Day: December 18, 2002

As we begin to wind up yet another year. It’s always a good time to evaluate progress and look forward.

In this spirit, Euro RSCG Worldwide [Flash Alert! Flash Alert!] have cleverly published their “Top Trends for 2003” which is a very interesting look at some possible trends that will affect marketers over the coming year(s). (Thanks to Richard Bailey for the link)

On a related note, the Knowledge Capital Group, a firm that specializes in analyst relations services, publishes a regular newsletter with news and opinions called AR Insider.

If you are working with analysts it’s worth getting. Their latest missive looks at the annual review of analyst subscriptions and has some solid advice. [Though as a side note, I think their ratios which states that if you’re selling a product for over a $1M then you should be spending five or ten times more on AR than PR is a little inaccurate!]

I particularly like their article this month on OMBs (One Man Bands) or those analysts/pundits who set themselves up as industry experts.

Your mission (as a PR professional) should you wish to accept it, is to understand how, why and when your audience(s) find information and use information. We seem to be in a temporary lull in terms of understanding how online and offline come together.

During the dotcom boom we all drank the Kool Aid, the Internet was taking over, we’d be working, communicating, socializing and shopping online without leaving our warm beds. Then the crash came, the Internet didn’t look so attractive anymore, maybe it was a fad after all.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in between. PR people will communicate online and offline, with both environments playing a major role in your communications activities.

While we understand offline pretty well, we still need to hone our online understanding and how the two intersect.

Among the questions we have to answer are what tactics work, where are the audience and what do they want?

It’s further complicated by the fact that different markets and geographies will most probably have different habits.

With that in mind, the New York Times has a fantastic piece on how retailers are finding that getting the online – offline mix correct is critical to the success of their business.

“..the fastest growth appears to be coming from retailers that have mastered how to use the Internet in conjunction with catalogs, stores or both.”