THINKing

Grandma Says

Southern grandmothers have often said, “there are only three times a respectable person’s name should be in the paper: when you are born, when you are married, and when you die.”

This is the one area in which I part company with my grandmothers.

Publicity is more critical today for the success of a business than it has ever been.
Why do I believe it’s critical? Let’s review what publicity – particularly publicity online and in business and trade publications - can do for your business.

Provides Neutral Third-party Endorsement. Even though many think the media are biased, consumers still cling to the belief that people who are quoted by the media have something worthwhile to say.

Boosts Your Competitive Advantage. Positive publicity confirms for your customers that they made the smart choice when they elected to use your products or services.

Enables Referrals. Your “smart” customers become evangelists by handing out articles about you to their business contacts.

Shortens Your Sales Cycle. Media coverage often does a better job of explaining what you do than an ad can. So, readers will have a level of knowledge about you before you meet.

Builds Your Marketing Library. Print and web-based articles can become excellent marketing material that costs little to develop.

Positions You. Publish or perish is the academic motto. Experts from outside the world of academia also know that by being quoted by the media they can improve their position as industry experts.

Builds Value. For every speaker like Tom Peters earning thousands of dollars for appearances, there are hundreds who are paid a pittance for speaking engagements. Can you guess the difference?

As you can see, there are a wide variety of reasons for you to be publicizing yourself and your business. Just this once, don’t listen to Grandma. Go get your name in the paper.

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LinkedIn Update Has Facebook Flair

LinkedIn released its updated version last night and took a lot of direction from Facebook, according to Webware,

Business social-networking site LinkedIn unveiled a redesigned homepage with a number of updates on Wednesday night. It’s the latest step in an ongoing initiative to prove that LinkedIn is more than a glorified address book by encouraging more professional interaction among users.

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46 Essential PR Links

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More links for your PR pleasure:
Media Information
Assignmenteditor.com
Columbia Journalism Review
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
HonestReporting.com
O’Dwyers
PR Week
Poynter.org
PR Watch.org

News/Business Information
Associated Press
AP Breaking Stories
BBC
Bloomberg.com
BusinessWire
CNET News.com
Financial Times
Fortune 500
Global 500
Hoovers
National Public Radio
PR Newswire
Reuters
Scripps Howard
UPI
World Wires

Media Ratings Services
Arbitron
Audit Bureau of Circulations
BPA
ComScore
Nielsen Media Research
NetRatings

Resources
Zip Code Finder
Zip Codes in Radius
Area Code Finder
Expedia
SuperPages.com
About.com
Currency Calculator
Google
Translation (Babel)
Trade Show News Network (TSNN)
Whois Lookup

Writers’ Resources
Strunk’s Elements of Style
Bartlett’s Quotations
Dictionary/Thesaurus
YourDictionary.com
Netiquette

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Die Damn You, Part Deux

Today’s dinosaur that needs to die is ad agencies. OK, I know I am biased on this subject since it is my sworn duty to become the creative resource for all Fortune 1000 corporations, displacing their agencies. But let’s forget about that tiny detail for a moment, shall we?

Here is what set me off. I’ll not name names because it is not my intent to embarrass anyone. But I ran across something yesterday that summed up how totally out of touch most ad agencies are with what is happening in the market today. On a social media platform that shall remain nameless I saw a message from an agency executive’s assistant that read something like this, “I’m trying to get (executive’s name) photo into his profile on (name of social media platform here).

So, it appears that ad agencies now are utilizing social media assistants to handle their networking for them. It’s like the old “have your girl call my girl and set up lunch” mentality. Now, there are some ad agencies out there doing the right things in the new marketing environment. Digital colleague Jason Falls and his employer Doe Anderson come to mind. But those are few and far between.

Many people in the agency world agree with me. Take Olivero Toscani, creative director for Benetton Group, for instance,

“ad agencies are obsolete. They’re out of touch with the times; they’re far too comfortable. When the client is happy, they stop trying. They don’t want to know what’s going on in the world.”

Or how about this from Dan Santy, principal of Santy in Phoenix,

“The traditional ad agency model is broken and dead. What clients need to know is about how to successfully navigate the shifts in marketing and how to solve their business problems. As agencies, we need to prepare them on how to navigate that shift.”

So, let’s agree that ad agencies should die and that all of their business should come to My Creative Team.

Update: Just ran across this solid post from CustomersAreAlways about how companies want to advertise instead of connect via social media. This is another case where ad agencies don’t show any leadership or foresight. Sometimes you need to tell your client, “No, that tactic is counterproductive.” Here’s a post from Conversation Agent that also points out the bad things agencies do. Bad agency. Naughty agency!

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Die, Damn You!

Yep, it is time for newspapers to die. Let’s stop killing the trees, and publish them solely online. Newspapers just refuse to accept the inevitable. Marc Andreessen, the man who brought us Netscape, agrees. He has started the New York Times Deathwatch.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Andreessen wrote on his blog (blog.pmarca.com). “I hereby inaugurate my New York Times Deathwatch, which will continue until the last Sulzberger has left the building.” The piece goes on to rip apart the Times’ business strategy top to bottom, attacking everything from the techno-illiteracy of its board of directors (which boasts experts in marsupials and snack cakes but almost no expertise in the Internet) to its recent per-copy price hike. “When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the price,” he snarked.

I’m with Andreessen. The digital age turns every second into a new deadline. A newspaper that requires time to layout, print and physically deliver has no place in the year 2008. Newspapers need to take the financial hit now and try to figure out a new journalistic model.

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Supersize Your Logo

Tired of the ads your agency delivers that have small logos, excessive white space and no starbursts? Look no further!

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Top 17 Media Relations Links

The digital world is changing how PR pros perform media relations. You don’t just have to send releases to journalists today. Now, you can reach your key audiences directly with releases. But there still are some tried-and-true media relations practices:

• researching news releases and features
• writing releases and features
• developing media lists
• distributing news releases
• preparing spokespeople for interviews
• assessing the impact of your media effort

So, in an effort to help you with your effort, I’ve pulled together some of the top online media relations resources. Let’s review:

Know How To Deal With The Media

- My Creative Team Media Relations White Paper

Know The Media

- Bulldog Reporter Free Ezines - the leading source of PR views, news and tools.

- Navigator - another good media relations tool from Cision

- Online PR Media Links -find media outlets online and read before you contact them.

- Online Media List Builder - this is a paid tool to help you build custom media lists

Reach The Media (distribution services)

PRWeb

PR Newswire

Marketwire

Businesswire

PR Leap

PR.Com

Research

Reference Desks Links - follow these links to a range of solid information sources

Online Conversation Tracker - find out what is being said about your organization online

Media Relations Forms

Developing A Media List

Preparing A Spokesperson

Preparing A News Release

Assessing Publicity Results

And there you have my top 17 media relations links. We’ll have more later.

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Best of 2007

Tom Pick at WebMarketCentral has a good series of posts that outlines some of the best marketing-related blog articles from last year. And I am not just saying that because Tom  has included some of my posts in his Best of series. OK, well maybe that does have something to do with it. After all, I’m only human. Thanks for the kind words, Tom.

Here are the Best of posts so far…

Best SEO Posts

Best SEO Tools

Best Web Design

Best Blogging For Business

Best Marketing Research

Best Interactive PR

Best Strategy & Branding

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Color Me Orange

It seems that every major - and minor - corporation adopts blue or red for their brand identity color scheme. These colors may be “safe” for the Bank of Americas and Wachovias of the world but are not necessarily the best choices for your brand.

Colors convey meaning in every society, including our own. Understanding the meaning of colors can help you communicate the right brand message.

For instance, my company’s color palette includes orange, gray and white.

These colors make sense in the overall branding scheme of things. Consider the our positioning statement: “For businesses which want their critical communications projects on target and on time, My Creative Team is the resource that consistently delivers top quality, strategically focused marketing communications work that makes you look good and that is a good value.”

Orange is considered an energetic color, connoting excitement, enthusiasm, playfulness and value. It is no secret why Home Depot and Howard Johnson’s selected orange. We wanted to express playfulness and good value, so orange was our choice, as well.

My Creative Team was a combination of two companies into a new enterprise. Additionally, we wanted to impart an understanding of our ability to deliver strategically focused marketing communications work. We selected gray which indicates stability, wisdom, and balance.

Finally, it was important that our ability to deliver on time and on target was clear. White means precision.

So, you see, you can communicate a lot about your brand without saying a word.

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When Billboards Go Bad

Some people are fans of good things. I tend to lean toward the dark side. There is nothing funnier to me than an ad execution gone horribly wrong. If you like this kind of thing, you’ll appreciate The Bad Billboard Project, which calls itself,

“a collection of bad billboards–bad design, bad ideas, bad implementation, bad strategy, bad placements, and worse.”

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