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Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging

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Citigroup CEO Launches Citi Bike With Best Messaging Ever

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Credit: https://citibikenyc.com

In a recent issue of , scored a huge tandem win in New York City with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The financial behemoth put $41 million into a and tourists to traverse the narrow streets of Manhattan on three-speed blue Citi Bikes with puncture-resistant tires. After three years of study, the program launched May 27, 2013 (in time for a three-day weekend).

The program has been hugely successful with 4.7 million trips and 9.4 million pedaled miles “obliterating projections.”

That’s not all.

Mr. Pandit delivered messaging that so completely blew me away, I had to share.

Here is what he said word for word as extrapolated in the Bloomberg Businessweek story,

“Pandit smiled and took the microphone. ‘Citi Bike is kind of like the Zipcar for bikes. It’s better for the environment. It’s also good exercise. People will be able to borrow a Citi Bike wherever they want and return it at their destination. This should lead to fewer cars on the road. It should lead to less crowding on subways and buses and better access to neighborhoods far from public transit.’ And best of all: ‘As the mayor said – all of this without using any taxpayer money!’”

The Citi Bike Message Map

When we dissect these neat sound bites packed with punch, we can see a perfect message map that covers all the benefits Citi Bike has to offer and squarely positions Citigroup directly on top; not to mention the expert delivery of Mr. Pandit.

Let’s take a look:

  • Home Base Message – this is the primary descriptor of Citi Bike; the easy message everyone can recall and relate to.
    Citi Bike is like the Zipcar for bikes. Mr. Pandit added “kind of like” to the description which is perfectly fine as he made the factoid his and personalized it.
  • Second Tier Messages – Each of these, usually four, second tier messages provide further explanation about the company or program. They could be about customers, price, innovation, benefits, investment, etc.
  • Citi Bike is better for the environment.
  • It’s good exercise.
  • It’s convenient – people can borrow a Citi Bike at origin and return it at their destination.
  • Less crowding. There will be fewer cars on the road, fewer people on subways and better access in neighborhoods.
  • Cost to taxpayers? FREE!

How Citigroup CEO Scored

Typically, the delivery of quick, spot-on messages is rare by CEOs of companies. What’s also rare is the fact that a journalist reported the messages in the story. Mr. Pandit earned something like 14 lines of a quote in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek story. Wonderful.

Let’s address one more thing – the subject of the story. Who can resist such a feel-good story for Manhattan? I love the point that the cost to tax payers is zilch; not to mention the proven mileage pedaled and trips tracked already!

When a publicly traded company the size of Citigroup is front and center with media, it’s customary for the highest executive to take the lead position. Mr. Pandit hit this one out of the park, and why not? He knew it was a homerun before he stepped up to the plate.

P.S. Hat tip to the Citi Bike website; it’s one of the best I’ve seen…take a look when you get a chance!

Startups Should Hire PR Early

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What-is-the-plan.jpgDuring the earliest stages of a startup, there are many discussions and decisions about how a business will launch and with which bells and whistles to go to market. Marketing needs to be involved in these earliest stages; does public relations?

The very lawyerly answer is, it depends.

When you work with a hybrid public relations professional who brings 30 years of experience to a team, then public relations influences a startup’s business strategy. There is even counsel delivered by public relations that can influence business model. This expertise comes from years of innate knowledge acquired from representing clients across industries.

A public relations professional is a startup’s single-most critical member of the team, especially during pre-launch.

Why?

While marketing morphs the business, public relations stands in the wings absorbing the dynamics of company culture and adding expertise from the outside looking in. While executives are safely spinning their business model, public relations contributes external perspective from the vantage point of a variety of stakeholders.

  • What will media ask; what will executives say?
  • What would investors and boards of advisors want set up at the start point?
  • Will consumers be able to understand why this company matters?

Startups Spend Time Inside

The formation of a company requires intense focus on the inside of a company. There’s so much more that happens beyond writing a mission statement or determining company values, structure and model.

What’s likely most confusing is the fact that public relations, in the presence of marketing, will not influence the inside of a company as much as it will influence how the company is positioned for external consumption.

Please read that again.

Therein lies the major differentiator among marketing and public relations – we who do the latter will always be listening for the language we need from marketing to describe and position a company for audiences who reside outside the company.

Throughout my career, I have influenced the business model of a startup. Because I bring such a breadth of experience across industries, it’s comfortable for me to share insights based on three decades of influencing results and driving measurable campaigns.

Ultimately, the best team for a startup is one where marketing and PR work hand in hand so all the expertise is conjoined with the same goal. Usually, that’s rare as the startup budget cannot afford a seasoned or deep team with these key players.

Would I to choose which professional to hire at the outset, it would be public relations – a seasoned, hybrid professional who has continually innovated and morphed alongside industry and technology.

PR And Marketing

Public relations is blending more with marketing than ever before; that’s nothing new, it’s been happening for years, yet now everyone is finally labeling what’s happening. Although the disciplines of marketing and public relations are blurring, there is still a major gap in understanding of how public relations delivers.

The logical progression for a startup is to hire marketing to morph its insides with branding, mission, vision, values, etc. When done, public relations enters from the wings during pre-launch. The positioning begins.

  • Public relations rolls in with a message mapping process.
  • Executives are trained to deliver strong messages to external audiences.
  • The business model is tested with all the key audiences in mind.
  • A strategy unfolds to announce the company’s existence with the differentiators in place.
  • A media relations strategy is launched to announce to the market this company exists and is serious about earning a spot in the vertical market.
  • Social media and blogs are launched to continuously push content.
  • Public relations and marketing blend and work cohesively to execute strategy.

No Budget? Hire PR

What if a startup is working on a shoestring budget? There are seasoned public relations professionals who can bootstrap alongside a startup.

When a startup needs communications and marketing counsel, a public relations professional is the best hire at the outset. Someone who knows enough about technology, business, messaging, strategy, positioning, marketing blend, and much more.

Having the ability to write professionally is critical; adding someone to the team who is a professional blogger and media relations professional is smart for a startup.

To understand more about why PR is a better hire for startups than marketing,

contact Jayme Soulati at jayme at Soulati dot com. The hands-on experience is there.

You may dial 937-312-1363, as well.

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The Happy Friday Series: Suddenly Delightful Jamie

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Jamie-Wallace.jpgThink about your online friends and how long you’ve known them. In 2009, when I was a Twitter noob, this woman with my same name and different spelling asked for people to vote her to the top of some contest. What did I know? I stepped up to help without a clue what I was doing, but I lent her support because she asked and it seemed to be a good cause.

Since then, Jamie Wallace and I have uncovered more similarities betwixt and between. She’s a good egg and one who shows her smarts in a variety of places. As communities go, she’s one to invite, befriend and love for life.

As Suddenly Jamie on Twitter (I never knew why she suddenly became Jamie – maybe she changed her name suddenly?) and via her blog, Suddenly Marketing https://suddenlymarketing.com, Jamie writes about stuff like this:

I help my clients craft standout brands, transform ideas and visions into profitable content, and create rave-worthy brand experiences. Part strategist, part writer, and part cheerleader, I love making marketing fun. I’m also a mom, an aspiring fiction writer, a prolific blogger, and a student of voice, trapeze, and horseback riding (not at the same time … though, that would be interesting …).

When she was invited to write for The Happy Friday Series, she did that with aplomb; her obvious life zest is apparent in the story when she asked whether life should be serious.

Here’s what’s cool about Jamie…she approaches life with appreciation, asking why all the way.

Look at this post she wrote about “delight.”   It’s a word she says we don’t use often…see here:

Delightful is not a word we use very often. It seems, perhaps, slightly antiquated for our times – a little too naive, a little too simple.
Such a shame.
To me, delight is more than just pleasure or even joy. Delight embodies a more complex feeling that is layered with the sense of having been given a gift (as in when we say, “Delighted to meet you”) and a sense of surprise – of happily coming upon some unexpected goodness, beauty, or kindness.

But what is really delightful is this sentence Jamie wrote and today’s gift Jayme gave:

So, to be delighted is to be gently jolted out of your everyday existence by someone or something presenting you with an unexpected gift.

Thank you for writing for The Happy Friday Series, Jamie.

Love, Jayme.

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Social Media, IT And Analytics Have Created Title Soup

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soup.jpgAdvertising Age featured a story, “Don’t Call Me CMO: Top Marketers Say Job Has Evolved Beyond Title,” I find quite amusing.

The giggle is more about the why.

Why do people feel the need to define themselves based on a single three-to-five word title? When a professional reaches the level of chief anything officer, they have successfully moved along the professional development career path to become a chief.

Why don’t we call everyone in the C-suite “Chief Cook & Bottle Washer?” That would sum up the role we’re all playing in the workplace today, right? Technology, analytics and social media have created a pea soup of necessary qualifications, and the chief marketer appears to be the most confused.

According to the article, some of the “better titles than CMO” proffered are:

  • Chief Value Officer – what does “value” really mean? Value of what?
  • Chief Growth Officer – isn’t marketing about growth already?
  • Chief Innovation Officer – ah-hah, but limiting right? You come up with the ideas only and don’t put them into action?
  • Chief Commercial Strategist – as opposed to residential?
  • Chief Customer Officer – Who is the customer? Inside, outside? Maybe this means a sales person who is adopting a role in the C-Suite.

Title Soup in PR

Coming from a discipline of marketing frequently at odds about titles and roles, I get the confusion and need to create identity in the marketplace. Public relations professionals have been grappling with professional branding for a very long time; of late, we’ve been quite clever about hiding behind a really cool title to mask the fact we’re in public relations.

Perhaps it’s cool to be in public relations again?

I have now adopted the new label of “hybrid PR” for myself, thanks to Gini Dietrich’s blog post awhile ago when she described all the things PR peeps do in the marketing arena and it matched my competency. The only problem is it still requires explanation. At least hybrid vehicles paved the way for a combo engine, and people looking at a title can guess that hybrid means many things added to the mix. It’s pretty easy for me to just be president of Soulati Media, Inc. because that it indeed the title put on incorporation documents to get my federal tax ID number.

For those who lead teams in a corporate environment, there is so much merging and blending happening that I can see why the title thing has become an issue.

I don’t think there is a title for the chief marketing officer that can capture everything they’re responsible for, do you? The kettle has to simmer first before anyone will be able to tell.

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The Happy Friday Series: Alaska Chick

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Alaska-Chick-horse.jpgShe’s just about the most #RockHot person to write about because she’s so darn easy to tease; yet, she is always right there to volunteer, say yes, support you, send a hug, be happy, and share a good yarn or three from all the way up in the darn middle of Nowheresville, Alaska.

I kid you not; this single mom, I call AL because her name is too long to tweet, has a herd of kids (well, maybe three). She’s the face of Pioneer Outfitters in the heart of Alaska where there’s no road or airport. They have to fly their own little planes, until they blow up (not kidding). They have horse trails, and the mail gets dropped from a bi-plane like every two weeks (kidding)

Have you met Amber-Lee Dibble?

Pioneer-Outfitters-Plane-Fire.jpgYou may know her as Alaska Chick, Pioneer Outfitters’ blogger extraordinaire, or Girly Grizzly; I think she answers to all three with a guffaw every time. Ask her why she has so many brands, and she’ll tell you to ask me.

Well, all kidding aside, AL has written for The Happy Friday series none other than three times! Apparently, she’s really happy, or she keeps writing about it to tell herself she is!

Should I put all kidding aside for a sec? (Hard to do; that’s why I said a sec.)

Amber-Lee Dibble

She’s  the most loyal friend you’ll ever meet. She will always help someone down and out. She will write a guest post for you whenever one is needed, and she never puts on airs suggesting she knows something when she doesn’t. She is so transparent and vulnerable which both make her the sweetest candy on Earth (because she lives in another part of the Milky Way, uhmm, maybe she’s a bit salty up and over there).

Why I love AL is because of all this and more.

The more is so astonishing because she’s a woman of the wilderness with a hot temper who wears pink all day long. Pink riding gear on horseback, pink galoshes and boots, probably pink panties, too. She sticks out like a sore thumb with all that snow up there, and I’m sure the grizzly bears are afraid of her, too.

No, seriously, she is kick ass in the wilderness communing with Mother Nature and the 30 below temperatures. She is a trainer of wilderness guides, a big game guide and a survivalist (I just made that up; AL, are you one of those, too?)

The really funny thing that makes me  happy about this post today is that AL is like six hours behind me; so she’ll be in the middle of R.E.M. when we go live without her. So, anyone want to banter a bit in comments about AL before she wakes up and grabs some Joe?

Thanks, Amber-Lee Dibble, for being part of this #RockHot community and contributing so many times to this series. I certainly would not have gotten this off the ground without your help. Much love and warmth to you and your Alaska family.

Happy Thanksgiving; we have much to be thankful for. I am thankful I have such a good sport friend who allows me to poke a little at her; but who’s to know if that’s really true? We’ll see in about six hours!