Brand Central Station

(from Bulldog Reporter’s PR University)

When:     Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 1pm EDT (90 minutes)
Where:   Online
Cost:        $ 299

Are clients asking you to integrate social media with their existing PR programs—but you’re unsure how to tie it all together? You’re not alone. By now, most in PR have tackled in social media tools—and implemented social media campaigns and on-offs for clients on channels ranging from blogs and Wikipedia to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and beyond. Some have even launched proprietary networks for clients while others are still focused on online forums. Regardless your level of proficiency with various social media tools and tactics … chances are that your success has often been limited because these ad-hoc efforts typically lack a coherent strategy. What’s more: Clients and companies don’t pay for tactics—they pay for strategic counsel that moves the needle.

The good news: You can maximize your digital footprint across multiple social media platforms—and quadruple your results—by following this proven and practical program guaranteed to help you create an advanced social media strategy for all of your new media efforts. Designed to help your team create and execute successful social media campaigns and initiatives in seven easy steps, this strategic regimen will help you boost your Internet ROI, grow your online visibility or reputation and increase your search ranking for your company or clients. Join one of PR’s leading Web 2.0 gurus and best social media instructors for this intensive, interactive webinar to learn how it’s done. In just 90 information-packed minutes, she will give youstep-by-step practical guidelines for using all these social media tools in such a way that they complement each other and support your traditional PR program to drive organizational goals. If you are looking for apowerful social media strategy to help you build buzz, brand and the bottom line online, then this is one PR training event you and your team can’t afford to miss.

Key Takeaways:

• Why you should not go one more day without drafting a social media strategy
• How to sell a comprehensive social media strategy to skeptical management
• Understanding the role social media optimization (SMO) plays inonline reputation management (ORM) and search engine reputation management (SERM)—plus how PR can tap these tools to build a bigger digital footprint
• How to position PR and communications as a vital player in the internal conversation about leveraging your social media strategy and supporting new technologies
• A Seven Step Guide designed to help you create and execute measurable social media campaigns and programs for your client, company or brand, including:
  • How best to create a social media team to drive your strategy
  • New ideas to help you draft a social media policy that matches your organizational culture
  • New tools and techniques to help you build a listening program
  • How to establish goals and metrics for your social media program
  • Best ways to assign social media roles and responsibilities
  • Checklists to help you decide which social media tools and networks are best suited for your goals and audiences
  • How to monitor and adjust your social media program for greater results
• How to optimize your client or company’s web presence via social news buttons, blogging, Web video, online photo sharing, online social networks from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter…and beyond
• How online newsrooms and Social Media Releases can play an important role
• SEO Fundamentals: First steps for bringing your SEO tools and SERM techniques up to speed as part of your social media plan
• Social media strategy do’s and don’ts—plus warnings from brands that blew it
• Best Practices : Examples you can take to your execs to show how a social media strategy can help build brand and the bottom line
• How to track and measure the value of your social media program and prove it to management
• How to talk to the C-suite about your new social media strategy

YOUR PRESENTER:
Jennifer Cisney is the chief blogger and social media manager at Eastman Kodak. She has been with Eastman Kodak for twelve years, resulting in a broad knowledge of the various businesses and in depth experience with the corporate website, kodak.com. Her contributions to Kodak’s online experience have been inspirational photography, design expertise and creative content. She helped create and now manages the corporate blogs. After launching Kodak’s social media initiatives, she oversees Kodak’s presence on social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr. Jennifer has been a speaker at such social media conferences as BlogWorld, BlogHer, Marketing to Women, 140 Characters Conference and The Inbound Marketing Summit. Jennifer was also recognized as one of Advertising Age’s 2009 Women to Watch.

YOUR MODERATOR:
Brian Pittman is content director of Bulldog Reporter’s PR University and the weekly email newsletter Journalists Speak Out. Previously, Brian served as editorial director at Infocom Group, where he edited, reported for and launched titles such as Media Relations Insider, PR Agency Insider, Ad Agency Insider and Managing Partner. Prior to that, he served as editor of Utah Business magazine, among other titles. He is a seasoned reporter with extensive experience interviewing such personalities as Steve Forbes, Bob Edwards and Margaret Thatcher. Complete Bio

News headlines for June 4, 2010 from The Daily Dog and mediabistro.com. (Updated throughout the day.)

(from The Daily Dog)
BP’s Credibility Unraveling Before Our Eyes …
Toyota’s President Says He Now has a Better Understanding of American Culture …
Wall Street Taps Former DC Insiders to Lobby Against Regulatory Reform …

(from mediabistro.com)
The New York Times To Host Political Polling Site FiveThirtyEight (NYT / Media Decoder)
New York Times Sends Wall Street Journal Cease And Desist Letter Over Brand Campaign (NY Observer)
Celebrity Glossy OK! Racks Up $175M In Losses (NY Post)
ABC News Digital Reorganizes Leadership (WebNewser)
If The iPad’s The Answer, What’s The Question Again? (InPublishing)
Network Communications Talks With Lenders After Missing Payment (BusinessWeek)
AOL’s Tim Armstrong: The Power of Local Journalism (PC Mag)
The New York Times Issues Correction To Hirschberg’s M.I.A. Profile (The Wrap)
Rachael Ray Boils Over Good Housekeeping Cover Story (NY Post / Page Six)
The Newsonomics Of Commercial Crowdsourcing (Nieman Journalism Lab)
Will Users Ever Pay For Online Content? Sorry, Probably Not (minOnline)

by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

There was a recent article that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer about Procter & Gamble and the financial impact it appears their re-focused charitable efforts are having on the company. (Read it here)

This story caught my eye for two reasons: First, only P&G could pull off a global good-will effort like this. And it’s interesting to read about the groundwork they are laying for a variety of their consumer brands in emerging and developing markets. In addition to the awareness and market-building efforts, P&G’s philanthropic program also enhances the value of the company in the eyes of shareholders who are becoming focused on results beyond the bottom line when evaluating their equity holdings.

But the second reason this article was of interest is that it was sent to me by a client.

This is a company not of hundreds of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales but of just over one hundred employees and sales that are, shall we say, significantly less than anything in P&G’s portfolio. Yet we’ve managed to work with this client and establish a national connection to a leading health association (The American Diabetes Association) and put together a corporate social responsibility program that will achieve the same kind of awareness and market-building objectives P&G is striving for on a global scale.

For many marketers, whether they’re inside an agency, working from home or cloistered away in a marketing department somewhere, the marketing strategies and actions of the mega-brands (P&G, Pepsi, AB/Interbev, etc.) can all seem out of reach. The fact is, though, their not … and marketers who don’t seem to understand that are destined to live out their professional lives doing more of the same and wondering why they’re not getting better results than they did the year before.

I’ve written about corporate social responsibility programs before. They’re interesting to put together and, done right, can not only have an impact on your company or brand’s growth; they can re-energize your employee base and help build long-term equity in your brand’s value. That can mean better margins on the sale of products to retailers or consumers and, just as important, it can mean better multiples if you decide to sell your business to an investor group or acquiring company.

Doing the right thing, the right way can be a tremendous benefit to your company.

More on this at another time.

News headlines for June 3, 2010 from MediaPost’s MediaDaily, The Daily Dog and mediabistro.com.  (Updated throughout the day.)

(MediaPost’s MediaDaily News)
ABC May Start Online TV Subs
Social, Mobile Sparking Heavier Use Of Media, Especially TV/Internet
Berwick Upped To Bravo President
B2B Ad Revenues Drop Again in 1Q
Triton Offers Free Apps to Media Companies
NBC Rings AT&T, Gets ‘Dial *’ Tone
Ad Firm TRA Gets Cash Infusion From Intel, WPP
Road Trip: ‘Spin,’ Midas ‘Rock The Highway’

(The Daily Dog)
BP Attempts to Reassure Investors that Gulf Clean-Up Won’t Affect Dividends …
Lawsuits have Hooters’ PR Scrambling to Defend Its Image …
Steve Jobs Defends Apple’s Image as iPhone-Factory Suicides Mount in China …

(from mediabistro.com)
Bids Submitted For Newsweek Sale (NYT)
B-To-B Revs Down But Not As Much As Last Year (Folio:)
20 Young Writers Earn The Envy Of Many Others (NYT)
Nielsen Files For A Possible $1.75 Billion IPO (paidContent)
Step Aside, Brand Loyalty; We’re Loyal To Information Now (Nieman Journalism Lab)
How To Make Over A Magazine For The iPad (AdAge)
Anna Holmes Leaving Editor In Chief Position At Jezebel (Village Voice / Runnin’ Scared)
Ebony Magazine Names Amy DuBois Barnett Editor In Chief (FishbowlNY)
Hearst Acquires Marketing Services Firm iCrossing (minOnline)
Publisher Sara Miller McCune Has Serious Goals For Journalism (LA Times)
Why Journalists Should Learn Computer Programming (PBS / MediaShift)
Mark Bittman Debuts A New Column In Parents Magazine (FishbowlNY)
In May, Lower Ratings For Larry King (NYT / Media Decoder)
ABC’s Jake Tapper Tries To Lure Palin To ‘This Week’ Via Twitter (Yahoo)
Management Changes At Canon Communications (Folio:)

… and what it’s not.

The Media Orchard blog has an interesting post about brands and branding.  They take on Jeff Bezo’s comment that “a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.”  And rightly so.  As the Baradels’ team at the Orchard point out, branding is a little more complex than that.

Instead, they say, branding is much more:

Branding is all about personification — giving human traits to things that aren’t human … Branding communicates the continuity of a company’s business model — to shareholders, to customers, to employees. It says, “This is the kind of person we are — if we were actually a person.”

But here’s the hard truth to the matter:

Corporations are not human. And that’s a good thing, because if they were human, they would be sociopaths. This isn’t a cheap shot. A sociopath is a person who is interested only in their personal needs and desires. By definition, corporations are designed expressly to serve the interests of their shareholders — and only those interests.

Now, these are important facts to bring up when discussing brands and branding, but they only tell part of the story.

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(from Chief Marketer)
When:    Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 2pm EDT

Do you want to turn more prospects into profits? Attend the webinar “The Crawl, Walk, and Run of Lead Scoring” and discover how you can make smart business decisions about your leads by identifying your best prospects – boosting conversion rates, speeding sales cycles, increasing customer lifetime values and reducing marketing waste.

You will learn:

• How lead scoring and analytics can…
  • Improve call handling in a contact center
  • Optimize lead handling by a sales team
  • Refine and target follow-up marketing
  • Identify prospects with laser-like precision
• How the real-time application of analytics and scoring is helping companies change the way they do business—giving them a competitive edge
• Ways to quickly gain institutional buy-in with immediate results showing the full value of your analytics
• Best practices from our current lead scoring clients
• How to get more revenue out of your leads

Click here to register through Chief! Marketer.

(from BtoB.com)
When:    Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 1pm EDT

BtoB‘s Ellis Booker and Genius.com’s Parker Trewin provide an inside look and detail 7 key findings from the recent B2B Marketing Skills Survey, which zeros in on the evolving role of today’s marketer.

The research-based webcast will explore the survey findings on a wide range of hot topics, including:

• Evolving skill sets
• Success metrics
• Alignment issues

Additionally, the webcast will provide implications and outline possible actions for today’s connected B2B marketer.

Click here to register for the webinar.

(Editor’s Note:  Joe Grant is a pragmatic agency consultant who helps them grow and strengthen existing client relationships.  I’ve always enjoyed his newsletters on agency practices and corporate leadership and found this one particularly insightful. – Mike)

The Focus of Success
by Joe Grant

Some say success in our business has a lot to do with luck. Or hard work. Or both.

Well here’s my little aphorism for success based on years of seeing ad agencies run by many well-meaning and ambitious types. It’s not a catchy cliché but you’ll find it easy to remember: You get what you focus on.

The agencies we’d call successful — steady growth, an ever-enlarging list of 1st-class clients, a talented and respected staff, moving into better quarters every few years — get that way because they know how to concentrate relentlessly on where they want to go.

Read more on Joe’s blog.

News headlines for June 2, 2010 from mediabistro.com, The Daily Dog, Incentive Magazine and Marketing Experiments.  (Updated throughout the day.)

(from mediabistro.com)
How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit(Daggle)
Newsweek‘s Tumblr Responds To David Carr’s Sunday Times Piece (Newsweek Tumblr)
More On M.I.A., The Times And Truffle-Gate (NY Observer)
BPA Board Votes Down Controversial Reporting Changes (Folio:)
Aggregators, Curators, And Indexers: There’s A Difference, And It Matters (Nieman Journalism Lab)
Handicapping The Newsweek Mag Sweepstakes (NY Post / Media Ink)
ALM’s The Recorder Goes to Weekly Print, 24/7 Digital (minOnline)
Hyperlocal Network Mainstreet Connect Raises $3.97 Million First Round (paidContent)
Active Interest Media Acquires Skram Media (Folio:)
Departures Taps Steve DeLuca As Publisher (Mediaweek)
Christine Guilfoyle Named Publisher Of More (FishbowlNY)
Under Lorin Stein, The Paris Review Takes To The Blogs (NY Observer)
Vanity Fair Presents Awful View Of Sally Quinn (NY Post / Page Six)
CNN.com Inadvertently Reveals Al Gore’s Email Address (WebNewser)
Rush & Molloy: An Oral History (Gawker)

(from Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog)
Oil-Spill Criminal Investigation Launched…
Anti-Tobacco Marketers Take a Different Approach to Dissuade People from Smoking — By Targeting Their Insecurities …
White House Launches Into Aggressive PR Mode as Oil Spigot Remains at Full Blast …
Free-Speech Component of Critical Web Comments Challenged as Businesses Start Retaliating to Criticisms With Lawsuits …
Enterprise Support Mounting for the iPad: New IT Survey Suggests Four Out of Five Businesses Plan to Buy One for Their Company …
Media Claim They are Being Stiff-Armed for Reporting on Oil Spill …
Carmichael Lynch Spong Wins Most Big Apple Awards of Any Firm
Garanimals Maker Retains CooperKatz
ABI Celebrates 30 Years
Arthur W. Page Society Names Julia Hood President

(from Incentive Magazine)
Incential Adds Non-Cash Awards to Sales Management Software
Black & Decker Jigsaw With Smart-Select Dial
PPEF Announces College Scholarships Honoring Industry Icons
Column: How to Make an Incentive Meaningful – by Bob Nelson
Column: Dealing with a Dispersed Workforce – by Cindy Ventrice

(from MarketingExperiments)
Facebook Case Study: From 517 to 33,000 fans in two weeks (plus media coverage)
Evidence-based Marketing: Why you need more than just numbers to truly drive ROI
Online Marketing Optimization Technology: We have ways of making technology talk, Mr. Bond

Methodology Presented at La Londe Conference in Service Management Shows Service Indicators Can Predict Customer Potential

(from BIGResearch)
COLUMBUS, OH — (MARKET WIRE) – 6/1/2010 – A paper presented last Friday at the La Londe Conference in Service Management in La Londe les Maures, France demonstrates a new, non-invasive approach to behavioral targeting. This methodology developed by Professors Don Schultz and Martin Block (both of the Medill School at Northwestern University), using BIGreseach® Simultaneous Media Usage® Survey data, avoids online privacy issues by using services people subscribe to to predict purchase behaviors. The presentation demonstrated how this method can improve the predictability of purchase behaviors 20-70%.

The approach re-frames the whole question of behavioral targeting. Consumers often aren’t aware of electronic tags and “cookies” and such tactics can often be perceived as invasions of privacy. This research concludes that non-invasive service indicators – information consumers willingly provide via a survey – can be used to enhance existing behavioral targeting approaches at minimal cost.

“Relating service indicators to consumer purchases bridges the gap between services people use and the products people buy,” said Professor Don Schultz of Northwestern. “The example developed in the paper is only the tip of the iceberg and holds great promise for low cost, non-invasive predictability.”

Key Points – “Expanding the Success of Behavioral Targeting with Service Resource Availability”:

• Online behavioral targeting today is focused primarily on using “cookies” attached to web-based consumer searches. From these tags algorithms, are developed to estimate customer potential and then are used to deliver targeted advertising messages.
• The current system is generally based on a limited linear predictive model to generate results.
• This paper provides a methodology that extends and expands beyond tagging methodology to other, non-direct contact product categories.
• It demonstrates how adding commonly available consumer service indicators can be used to effectively increase the predictability of frequent and non-frequent purchases.
• In addition to avoiding privacy issues found in the current system, this methodology demonstrates the value of additional customer services resources as a method of improving general marketing capabilities.

Read the full complimentary paper: http://info.bigresearch.com

About BIGresearch®
BIGresearch is a consumer intelligence firm providing analysis of behavior in areas of products and services, retail, financial services, automotive and media. BIGresearch conducts the monthly Consumer Intentions and Actions®) of 8,000+ respondents and the semi-annual Simultaneous Media Usage® Survey (SIMM®) of 15,000+ respondents.

Vancouver-based Vitrium Systems announced the launch of a new, online service that allows marketers to embed a registration form into PDF’s. The new system, dubbed PDFSalesLeads, allows marketers to take advantage of the portability of electronic sales literature while providing an interactive form inside the document that will allow the reader to provide the contact information required to carry the sales process to the next step.

During a sneak peak of the new service, Vitrium’s Manager of Marketing and Communications, Randa Codron, explained how PDFSalesLeads provided a solution to the dilema of making prospects register to download PDF’s online or giving digital documents away without any idea of who’s reading them. “PDFSalesLeads allows users to complete their registration information inside the PDF while they are engaged with the content,” she explained. “You can set the form up to appear on any specific page, so the reader has a chance to decide whether the information your providing is something they want more information about.”

Furthermore, the technology stays with the document, so PDF’s that are passed from one user to another also pass along the interactive registration form. All registrations are collected in real time back at the PDFSalesLeads web site and can be integrated into SalesForce.com.

View an online demo.

This is a handy break-through for small and mid-sized marketers who want to expand their reach via the Internet but can’t spend a lot of wasted time sorting through irrelevant leads or trying to follow up on bogus registration information. At just $49 per month, the service is affordable.

The possibilities of this technology appear to go beyond simple registration. During our conference call, I asked if there were plans for creating other interactive forms that could be imbedded into PDF’s. While Randa couldn’t be specific, it does sound like PDFSalesLeads may be just the first of a number of utilitarian products to roll out of Vitrium’s R&D team.

We’ll be watching for more developments from Vancouver in the future.

(from Bulldog Reporter)
When:     Thursday, June 3, 2010 starting at 1pm EDT

Crisis veteran Gerard Braud shares his inside response secrets.

Search “BP” online right now—and what do you find? It’s a nightmare, of course. Chances BP will suffer from today’s horrible online buzz for years and years to come, thanks to the “long tail” effect of the Internet.

So what do you do when your company, client, CEO or brand faces a crisis—online or off? How do you win the war on the Web when bad news, flat-out lies or rumors strike in social media? How do you stem the tide before the damage goes viral?

As you know, the key to crisis survival is preparation—the ability to develop messages and implement response plans immediately, before the 24/7 media bang down your door, before you’re “tweeted” to death.

Here’s some solid help: To make sure your organization’s crisis plan is current and robust, I urge you to listen in on PR University’s upcoming audio conference: “Social Media When “It” Hits the Fan: What PR Must Know about Online Crisis Communications to Win the War on the Web.”

In just 90 information packed minutes, crisis guru Gerard Braud will reveal proven crisis response strategies that are guaranteed to increase your competence and confidence when combating reputation or brand disasters in today’s multi-dimensional communications environment.
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