Basically, it’s true what you’re saying, but as a public relations and social media specialist, you should know that not everything is gravitating around internet. Yeah, social media (social networks, twitter, etc.) is good, is making us lose time and “be happy”, but it still ain’t the real thing.

I like social media, I do consultancy work for companies about social media, but I’m not living my life around Facebook or Twitter. It probably depends on age categories, but after 21, you kinda stop using it as before that age. You have already discovered booze and girls, virtual “makin’ out” is no longer an option. It would be really interesting to see a study on how people use social media on age categories.

Here’s something interesting: in Romania, kids are Hi5.com heavily users. A few days ago, two kids (aged 13 and aged 14), both boys, wanted to date a girl they “met” on a social network, probably Hi5. They went to meet her and they found a man. The man raped them and stole a cellphone and a camera. Now, stupidity pays, but it’s a good example on what the dangers “behind the scenes” are.

Of course, you’re not talking about social media in terms of social news, but regarding business opportunities and such. But after a while of being so captivated with this domain and eager to get more info, we all tend to forget one thing: after a while of coming back home from work and loading Facebook night by night, your wife or husband may want to divorce. Or maybe you don’t open Facebook, which means social media means crap in the real life.

Stop thinking about social media as an environment and start thinking about it as a set of tools that can be used both by users – as a free knowledge base (I use both Twitter and Facebook to find cool stuff and to get recommendations), as a place to download all frustrations (people understanding and giving advice) – and by companies (to spread their message in a positive way, finding conversion after conversation).

Now, let’s put it right: how many friends do you have on Facebook and how many of them did you actually met? How many of them are your friends in real life, the ones you go out and have a couple of beers with? 1%? Now, that’s what you should focus on. “Social” friends are merely the people that supposedly listen to you. But how many of them do actually listen? I take twitter as an example, but this phenomenon is way better seen on the multitude of links, shares, likes and wall messages on Facebook: in a river of tweets, how many actually get your attention? Just a few, probably the ones with links that might interest you.

So, where are the social friends when you need them? And how many are them? The egosystem you’re talking about is a good theory, but has a few lapses. The egosystem changes with every tweet or FB message. The network is different every time you tweet, because you can’t have all of your social friends at a time.

Therefore, social media is just a replacement for a real social life. Which is OK, nothing to say about that. But it’s nothing more than that. What you really have to find out is how to use it best in the long run. You see, theories we understand, but practice is what kills us.

Post from: Tonify.net

The thing is, when dealing with companies as a reporter, you have to pass the Marketing & Communication Department in order to get an interview or, basically, any other information that’s not on the company’s website. That being said, most medium-to-huge companies work with PR agencies. PR agencies want money. For that money, they have to work.

The circuit of an e-mail

The first step for PR agencies with smart employees is to market themselves in front of journalists as the primary source of information when it comes to their clients. So to get an interview with some manager from a company, you have to send an e-mail to the PR agency. Because every corporation’s communication department works directly with the agency, if you pass the agency and send an e-mail to the company’s representatives, you’ll usually be sent back to the PR agency. Because, well, the agency usually answers most of the press requests, including writing the answers to reporter’s questions.

Now, here’s the fun stuff. Being a long time reporter, you might know that eventually you’ll be sent back to the PR agency. So you go ahead and send them the request. What happens next? The agency gets the request and goes to the client saying: “We found a huge opportunity for your company’s [insert here department] manager to be featured in an article in Publication X“.

The opportunity

Usually, the agency puts it like this: “We found you the opportunity, We’re good, aren’t we? Now pay us the performance bonus“. Though, that didn’t actually happened. What really happened is that opportunity found you. It’s actually fascinating seeing how stuff works. The relationship between a PR agency and a company’s communication department is really interesting to watch and see how an interview with a manager opportunity for a company is being rewarded though it shouldn’t happen.

I’m not talking about small companies where a PR agency actually does its job and finds opportunities. That’s different. In these cases, opportunities might come through good relations between PR workers and journalists. “Hey, dude, a client of mine could be interesting for your paper, what do you think?”, “Hey, cool, give me the contacts“. But PR opportunities usually come through good press releases if they’re well written, when there’s a news factor involved.

Everyone can write a press release and send it to a mailing list, but you have to give journalists the news, not the info. For some agencies, that’s hard to do. And that’s why most journalists agree that the best PR workers are… well, former journalists.

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When you’re blogging for seven years and everyone knows you as an influencer, it’s kinda stupid to just send an e-mail and say: “Look, you can win a phone!“. Thank you for the huge opportunity of giving you lots of free advertising for nothing. So I turned down the “offer I couldn’t refuse“. Sorry, but I already have a damn much better phone, it’s called HTC Desire and runs on Android.

Let’s spam in social media!

After finding a few bloggers interested in the “opportunity”, the agency asked them to spread the word about the campaign. So they started to tweet: “Please vote me to become the Ovi guy!“. You know, there’s this Facebook application I use too, that takes the tweets and publish them on Facebook. It was OK once, it was OK twice, but after tweeting a dozen times in a couple of minutes the same links and messages, and after seeing them both on Twitter and Facebook (what can I say, I love duplicates?), then retweeting supporters tweets, now that’s annoying.

Both my Twitter and Facebook “walls” were full of the same tweeted and retweeted links. It was too much for me to bare. It was my time to tweet:

If I see any other tweet or retweet of this free advertising campaign for Nokia, I’ll start unfollow without exceptions.

One who probably hasn’t seen my tweet retweeted some supporter’s message. I removed him from my list. And there was silence.

About influencers

It’s good to know influencers. But if you want to convince an influencer to help you, you have to come with a solid proposal. It doesn’t matter if it’s money or if it’s just a cool idea. The important thing is to come with something strong, not with “the opportunity to win a phone“. Come with a good implementation strategy, not with some “please spam everybody” .PDF file. I don’t give a crap about your phone. If I want one, I’ll buy one, I can afford it and I will get it if I need it. If you’re asking stupid questions, I’ll tell you to go find yourself some other suckers.

Now, guess what? It’s almost a week since they started the campaign in social media and it’s silence as far as it comes to the bloggers I follow on Twitter. No one speaks a word about the Nokia campaign and no one wants to become the Ovi guy anymore. I am really sorry for the agency, but this is not how you plan an online campaign. You don’t get results by spamming people. You have to find creative ways to engage consumers.

I like Nokia as a brand, my wife owns and uses a Nokia E72 phone, she’s satisfied with the software and capabilities (though I dislike Symbian), they have great PR and great marketing, they have one of the best PR agencies in Romania, but they so suck when it comes to the online medium. “We don’t have budgets for online communication“, Wunderman representatives say. Well, then be creative! Otherwise, stop dreaming.

Post from: Tonify.net

When it comes to brands and new mediums, some are fascinated by the huge potential of spreading the ads (more or less, because we’re talking mostly about PR here), but most of them are afraid.

You don’t control the conversation

When it comes to traditional mediums, it’s all about budgets. Advertising budgets. A company like Vodafone will not have problems with television channels, nor with newspapers, as long as they spend tens of millions of dollars on a yearly basis. When a newspaper gets a few hundred thousand dollars a year, they won’t publish anything bad about the brand.

When it comes to blogs and news websites, it’s different. First of all, money comes through intermediaries. Second, both blogs and news websites have user comments sections bellow every article. Users are reactive when it comes to problems they had. I had lots of problems with Vodafone for example. No Vodafone employee from the Communication department ever left a comment saying “Dude, we’re try to solve your problem as soon as possible and hopefully, none of our clients will ever face something similar“.

The basic rules of PR

The biggest fear of a company is getting negative responses. Which is normal. The problem is they don’t react. If a negative article is published in a newspaper, all of their PR department people will have a “communication crisis situation” and they will all start making PowerPoint presentations. Tipically. They’ll start sending press releases and all problems will end.

This kind of reactive response to a crisis situation is normal, but it won’t be applied on the internet. Why? Because internet is some sort of a Wild West for most companies. They don’t understand it and they don’t want to. This is why most of the big corporations still have their 1990′s websites up and less running.

…but you can control the topic

I said it before: you can’t control the conversation, but you can control the topic. There will always be unsatisfied customers who are going to criticize you as a brand. That’s why you have to be there and help them out. Offer them straight answers and work with your client service department to solve all the problems. It’s going to cost you more, but you’ll have satisfied clients that will recommend your services to others.

First rule: never fight with the users. Be positive and explain them why there’s a problem and try to figure out something with them. Involving your users/clients/customers will give them the illusion that they’re part of your organization and they’ll feel important to you. That’s a huge plus for your image. Being reactive will make them angry.

Example

Vodafone makes an advertising campaign. Their message says that the mobile internet coverage is 90% of the country. My mobile connection is HSDPA. 20 kilometers away from the capital city of the country, every phone has signal losses. We’re not talking about internet, we’re talking about call service. Zero to two lines of signal, phone calls dropped out of a sudden. In the margins of the city, the same problem, which “we do not intend to solve too soon“.

And other stuff like that. But they advertise coverage while their coverage sucks. This is the pure truth. It’s true, it’s the best mobile internet service connection in the country and has the best plans when it comes to money. But I seriously think about dropping my subscription and go to another operator where coverage is a quality service, though internet speed is lower.

What happened?

I wrote on my other blog about my issues with Vodafone. What happened? The PR officer called me and asked me why didn’t I explained to him the problem. Why did I wrote on my blog? Well, because I don’t want to solve my problems through the PR department. As long as I pay for a service and I have problems, it’s not reasonably to solve my problem and leave others behind. It’s a matter of principles. They will solve my problem, but not the others’ same problem. It’s not OK.

They decided to stop advertising on my blog and stop answering my q’s. That’s not OK. The good answer was: “We’re sorry for the inconvenience, we’ll take this matter to the tech department and promise to help“. That would’ve made me give them a PR bonus on my blog: writing a new article in which I would say how cool they reacted. It didn’t happened. Why? Because… they’re scared.

But they’re still advertising mobile internet and coverage, Facebook and Foursquare. Though they can’t handle it. Well, Google is forever. That’s going to hurt some day.

PS: The thing with companies is that instead of feeling inspired and try to inspire from user generated solutions, they don’t give a crap. I understand procedures and stuff, but once in a while, you have to open your mind. The cartoon above says all about how a online PR strategy should look like. Photo credits go to Hugh.

Post from: Tonify.net

If you remember, there was a case of a woman that wrote on her Facebook account that she’s going in a vacation and, while she was out, some of her Facebook “friends” broke in. Now, that’s a risk that geolocation implies and it’s the risk no one seems to care about.

An ugly story

I live in a nine story building with 45 apartments only in this wing, which makes it harder to find my flat and rob it, but think about someone who lives in the suburbs and owns a house. Geolocation means pointing on a map the exact location of that house. And breaking and entering is not the only risk you take while using this service.

Let’s say some guy is Facebook-friends with a pretty girl. She’s a good looking woman, but he’s not her type. He insists. She refuses. One day, he gets drunk and has the brilliant idea of paying her a visit. He opens Facebook and takes a look at her last itineraries, he gets her house location, gets in his car, drives in front of her house, she gets raped.

Now, that’s worse than being robbed. OK, he goes to jail, he’ll be paying for being a stupid ass. But she’s going to be marked for life. It’s a tragic experience no one should ever have. So, the question remains: why so enthuziastic?

What should be done?

First of all, having a positioning system on your phone is brilliant. It doesn’t matter if it’s A-GPS, like Google Maps based on using phone signal triangulation to point your location, it doesn’t matter if it’s a GPS software like iGO, which I used on my former HTC Touch Pro phone and still using on my new HTC Desire.

It’s great: you can easily get directions, find out how to get where you need to be, you can calculate distances, works both while driving or walking. But what about your phone sending your location out there without your permission?

I don’t use Foursquare, but I know how it works. You specifically send your location. It’s a great system, but think about using geolocation in a stupid way, without thinking about the consequences. Like most of Facebook users do. “Wow, this is great!”, she wrotes on her wall while below the message you can see “written from here“, where “here” is her home position on a map. It’s all about using it wisely.

The privacy issue

I’m not a privacy paranoid. I’m a Google heavy user and that says all about me. I use GMail, so Google knows all my connections, I use Google Docs so Google knows everything I’m working on, I use Google Contacts and I keep all my phone numbers in it, none of them in my device’s phonebook (hell, I love syncing), I use Google Reader, so Google knows all my interests, etc. I hate Buzz, though.

But the thing with Google is that your details won’t go public. It’s alright for me if Google uses some of my personal data in their research as long as my e-mails don’t get into the wrong hands. But it’s not OK to post your location all the time.

So this is what Facebook should do with Places: try to minimize the negative impact of geolocation on its users. Add options so the user can hide his home location, to automatically disable geolocation while being in a certain area.

It’s gonna be fun

I can’t wait to see how many trials will Facebook have to face in the future. Because people don’t really care about the risks and that’s going to hurt. As I said, it’s going to be fun to watch.

Post from: Tonify.net

You cannot actually believe that a tweet saying “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot” is actually reffering to a huge respect to a terrorist leader. 140 characters are not enough to make you draw a conclusion. And mistakes were made on both sides.

Octavia Nasr’s mistake is that she didn’t follow-up her tweet explaining why she respected Fadlallah so people understand right away. She has mistaken by misjudging that everyone knows Fadlallah’s philosophy about letting and helping women raise from the Islamic closed circle of prejudice. Well, sorry to disapoint, I had no idea about that and I think to myself as a pretty informed individual, always intrested in what’s new.

Writing an explanation on the CNN blog is actually a bit too much. One more tweet was enough. Still, we have the other problem, the one which conflicts with the liberty of free belief (I guess it’s called like this). To judge a journalist – and more than that, a Senior Editor – for a short 140 characters tweet is stupid and only means people are more superficial than they admit they are.

Yes, Octavia Nasr was wrong to stick to only one tweet instead of following up with the second. But from that to resigning and claiming that she lost her credibility, that’s just stupid. She has the liberty to admire anyone she wants and no one can take that from her. But you cannot accuse her of almost being a terrorist lover only because she admired only some of the good qualities of a… well, not quite a good man. So, please try to sepparate good from bad when you start judging someone.

Post from: Tonify.net

Please answer to a short question: what’s the first word that comes to your mind when you hear “Africa” besides “vuvuzela”? I thought so. Vuvuzela is that damn horn that made your team lose the match because the players were too damn annoyed to focus on the ball. But think about it: how do you use the vuvuzela to boost your sells?

Since the first minute I heard about vuvuzela, I understood that this is the word of the moment. I had no idea what that was. I’m not a big fan of soccer, so I don’t watch any games. But the naming was brilliant and I was suddenly interested in what that thing is and what that thing can do. Only late I found out that it’s a pseudo-instrument, a horn that sounds like bees and annoys everyone.

Where to use

Vuvuzela is not actually a marketing tool, but more of a strategy. I bet 70 percent of those who have heard about this year’s World Cup have no idea who won two matches in a row, but they’ve definetly heard about the vuvuzela. That’s what marketing is actually all about and vuvuzela strategy is the best strategy you can use especially when you’re facing a communication crisis: take people’s focus of your crisis and move it onto another object of interest.

Vuvuzela describes best what “buzz” means in terms of online communication. Hell, South Africa never registered in it’s whole history such an advertising success as vuvuzelas did. So why not give a shot and start doing something similar?

How to use

What you can learn from 2010 World Cup experience is that marketing isn’t all about the products you sell, but about the way you promote your products. The World Cup product is soccer. Well, not really, World Cup is soccer’s product and matches are World Cup’s products, but who cares? What selled best this year? Vuvuzelas and a huge image boost for South Africa. Everyone knows now that South Africa is the home of vuvuzelas and vuvuzelas is what makes the mind connection between South Africa and tourism in such an exotic country (though this time of year is damn freezing).

What you have to remember is:

1. You can market everything else than your product and people will remeber your name
2. If you’re a guitar shop, you can market a bycicle horn and get new clients if you find a great idea to make a connection between the two of them

It’s kind of what Steve Jobs does: the iPhone 4 won’t work, hell!, it’s the people in the hall that use too many mobile internet connections. That’s the point. Now it’s up to you to actually sell your products using a great strategy example.

Post from: Tonify.net

One really efficient hoax - Karen from Denmark, the single mother looking for her baby's father - should get a prize for creative PR

Some might say it’s stupid. I’d say it’s brilliant. VisitDenmark, a tourism agency, ran a viral campaign with huge potential and great results, actually. Though it wasn’t quite the best idea, mostly because the tourism agency basically said “Any kind of publicity is publicity”, almost one million people watched the video with the single mom searching online for her baby’s father. Karen was supposedly drunk one and a half years ago, she had sex with a tourist and got pregnant. From this to promoting “sexual tourism” is only one step. Still, it can be efficient

Mashable is the blog that made the hoax popular, though there were quite a few comments on YouTube saying the video just can’t be real. Considering the implications and the controversy, the idea is actually great. As long as they assume the full responsibility for all reactions, it’s fine. Of course, the idea of “sexual tourism” will generate a pretty nasty image for the tourism agency, but in the end, just think about it: cheap PR, right?

It’s interesting to follow this advertising trend regarding tourism. You can recall “The Best Job In The World” campaign for that island in Australia, which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Lions. This is quite similar, except the part where there’s no job, but there’s “business”, even if we’re talking about “sexual business”.

How cheap is this Danish Tourism PR?

First of all, you might consider the strategy is cheap as in low. May be, as long as it’s confounded with promoting “sexual tourism”. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean it can’t be efficient. Almost one million people watched the video and lots more will watch it, despite the fact it was removed. Copies are published on YouTube, so it’s still accessible to the public. As long as it will attract tourists as much as 2% of the viewers, that means it’s efficient. And let’s look at the big bright side: the huge brand exposure for Denmark.

Regarding the price payed to the creative agency, it can’t be that expensive.  Which is good for the business, as long as the video went viral in just a few days and has already become a PR case study. Why so? Again, for the huge attention drawn to Denmark and Copenhagen. So, are you ready to visit the country?

Is bad publicity actually becoming good publicity? As long as VisitDenmark announced shortly that it was just a campaign, and the countries image wasn’t affected (and I strongly believe it didn’t had the time to affect Denmark’s image), yes, it is.

Post from: Tonify.net

From switching a font to involuntary free marketing

They said it’s for the better. Switching from Futura to Verdana, the marketing guys from IKEA had in mind one simple idea: making their catalog readable everywhere, especially in countries like China or Japan. But then again, it wasn’t that brilliant. Hundreds of designers almost killed the IKEA’s marketing team. Still, though the company had negative feedback from designers, it had a lot of media exposure, including The New York Times, Time, etc. Is that good or bad? I think it’s free PR

Though IKEA never really needed a burst of popularity, at least not in Europe, they just got it. Involuntary, because I don’t really think someone actually thought about such a simple idea to bring so much media coverage. Basically, because they didn’t need it. IKEA’s marketing is all about catalogs delivered to your door. You take it, you check it, you like it, you go buy. And you keep the catalog for the rest of the year. We still have catalogs from three years ago, for example, and that’s because some of the furniture goes away in the new “book”.

Recently, I noticed that IKEA goes as well for unconventional OOH. In Bucharest, they arranged the furniture in the street or in bus stations. Pretty cool. But from direct marketing and OOH to online viral marketing, that’s a lot to go. So I believe what IKEA’s marketing people say it’s true. Some guy thought it would be nice to have a web font. It’s all about usability, right? Taking the new and inserting it into the old. Some sort of adapting to the new age, but in the old mediums. And, of course, Verdana is cheaper.

Well, the reactions were unexpected:

We’re surprised, but I think it’s mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don’t think the broad public is that interested.
IKEA spokeswoman, Camilla Meiby, to AP reporter.

What’s with all that fuss about Verdana?

There’s actually a petition asking IKEA to return to Futura. But it’s not about the fonts as much it’s about the reactions. A few days ago, I found the new catalog at my door. I took a short look and it’s actually good, despite the fact Futura was left behind. And I work as a designer on various projects. I don’t know if the new catalog looks worse than the previous one, but it sure doesn’t look better. It’s quite the same. And it’s not about the fonts as much as it’s about the products.

The guys that worked on the new version of IKEA’s catalog are actually good. In normal circumstances, Verdana looks really bad on print. The letter spacing is absolutely ugly when it comes to headings. So the designers took a really pretty approach and used Verdana italic. Which gives a whole new look to the layout. Verdana isn’t such a bad choice after all. I know, it would’ve been way cooler to just keep the old Futura, but it’s actually not that bad.

And the free PR

Being their marketing tool of choice, the IKEA catalog is one of the best examples of simple marketing when it comes to lovemarks. The catalog is that something that you actually wait for. It’s the spam you actually enjoy. You’d probably throw out all Carrefour catalogs, but you won’t get rid of IKEA’s. That’s why I can understand the designers, this product is an icon, right?

But changing the font created such a big buzz, that IKEA would be stupid not to use it next year just as well. No, they shouldn’t change the font again, this time to Arial. They should switch back to Futura and get new media coverage.

I quite enjoy this examples of free marketing, voluntary or not. These are great ideas that can improve your marketing strategies. Though designers took it to a revolution, the common people won’t bother looking at fonts as long as they’re readable. Still, that doesn’t mean everyone should switch to Verdana just because IKEA got into the news.

Post from: Tonify.net

Who's gonna buy a $141 burger? Who cares?

We’re going through a recession, right? What does that mean? Well, it means money should stay in your bank account and multiply. Because it’s not easy to make them. So what do you do to promote your business? Well, find a cool idea and get free PR. That’s what Burger King did. And the idea is great, though what they’re promoting is something no one will actually buy. But who cares as long as it’s free PR? Here we go.

Burger King “launched” this new burger, right? Well, they’re a burger company, so they should launch new burgers. But what if you were to own a burger company which sells burgers for five bucks and suddenly you were to launch an 85 pounds new cheeseburger? Who would actually buy that? Most probably, no one. So here’s how you make a simple campaign for a product with “utopian” sales.

What do you do when you can see that your products are selling less than expected and you feel like customers forget about you? Of course, you go for advertising. But advertising is not cheap. That’s why companies go for PR. PR should be cheap, there’s no production costs compared to advertising, where you have to pay for video and for outdoor, where money goes to buying paper and ad space.

But if you’re Burger King, you can afford a good PR agency. So what’s to be done? Well, why not launch a new product? A product that no one will ever buy unless he’s stupid? So here’s what Burger King did: they launched an exclusive burger, just for London, for the price of 85 pounds. That’s like 98 euros. To be more exact, that’s 141 dollars! Who would pay that money for a burger?

Well, it doesn’t matter. Guess what were the results? Media coverage. Cool, huh? Well, I guess that can be called “exploiting the cheap people”. Or just “exploiting the people”, because no one has such a small IQ to pay 141 dollars for a burger. But that means brand exposure and a lot more attention to the Burger King brand.

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