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Archives for August 2012

Google, Frommer’s, Zagat and Content Marketing

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from +Amanda Blain

Did you see the news? Google is carrying forth with its strategy to become a content marketer with the latest acquisition of Frommer’s travel guides for $25 million. In the world of travel guides, I wonder if that’s a lot of money? When you look at what Facebook paid for Instagram; it’s peanuts.

I, for one, love Frommer’s. It’s my travel guide of choice along with Lonely Planet. Last year, Google bought Zagat Reviews, and you begin to see the strategy unfold with its launch, too, of Google Flight Search.

Talk about becoming content kingpin in the travel and hospitality industry over night, eh?

So, what does this say about search engine Google now owning hot travel sites where hotter content rules? Because it can, it is diversifying in a sector that caters to a wide demographic from teens and tweens to mommies, business folk, seniors and great seniors.  How smart is that for a strategic move?

I don’t have to tell you that Google has opened up new and huge opportunity and successfully diversified its interests; much to the chagrin of Yelp and Yahoo!

What’s Your Google Strategy?

Here are some tips you might parlay in your own neck of the woods:

  •  If you’re @RalphDopping or @PattySwisher who work in the architectural fields, perhaps their firms might join forces with a construction company or launch their own. Small construction is still a good bet (versus building high-rise office structures), and perhaps architects can earn a greater piece of the pie.
  • If you’re @KaarinaDillabough who works as a business and life coach, is there a way to boost business by developing killer content that encapsulates tips for the stressed mommy entrepreneur? She can build a new channel that way; open new doors.
  • If you’re @NeicoleCrepeau who owns Coherent Interactive, a digital web shop with marketing analytics, perhaps she could partner with Soulati Media, which brings solid PR experience to marketing teams.
  •  Adam Toporek diversified his brand; I watched the whole thing. He decided to refocus his brand new blog on customer service and went dark awhile as he rebuilt the site and now targets content specific to that topic. Now, when I write my customer service stories, I always shoot them to him as they fit better on his blog than mine.  What’s he done? Become a content expert in that sector, just like Google is doing in hospitality and travel.

Very cool.

More Fast Company Social Media Cover Story Disappointment

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Credit: Jayme Soulati

By now, you’ve seen the Fast Company cover story, with tongue in cheek and not in check, about social media being “kinda” sexy. It’s the tonality and a few other things in question for me. If you’re late to the party; it’s not too late to see it here.

I wrote about this Monday and wasn’t happy or unsurprised that PR is getting short shrift at the mahogany table (said Barrett Rossie in blog comments) by others in the digital space AND Fast Company.

What gave me pause when reading the story start to finish was the entire tonality of the piece as well as one word choice in particular by a Fast Company staff writer, I presume (there are no bylines for the featured tips and secrets).

In comments Monday, Geoff Reiner, of Clarity for The Boss, and I were chatting about the disappointment with that kind of sub-quality wording, IMHO.

People who read Red Head Writing know and expect her to use this language in all of her post, something I’d never do and gasp upon reading a blog like the link provided. If you don’t like it, “her house, her rules,” as she always shares.

While it doesn’t sit well with me ALL the time (I’ve been known to use the f-bomb for emphasis in an adjectival sense), what bothered me about Fast Company was my stupid expectation, the props I ALWAYS give that publication, and subsequent let down as a result.

Fast Company Poor Editing

Here’s the passage; you can be the editorial judge:

“So how does a brand be intimate with a person? It’s a major mindfucker. Brands want Facebook ads to look more like the rest of their stuff; to put this new thing in an old shape.” (Fast Company, Insider’s Secret No. 2, Facebook to Ad Creatives: Help! Please!, September 2012)

So, the crux of the matter is the following, and Jenn Whinnem also raised a great point about journos and bloggers related to respectability and credibility:

Should nationally published magazines be upheld to greater standards than professional bloggers? Is the tone of this cover piece the way Fast Company itself gets invited to the table as a content marketer/blogger (thanks Ralph Dopping for that thought)?

I laud this publication every week in blog posts because I relish its content for its ability to generate blog fodder and mojo for me as a professional blogger. This cover piece on social media, although providing great inspiration for many a blogger, isn’t what I had in mind.

What say you?

Is PR Getting Short Shrift in Social Media?

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Back in the day when I was a whippersnapper in Chicago’s PR agencies, the lament was “we weren’t getting a seat at the boardroom table.”

Fast Company landed on my desk several days ago; I devoured the cover story, “Social Media Is Sexy (kinda).” It features “38 ironclad rules (sorta); 18 (uncomfortable) truths); and 6 can’t lose secrets (you wish).”

From the tone of the headers on the cover, insert tongue squarely in cheek.

Turn to “Insider’s Secret No. 5 — You Hired The Wrong People.” (The strange thing about these pieces is I can’t tell who wrote them; no bylines at top or bottom of articles.

At any rate, this writer says “To be a good social media person at a brand, you have to have a background not just in digital or marketing, but also in your product. There are so few people with that blend of experience.

And…

“People are always shoving social into marketing, or they’re shoving it into digital. It’s actually all this stuff: It’s marketing, it’s digital, it’s creative.”

AHEM!

Dear Mr./Ms. Fast Company Insider Secret No 5 Author:

Public relations practitioners are highly qualified to manage social media. We know the product inside and out (that’s how we promote it); we are content marketers with better than decent writing skills; we’re creative; we are strategists; we are also business people; and, we have a keen interest in the bottom line — you know the ROI and analytics of it all?

Kindly include PR in the future when writing about social media wherever your tongue is.

#ThatIsAll,

 A Credible PR and Social Media Marketing Practitioner

So, PR, are you getting a seat at the social marketing table? Or, are our sisters in related disciplines getting all the glory?

The PR Benefit of Visionary Patagonia

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Fast Company never disappoints. There’s more blog fodder in a single magazine than reading Mashable every day. In a tiny blurb in the May issue, The Rules of Good Business, the founder of Patagonia is interviewed.

After yesterday’s blog post about the C-suite executive for Chick fil-A and how his views caused horrific PR, look at how cool the Patagonia PR team must feel to be working with a visionary CEO the likes of Yvon Chouinard.

After reading the Fast Company story and my observations:

        • Buy Patagonia
        • Become a sustainabililty consumer
        • Start the learning curve about saving our planet simply by purchasing the right article of clothing

Did you know Patagonia is one of the greenest/cleanest and environmentally savvy companies around? Its founder, Yvon Chouinard, is a green-living pioneer who has put green squarely on corporate and consumer maps.

Patagonia lives and breathes love of our planet. Among its product suite, there are about 40 items the company follows every step of the supply chain to monitor how natural resources are used. The company knows exactly the type of water (i.e. well, irrigated) being used and its effect on the environment.

Chouinard introduced the sustainability index; Patagonia is working with 40 clothing companies, such as Walmart, to put green buying directly into the hands of consumers.

In the near future, smartphones can be pointed at an article of clothing and the shopper can see a clothing item’s sustainability index grade. A pair of jeans may have a score of 10 or 2 based on a variety of factors. How flippin’ cool is that?

Why Buy Patagonia?

When you think of founders of companies, you want to believe each has the best interest of a cause, an issue, Earth, natural resources, children, or something else in mind. With the Patagonia founder, it’s true. His vision for the future of Earth depends on consumers participating and making choices not to buy fabrics made in sweat shops where children are employed or from sheep’s wool or cotton in lands without environmental regulations. He wants our natural resources protected during the manufacturing process, and he’s all about water preservation. (How many people you know swimming in our lakes getting infected with flesh-eating bacteria and staph? Tons.)

Marketing and PR Opportunity

  • Is your company leader a visionary? Can you put that vision into action and develop strategic campaigns to positively influence a global issue?
  • With the top-down strategy, how can PR influence audiences who consume your company’s products or services?
  • When you consider thought leadership programs putting your visionary CEO on the frontlines with impactful messaging and use owned media to push that message, you’ll get your results with so many more benefits, too.

What a difference reading about Mr. Chouinard and Patagonia versus Dan Cathy and Chick fil-A. The former’s efforts toward sustainable consumerism have yet to be trendy, but somewhere the pendulum has to swing to the side of consumers’ green education more than just recycling PETE.

Want to work with a cool company the likes of Patagonia with an even cooler visionary? Then do your research ahead of time; it just may make a difference.

 

(Photo Credit: Jayme Soulati, iPhone 4S)

 

Brand Loyalty And Chick Fil-A User Experience

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Customer service is dead. Right? Well, that’s what everyone says about blogging, and MySpace and Instagram and everything else that’s been taken over or gobbled up.

This post is a mash up of customer service, brand loyalty, personal perspective and a mom’s conundrum

Guess where customer service isn’t dead? At Chick fil-A. I should know because kidlet and I eat there once weekly during the school  year because select soccer and taekwando do not allow a sit-down dinner at home.

 

On Chick fil-A

Here’s what happens at the Chick fil-A restaurant we frequent in Centerville the most:

  • They greet you with a smile every time.
  • They come to your table to ask if you need a refill and if everything is OK.
  • They come to your table to clear refuse even though patrons do it themselves.
  • They say bye when you leave and thanks for coming (when it’s not too busy).
  • There’s a coupon for a free this or that twice monthly, and they text me with deals, too.

All age groups frequent the establishment, and it caters to sports teams, school clubs, senior citizens, fund-raisers, and more. The bathroom is always clean, and so too is the facility.

Differences of Opinion

This is why I’ve had a hard time. By now, everyone and their brother knows the President and COO Dan Cathy has views that may or may not mesh with mainstream America. While I don’t agree with Mr. Cathy on a number of perspectives, his philosophy on a variety of core societal issues is alive and present in today’s divisiveness. But, that’s  his and my business, and I refuse to debate that on my blog or anyone else’s.

Because my user experience is so positive at Chick fil-A, and oh yes, the food is excellent for fast food (how could I fail to mention that minor detail?), I will continue to go there in spite of my disagreement over Chick fil-A leadership. (You know they’re closed on Sunday even in food courts, right?)

Those who have never been to a Chick fil-A more than a few times are hard pressed to form the opinion I have. When my choice as a mom is McDonalds, Taco Bell or Chick fil-A in a pinch, you can guess what I’m choosing.

 Blog Comments

Every blogger has been enraptured with the PR debacle of Chick fil-A. As is my wont, I am not the first mover when it comes to new apps, channels, or breaking news (well, I do sometimes break a story). I let the other guys pave my way, and oh boy, did Gini Dietrich’s blog do a yeoman’s job. 

(I’ll write about the highjacking, not good old blog jack, Kaarina, of Spin Sucks in comments another time.)

And, so, I’m a tad disappointed with myself for not supporting my own standards; does this make me a  hypocrite? I don’t know; I’ve not come out and  forcefully stated my opinions publicly like the founder of Chick fil-A. Was that a PR stunt? Lesser things have happened.

Visionary CEOs

Tomorrow, I’ll write about another CEO who does have vision and is trying to support Earth with his eco green actions.

So, my brand loyalty to Chick Fil-A has been tarnished. But, my brand loyalty will soon begin for Patagonia (until tomorrow, dear readers!).

 

Meanwhile, what say you on this issue? When customer service and food excellence outshine the shenanigans of the C-suite, what do you do?