Archive for the ‘PR’ Category

Marketers expect to allocate a third of their budgets to creating content in 2010, up from 11% in 2009, the annual survey from Junta 42 has revealed.

Social media, e-newsletters and blogs remain the top favoured content channels, with mobile the fastest growing segment.

The survey of 259 marketers also found that small businesses spend twice as much on content as large ones do.

Overall, 60% of marketers planned to increase spend on content in 2010.

Related research from Hubspot shows that small business blogging generates 55% more website visitors and 102% more Twitter followers.

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken about the importance of new digital channels in an address on the Vatican’s YouTube channel.

In a sixty second clip, he urges followers to make use of “the resources made available by the digital age in which we live”  describing it as “the urgent and unavoidable task” in the build up to The 44th World Day of Social Communications on May 16.

On his Pope2you website, the Pope’s Facebook, iphone application and YouTube channel, ‘The Vatican’ are evidence of his enthusiastic adoption of new media, though he is not yet on Twitter.

Personally I’d never heard of Jenny Craig until this week – apparently the weight loss company is a player in the $40billion US diet industry – and one that’s  about to get bigger, thanks to the publicity the market leader, Weight Watchers is handing it by way of a lawsuit.

The employment of lawyers to fight publicity battles is almost always a bad move. You wouldn’t ask a PR agent to defend you in court, why employ a lawyer to handle publicity? Tiger Woods did it recently and that’s turning out well isn’t it.

Even if the Jenny Craig claims are deemed misleading in court, dieters won’t care really, it’s mere semantics, they’ll give it a go anyway and in far higher numbers than if Weight Watchers hadn’t drawn attention to them in the first place.

If you look at the offending ad below, Weight Watchers isn’t even mentioned, they say only ‘the largest weight loss program.’ Now everyone knows exactly which brand is allegedly half as good as Jenny Craig while before it was oblique. Read the rest of this entry »

YouTube has announced it’s going into the movie rental business, starting with five films from the Sundance Film Festival, available from January 31st.

YouTube says it is reacting to movie maker requests for a finance model online that doesn’t rely on advertising – which doesn’t always fit their distribution and monetisation needs.

The Google Inc. owned company indicated that this is the beginning of an expansive plan to offer movie makers a new way of managing the distribution of their films.

“These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option”, YouTube said on their blog.

Google, which has struggled to make a profitable business out of YouTube after buying it in 2006 for $1.65 billion, may see pay-per-view as its best bet to grow revenues. Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting title for Gordon Ramsay’s comeback on C4 last night – no doubt the double meaning is not lost on Gordon Ramsay Holdings, in this first attempt at reputation escapology after “a shitty year” as he puts it at the start of the programme.

So Gordon’s gone to India on a culinary and personal journey to learn about authentic Indian food and show a different side to the sweary alpha-chef – a more humble, vulnerable, willing-to-learn Ramsay.

It’s an odd choice, a bit like Michael Winner seeking public redemption by reviewing kebab houses. Ramsay does genuinely seem at times appalled, deflated and out of sorts, the manic mannerisms are still there, the direct questions, but in languid India, where he’s definitely not in charge, the hyper Ramsay presenting style doesn’t quite work. Read the rest of this entry »

If a client phoned up and said – “we’re buying two new anaerobic digesters, can you get us some coverage – The Sunday Times maybe?” you could be forgiven for guffawing silently before moving into serious expectation management mode.

But there it was, half a page in The Sunday Times business section, a story about two anaerobic digesters. Few of their 1.1 million circulation can even have heard of these methane producing machines, I certainly hadn’t.

Signs that Bruichladdich, the 1881 whisky distillery buying them, is a talented, entrepreneurial business were much in evidence when I toured it back in May. From the slick packaging and innovative products, to the stealthy looking black helicopter parked on the lawn, Bruichladdich smacks of a star brand in the making. Read the rest of this entry »

McDonald’s has revealed plans for its Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics marketing campaign which will include a Facebook and Twitter scavenger hunt to promote Chicken McNuggets which, according to McDonald’s, is typically the favourite food of athletes at each Olympics.

The online campaign will feature the theme ‘How do you McNugget?’ and other PR activities include a 300 strong all star McDonald’s team, specially selected to run two restaurants at the games, along with celebrity endorsements. Here’s one of their ads:

Coca-Cola has published a guide to engaging with social media for its 92,400 employees worldwide, recognising that its brand reputation is now in the hands of more than just a handful of marketing executives and pr representatives.

There are three tiers of spokespeople in the brand’s ‘Online Social Media Principles’ document; unofficial, official and a shadowy referral unit, known only by an email address, online.relations@na.ko.com.

The official spokespeople will be certified through a Coca-Cola social media certification program before being turned loose to represent the company online.

Unofficial spokespeople, i.e., any employee knocking about on social media sites  are urged to remember that anything they say online may reflect on the company and to remain true to the company’s core values. Read the rest of this entry »

Forget the sludgy single digit percentage growth of traditional PR as predicted by December’s Strongmail survey, how about a piece of the triple figure rocketship that is social media marketing spend?

eMarketer’s interpretation of US figures from the Jack Myers Media business report (left), suggests there is a place for PR at the new marketing high table as social media outreach providers:

eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson writes:

“In 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of marketers’ expenses will go toward creating and maintaining a fan page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the impact of a social network presence on brand health and sales. Paid advertising will not be the primary focus, but it will serve to drive traffic and engagement with the larger social network presence.”

You’re unlikely to hear a PR agent publically criticise a major news outlet, unless they’re feeling commercially suicidal that day, yet sensationally Matthew Freud has made a gloves-off attack on Fox News, the leading US TV news network owned – and this is where it gets even more surprising – by his father-in-law, Rupert Murdoch.

Agreeing to contribute his thoughts to a New York Times profile of Fox founder and boss Roger Ailes, Freud said: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

Commentators suspect that his comments don’t so much represent a spectacular gaffe by Freud as a tactical move to destabilise the station chief. Michael Wolff, a biographer of Murdoch said “Matthew Freud, a PR man of extraordinary craftiness, is not going to say anything off the cuff, certainly not that.” Read the rest of this entry »