Toyota & Saatchi's Cautionary Tale

Sticking with the theme of automotive brands and engagement, you've no doubt seen that Toyota’s 2008 guerrilla marketing campaign, promoting its 2009 Matrix, is once again making headlines, and it aint’ pretty. As a refresher, in 2008, Amber Duick began receiving a series of emails from one by the name of ‘Sebastian Bowler’, a fictitious English soccer hooligan with a fondness for excessive drinking, destruction of private property and  general rowdiness (because these are all traits that every English soccer fan exhibits, of course). The first email Duick received from Bowler was to let her know he was on his way to her apartment – even so much as citing her address – to crash for a while. Additional emails chronicled his trip to her abode, often mentioning his frequent run-ins with the local law enforcement, while another email, this time from a hotel manager, demanded Duick pay for damages associated with a television, supposedly broken by Bowler, accompanied by an authentic-looking e-bill. Not surprisingly, Duick was a tad upset, or in her own words ‘terrified.’

Only after receiving a final email containing a link to a video did Duick realize what was actually happening: she was the target of a virtual prank designed to raise awareness of the new 2009 Toyota Matrix. What a rugged English soccer fan with a penchant for inebriation has to do with the Matrix is beyond me, and quite obviously, beyond Duick as well - a woman who was chosen because she represented Toyota’s target market.  The campaign certainly had a hint major dose of realism to it, something Alex Flint, creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi – the L.A.-based agency responsible for the campaign – boasted about. Now, three years later, news broke that a California court has agreed that Duick can move forward with a $10 million lawsuit against both Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi. Ouch.

I don’t think anyone can argue that this was a poorly executed idea, one that clearly – at least to everyone outside of Saatchi & Saatchi – wasn’t given nearly enough thought.  But as someone who works in the PR industry, this whole campaign fascinates me for a different reason, outside of its headline-grabbing concept.

Here Toyota was, in 2008, when Twitter only had 500,000 monthly visitors, when Facebook broke its first user milestone of catching up to MySpace, and when the concept of social media, and storytelling marketing was still in its infancy. Despite this, Toyota took a chance on a program, albeit one disconnected from its audience, and ran with a concept that was, to an extent, ahead of its time.

Today, one of the most difficult challenges PR, marketing and advertising professionals face isn’t always coming up with fresh ideas; it’s selling them to clients. Businesses have a comfort zone and it’s when they step out of it that great, award-winning campaigns are born.  To that extent, I applaud Toyota, which for the record, is still with Saatchi, for at least trying something new and taking a head-first dive into the unknown.

As for Flint, he told marketing magazine OMMA (Online, Media, Marketing & Advertising) that the prank campaign should gain the appreciation from ‘even the most cynical, anti-advertising guy.’ Three years, a flurry of negative articles, public backlash, and possibly $10 million later, I wonder if he still feels the same way.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Negative Comments Can Have Positive Results

Most companies have realized that digital communications and social media tools are here to stay. They accept that they will need to embrace online strategies or go the way of the dodo, but many are still scared.  Can you really blame them? I can't.  No matter how succinct a company's launch into social media may be, it's unlikely they will completely avoid negative comments or  haters of their brand.  But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Negative comments or feelings can go a long way to actually help a company move forward with a successful social media program.
I recently worked with a client to launch a new product using a number of social media channels. Part of their program involved seeding content on  content sharing and community based sites. On some sites, the content was rather well received, and got positive reactions from bloggers and online media. On others, however, the content did not meet the standards of the community members. They felt the content provided too little value and made sure they told us so.  Confronted by negative feelings, we had to act fast to address their concerns.
We wrote a response thanking those who had spoken up for their feedback. Negative feedback is just as useful as positive.
We then wrote direct messages to the specific members who were most vocal, asking them for more input: What kind of content would they like to see? What questions (if any) did they have that we might be able to answer? Would they be willing to discuss industry topics in greater depth to help develop content that would provide real value to their community?
Unfortunately the community members didn't continue to engage with us after their initial round of commenting. However, we learned some really valuable information about the community and industry.  This community site is absolutely one we want to work with going forward. Even though their comments were negative, they are engaged and passionate.
No brand is hater free.  Negative comments are always a strong possibility. It's what you do with them and how you learn from them that will decide if your social media campaign will flourish or fall flat. Social media is social - good or bad, all comments count!
-Heather

Advice For Anyone Who Wants to Start A Blog

A few days ago, a friend of mine mentioned that she had begun PR school and asked for advice about what to do for the blog she was obligated to do for one of her classes. If you're one of those die-hard BlogCampaigning fans, you probably already know my thoughts on adding another PR blog to the over-saturated sea of PR blogs.

Back then, my advice to my young friend would have been that she should start a blog about something she cares about.

Now, my advice would be that they avoid starting a blog altogether.

Instead, she should start a Facebook Page.

Right at the start, she can populate this Facebook Page with information about herself (or her project) and what the page is about.

Since I'm pretty sure students in these PR classes are encouraged to read each others' blogs, she can then ask her follow students to 'Like' the page (a much easier task than subscribing via RSS).

Instead of daily blog posts, she can write daily status updates for the page. Facebook's newish tagging ability makes it easier to link to other pages, and isn't really that different than the traditional HTML links you'd include in a blog post. These tags have the added ability of ensuring your post is visible on the page that you tagged, potentially increasing your audience. Interactions on these pages (Likes, Comments) will be spread across the social network of her and her friends, encouraging further interaction and becoming much more visible than if these same interactions were made on a blog.

If she does all this, she'll have the framework for a 'blog' that has the potential to be more popular than any of her classmates. She'll also learn a lot about an increasingly relevant tool in the communicators' kit.

She'll still have to ensure her posts are interesting, resonate with her audience and encourage interaction. A supporting website with basic contact information and direction to 'Like' the Facebook page couldn't hurt, either.

What do you think? Is this good advice for a PR/communications student? If you're a teacher, would you give a passing grade to a student who did this instead of starting a traditional blog?

-Parker

PR Girls?

A few weeks ago, a young producer and musician by the name of Jeremiah Vancans sent me a song he thought I'd like, called "PR Girls", that he produced for his group The Deli Boys.

From his description of the song:

"It talks about the large boot, small dog, fancy bag culture that has taken over the city streets across our nation. We recognized a type of girl that was repeatedly emerging from the deep jungles of urban culture. Owning the street with their over-priced bags, they developed their own language of terms by using weird melodic lisps and slurs. These women, no matter if they were in the Public Relations field or not, were dubbed 'PR Girls'. This term catapulted the idea of writing and producing this song. We hopes you like."

(If you're reading this post via RSS, you might have to click through to listen to the track below.)

The Deli Boys – PR Girls

[audio:http://199x.org/sounds/prgirls/PR%20Girls.mp3]

What do you think? Is this what you think of when you think "PR Girl"?

And on a related note: whatever happened to Kim Kardashian's reality show about PR Girls?

-Parker

Labels Are For Cans, Not People

Recently over lunch, a client explained to me that her company once tested its employees to find out what "type" of person each of them was. The test asked a series of hypothetical "What if..?" and multiple-choice questions (for example: "You win the lottery. What do you do first?"). How that individual answered the questions—for example, either emotionally ("Throw a party"), or analytically ("Call your accountant"), and so on—determined the person's type, particularly related to the employment. The company revealed the results to the employees, and everyone in the company learned a little bit about most of their co-workers. My client found the test to be enlightening, and talked about how she came to better understand some individuals as co-workers based on their test results.

I gave some thought to this from my perspective as an employee of a large multinational. If presented with a similar test, would I want my employer to know (or better yet, to think they know) what type of person I am based on an arbitrary test of my hypothetical reactions in differing situations? I concluded no, I'd be uncomfortable revealing personal information that might lead to my employer making a decision about me.

My thinking is simple: if I were to reveal aspects about myself to my employer that I would otherwise not reveal in a professional setting, then I might be judged on something that never happened. If a test found me to react emotionally to hypothetical questioning, who's to say that I would react emotionally in a professional setting? My employer may be making an incorrect assumption about me without basing it on my actual performance. This would trouble me as an employee, even if the test results matched my actual performance on the job.

Another fault I found was that we think we know how we would react to the news that we had just won the lottery, but until we're actually faced with that scenario, we will never actually know the correct answer. It's the Minority Report problem: until someone commits the crime, they shouldn't be convicted of it.

I took something called Myers-Briggs in college and found it to be mostly nonsense. Have you ever taken a test that revealed your "personality type"? If so, did you find it to be an accurate indicator of who you really are?

Moreover, I'd like my employer to understand me by my performance—to the point that they'd find a personality test useless after years of their own knowledge gathering. How would you feel about sharing your personality type with your employer?

MAVERICK Idol Is Back Again

Last year, I wrote about how MAVERICK offered an internship position via an American Idol-type of competition.

Now that I work at MAVERICK, I'm excited to see that the agency is doing it again. One of last year's contestants, Katie Boland, is still a full-time employee here and I work with her on a couple of different projects.

This year's competition will mean that the aspiring intern has to face two rounds of questions from a panel of MAVERICK employees. I think this is a great chance for the applicant to show that they are good at public speaking and can think quickly on their feet.

The winner will be notified that day, and will receive an twelve-week paid internship (from what I've heard, the pay for this is above average for similar internships). More importantly, they'll get experience in media monitoring, writing, planning and social media. While there is no guarantee that they will end the internship with a job, the experience will help them in their career.

For more details, please see Julie "The Maven" Rusciolelli's blog post about the contest (or check the MAVERICK website) . Interested applicants should send an email with their resume to idol@Maverickpr.com by May 7 at 5:00 p.m. They will then have to show up in person at the MAVERICK offices on May 12 at 10:00 am.

Is this a good way to find interns? If you are a student, would you apply for a position this way?

-Parker

The Bottom-up Perspective and Public Relations

Over the past few months, I've really come to enjoy reading Timothy B. Lee's blog. The computer programmer, writer and think-tank worker bee is now pursuing a PhD in computer science, and is blogging his thoughts about "bottom-up" thinking. What is bottom-up thinking? Its not something racy, nor is it about chugging beer. As Tim says:

"I’m convinced that Silicon Valley’s fundamental strength is the fact that it embodies what I’ll call a bottom-up perspective on the world. The last couple of decades have brought us the dominance of the open Internet, the increasing success of free software, and the emergence of the free culture movement as an important social and political force. More generally, Silicon Valley is a place with extremely low barriers to entry, a culture of liberal information sharing, and a respect for the power of individual entrepreneurs."

For the most part, Tim's posts have reinforced some of my own opinions about the way things should work. He has also occasionally caused me to second-guess my own actions; but never as much as a few weeks ago when he wrote a critique of the Public Relations industry ("The PR Firm As Anti-Signal").

"PR people seem to be floundering in this new environment," he writes, before going on to explain that hiring a PR firm sends the message that your company "doesn't get the web." Tim feels that if your product or company is good enough, you don't need PR. People will talk about you, write about you, and do business with you. It was particularly tough to swallow considering I'd just made the move from Product Management to Public Relations (the two really aren't as different as you'd think).

However, upon closer inspection, it seems that his complaint is about PR companies that also don't "get the web". You know, the kind that we always complain about, the ones that send the cookie-cutter pitches to thousands of reporters on the very off-chance that they might write about their client.

What Tim doesn't understand is that PR isn't just about sending pitches. Its about communicating.

Tim is fortunate enough to be able to write clearly, and I'm going to guess that this isn't a skill that every computer sciences PhD candidate has. In fact, I bet that Tim is a bit of a renaissance-man rarity in his world.

But at the same time, there aren't very many Public Relations professionals that know much about computers (seriously, as a group, we're not as tech-savvy as we like to think we are).

Computer programmers (coders, developers, etc.) need PR pros to help them tell people about their product, explain what it does and communicate with the user base. They need designers to make it look nice. They need sales people to sell it.

And the patent lawyers that Tim talks about, the ones that he recommends start a blog instead of getting their PR people to offer to comment on various issues? If they're really experts, they're probably too busy with cases to start a blog. But a PR team could help lawyers set one up, and teach them how to write concise posts that draw on their knowledge but require a communicator's skill to make them more palatable to a wider audience.

As I heard someone say about this same issue a year or so ago, "Sure I can paint my house myself, but why wouldn't I just hire professionals who can do a better job?"

Tim, if you read this I hope you give PR a second chance. We're not perfect, but we're learning. And there are some public relations practitioners who are redefining the profession using the bottom-up thinking you preach.

-Parker

Stop Reading PR Blogs

Earlier this year, I suggested that PR students wanting to get involved in the online world should avoid starting a PR-focused blog. Now, I'm going to suggest that we all stop even reading PR blogs. They aren't that representative of the real world—the wilds of the internet.

Rather than focusing on how this tightly knit community (I believe David Jones referred to it as a "circle-jerk" on Inside PR) does things and communicates, why not spend that time getting more involved in understanding the way actual people use the internet?

Learn how your clients' audiences look for things online. Learn about what they're interested in. Become passionate about what they are passionate about, or at least try and understand their passion.

I'm willing to bet that most of you don't spend your evenings re-reading your old PR textbooks (nor do you buy the latest version every year), but that you probably do browse your region's daily newspapers on a regular basis.

Do you have any idea how few people care about RSS feeds? How many of your friends (outside of those involved in the communications industry) actually care about Twitter or even understand what it does?

Forget case studies. Forget best practices. When is the last time you did something truly new and interesting?

-Parker

CNW Goes Big On Twitter

CNW Group has always been committed to getting our clients' news in front of journalists and the media. For years, the only way to really do this was via the news wire. When fax machines became an accepted way to send and receive news and information, CNW Group embraced that technology to reach members of the media. Similarly, when email became a popular form of communication, CNW offered interested parties the ability to subscribe to our clients' news via portfolio email. The same, too with our categorized RSS feeds. The point is that as technology has changed, CNW Group has changed with it in order to make it as easy as possible for both members of the media and the general public to get news and information from our clients.

That's why I'm excited to announce that we've officially launched hundreds of unique Twitter accountsto distribute our clients' news over Twitter. The accounts are based on our existing news categories, and all releases posted on our website and over the wire will also go out on anywhere from one to four of these accounts (depending on how the release is categorized).

By breaking the news into these seperate categories, we're making it easy for interested parties, be they members of the media or the general public, to find and follow the type of news they are interested in. Similarly, by offering news via the traditional wire, by fax, by email, by RSS and now by Twitter we are making it as easy as possible for people to get news from us.

Read the official news release from CNW Group about this, or check out the full list of accounts at http://newswire.ca/GetNews.

-Parker

(note: Although I am an employee of CNW Group this post, like all my posts on BlogCampaigning, reflects only my own personal views and opinions and not those of my employer)

How To Get Your Company Into The Financial Times

Occasionally we're lucky enough here at BlogCampaigning to have someone guest write a post for us. The latest person to share their knowledge with our readers is Malte Goesche, CEO and cofounder of Iliktotallyloveit.com, a website that "allows users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird. Included with every item is a link to an online shop where it can be purchased." He's written a post for us about how his company got a great deal of publicity without the help of PR companies or newswire services.

If I say it is not that hard to get into the pages of the Financial Times, you might not believe me, even though it only took two well-written emails to get there. Of course, I’m leaving out a lot about building a startup (from having the idea to build the product and get funded), but this is supposed to tell you more about how we built and established the brand of iliketotallyloveit.com.

Out of our team of four,  one of my jobs was to get our name out there. Since I didn’t take PR & Marketing 101 I just did what I thought would be the way to do it: find publications (online and offline) that I liked myself and found suitable,  then get in touch with the the right person at each publication, approaching them as directly and personally as possible. It sounds easy, but I think my naivety back then saved me from making many mistakes (I guess that’s what these 101 classes would’ve been good for). I didn’t write press releases or generic emails. By browsing through the chosen publications I found out which authors would be the right fit and then I went ahead and introduced myself via email as what I was back then: a student who had a website with some friends and who would be happy to hear some feedback or a have some review their site. I wasn’t pretentious, didn’t lie and never bullshitted anyone. People seem to have appreciated that a lot.

I believe that approaching people on an eye-to-eye level is very important. When you are writing (I intentionally don’t use the term pitch here due to its spammy connotations) to a smaller blogger you don’t want to come off as the big-headed founder of a startup, just as another internet/tech savvy person/fan who wants to share what he created with others. Be approachable and open to people. Even if whomever you reached out doesn’t write about you right away they might remember you and get back to you once your startup is just the one they need to write about at some point. To go back to the article in the FT, in this case I was lucky, because I emailed the journalist right when she was researching a piece going into our direction. Sometimes a little bit of luck helps.

When writing that email try to keep it short and simple. Remember that you are writing to a human being and don’t just copy and paste some impersonal marketing piece. Let the recipient know that you did your research about her/him and why you think that they could be interested in your product. Just imagine you are meeting that person face-to-face somewhere and act/write accordingly.

After putting in weeks and weeks into researching journalists and bloggers and then writing emails, quite a few publications wrote about us and we also started to write few press releases. I don’t really know about press releases. We did spend the money on sending one out through PR Newswire once with zero response. Unfortunately, it was just a waste of time and cash; as a small startup €800 is real money. Here I think it depends on what your product is and I believe it can’t hurt to try it once. If the ROI is satisfactory, great and if not you know where you can save some money in the future and you've  learned a lesson.

I like to rely on my personal mailing list that I built and keep building. Sending a message out through it every few months has always brought good results.

Some people will also tell you to hire a PR agency. That of course depends on so many factors. If you are a small startup you might not want to spend a monthly flat fee (I found that they usually started at around $10k for mid-sized agencies) for many services you might not need, but it all depends. If no one in your team wants or can handle the PR work this might be the right type of thing to outsource. Some startups grow so fast and have so many press requests coming in that it makes sense for them go down that road. I can only speak for us, and say that so far we haven't needed a full blown PR and marketing package. Although we did spend some money to get some advice from a few experts, I believe there is nothing we can’t handle ourselves.

Well, this post was very long considering that my main message is actually very short: Try different approaches and see what works best for you. Do some PR A/B testing, carefully evaluate the results and sort out what didn’t do the job. Learn those lessons and keep moving forward. Or, as the world's best basketball player Michael Jordan once said:

“I have failed over and over and over again in my life – and that is why I succeed.”

Feel free to email Malte at malte (at) i liketotallyloveit.com, follow him on Twitter (he's @malte) or to read his blog at Blog.iliketotallyloveit.com. Don't forget to check out iliketotallyloveit.com!

What do you think of Malte's thoughts on getting coverage?

Friday Cinema

Ryan Peal blogs for Hill and Knowlton at Creativity In Public Relations. While it isn't the most creative title for a blog about creativity, all of his posts are about really neat PR campaigns. His most recent post is about AMP Energy Drink's new "Walk of No Shame" video that I'm sure they're hoping will go viral.

While we're on the topic of viral video and guerilla marketing tactics, Amanda Gravel posted a great video via Slate about the future of viral marketing :

And since I know you want to watch one more video, check out this video from the Stock Footage Awards (link).

Have a great weekend!

-Parker

PR Grows and Journalism Shrinks

Last week, I had the pleasure of seeing Ira Basen, of CBC’s Spin Cycles radio series, deliver a lecture at Seneca College. His comments centered around the frustration that public relations practitioners experience with regards to PR public image; how it is defined by those who are least sympathetic to PR: journalists. CBC’s history of grimly portraying the PR industry included, a radio documentary-turned-book, The Sultans of Sleaze (1989), followed by Truth Merchants (1998), which examined PR from a journalistic perspective. Finally, Basen put together Spin Cycles (2007), which took a more objective stance on PR.Although Basen criticizes public relations practitioners, he also criticizes journalists, which comes as a relief to PR folks due to the anomaly. In general, the public relations community has been very receptive to Spin Cycles, particularly in the UK, US and Italy. Basen speculates that this is because he takes PR seriously as a vocation and knows more about its history than most practitioners. Basen talked at length about the growing strain on contemporary journalists. Using Toronto as an example, there is an increasing demand for journalistic content. Toronto is the successful home to four major dailies with an unprecedented readership of 2-3 people per household. On the other hand, we hear every day about layoffs in journalism. Just recently, the BBC announced that 12% of its journalists were getting cut. In 1991, there were 12,700 journalists in Canada, compared to 12, 500 in 2001. The gap between the demand for news and its supply has widened. This means our journalists are strained, meeting impossible deadlines with limited resources. What it also means is that the newsworthiness and quality of printed stories is eroding. In school, we hear constantly hear about the inundation of newswire services (CNW Group, Marketwire) with news releases in Canada, with numbers reaching upward of 200-300 news releases each day.

As the number of news releases generated continues to increase, the resources and time that journalists have to come up with stories is decreasing, which ultimately affects the quality of the stories we read. The implicit contract that journalists have with their audiences to deliver newsworthy and credible stories has been broken as the real news stories are lost in a sea of news releases based on latent advertising and product placement. Thus, Basen believes we cannot lay the blame on the public relations industry, but rather on the depleting resources of our journalists.

Keep reading BlogCampaigning for more on Ira Basen's ideas next week!

- Jess