My husband and I went to see Avatar over the weekend. Wow. The visually stunning spectacle has been director James Cameron’s pet project for more than 10 years, his last major theatrical release being a little movie called Titanic. The movie is in 3D but it’s so unobtrusive and simply enhances the story without going for corny effects, a novel approach to an older technology, enhancing rather than interrupting the storytelling process.

It was an inspired move by Cameron to hire virtual unknowns in the lead roles, but a mistake, despite her considerable talent, that he cast Sigourney Weaver in the film because, more than once, it felt like I was watching Aliens or even Gorillas in the Mist. For the same reason he put faces to those with whom we have had little or no previous associations in the lead roles, he should have cast an unknown in Weaver’s role; this was the only distraction that took me out of the marvelous world of Pandora and back into North America, circa late 2009.

I don’t want to spoil the storyline of the movie for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it but plans to, but suffice to say that while the movie is well worth seeing and elements of the film’s story are absolutely creative and novel, the vast majority of the plot is well trodden territory. Thematic elements are very reminiscent of [SPOILER ALERT!] this, and this.

There’s nothing new under the sun, they say, and the same is true when it comes to marketing. While it’s true that in the realm of technology, there are truly revolutionary products being released, there are also a slate of products that are only slight modifications on existing offerings or have very little if anything unique about them, rather they are “me too!” propositions. That’s okay - consumers need options at different price points with different feature sets, and other distinguishing attributes, however small.

The challenge becomes how to market your offering when the basic story (of your product, your company, your industry …) has been told many, many times before. Take a page from James Cameron’s book and find novel ways to tell a familiar tale, use new technology to do so and make it compelling to your audience. In our terms, this means to use novel marketing approaches like social media to communicate your key messages to your prospects and customers, providing them with the information they need in a format that’s interesting to them and that will get them talking to other prospects about why your offering is the one to see and why your marketing campaign is better than that of your competitors.

Technorati Tags: Avatar, James Cameron, marketing

It’s been a busy time for Twitter.

The microblogging platform, on which all of the authors on this blog have accounts - @FrancisMoran, @LindaForrest and @inmedian - has recently announced several key partnerships that will move the social media platform from the early adopter stage to the mainstream. Microsoft and Google announced a few weeks ago that they would include “Tweets” in their search results, legitimizing for many skeptics the platform as a bona fide media channel and information source. Then, today, a partnership with LinkedIn was announced wherein Twitterstreams will be included in LinkedIn profiles.

This is a big step, and should increase adoption in the professional world from the dismal figures IDC collected earlier this year. Not to mention how it will impact Twitter’s bottom-line; it’s value was theoretical for a very long time but with a handful of powerful partnerships such as these, the money will be rolling in.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, LinkedIn, social media, partnerships

Senator Ted Kennedy died late yesterday, the latest tragedy in the long string to befall the family that has so captivated the world these last 50 years. His passing is also the latest high-profile death to spawn a flurry of internet traffic, blog posts, Tweets, and the like.

Being a child of the 80s, it has been a rough year, with iconic figures like Michael Jackson and John Hughes, director of some of my favourite movies, passing away unexpectedly, shocking their many followers.

We truly live in an era of mass communication. Sometimes that brings us together, other times it alienates us. In times when people need to have even a virtual shoulder to cry on, the many means of expression available to them, the virtual support system at their ready disposal is of great comfort indeed.

Bob Lefsetz, editor of the Lefsetz Letter, a music industry trade newsletter, was on the Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos last year talking about just how messed up the music industry is (quite) and he touched on the fact that in today’s modern age, there is so much media available that we’re less connected to one another. Ironically, the glut of media channels meant to provide us with more content, ostensibly, one assumes, in order to provide us with more cultural touch points to be able to discuss with one another, is providing each of us with customized content that it’s unlikely that any of our friends or contacts are aware of. His example was a television show that he’d seen and adored that aired on an obscure cable channel and despite his evangelism about the program, had yet to meet another human who had seen it.

These recent high profile deaths and the public’s reaction to them represent the flip side to Lefsetz’s argument. When Michael Jackson died, it was said that he almost took the internet with him, so compelled were his legions of fans to flock to news sites, to write blog posts about what his music had meant to them, what his impact on our society had been, some to mock, others to mourn…

What can we as modern marketers learn from this? In the same way that on a personal level the many channels available to us can draw us closer or push us further apart, they accomplish the same when used for business, for promotion. The media channels are many, the messages on them innumerable, but focused messaging on the proper channels can bring your market closer, can provide them with the niche information that they need, can, in short, sell more of your stuff.

A Cutting Edge Focus on Social Media for Business was the thrust of this week’s Ottawa Network event, but while each of the presenters offered useful insights on the abrupt paradigm shifts in customer and media engagement driven by Web 2.0, what struck me was that no matter how much some things change, they remain the same.

Chris Biber, president and CEO of SearchingWorks, started off the evening by reiterating that social media, be it Twitter, Youtube or a blog, is simply another set of tools in the marketing toolbox, while marketing itself is simply the “consistent application of common sense.”

It all begins of course, by taking the time to research and understand your customers. Who are they? Where are they? What interests them? And what are their needs and expectations? The same basic foundation that’s always been a requisite for an effective marketing program. The difference now, of course, being that social media allows for a much more candid and informal two-way flow of communication between company and customer.

But this is a conversation that cannot be dominated by a “me, me, me” approach. While companies and brands can make themselves part of the conversation and attempt to direct it, they can’t expect to control it. Nor will their audience respond favourably to anything that is blatantly self-serving or promotional.

Rick Radko, president of R-Cubed, drawing on his software-engineering background, took a different perspective and focused on the application of social media as an internal, rather than external, communications tool set. From online tools for document sharing and collaboration, to wikis, Rick talked about how “Enterprise 2.0″ is becoming the norm for organizations with teleworkers and remote offices, to keep staff in touch and part of a common corporate culture.

In particular, Rick touched on using a wiki to keep staff informed on everything from new corporate directives, to who down the hall is offering to car pool. It’s the digitization of that ubiquitous cork board that adorns staff lunch rooms everywhere, plastered with pushpins and dead-tree notices.

Lastly, Natasha D’Souza, founder of Virtual EyeSee, talked about the distinctions between the social media release, versus the traditional news release, an example of which she offered for a recent Mother’s Day event she held. As her example illustrates, the social media release tends to be less formal and directly addresses the intended audience. It also moves up the contact information and incorporates multimedia elements to support it, from pictures, to video and links to other relevant sources of information.

Two things in particular struck me about the structure of a social media release and how she used it.

First, is the volume of supporting content that can be added, in terms of pictures, video, links and so forth. In the good ol’ days of tree slaying, a comprehensive package such as this was called a media kit. Is the social media release, in its fully realized form, in many ways not simply the digitization of this traditional public relations tool? (Editor’s note: Actually, long before the term “social media release” was ever coined, savvy PR practitioners have been offering their contacts multimedia-rich content. And we’ve been hosting or delivering that content via electronic channels for decades. The web has made it easier for practitioners to do it all themselves but there are still some media formats — broadcast-quality b-roll, for example — that you probably don’t want to host yourself.)

The second point came when one attendee asked Natasha how she distributed this social media release. And this is where another classic and intrinsic element of marketing and PR came in. She researched the influential bloggers in the Ottawa area who would be interested in her Mother’s Day event and contacted them to pitch the event and direct them to her release. Proving once again that they’ve yet to come up with a social media tool that is a suitable substitute for hard work and old-fashioned solicitation.

Technorati Tags: public relations, marketing, social media, blogging, Twitter, wiki, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0

I was interviewed a few weeks back by the Ottawa Business Journal for a piece on marketing through a downturn. While a good bit of what I had to say did make it into the article, I thought it would be useful to expand on my thinking here. So, here are my 10 tips for marketing through a downturn.

1. Do as much marketing as you can afford

We’ve written a lot about the merit of maintaining your marketing spend through an economic downturn. There is still business to be written, markets to be taken and customers to be won. And a downturn, when many of your competitors may well be going quiet, often represents an unprecedented opportunity to grab a much larger share of voice.

2. Recalibrate your strategy and recast your budget strategically as opposed to simply cutting x% across the board

The OBJ reporter kept trying to get me to name the “one thing” that companies should do in response to a downturn. I resisted being so binary since a downturn represents doom to some but incredible opportunity to others. And even for those for whom it’s a challenge, an across-the-board response is rarely the right one.

At times like this, strategy becomes more valuable than ever. Know where you’re trying to go, the best way to get there, and how you’re going to know that you’ve arrived. Cut those marketing tactics that won’t help get you there and re-invest the money in the tactics that will.

3. Negotiate pricing

All the vectors you use to communicate to your marketplace are feeling the pinch right now. There is no better time to play hardball on pricing, or to negotiate added extras that usually cost a lot more. Most media outlets will cut their line rates or give you valuable extras like a free newsletter distribution, web conference, white paper distribution or even additional insertions. Trade show organizers may agree to a bigger booth space for the same price or throw in sponsorship opportunities or show guide advertising that in better times might cost you thousands more. Even if your supplier must hold the line on fundamentals, see if you can’t snag some of the valuable extras.

4. If you have channel or other partners, consider pooling budgets and activities to make your dollars go further

Can you share a trade show booth with partners? Can you initiate a co-op advertising program that sees you put up some of the cost while your channel partners put up the rest? Is the opposite available to you — are you a channel for an OEM with a co-op program?

5. Do not abandon measurement

If marketing is seen as the easiest thing for companies to cut during a downturn, then measurement is seen as the easiest thing for marketers to cut. After all, it doesn’t really contribute anything, right? Wrong. Harken back to tip No. 2: If you’re not measuring, you have no idea where you are or what got you there, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t, and you simply can’t be strategic about your marketing spend. When times are good and there’s budget to spare, you might be able to afford to have some things work a little less effectively. When times are tough and every dollar must produce a result, you need to be measuring so you know which tactics are delivering and which ones aren’t.

6. Be transactional if there’s an immediate opportunity

As I’ve already noted, a downturn means different things for different companies. If there is good business that can be immediately secured, be highly transactional in going after it. Alter all your messaging to “Buy now,” and focus on tactics, like advertising and direct marketing, that communicate transactional messaging best.

7. If there isn’t an immediate opportunity, go long

It’s far more likely, however, that your customer’s buying cycle has stalled; it almost certainly has lengthened. So if your customers have hunkered down waiting for the storm to pass, there’s no point in blaring the hard sell at them or offering them discounts and other incentives to immediately do something they’re simply not going to. Does this mean you, too, should hunker down and draw the blinds until things blow over? No, it means your messaging should shift to support longer-term objectives such as awareness building, thought leadership and marketplace education. Tactics like media relations, trade shows and white papers that establish your authority and expertise are a better use of your resources if this is your reality.

8. In all communications, employ story telling that emphasizes how your product or service saves money or drives additional immediate revenue for your customers. Speak to the pain they’re feeling in a recession

Whatever the economic conditions, your marketing and communications messaging should be all about your customer, not you. You should always be speaking to the pain your customer feels that your product or service solves. In a recession, your customer’s pain is almost certainly all about revenue — making more of it or keeping more of it. Make sure you’re speaking to this.

9. Be overly attentive to your existing revenue base

“Love the one you’re with,” says the old song, and that’s never more relevant than in a downturn, when new customers are hardest to acquire. Your current customers are keeping you in business and it’s almost always cheaper to maintain and build business with existing customers than to find new ones. Lavish your existing customers with love, look for low-cost ways to improve the value you create for them, and communicate, communicate, communicate — let them know you love them.

10. Effective relationships never expire, so keep talking

Keep talking to everyone in your value chain, including suppliers, service providers, channels, influencers and, of course, customers and prospects. Even if they can’t use your services or you theirs just now, keeping those lines of communication open and full of useful information will serve you very well when the economy recovers.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, media relations, recession, downturn

As recorded here, I started Tweeting a bit less than a fortnight ago. (Handle is @francismoran, if you’d like to follow me.) Today, I want to come up for air as I barely tread water in the Twitterstream and share a few first impressions.

1. Twitter is the most addictive thing since crystal meth was synthesized, and it has precipitated a massive relapse in my online behaviour.

I am an easily distracted guy at the best of times. So over the past few years, I have instituted some processes in my work life to diminish the potential that my focus on the task at hand will be derailed by incoming emails, news feeds or other bright shiny objects. I turned off all email alerts, stopped using instant messaging services and schedule specific times in my day when I will deal with email, my RSS feed and the like.

Then along came Twitter. At the office, at home, waiting for my Clover at Bridgehead, at the breakfast, lunch and dinner tables, at red lights while driving … hell, almost anywhere and at any time of the day, I MUST check Twitter and see what the ‘Stream is bringing me. It’s obsessive, and I’m actively seeking therapy.

2. Twitter is also incredibly seductive.

I wrote that I intended to use Twitter not as a sort of ersatz IM tool, or as a way to stay in touch with friends, or to post self-promoting updates about what airport I was now landing at. Nope. Twitter, for me, was going to be strictly business. I intended to use it to tweet about things not worth a full blog post, to draw attention to interesting things that came through my RSS reader, to promote great content secured by one of our clients here at inmedia, and to participate in Twitter conversations.

Well, it was that last one that pulled me in. (Right now, I’m channelling Al Pacino’s character in Godfather II.) Before I knew it, I was giving grammar tips, talking about what I’d name my boat if I had one, and, most un-businesslike of all, posting pictures of myself on a Jamaican beach.

3. Twitter has really goosed our blog traffic

It hasn’t all been obsession and personal indulgences, though. While the data points are still relatively few in number, we saw a tidy spike in blog traffic last week, with visitors up about 25 per cent from the weekly average for the previous month, page visits up 80 per cent and a 10-per-cent increase in subscribers. And Twitter has become the third-best source of referral traffic to our blog. All in less than two weeks. Nice.

4. The tools are a bit bewildering

Selecting a Twitter client has been a bewildering exercise. Initially, I started off both reading and posting directly on the Twitter site, hitting F5 every time I wanted a fresh deluge of tweets. Of course, as any member of the Twitterati knows well, there is a plethora of clients that can be installed.

I’ve been testing TweetDeck. It’s okay, but its constant pings are just too demanding on my too-fleeting attention span. Maybe I’ll play around with TweetDeck a bit more and explore its greater functionality but for the moment, I think I’ll continue to use my browser on my desktop.

I’m on my third client for my mobile platform, the iPhone. And it’s here that my obsessiveness really runs amok anyway. I’ve been using the free iStore application TwitterFon for the past several days. I really like the interface, especially how it uses colour to categorize incoming tweets and shows all replies whether or not I follow the person replying. Conversation threads are also very easy to follow. I think I’ll stick with this one. Until a brighter, shinier one catches my eye…

5. @snolen takes the prize for best Twitter Stream this first two weeks

The Globe and Mail’s excellent Stephanie Nolen, who was recently reassigned from the paper’s Africa bureau to its India bureau, kept up a steady stream of live tweets reporting on the Dalai Lama’s speech to his followers marking yesterday’s 50th anniversary of his flight into exile from Tibet. This is the future, kids.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, inmedia Public Relations, inmedialog, blogging, social media

When we launched this blog about 18 months ago, I blamed congenital social media addict Alec Saunders for persuading me that I and my colleagues here at inmedia PR had enough to say that we should be blogging. Nothing we’ve seen in the time since would persuade me he was wrong; our blog has hugely increased our online presence, vastly boosted the ratings for our corporate web site, and both brought us interesting business opportunities and helped validate our expertise on others.

Now we take the next step. Twitter.

And, as I wrote in my very first Tweet, if Saunders is to blame for making me a blogger, then Scott Lake has to take responsibility for making me a Twit. Scott has been pushing me to join the twitterati for a while now, and last week, I did. You can follow me at @francismoran. The tipping point for me was this blog post from the folks at Velocity about how they use many different social media tools, including Twitter, to gain the greatest possible leverage for good pieces of content they generate for their clients.

Now, much as I like to claim to be an early adopter, I’m not terribly early to this particular party. In fact, I’m not even the first person at inmedia to start a Twitter account. That honour belongs to my colleague Linda Forrest (@lforrestinmedia), who wrote her first update in May last year and has been a bit more active while on maternity leave. (We all know that first-time Mums with months-old babies have oodles of time on their hands, right Linda?)

Scott has promised to drop by and give me a crash course in how to make the most of this interesting social media tool. For my part, I think I’ll use it for all the quick comments that seem to occur to me in the course of a week, things insufficiently detailed or profound to warrant a full blog post. We’ll also add a tool to this blog that automatically issues a tweet when we write a new post. I’ll tweet about other posts I read in my hundreds-deep RSS feed, participate in some of the conversations that are going in the twittersphere and, like Velocity, draw the broader web’s attention to some of our clients’ successful content generation.

As with our blog, we’ll keep you posted on how this goes. As a newbie, though, I’d be keen to hear from readers who have had good or bad experiences with Twitter, and how you use it.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, media relations, social media, Alec Saunders, Scott Lake

Despite all the hype, hoopla and debate around social media as a marketing and public relations tool, there is one even more fundamental aspect of the Web that is far more pervasive: the search.

It seems weird to say “the search” without putting ”Google” in there, but there are other services available to dig up information, Wikipedia being the most obvious. It used to be that information was power, now it’s an avalanche that overwhelms us. Intelligence is what’s important: the ability to filter through the overload to determine what is useful and chart trends or patterns that have meaning and relevance.

When all that information is so readily available and convenient, it’s easy to take it at face value without looking deeper and doing some good old-fashioned digging to verify facts and the credibility of the source. For a journalist on deadline eager to wrap up a story, it can be a trap. Take the example cited by Drew Benvie at Drew B’s take on tech PR, in which a fictional athlete was presented in an article as an actual person, thanks to a bogus profile on Wikipedia.

That’s not to suggest that Wikipedia is not a valid research tool, but it is vulnerable to abuse and demonstrates the importance of verifying facts and cross-referencing any online source of information.

For organizations sensitive to how their brand or image is being presented to the world, it is definitely important to keep an eye on such online information portals to ensure the accuracy of whatever information is being presented about them.

And while there are valid questions about the veracity of online information, what about the value of obtaining media coverage online instead of in print?

As a newspaper editor with only so many inches of space in the print product but much more on the website, I would often hear the complaint that running a story only online was somehow inferior to running it in print.

Sure, there is tactile satisfaction to be had in handling ink-stained paper, but it should be amply evident by now that content online lives far longer and reaches a far larger audience than the processed corpses of trees. In the newspaper business, I would get feedback on stories from readers on other continents after the content appeared online. The print product, on the other hand, was distributed in only one city. You do the math.

Kevin Dugan at the Bad Pitch Blog shares my sentiment and offers a video clip to help make the point.

Technorati Tags: social media, Google, Wikipedia, media coverage, online media, print media

How we communicate is just as important as what we communicate. And by “how” I don’t mean what tool should be drawn from the social media toolbox. I mean the language we use that either demonstrates frankness, sincerity and honesty, or obvious self-interest that will only push away your listeners. Timing is also key. It’s much easier to engage in dialogue with someone if they don’t feel your agenda is pressuring the conversation. If you only speak with someone when you expect or need something from them, you’ve conveyed the impression that this is nothing more than transactional relationship. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Hardly the foundation for a long and fruitful association.

Today’s picks from the Blogosphere all touch on these points.

The first comes from Collective Conversation, where Kellie Major cites the example of a CEO who, in an address to his staff about cuts, demonstrates clearly and sincerely how he shares his employees’ pain.

In contrast, Joseph Thornley at Pro PR presents a somewhat different attempt at communication from the C-suite. In this case, it is RBC head honcho Gordon Nixon trying to reassure the bank’s customers that all is still right with the world and with the Canadian banking industry. Or is it really just a piece of self-promotional fluff that should have been distributed as a press release? You decide.

Lastly, we have words from the horse’s mouth about how to, and how not to, begin a dialogue with a journalist at Bulldog Reporter from Michael Singer, West Coast news editor for InformationWeek.com. And, no surprise here, he says waiting until you have a news release to peddle is not the best approach. He goes on to offer a number of other tips to keep in mind when chasing media on behalf of a client and how to make appropriate use of such avenues as Twitter.

Technorati Tags: social media, media relations, pitching, communications, RBC,  Gordon Nixon 

Pondering the place of social media in the marketing and PR toolkit has been a familiar theme on this blog as the industry as a whole attempts to understand how best to approach and manage audience engagement with such a dynamic, informal and immediate variety of channels as those that fit under the general heading of Web 2.0. (Or maybe we’ve already moved on into Web 3.0. Who can keep track?)

Should you blog? Should you tweet? Should a company hang out its dirty laundry for all to see? To whom can companies turn for advice and how can they validate the credentials and experience of those who claim to be the gurus with the answers?

It’s a pickle, for certain, and one that will only weigh more and more on the minds of companies through 2009 as they struggle to build awareness of their brand and their value proposition as recessionary pressures nibble away at the bottom line.

I’ve come across an interesting array of perspectives and opinions on these matters over the past couple of days.

Beth Harte explores the question, Is social media the same as marketing? and reaffirms the most basic precept: Social media is best considered and approached as one part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. Her post also raises the quite valid concern about carpetbaggers who claim to be experts in the area.

Robert Geller writes about how pervasive social media tools such as Twitter have become, emphasizing his point with the example of how it is being used by the Israeli government as a communications tactic in its latest flare up with Hamas and the Palestinians.

But a social media tool’s popularity can pose problems, even security risks, for those who use it. As we have seen this week, Twitter’s success has attracted the attention of those with malicious intent. Terry Sweeney writes about how “the public nature of Twitter — like Facebook or web mail or P2P file-sharing sites — means it offers a rich petri dish for online mischief,” which has left the service scrambling to save face. And while this may not be sufficient reason to abandon the service, Terry suggests it warrants a hard look at what benefit can be derived from Twitter before jumping on board.

All that matters in the end is understanding your business, the audience you are trying to reach and using only those tools or tactics that make sense as an effective means to achieve your business development and customer service objectives. What’s hot is irrelevant.

Technorati Tags: media relations, social media, business development, Twitter, marketing