Category: General

OK so the headline is a little tabloidesque.  The Patrick Marketing Group have released their annual survey of over 100 Marketing executives.

Predicatably in a down market, ROI is the key driver of Marketing investment – show us a (sales) return and we’ll invest.

Of most interest to us PR folks is what areas are getting budget increases next year.  Top of the list are Seminars and Events (50%), Electronic Advertising (48%) and Direct mail (42%).  PR comes in fifth with 35%. Trade Shows and Print Advertising bring up the rear with 26% and 20% respectively.

Last year’s survey had PR as the number one area for growth in Marketing spend, maybe these results show Marketers have already upped their investment sufficiently….mmmm. 

On the role of Online Marketing, 42% of respondents said that online marketing was critical, 24% are now getting serious about online marketing, a whopping 20% think online marketing isn’t relevant and 14% accounted for by “Other”.

Psycho Tactics, a firm that offers to help firms understand how psychology affects consumers has executed a smart viral marketing campaign.

They have released a short report on “Why Santa’s Marketing is Better than Yours”. [PDF]

Excellent.

[Via MarketingWonk]

I’ve been reading former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner Jr.’s book, “Who Say Elephants Can’t Dance?” which details his turnaround of Big Blue from the low to it’s present rude health.

Interestingly Gerstner’s first hire was David Kalis his communications executive from his previous two roles.

“He was, in my opinion the best Public Relations Executive in America.  He was also the first true PR professional in IBM’s history to hold the top communication job.  For decades the position had been a rotation slot for sales executives being groomed for other top jobs.”

High praise indeed and nice to see a CEO understanding the importance of PR – even if he might be exaggerating a little!

Wow, news is slow in the PR world, there’s very little of note to be found, luckily the PR blog crew are keeping things ticking over.  Let me know if you’ve any interesting news.

 Phil at the G2B Group points to a piece from this month’s Inc Magazine on PR’s legal privilege in view of this ruling from June this year.

 Kevin Dugan is giving up on Blogger’s BlogSpot service (which has been very spotty recently) and moving to a hosting provider for his blog, don’t forget to subscribe to his new three letter acronym thingy that I can’t mention for a while.

 Colin at CanuckFlack points to some really interesting research from the Miller Brewing Company which looked at the actual sales results from PR:

“Mr. Choudhary said the PR data was the missing link that has held back PR from becoming a strategic part of the brand planning process, but that is beginning to change. And the results are startling. Based on the analysis, Miller has learned that its PR campaigns generate 1.2 percent of base product sales, or 4 percent of incremental product sales (the amount of sales created specifically from marketing efforts such as advertising, PR or promotion).”

 Trevor Cook has some amusing writing tips over at SoapBox. Among my favorites is:

“Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.”

 

A new research study of over 2,800 blog owners carried out by Blog Search Engine, found that over 90% of them had never been approached by a PR person.

While 26% of respondents said they would refuse to blog about any company that approached them, the balance (73.9%) of bloggers were open to PR pitches with the proviso that the blogger would hold the final decision based on their perception of the company in question. Compare this to the fact that only 29% of bloggers were willing to consider advertising.

I think those are some interesting (non-scientific) statistics that highlights how little our profession has thought about pitching a relevant blog. It seems that if you are thinking about it, the channel is open and in many cases waiting…

What drives the blog agenda?

Another interesting finding surrounds how bloggers find content for their daily rant. Top of the list are sites that bloggers check regularly (68.5%), other blogs (58.9%), friends (54.3%), News sites (47.7%) and Google News – a stonking 33.8% – which underlines why Google is so darned important! (As a sidenote… a certain three letter acronym, which I won’t mention, accounts for just over 17%)

MediaPost has covered the study (free registration required) with the nice tabloid headline: “Blogs Fail To Crack Flaks, PR Pros Remains Indifferent To Web Log Spin.” – Indeed.

PR Opinions has already been pitched quite a few times (and in all cases very well) and is of course more than willing to accept more pitches 🙂

Thanks to Joanne and Jeremy for the links to the research and MediaPost article. As a sidenote, Jeremy has an interesting link to a new service where you can be informed via your AIM when a blog is updated. I’m happy to add it, if anyone is deperate enough for some PR content to want it….

The importance of Search Engines in driving traffic (and awareness) has never been greater, but it’s an area that many PR people ignore or simply outsource.

The fact is that Search Engines for many businesses (online and traditional) represent a major communication channel. How much do you know about Search Engines? Do you know the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is the collective term for activities designed to improve your organizations search ranking, but it means more than the right HTML tags and web page description.  

Are you au fait with Google’s AdWords and Overture, which are a major promotional tool for effective Search Engine marketing?

The BBC has a good story today on how Google’s efforts to thwart Search Engine fixers has adversely affected the rankings of legitimate businesses and has had a measurable affect on their sales. Can you afford not to understand how these “Windows on the Web” work?

I don’t think so.

Further reading: SEO PR, Search Engine Watch, SEO Chat, Google Dance, Google’s advice on SEO, SEO Today

I’m sure you are all growing tired of my dissertations on RSS, so here’s my last RSS-related post for ages…. Salon’s Scott Rosenberg takes a look at RSS. [Thanks to Darren for the link]

Jeremy Pepper raises some interesting points on my follow-up RSS posting in particular that:

“RSS is another step down the slope where PR people don’t interact with humans.”

He also points out that whilst Tech PR is leading the way, for many industries, PR people’s tool of choice remains the phone.

I think these are great points.

First of all, as e-mail volumes have risen, I now find myself using the phone more often and in many cases, for all parts of my work, it’s more effective. E-mail is still number one from a volume perspective, but the phone continues to play an essential role when you need to get things done.

Furthermore, I think if we look at technologies like RSS as a means of distancing ourselves from our audience, whether that audience is media or non-media, I think we’re in trouble.  I look at RSS as a tool that may in the future increase the reach and effectiveness of information, in a world where e-mail is beginning to struggle.

What’s the most effective means of communication? Without question face-to-face is the number one. You can only build limited relationships over e-mail and indeed the phone, which is why video conferencing, often the poster child before the Internet’s rise to prominence, never took off as it was supposed to.  While it’s useful for brief meetings with people you already know, it’s not an effective medium for building relationships.

This was brought home to me a couple of years ago I had two detailed conference calls with an analyst.  The calls went well, there was a good exchange of information, but when we met him face-to-face, his first question was “What do you guys do?” – the face-to-face meeting solved that issue!

In summary, I think we should look at these technologies as a useful adjunct to the traditional disciplines of this profession, i.e. communication. It’s not a wall we’re putting up, it’s a way of increasing our reach and responding to changes in how people find information.

If RSS (in the future) helps that process then it will be used, if it doesn’t it won’t.  PR people have to be completely pragmatic.

Phil was wondering if there are any studies on the uptake of RSS. I don’t know of any, if you do please let me know. I would guess that RSS is still in the very early adopter stage.  The Technology sector normally pioneers this stuff and technology journalists are only beginning to look for RSS feeds, so I think widespread adoption is a long way off. However, we already have a large number of subscribers to our RSS feeds, so I think engineers and other IT-related end-users are already using RSS every day.

In some breaking news, Bacon’s has acquired MediaMap.  The latest episode in the consolidation taking place in the media database world.

This year’s winner of the annual “Foot in the Mouth” award is the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for this beauty:

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns � the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

The awards are presented by the UK’s Plain English Campaign which is a pressure group demanding that public documents be written in (surprisingly enough) plain English.

My favorite previous winners are:

“I think that [the film] ‘Clueless’ was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it’s true lightness.” – Alicia Silverstone

“I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe and somebody said I was a snake, I’d think ‘No, actually I am a giraffe.” – Richard Gere (the 2002 winner)