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GoPro Is Perfect Example of National Media Pitch for PR

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I looked at the byline of the reporter; was I reading this amazing story in Fast Company? Close, but not. Tom Foster “has been an editor at Men’s Journal and Fast Company. This is his first story for Inc.”

My two all-time favorite ‘zines for business news, company innovation, entrepreneur success, and so much more. This story, “The GoPro Army—How a scrappy little camera company turned its customers into a stoked sales force and became a $250 million industry leader.”

Crumbs. You can’t beat that headline; it tells the story right there (and it took the whole page with 16 images from GoPro cameras to illustrate the first spread of the article). In true Fast Company form, the first two pages are in its style, while the last four are Inc.-esque.

What’s needed to get this kind of coverage money can’t buy?

Before I go into the elements for a national story pitch, I want to reference my message mapping articles again, and for good reason. I started writing this with the angle of “backing into a message map” because I had no idea this company existed (I’m not an extreme sports fanatic, nor would I ever consider the daredevil stunts GoPro does). As I was reading the first two pages with every line circled in three out of four columns (as blog fodder), I saw what the reporter told me come to life, “GoPro is a company that’s deeply invested in storytelling (primarily in the form of extreme sports videos.”)

As the reporter told his story beginning with hair-raising visuals as a passenger skedaddling through the Santa Cruz mountains in a Ford GT40 replica Le Mans racing car with GoPro CEO at the wheel, I was hooked. Not only was GoPro being acknowledged for its storytelling finesse, a master storyteller in Editor Tom Foster was recanting his personal adventure, too.

Just read the article, OK? You’ll get what I’m saying spot on.

Story Elements for National Media

So, let me try to share the elements you need for your company or client to be considered by national media.

The basics in this story are covered well.

Zany and photogenic CEO under 40-years-old

Proven profits and exponential company growth

Successful product with adoring consumers

Market monopoly (90% market share)

Industry everyone and anyone will drop jaws about.

 

The added bonus to making the pitch all the sweeter:

Product Line.  It’s a suite of “wearable, mountable and affordable HD video cameras that make all kinds of previously impossible shots much easier to capture. …they pack a surprising amount of power and versatility, especially for their $300 price tag.”

YouTube Views. The writer references three YouTube videos shot with GoPro cameras each with 12.4 million views, 2.8 million views and 2.1 million views. These postings are part of the arsenal of video posted to YouTube every two-to-three minutes (either by customers or the company’s 20-person in-house media team).

Industry Analysts. While it’s not always up to you to include industry analysts in your pitch to national media, it is an added bonus. “IDC estimates GoPro’s revenue at $250 million, on sales of 800,000 cameras world-wide. He (industry analyst) calls GoPro “the fastest growing camera company in the world.” (Redirect to sentence above – “coverage money can’t buy.”)

Customers/Users. GoPro has a Facebook fan base we can all drool over. “In 2011 alone, Facebook fans grew from 50,000 to more than 1.3 million.” (Gasp, who manages that community?)

Customer Engagement. Using the BARE (brand audience rate of engagement) score to track activity on Facebook, the CEO mildly states, “I think we have the most socially engaged online audience of any consumer brand in the world.” Indeed.

Social Brand. Read those words again. What do they actually mean? When you have a tiny video camera (any large corporation could’ve made, right?) you can wear, a global army of camera users is created every single day. Their videos of bungee jumps, an Alpine downhill, a coral reef exploration, or a kid’s race track excursion are all posted to YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+ and every limitless social media channel imaginable. Globally. This exponential, ubiquitous growth is unimaginable, but here it is right in front of us being presented by an upstart. (Is this CEO the future Steve Jobs?)

I’m blown away. No way in my lifetime will I ever get the chance to pitch a company story like this, and I’ve been pitching media too many years to count. I’ve had success with national media, for sure, and I know what it takes to see it through (sweat and tears). I also realize the challenges media relations professionals face to tell a story like this.

Here are my summary tips:

Get your message map(s) in order and tell your story. Put them into a format that lends itself to storytelling and not just word reading. Words on a page must come to life with passion.

Not involved in social media yet, Company X? OHMYGOSH! If this story is not your kick in the pants, nothing is…Get on it. I cannot tell you how serious I am; look at the fan engagement and the social branding (that alone rocks) behind GoPro success.

This story is a perfect example of what national media want to see in a perfect national story – social media engagement on a variety of channels along with this BARE metric. (Don’t worry,  I bet only the top 10% of companies are likely to have that metric clocked with any margin of influence.)

Engage with industry analysts. This is an aspect of public relations often ignored. It’s called industry analyst relations…simple. It’s different than investor relations and important for privately held companies that hold market share in their respective verticals.

This story is both an inspiration and a freak (no accident). As a public relations professional, work hard to touch upon these elements and show proof points in as many as you can. I’d hasten a guess this company is a media darling and one in a million, but it’s sure exciting to wonder what it’s like to be in the media relations and social media hot seats for GoPro.

(Image courtesy of GoPro Facebook page.)

Land’s End & Plus-Size Model Body Image

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I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a model. I love that stuff — the glitz, glamor, make-up, product, fashion of the runway. You can bet, though, I’d never model for Land’s End. When you watch the video here, you’ll get what I’m talking about…Land’s End makes its plus-size models look extraordinarily frumpy, having lack of confidence and implied low self esteem.

I leave you to watch and ponder as you consider whether I’ve got a point, or not. I’m offended; are you?

Klout Means Nothing; Carry On

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Were you as surprised as I was to see your Klout score bottom out nearly 14 points lower yesterday? I looked twice and did a “huh” and then remembered it was planning a total revamp of its algorithm and people would not be as influential as they thought they were.

Yawn. Whatever.  So what?

Let’s remind ourselves what influence is – there’s been so much discussion (the ‘sphere is alive and kicking with all the Klout posts today) about whether a number dictates your influence. It doesn’t! But, we’re all so competitive that when a number is associated with us that correlates to the frequency of tweeting and posting, we start to believe it!

Yesterday on the #MeasurePR Twitter chat with @Shonali and @JenZings, that question came up…is influence measurable?  I believe, perhaps, but not via Klout. Is Klout monitoring key words and strength of message within each tweet and post?  Who is awarding the +K and is it a game like for “cougar,” “sheep,” “wine,” or other non-influential word?

Imagine a software salesperson who RTs 100 tweets/per day; his Klout score would increase for sure. Now, look inside those tweets and see what they say – are they all tech oriented, or not? The latter…and herein lies the problem.

Klout is “measuring” frequency of exposure not the content within that exposure.

So, with your lower Klout score as of yesterday:

1. Carry on, Garth. It’s business as usual!

2. Create the engagement in your community you’ve been striving for all along.

3. Keep the conversations going about issues near and dear to you and recognize you will get something out of that communication but your Klout score will remain as is.

4. Don’t get so caught up about a number. Who are these guys anyway, associating their arbitrary algorithm to every peep who tweets? When you sit back and think of it that way, it’s clear – you are master of your own influence and no one else.

So, ready to ignore Klout and keep the momentum going?

Intel Inside & Storytelling

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Remember Intel Inside? Back in the day, when the first personal computers were being marketed, there was the little icon sticker, now iconic, on the screen that said, “Intel Inside.”

No consumer really knew what the heck that meant, but it sure as heck was a status symbol and every computer had to have it to work. Call that absolutely smart branding.

In Chief Content Officer, a supplement in B-to-B Magazine, Joe Pulizzi spoke with Pam Didner, Intel’s global integrated marketing manager. I am intrigued by several statements Pam made in this piece, and I’d like to share with you:

“Content marketing is everything we do on the B2B front.”  When it comes to consumers, Intel calls it “experience marketing — putting customers in the center and telling a story to which customers can connect emotionally.”

Think a minute. Intel is all about the insides of processors, computer chips, hardware components and other gizmos and widgets (that’s not a side-bar blogging app!). Consumers could care less, but the Fortune company has to make consumers care, and they do it by storytelling.

Case in point, here’s what Pam also said:

“Intel is an amazing brand. Our hero product, the microprocessor, presents us with a marketing challenge because our consumers cannot see it, smell it or touch it. We need to continue to find innovative ways to build brand relevance with consumers.”

(I am just sayin’ right now #storytelling has taken on new leafs; it is a hot trending topic right now on the interwebz…have you seen it on all the blogs again?)

Think 2. Could you imagine being on a marketing or PR team for a company that has a “hero product” no one can get sensitized to? By the way, I love that term, “hero product.” What that requires is the utmost in creativity and innovation.

Here’s one cool way Intel has adopted that innovative spirit:

The Museum of Me uses Facebook photos and video to create a museum or art gallery all about you/me. In its test pilot in late May, there were 36 “likes” in five minutes of launch. After five days, there were 1 million hits, and Intel’s global marketing/products teams had no idea it would take the world by storm.

How can we adopt some of Intel’s creativity and innovation into our own business objectives?

In a service business like many of us have, we have a marketing challenge much like Intel; our “hero product” happens to be our intellect and creative deliverables. No one can touch that, taste it or squeeze it (think Charmin) prior to purchase.

We have to be creative in how we set up our brand and show our “Intel Inside” to make customers’ lives improve. I’ll offer a few ways I think that’s possible, and then perhaps you might add yours:

  • Blog creatively with new and fresh ideas. There is so much inspiration you can take from reading anything and everything. In fact, you need a pen and paper to jot down ideas as you’re speaking with people because if you open your mind, they will come fast and furious; promise.
  • Design yourself and company with pizzazz. Yes, there are templates galore available to fashion into a blog or website, but go the extra mile and have someone tweak and customize it to make it yours.
  • Always be smart when posting anything anywhere. If your barrier goes down and you cut loose, know that your image is at risk. It’s easy to do — let down the walls as you feel so comfortable and forget the whole world is watching.

None of these thoughts are fresh or innovative, but when I put them side by side to Intel’s challenge with its hero product, it makes sense to me to reiterate the basics lest we forget our boundaries and get sloppy along the way.

What’s your story?

 

 

Run to Google+ to Engage!

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I would be remiss if I did not share my thoughts about Google+ after a weekend of playing. Here’s the upshot…RUN to Google+ and reserve your profile and nickname before others, especially if your name is common or there are duplicate names to yours.

The site is intuitive, addictive, fast, and organized. My network is not just being built from Twitter and Facebook, thank goodness, it’s coming alive with people I don’t even know.

* And, that’s what’s cool. Google+ is organized in circles. You can put peeps into a circle of friends, social media types, PR, family, following, or any other category you create and name. I found that I have pretty much three circles only; not sure I need to skew them deeper than that. If I did, it would be a simple click with a really cool interface to make it happen.

*As for content, I’m a bit unsure about posts up there. The weekend was full of banter; ahem, Ms. Dietrich was scamming the poor system in search of “free beer.”  I think she found it.

*What people are saying, and I fully agree, is they don’t want to see content being cross-posted from Twitter and Facebook. Because so many of us are connected on all channels right now, the cross pollination of content and repetitiveness would become  unruly. This remains to be seen…how folks will elect to share.

* The jury is still out how to best use this channel. What I’m hoping for is a more professional channel of business folks that would create a hotbed of learning, testing, and challenging/useful content. Again, if you follow those types of peeps and organize others into circles, that is highly likely to happen.

* Here’s one critical tip — secure your nickname. Here’s the link and it appears like this when you’re done In box one, type in the name you’d like to use to identify yourself. In box two, copy and paste just the numbers from your current Google+ account (found in the url in your browser). Click “add” and voila. You can use this to identify yourself rather than a cumbersome set of numbers and unwieldy url.

* When people  you don’t know add you to their circles, add them, too. In this beta phase, all peeps should be safe (not spammers yet unless her name is cough, Gini, cough).

* Re analytics, there’s a lot of banter about whether this channel will help drive blog traffic. Why wouldn’t it? I already had an alert for my profile here; I know that Google, being the search engine it is, is going to be monitoring traffic inside and pushing attention to the outside.

* One thing that is slightly disturbing to me, though, is the amount of data being transmitted via Gmail, to Crackberry and to iPad2, plus other mobile devices. Think about it…how will we keep data plan charges down when the mobile providers are all going to fee for usage plans? Anyone else have a thought on this? I got the idea after seeing the huge spike in Gmail traffic to my iPad and Blackbery; that’s a bit worrisome.

What’s your first impression, folks?