your Event on Your Audience's Calendar," Calgoo.com will soon launch a cross-platform service that promises to put events like your company’s upcoming education seminars, your store’s upcoming sales events, your professional sports team’s game times, a golf course’s open tee times, or even relevant eBay auctions on your Outlook, Google or iCal calendar. The company describes their approach as a permission-based marketing medium for businesses to promote time-sensitive products and services

Links

Good Art is Not Subjective

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:45:00 PDT

Jackson Pollock's art is interesting, especially the more colorful pieces, but I've generally had a much harder time appreciating other abstract art. I found some rationale for my tastes (or lack thereof) in "Acquired Taste," in article by Gene Edward Veith in World Magazine (subscriber login required for full article, Feb 9/16, 2008 issue), where he explains "A work is beautiful to the extent that it displays at the same time both complexity and unity."

"A canvas of random paint-splatterings may have complexity, but it has no unity," Veith said. "The Sistine Chapel, or a Rembrandt woodcut, or a Hudson River landscape has both, being full of individual details that come together into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts." Veith extends the concept to music, drawing contrasts between simplistic and more complex forms, even within the same era or genre of music itself.

Enjoying junk food or junk culture isn't bad once in a while, but developing taste in art (or music, or writing, or dance, etc.) does require discipline. "Growing in taste means learning to take pleasure in what is objectively good," Veith said.

While classic thinkers spoke of three kinds of absolutes: the true, the good, and the beautiful, Veith clearly bases his definition of "good" on a Christian worldview. "The Bible tells us to set our minds on 'whatever' is 'excellent' and 'of good report' (Philippians 4:8)," he said. "To think that beauty is nothing more than a subjective preference—unconnected to standards that originate in God Himself—is to buy into a foundational principle of today's anti-Christian worldview."

Regardless of worldview, a principle we can apply here is that making good judgments about art, copywriting or strategy is often less subjective than the novice (or naïve) may think. Rationale patterns flow underneath good communications, and the professional communicator does well to become a life-long learner of theory as well as the practical application of our trade.

Bill Hybels: The Importance of Decision Making for Leaders

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:29:53 PDT

Author and pastor Bill Hybels (bio & books) spoke about decision making during his keynote address to the Willow Creek Leadership Summit on August 7.

Good decision making is critical to being a leader because so much of leadership is about making decisions. In addition, many decisions we make as leaders have "high stakes," affecting the lives of those who work for us, as well as hundreds or perhaps thousands whom our work efforts touch, according to Hybels.

It is important to have a process to arrive at good, God-honoring decisions. Likewise, it is important to learn how to improve our decision making over time. Hybels recommended Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis as the best book he's read on the topic. He then outlined a traditional, four-point approach to Christian decision making:

1. Does the Bible say anything about this?

So many decisions aren't that hard, Hybels said, because the Bible gives clear direction. For example, leaders should admit when they are wrong. They should set an example. They should treat all with respect. He recommended leaders read the Bible regularly and see what effect it has on their decision making.

2. What would smart advisors tell me to do?

All leaders should establish a formal or informal network of advisors, Hybels said, since in the abundance of counselors there is safety as Proverbs 11:14 suggests. However, the leader must also apply their own discernment to the advice they receive, as in the case of Absalom, the son of Solomon, who made the poor choice of following the advice of his peers instead of his elders, which resulted in a civil war instead of consolidating his hold on the kingdom after his father's death.

3. What have I learned from past pains, gains and experience?

Reviewing the scars from past experiences helps give perspective to subsequent decisions. Likewise, gains from past bold decisions can help influence the current decision. Put together he abbreviates this step as P,G & E – pains, gains and experience. Hybels said journaling can be a valuable way to add to your wisdom if you include information about decisions and their results.

4. Is the spirit prompting me?

When facing a decision, Hybels attempts to listen for an inaudible whisper that is God's voice. Sometimes when he feels God is warning him against a course of action it is like God is saying, "Let me save you from yourself." Relying on the spirit's promptings leads to life and peace according to Romans 8:6, he said. Another method he uses to make decisions is a "test decision." He will make a decision in his mind, and then carry that around for a few days to see if it feels right as he goes through his day.

Decision Making Axioms

As leaders lead over time they often begin to subconsciously compress these decision making steps into principles or proverbs for themselves. As they use these and find them helpful, they may become part of the organizational culture. Such "business proverbs" are the topic of Hybel's most recent book, Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs.

Abraham Lincoln's response to people who wanted revenge on the South after the Civil War was phrased as such a proverb, "The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend." Likewise, Bob Galvin, retired CEO of Motorola, is known for "create motion for motion's sake," meaning that taking an organizational action is generally better than complacency and forces individuals to make changes that have potential for improving operations.

Colin Powell, a former Leadership Summit speaker, has about a dozen such proverbs according to Hybels. They include "check your ego at the door," "promote a clash of ideas" (don't seek consensus, but ask "And who has a contrary point of view?) and "reward your performers; get rid of your non-performers" (don't waste time on non-performers).

After interviewing Powell last year, Hybel's staff pointed out that "you have sayings too." He began to write them down over the course of the year and came up with a total of 76, which became the basis of Axiom. These include:

Vision leaks – Even after a leader sets a vision, people forget. They need the vision and goals restated for them from time-to-time. My wife noted that a better analogy might be that "vision evaporates" since it's not necessarily the fault of the recipient that the vision gets dull over time.

Get the right people around the table and it will be fine – Meaning that a challenge is best addressed by a team of the right people, not necessarily preconceived solutions.

Facts are your friends – I've found myself saying something very similar in my career. Hard data helps make decisions, and make them easier.

When something gets funky, engage – In other words, when a situation is awry, don't think it will go away or heal itself. Actively intervene instead.

Leaders call fouls – when someone or something crosses the line, the leader should say so publicly. Sometimes a leader has to call a foul on himself and admit when his behavior was out of line.

Take a flyer – Take a bold risk to launch a new initiative. Every once in a while you will have to create an action plan that takes your breath away, Hybels said. This should be differentiated, however, from moves that "bet the farm" by risking everything.

Of course, axioms that you create and coin yourself as a leader will always be more powerful than those you adopt from other leaders, Hybels said.

Leaders cannot be decision-adverse, Hybels said. Leaders need to make decisions. It's what leaders do. If the decision turns out well, your response should be to thank everyone you can think of. If it turns out to be a poor decision, don't blame others. Don't whimper or whine. Rather, take the responsibility for the poor decision and use the lesson to improve your decision making in the future.

Having a framework for decision making, a network of advisors, and an awareness of principles that have worked for us in making decisions in the past are all excellent recommendations applicable to marketing and public relations professionals.

Additional Resources

"Next Steps" Resources for Hybel's presentation at the Leadership Summit
Digging Deeper links and references from Hybel's presentation
Dave Ferguson of the Velocity blog reviews Hybel's talk on decision making

Polish Your Employees' Name Badge Presentation

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:48:26 PDT

Good customer service and safety standards encourage your employees wear their name badges in a clearly visible manner, but sometimes this can be a challenge.

Name tags with simple pins are common in restaurant and retail businesses, but corporate organizations generally issue a name badge. Frequently these are embedded with a proximity reader, bar code, or other "smart chip" devices for security, identification, or time card purposes. Such badges generally have clips, which work well enough for employees with suit coats. Shed the jacket; however, and the name badge creates the dreaded droopy pocket syndrome.

Lanyards are often employed in such situations, but these may involve safety concerns, even with break-away connectors. In addition, a lanyard still positions the name badge around the navel, rather than where it is clearly visible to customers in the upper body area.

Badge Supports, LLC has now created a very nice option for shirts or scrubs that include a breast pocket. Their Nerd-Buster Badge Support slips into a shirt pocket providing an easy way of displaying a vertical or horizontal badge. The device also includes a tab that sticks up to attach a recognition or ribbon pin. Versions are available to hold a few business cards (I'm always forgetting to bring my cards to vendor meetings!), or may be pre-printed with a logo, calendar, mission statement, commonly used chemical formulae, or safety information (such as your organization's overhead paging codes). These features make the badge support a unique idea for vendors to give away at trade shows or Human Resource departments to purchase in bulk for their organization.

Name Badge Links
Unsolicited's crack research staff has scoured the Internet for solutions to droopy pocket syndrome and found these resources:

Badge Supports, LLC – The best approach we discovered, economically priced and Michigan-based (founded by a former automotive engineer like my father so they get extra brownie points).
Arm Band Badge Holders – May be appropriate with lifeguards or staff in T-shirts, we suppose.
Pocketprotectors.com and securityimaging.com produce Pocket Protectors with Name Badge Holders – An option for those that carry pens, pencils or other items in their shirt pocket.
Government ID Badge Holders from Evolution Card Systems & Badge Supplies – Rigid, color-coded, magnetic, arm band and other badge holders for school, military or government use.
Badge straps with hole or with extra loop - Versions of straps without the ubiquitous clip for use with necklaces, reels, tube lanyards or the like.
Badge Holders, Lanyards, Badge Clips, Badge Reels and more - from IDwholesaler.com

Getting Your Event on Your Audience’s Calendar

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:49:42 PDT

You've worked hard on designing and promoting your event. Now the challenge is making sure those hard-earned registrations actually show up. In some cases, reminder calls are appropriate, but in an age driven by electronic calendars what you really could use is an easy way to get your event onto your audience's computer or PDA.

Option 1: Integrate Yourself with Online Calendars

Users of eventful.com have the option of a button "Save to calendar" which gives options for posting to Outlook, Google, iCal format and other calendars. Eventful.com, which bills itself as having the world's largest collection of events, is a neat website which allows you to post details of your local events for free. It is easy for anyone to search for concerts, exhibits, lectures or other events of interest in their area, or a city they plan to visit. I found my region well represented with local events. In addition to the calendar feature, there are RSS feeds, e-mail notification, promotional tools available (Demand it!), imports from iTunes or last.fm (to track where your favorite bands are playing), and groups/friends social options. Posting your event to eventful.com can be the first step toward an integrated effort of pushing your audience to a popular online location where they can choose to add your event to their calendar.

In a similar manner, Markthisdate.com is a European-based calendar portal and event promoter that offers widgets to promote your schedule of events. Of course many other city web sites or daily newspaper sites provide a venue to post local event details (e.g., cincinnati.com), and you could always hold a virtual event in Second Life .

Option 2: Build a Convenient Calendar Link on Your Site

For a more customized approach, consider how WebEx online meetings have an "add to calendar" feature so you can add either a single meeting, or a series of their meetings, to your Outlook Calendar (although it was simpler in Office 2003 than in security-enhanced Office 2007). Minor league baseball teams the Toledo Mudhens and Corpus Christi Hooks, as well as the major league Detroit Tigers have an option to add their game schedules to your Outlook calendar. Unfortunately, these are a manual and somewhat complex process from a user's perspective. Such approaches use the vCalendar and iCalendar standards.

Until (or unless) someone has created a secure but simple approach to adding items to a customer's Outlook calendar, the most effective approach may actually be a combination of wired techniques such as existing or custom programmed "add to calendar features," or perhaps you-to-your-audience e-mail reminder services, with more traditional approaches like registration confirmation letters, reminder slips, and so forth. Let us what you use to get your events on your audience's calendar by using the comment link below.

Additional Calendar-Related Links

Add or remove holidays to Outlook
Easily Add Major League Baseball Team Schedule to Your Calendar (via markthisdate.com)
Customize your employee's Outlook calendars with your company's important HR dates
How to create & distribute a vCalendar file for Outlook
Google Calendar with Outlook and Smartphones Automatically
Sync your Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook
Add Google Calendar to Outlook
Outlook 2007 Calendar and Google Calendar integration (YouTube tutorial)
Create an Add to Google Calendar button for your Web page
CalendarHub.com: Access your online calendar from anywhere, privately, shared in a group or published on your blog
Upcoming: Yahoo's less than impressive event and calendar service (but it does use the hCalendar microformat, which may impress some geeks)
Memo to Me, Online Reminders, RS Outlook and Free Minder are email reminder services, although none seem to promote a bulk or "one to many" option
Send invitations via Evite.com (such as for Cinco de Mayo)

Campaigns with Impact in Six (Easy) Steps

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sat, 03 May 2008 11:06:14 PDT

Good advertising or PR campaigns have impact, make sense and have an overall sense of simplicity. But nothing simple or elegant is ever really easy, as oysters will tell you about the pearl necklace.

Based on my experience, the creative process flows through at least six steps, which clients generally do not understand, and which newbie internal or agency staff might even be a bit vague on. Understanding this creative process can help both clients and staff support the development of approaches that are on-target with impact, sorta like those recent Cheez-It commercials.

Fact Finding
A review of the organization’s situation and goals is the first step in the campaign development process. Typically, this will start with a meeting between the in-house or agency staff and the company’s administrative team. This will provide valuable information — situation, conflict issues, goals, audiences, product benefits and/or propositions, competition, budget, deadline and so forth — but will likely be strongly influenced by an internal perspective. Additional research — formal or informal, primary or secondary, quantitative or qualitative — is wise to consider at this point. Good creative is strategic, so making sure one has the consumer’s view of the situation will pay dividends. Otherwise you could end up with let’s-whitewash-the-issue, or let’s-hit-them-in-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat approaches.

Mandatories
Mandatory elements of a campaign are typically part of the creative brief, but it is worth mentioning them separately here as they can be an easily overlooked, but treacherous part of campaign development. It is helpful to have these up front in case any issues impact the overall direction of the campaign. Mandatories include elements that must be included in the final product such as:

Follow corporate graphic standards
For a co-op advertising, include Snodgrass Industries’ name and/or logo
In radio, use client’s brand name at least 3 times
Follow usage guidelines for any third-party endorsements or awards
Theme must be transferable to dozens of specialty items that the CEO loves
Be congruent with company slogan “We Care”

Creative Brief
The creative brief is a structured document that spells out the situation, strategy, mandatory requirements, and other items from the fact-finding section above. It is a tool used by the creative team as they go into the synthesis process, but can also be used the starting point for a description of the creative direction of the campaign once the following steps are complete. There are surprisingly large number of very good creative brief templates available on the Internet, and their construction and use are worthy of a separate post at some future time.

Synthesis
Here’s why you pay the creative folks the big bucks. And it’s why Thomas Friedman suggests that people who synthesize will have a better chance of being part of the new “untouchables” in the coming global economy. This step involves a creative team, which most often includes a small tight-knit group includes people with these types of skills:

A creative director
A strategist
A designer and/or visual thinker
A copywriter and/or word thinker
An account executive or staff close to the client (but NOT the client)

The creative team may be one person in a small agency, but more typically one to three or four people. The roles may overlap, depending on the people involved. The key is that this team is a small group with good brainstorming skills, developed from years of creative thinking. They will generally do a fair amount of what my father called cogitating before the magic occurs. I have never seen such a team involve a client, most likely because this would inhibit honesty and creativity.

The creative team generates ideas that synthesize elements such as:

Key points from the situation
An understanding of the consumer’s mind
An understanding of what is realistic within the customer’s set of goals
Insights into the benefits and unique selling proposition of the product or service
Cultural references that would resonate with the audience
A sense of “tone” – formal or informal, funny or emotional, and so forth
Ideas about what will break through the clutter
Knowledge of good communication theory and strategy, including use of direct and circuitous paths
Shape, size, colors, and communication tools
And likely a secret agency sauce

The Big Idea
The result of deep and creative thinking (a.k.a., synthesis) is a refined idea that defines the campaign’s direction. It is “the big idea” or the philosophy that drives the campaign and ties it together. It likely isn’t the campaign “theme” itself, but it is succinct.

Implementation
Everyone has ideas (although unfortunately, they’re not all good ideas). After you have the idea you must do something with the idea. The big idea must be used to persuade, to communicate a message through the clutter, or otherwise use communication as a vehicle of change. So at this point, the creative process gives way to approval and implementation, including:

The client presentation
Approvals (or back to the drawing board… if you don’t get fired)
Copywriting & design implementation
Testing
Tweaks
Final reviews
Placement, production or execution

Applying the Six Steps for Improved Results
Understanding the creative process can help facilitate better creative results. Here are some ideas:

Develop a crib sheet to make sure you gather necessary information from clients during fact finding
Make sure you clarify mandatory elements of the campaign before you get too far down the road
Always gather up graphic standards and third-party awards and endorsement usage guidelines early in the agency-client relationship
If you’re not a strategic thinker, nor a visual thinker, nor a senior copywriter, then don’t expect to get invited to the creative team’s brainstorming meeting quite yet
Read a book on structured creative thinking or brainstorming. Start applying what you learn
Identify what data or elements your agency, creative director, or supervisor is going to need and start researching these items before they ask
As a client, develop a creative brief template that you can use to give your agency background information (saves billable hours!)
As an agency, develop a creative brief template with your logo on it (impresses clients, keeps creative staff on task)
Deconstruct advertising or PR campaigns that you like and identify the big idea and key elements of the creative brief
Do things to keep you abreast of the culture and your audience.
Get a hobby or sport. Be well read. Read something different. Go a circuitous route to work. Increase blood flow to the opposite side of your brain.

By understanding that developing a campaign is a process, and that big ideas don’t just pop onto the table, you can help structure expectations for clients and prepare your marketing or public relations staff for the unglamorous, dirty work that is the true foundation of developing a campaign with impact.

Code Monkey Musings on Music Narrowcasting

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:20:29 PDT

We first heard Jonathan Coultran’s song Code Monkey (lyrics iTunes) last year when it was circulating on the Internet, but listened again, more carefully, after John Wall recently featured it on The M Show. This made us consider whether there might be a market for music that is segmented to ultra-narrow audiences – like computer programmers.

This seems a crazy idea, until one ponders the historical progression of broad to narrow. AM radio was the first to narrow cast, as a reaction to the growth of FM and evidenced by the growth of talk, sports or business radio, African-American and Hispanic stations, and even radio narrowly segmented audiences like 80 year olds. Now – although many corporate owners follow a strategy of only targeting large, oldies audience segments – some argue that FM radio stations are also beginning to follow the narrowcasting trend, in reaction to the rise of satellite radio like Sirius and XM radio, as well as Internet radio.

Furthermore, podcasting is perhaps the ultimate form of narrowcasting, and social media have also constructed narrow, ultra-segmented audiences, with My Space applying this to power to upstart bands and aspiring musicians. So the Internet has become a wild card in the evolution of media. What if the next leap in innovation was music targeting secretaries, or motorcyclists, or construction workers? This wouldn’t need to be a single band or bands, but could be a virtual construct from all songs specific to the audience’s experiences.

It some ways this makes “narrow” sound boring – and perhaps it would be. But the question remains, if we continue a march toward segmenting of segments in all media – including music – where will we end up?

Additional Links

Listen Up: Local Radio Audience Moving to the Web? (San Diego Business Journal)
Mining Solid Gold on the Radio (New York Times)
In Which I Melt Down Over the Troika AM/FM Radio (Boing Boing)
Code monkey T-shirts and stuff
Spend a lousy buck and buy the song on iTunes instead of just grabbing it for free off the Internet, or make a donation to the artist

Book Project Update

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:27:56 PDT

The book project that has kept us from active blogging for the last few months is nearly complete. My wife helped with the final research push, which we were able to handle long distance with sources in Franklin, New Hampshire, site of the former Forest Vale Camp. This was followed by several proofs with my mother, wife and a friend providing valuable final help in correcting factual and grammatical errors. We are now awaiting delivery of an initial shipment from Lulu.com and trying to decide what to do with the recaptured free time (beside blogging, of course).

Unsolicited Advice at a New Address

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:51:08 PST

We apologize for the disruption in service over the weekend as we moved to a new domain.

Unsolicited is proud to now be available at its own domain at www.unsolicitedmarketingadvice.com. Old bookmarks for blogspot.com and RSS feed subscriptions should still work just fine, but let us know if you experience any problems or find any broken photo links.

We've also added a machine-readable Creative Commons license at the bottom of this page in an attempt to address content theft that we've been experiencing. We don't have much hope of stopping these low-lifes that are likely using our search-term rich material for click fraud, but hope springs eternal. If you're reading this post other than via e-mail, a news aggregator (i.e., Bloglines, News Gator, and so forth), or from the URL www.unsolicitedmarketingadvice.com, please move your bookmarks to this authorized domain. Our copyright license authorizes only attributed, non-commercial use, so if you see Google ads or naked women, you're reading unauthorized usage.

Thanks for your support.

The Internal Communicator’s Dilemma

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:03:32 PST

Internal communications can be frustrating. After a full-court communications effort, employees still say "I didn't know about that...."

It seems the more you communicate, the more employees seem to miss the message. Perhaps it’s time to step back and look at the bigger picture. Here are some tips:

1. Instead of more tools, try research
An external audit of your internal communications is an excellent idea, but also consider research that tests how well staff are receiving the messages you send. This is a better approach than relying on anecdotal comments. Segment your research by department and find out who you're not reaching through traditional channels.

2. Consider cascading messaging systems
A structured, cascading messaging system puts the burden on management to communicate to staff. Follow-up measurement can help determine how well employees receive messages, and can identify who the problem children are.

3. Push back
"Really, you didn't hear about that?” Probe employees on their communication habits and how they missed your messages. When employees say, “I didn’t know about that,” try -- in a pleasant way -- find out why. And ask, “How would you like to learn about important company news?”

4. Consider if you're communicating too much
There is such a thing as communicating too much. Doing so makes everything seem equally unimportant. Cutting out the clutter can make the important stuff rise back to the top.

Three Ways to Use Seed Lists to Your Advantage

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:36:34 PST

If your organization does any amount of direct mail, you should be using seed lists.

A seed list is an extra set of addresses that are added to your mailing. The seed list names are added to the mailing regardless of whether they match the target criteria used to develop your list. They generally include you and perhaps other key people inside or outside of your organization. The term comes from how mailing list companies scatter (or “seed”) decoy names and addresses into the lists they sell. This allows the list company to monitor how their list is being used and safeguard against unauthorized use.

Marketers can also use seed lists to their advantage in at least three ways:

1. Track delivery time and quality
By adding yourself, your direct reports and call center staff to mailings, you’ll be able to know when pieces begin to arrive in consumer’s mailboxes. Plus, your staff can let you know about problems that occurred in the mail stream, such as ink rub-off from postal equipment, damage due to insufficient paper weight, additional tabbing done by post office because your piece wasn’t secure enough, or other design and mail house issues.

2. Keep your administration and key staff informed
While you may not want to swamp C-level staff with mailings, adding your boss or other key administrators to your seed list can help them have a better sense of what is being done in the Marketing or Public Relations Department. Unlike television ads or brochures, direct mail efforts often go unseen. Seeding the list with key staff or service line leaders can help the organization have a better idea about otherwise unseen communication efforts. You can even add your mother to the list if you feel guilty about not calling her often enough. And don't forget your ad agency account executives.

Of course, anyone that you add to your seed list should give their consent and understand that they will be getting more than the normal amount of company mail. Home addresses are generally better to use in such situations than work addresses. You may even want to develop a one-sheet explanation of the seed list concept to hand out to new additions to your standing list.

3. Exchange mailings with like-minded organizations
New ideas are the lifeblood of good communication efforts. One way to have a constant stream of ideas is to see what other organizations are doing on a regular basis. Non-profit organizations in particular will benefit from getting on the mailing lists of likeminded organizations from around the country. Vendors will often also host user groups or client conferences where the astute marketer will seek reciprocal exchanges of newsletters or direct mail seed list placements. Much of the material you receive will be trashed, but the gems can be kept in a swipe file for future reference.

To create a seed list, simple develop a spreadsheet with names and addresses that you collect from those who agree to be on your seed list. Your mailing service will likely appreciate if this follows a standard field layout that they use. Then create a standing order with your mailing firms that specify the list be added to every outgoing project. Most mail houses are familiar with this process. After first initiating a seed list program, check in with those on the list to let them know that you appreciate them letting you know of any problems or concerns.

Seed lists are easy to create, easy to implement and will return benefits to the communication professional that puts them to wise use.

Additional Resources

Quebecor explanation of its Seedtrack program for direct mail
E-mail Deliverability Tracker -- Deliverymonitor.com helps you seed your e-mail subscriber list with addresses at major ISPs. The service then checks those mailboxes and provides a detailed delivery report.

The Obvious Next Product

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:12:37 PST

P is for Product, but product development is often an overlooked element of the marketing mix, especially in small to mid-size businesses. Perhaps it's a lack of creativity, the result of natural myopic business focus, or a function of the quality of marketing staff. Regardless, the primary, under girding principle of marketing is to meet customers’ needs, rather than trying to push what the company has to sell. So, so many businesses miss this point.

Another example of this came earlier this month as Walmart pulled the plug on its online movie download service (and no one noticed, as Gizmo reported days later). Walmart, who does an excellent job of taking my money on a regular basis, missed the customer boat on this one. Encumbered by restrictive DRM, built on Microsoft's WMV format, priced expensively compared to the competition, and without a good way view the movies on -- gasp -- a television, the product flopped. No big surprise.

But the Walmart failure doesn't mean that online movies aren't a good idea, or that there isn't a profitable market for movie downloads. It just means the product isn't right. Yet.

In fact, the correct product is somewhat obvious:

Easy selection of movies - like Netflix or your local video store
Convenient one-click purchase and download to your computer - like Amazon or iTunes
A wide selection of recent releases and classics from the past – from all major and minor studios, including The Yellow Submarine by the Beatles
Relatively fast downloading, so movies can be watched on impulse - like cable on-demand services
Easy, unattended streaming from the computer to any television or other computer in the household - like your wireless home network
Light on digital rights management - so you own the movie and can play it at home or a portable device forever - like iTunes
The ability to make (limited) DVD copies - so you can take something decent to watch when you visit your in-laws
Low priced - to encourage adoption, volume and more purchases (as well as keeping Walmart out of returning to the market) - like iTunes
The option to watch in high definition without worrying about Blu-Ray or HDDVD formats – this could be at a premium price
Convienience and/or convergence features that make the product a useful addition or replacement to current home entertainment devices, such as:
- Tivo-like features so one can record from broadcast or cable – including high def
- VCR Plus+ – like simplicity of programming from television
- The ability to play DVDs that one already owns or has rented
- The ability to rip DVDs that I already own to add to my library
- No need to set a clock
A well designed product that "just works" - like the iPod

Of course there is one company already repeatedly mentioned in this list: Apple Computer. And there is an Apple product that already meets some of the criteria: the AppleTV. Thus, the obvious next product for Apple is a second generation AppleTV. And if they get it right, it will be another blockbuster.

Despite the demise of Walmart’s video download service, there are a number of other such services (CinemaNow, Apple's iTunes Movie store, MovieFlix, Movielink, Amazon's Unbox, and Starz's Vongo), but only Amazon’s Unbox is a large, serious contender. Although Amazon has links with TiVo, which was mentioned in the wish list above, Amazon still lacks access to the hardware component needed to make such an online service work seamlessly with television -- which isn’t to say that one should count them out, as evidenced by their willingness to launch the Kindle product.

Yet it is Apple that is poised to succeed in the online download market for a number of reasons, all which tend to circle back to the concept of “product.” Marketers can apply these principles to their product or business development efforts as well:

1. Steve Jobs Himself
Apple’s past successes have been strongly influenced by Job’s personal attributes: “his unwavering focus, his insistence on excellence and his belief in his own vision,” according Steven Levy in The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. The leader is key in product development.

2. A Focus on Excellence
At age 29, just weeks before the original Macintosh launched, Jobs said “my best contribution to the group is not settling for anything but really good stuff.” Levy explains that Jobs evokes a “Reality Distortion Field” around him as he seeks to achieve the ideal solution.

Levy also notes that some people have mistakenly thought the key to Apple’s success was the “coolness” factor. But this is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Cool is only a byproduct of the product development process according to Yossi Vardi: “The only thing a company can do is strive for perfection and hope that the gods smile on it.” The classic example is the distinctive click of a Mercedes door, which results from the care taken to manufacturer it so the entire rim of the door touches the chassis all at once as it closes. Jobs confirmed this principle when Levy asked whether he had tried to make the iPod cool. “No,” he said, “we tried to make it great.” A focus on an excellent product is essential to successful product development.

3. Understanding the Underlying Issue
As one works on developing a new product or service, it will eventually become clear that nothing simple is ever easy – meaning that the elegant solution must be found through a complex struggle. As part of that struggle to achieve an excellent product, “the really great person will keep on going and find… the key, underlying principle of the problem. And come up with a beautiful elegant solution that works,” according to Levy. Successful product development is a struggle that requires really understanding the underlying issue.

4. A Strategic Fit
The iPod and AppleTV aren’t just neat ideas to computer manufacturer Apple, they are core to a long-held strategy called the “Digital Hub.” Essentially, Apple’s goal is to create best-of-class software (and with the iPod and AppleTV, hardware as well) that people would enjoy so much that they would want to buy an Apple computer. In other words, there is a method to Apple’s “madness.” Good product development does likewise; it follows the organization’s strategic DNA.

The application for the marketing professional is several-fold. First, save up some of that holiday gift money for the inevitable second generation AppleTV. Secondly, approach product development (pause) and approach it as a serious enterprise: Find the right person to champion a new product or service; refuse to settle for “good enough;” drive down to the core issue; and only select new products or services for development that have an excellent strategic fit with your company.

Additional Links

New York Times: Wal-Mart Pulls Plug on Movies via the Web
Walmart Video Download site – featuring the “closed” notice
Which Movie Download Sites Are the Best?
Digital Hub Strategy explained in a 2002 Apple advertisement
O’Reilley: Apple's "Digital Hub" More than Hype
CNET Review of AppleTV
Apple TV isn't Catching on, Analyst Says
Apple and Fox’s Movie Rental Deal Also Includes Pre-ripped iPod/AppleTV Versions on DVD
The Second Coming of Apple TV

A Most Excellent Production Planning Calendar for the New Year

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:54:13 PST

With the start of a new year, it’s time to take control by making your calendar a tool for proactive planning. Here’s the challenge and an excellent solution to production planning:

The Challenge
When planning print production projects or newsletters, it’s often necessary to back into deadlines from an established delivery date. Or conversely, one has to plan forward for copywriting, layout, approvals and printing to know when delivery is possible. Such planning is a challenge with normal month-by-month calendars, even if they’re all printed on one sheet for easy reference.

A Solution
Dave Seah’s Compact Calendar makes production planning easier for marketers and public relations professionals by stringing all the year’s dates together on one long page with the weekends pushed to the right side in gray. Months and weeks of the year are indicated to the left of the main column of dates, while holidays are indicated by a colored numeral on the calendar.

The result is a most excellent production planning calendar that makes it easy to calculate “number of weeks out,” scan for conflicts by days of the work week, and identify when holidays fall inside of a production timeline. Seah provides the calendar as a Microsoft Excel file, so you can modify it to meet your particular needs, such as adding holidays, or even tweaking it to display subsequent years, if desired.

It can be effective to use the compact calendar to scribble on as your developing your production timeline, or you can go down to your local Kinko’s and have it printed as a yard-long, 10-inch wide wall calendar that you can view from across the cubicle (consider printing on outdoor banner vinyl for durability and adding your company’s logo). In addition, people have posted international variations of Dave’s calendar to his web site, so if you’re in someplace like Malaysia, there may already be a version in the proper language and with local holidays.

Additional Links

David Seah’s Compact Calendar download page
LifeHacker post about the compact calendar
How to use the compact calendar with a moleskin
How Jerry Seinfeld uses a calendar as a habit-building, productivity tool
David Seah’s filmstrip calendar for elapsed calendar time on a monospaced display (a bit geeky)
Downloadable Microsoft Word calendar templates – 2008, academic year, multi-year and other special-use options
Okidata-compatible customizable planning calendar templates for Microsoft Word
DIY Planner – Printable forms in various sizes (including Hipster PDA) for time management, GTD, project planning, checklists and note-taking.

Getting Readers to Page Two of Your Direct Mail Letter (Where to Page Break)

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:51:39 PST

I recently received a fund raising letter from my son's college. It was well written and formatted, and if tuition wasn't due in another month, I may have even opened my wallet.

One common flow in this otherwise excellent appeal was how the reader was taken from the end of page one to the top of page two. The last paragraph on page one concluded at the end of the page and a new paragraph began at the top of page two. While visually attractive, this gives the reader an opportunity to stop reading at the bottom of the first page (just when the appeal is getting warmed up!).

The better way to handle this issue is to break between pages in the middle of a paragraph and in the middle of a sentence.

Admittedly, starting a new page in the middle of a sentence and middle of a paragraph requires one to be aware of widows and orphans. Plus, the use of a parenthetical "continued on next page" phrase is still an option. However, the flow from page one to page two will be improved if readers realize they are "missing" the remainder of the last sentence on the first page of your letter.

Additional Resources

97 Tips to have a Successful Direct Mail Campaign (see tip #29)
Designing Strong Direct Mail Letters (see tip #5)
A Step-by-step Guide to Direct Mail Letters from direct-mail.org (see guideline #7, which they claim will impress your boss)
Power Direct Marketing resources by the late Ray Jutkins

The Use and Abuse of Questions in Copywriting

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:40:39 PST

Questions are frequently abused as a copywriting technique. They are often used too quickly, too frequently and without thought of the reader’s needs. You’ll improve your copywriting if you avoid questions more often than you use them. Here’s why:

The Fallacy of Engagement
Questions are an engagement device. That is, they slow a reader down and make them think critically about your content. But there’s one problem. Your reader has to be engaged and reading your copy to start with. Once this is happening, a well-phrased, well-positioned question can kick it up a notch.

If you reader is skimming while standing over a trash can, a question can often have the wrong effect since it is exceedingly simple to ask a question with “Don’t know and don’t care.” Questions – especially rhetorical questions – will often elicit a negative response from the reader. Readers are bombarded with messages throughout the day. Give them a chance to dismiss you message and they will.

This means that opening your letter, ad or brochure with a question is generally a weak technique. Not always, of course. A good headline, interesting artwork and compelling topic can make a question lead effective. Sometimes. But not as often as one of the dozen other techniques you could use.

Stuck in the Middle with You
If you choose to use a question as a persuasive device, consider the middle to lower half of your piece as the proper placement. By this time, you have developed trust with your reader and laid out your case. For example, the second page of a fundraising letter may be the right place for a single-sentence paragraph: “Will you help make this project a reality?” In addition, questions can be used effectively as part of the graphic design in the middle of the piece to lead the reader farther into the layout (see an e-mail newsletter example).

Answer the Question
Rhetorical questions assume the reader knows the “correct” answer to your question. They may not. In these situations, you may have added confusion to your writing rather than clarity. It’s good to consider clearly answering any questions that you pose to your reader. This will drive home your point and avoid losing your reader. Better yet, if you want to clearly drive a point home, consider if rewriting the question as a statement would have more impact.

Students of persuasion and negotiation may argue that accumulating a series of “yeses” can be an effective approach to closing a sale. However, discriminating readers are unlikely to fall prey to such manipulation if the argument is not already sound and the reader involved. In such situations, creating a non-existent dialogue with the consumer through the use of questions is unlikely to accomplish acquiescence through sleight of hand. Refocusing the structure and argument is a more appropriate approach.

Questions also a Weak Structural Crutch
Another sin frequently perpetrated with questions is using them as a structure for subheds or topics in a brochure. For example, “What is XYZ?,” “How should I prepare?,” “What happens next?”, “How do I Register?”, “Where is XYZ Company Located” and so forth. Besides boring a reader with such a stiff, repetitive structure, there is a further error in this approach.

Subheds are not absorbed by the reader in the same way as a sentence. They are designed to be quickly skimmed and comprehended. Using a question as a subhed hides the key information that the reader needs. The question subhed interfers with reader comprehension. Thus, “Register in Three Easy Steps” is better than “How do I Register for the Program?” because the key word, “Register” is more prominent. At a minimum, question subheds should be rewritten to declarative statements: “What to Expect” is a better, more directl subhed than "What should I expect?"

Overall, when you find yourself using a question in your copy, step back and consider working a bit harder to rephrase the section. Questions should be used as a carefully thought-out and judiciously-applied technique in your copywriting.

Additional Links

Why Plato Would Have Blown it as a Blogger – Copyblogger.com’s Brian Clark explains why rhetorical questions don't really foster dialogue or conversations, which are an essential part of effective business blogging.
Write Effective Fundraising Letters by Being Conversational – You can (but don’t have to) use one or two rhetorical questions in your fundraising letter if you like since such questions create the sense that a conversation is taking place between you and your donor.
Spark Notes’ Rules of Writing entry on Rhetorical Questions – “At best, rhetorical questions are pompous.”
Hints on Writing Philosophy papers - “You (as the writer) know what the answer is to the question. But the reader (me) may not be so sure. So tell me what you think – don’t ask me a question which (you think) has an obvious answer. The answer may not be obvious to me.”

Technorati Tags: Copy Writing

An Outlook Trick for Filing Important E-mail Messages

johnsonwarren@gmail.com (Warren Allan Johnson) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:08:31 PDT

Keeping copies of important e-mails that you write can be time consuming. The usual approach is to either dig these out of your sent mail. Other users might have Outlook file the reply with the original message, but this requires configuring this option and dragging the message to another folder first.

Copying or blind carbon copying yourself is a step in the right direction, but an Outlook rule can automate this process (presuming you’re using Microsoft Outlook).

First, to display the bcc: field, select View/Bcc from the text menu.

Next, create an Outlook rule (Tools/Rules & Alerts...) that looks for messages that are sent by yourself, to yourself. Then have these messages marked as read upon arrival and moved to the folder of your choice and stop processing other rules.

Now when you author a message or reply that you want to save, just add your e-mail address to the Bcc: field and a copy of the message will be routed to the folder you selected after you send it.

There are Outlook add-ins available if you want to always cc: or bcc: yourself or someone else, based on the addressee, words in the subject line, or words in the attachment. These tools can be used in combination with our rule trick to automatically select which messages are selected for this archiving process. However, you can also use Outlook rules to “check messages after sending” (again, based on criteria to select like addressee or keywords) and move a copy to a folder you indicate, assign it to a “category” and so forth. This can be a more precise method of saving messages if you can identify a pattern to the type of messages that you regularly archive.

Additional Resources
Auto CC/BCC for Outlook by AbleBits
Always BCC by Sperry Software

Unsolicited Marketing Advice

Responding to Online PR Issues Requires Advance Planning

Helpful Guidelines for Writing Sponsorship Announcements

The Trouble with Twitter

Twelve Ways Newspapers Can Reinvent Themselves

Why Graphic Artists Have a Difficult Job

Correcting Your Company's Brand Name or Location on GPS Systems

Could .TEL Spell the End of Yellow Page Advertising?

New Tools and Social Media Cause Practitioners to Sound Warnings about the Future of Public Relations

Developing a Culture of Giving within Your Organization

Update: Calendar Marketing Approaches

Good Art is Not Subjective

Bill Hybels: The Importance of Decision Making for Leaders

Polish Your Employees' Name Badge Presentation

Getting Your Event on Your Audience’s Calendar

Campaigns with Impact  in Six (Easy) Steps

Code Monkey Musings on Music Narrowcasting

Book Project Update

Unsolicited Advice at a New Address

The Internal Communicator’s Dilemma

Three Ways to Use Seed Lists to Your Advantage

The Obvious Next Product

A Most Excellent Production Planning Calendar for the New Year

Getting Readers to Page Two of Your Direct Mail Letter (Where to Page Break)

The Use and Abuse of Questions in Copywriting

An Outlook Trick for Filing Important E-mail Messages

Campaigns with Impact in Six (Easy) Steps