Archive for Storytelling
A funny thing happened on the way to the dairy counter
Posted by: | CommentsWhen I was still doing stand-up, one of my compadres had a regular bit where her punchline was “women: we make milk. We make eggs. We’re a dairy!”
I’m a big fan of the dairy. No, not the human variety, the kind you find in grocery & gourmet stores. So imagine my surprise when I saw the latest ad campaign from the US Milk Board. The Milk Peeps have been riding on “got milk?“ for almost 20 years.
It seems that they saw a niche messaging opportunity, and ran with it. Did they run over a cliff? You be the judge.
I’m a big fan of the funny, as you know. However, when you deploy the funny in service of a brand message, you’ve got to make sure that everyone in your intended audience is on board. Women howled in protest from sea to shining sea when the campaign was launched about 4 weeks ago.
As someone who knows PMS only too well – totally an insider, trust me – I would have advised the Milk Peeps to make a woman the face of the campaign. She could warn her boyfriend/husband/boss/random strangers that their lives might be at stake unless dairy products were brought forth right-damn-now.
And it wouldn’t hurt to add some commentary on the potential risks of drinking milk that has rBGH (a/k/a bovine somatotropin, or bovine growth hormone) in it: like the pus from mastitis – udder infection – that cows who get pumped full of the stuff wind up suffering from. Who needs that, right?
The campaign has certainly kicked off some buzz. I don’t think it’s exactly the buzz that the Milk Peeps were looking for, but buzz is, after all, buzz. Just ask Rupert “help-I’m-strapped-to-a-buzz-saw” Murdoch.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Jumping the Shark. And Jumping the Gun. Both bad ideas.
Posted by: | Comments
{EAV_BLOG_VER:fa0340bcabef07a3}
Netflix jumps the gun
When you announce a price increase, timing is everything. Netflix learned that the hard way when they broadcast a 62% price hike – from $9.99 to $15.98 – on their basic discs-and-streaming subscription package. The screaming was heard everywhere from backyard barbeques to CNN.
Netflix’s earning call was today – Monday, July 25, 2011 – and was almost entirely taken up by discussions about their price hike, not about their great share price increase. If they’d waited until today, or tomorrow, to announce their subscription rate hike, they would have looked like really smart business folks. Instead, they wound up being tagged greed-heads.
Over on Mediapost, David Goetzl shares a pretty good breakdown of the why and how of their communication #fail.
Old Spice jumps the shark
I’m a huge fan of the brilliant “your man could smell like … me!” campaign Old Spice launched in February 2010. Talk about giving an old-school brand a 21st century makeover – it’s a case study in how to create a viral juggernaut.
So now, they announce they’re replacing the new Old Spice Guy, Isaiah Mustafa, with … FABIO? Seriously?
I don’t know what their intended purpose is there. If they’re trying to build a rivalry to juice up the campaign, they could have picked a waaaay better foil for Mustafa than a faded Italian pinup dude whose voice sounds like he’s been inhaling helium. And whose biggest headline was generated by his getting beaned in the beezer by a goose while riding Apollo’s Chariot at Busch Gardens back in … 1999. So now Old Spice is partying like it’s 1999? What fun.
When it comes to successful business storytelling, your message is very important. The timing of that message is critical. Both Old Spice and Netflix offer cautionary tales on how not to jump the gun, or the shark.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Event PR: Plan or #fail
Posted by: | Comments
One of the best arrows in an organization’s business-building quiver is a well-executed event. Doesn’t matter if it’s a seminar featuring your company’s expertise, or a massive trade show effort in Vegas – planning is critical to achieving that “well-executed” tag.
And, other than the actual value-delivered-in-the-room, nothing matters more than your PR strategy and execution in support of that event.
In other words, failure to meaningfully plan your event’s PR will likely mean event #fail.
The rules:
- Give yourself enough lead time: an effective event PR strategy requires enough time to make the connections that will ensure success. Media, industry influencers, key company executives – you have to have time to build awareness and buzz.
- Build an engaging and informative media kit: this is particularly important for big events like major trade shows. Why is your organization creating or participating in this event? Tell that story from the ground up: the keynote speaker(s), the industry folks you’re targeting, the team putting together the event, the city where the event is happening. Make it accessible, with downloadable PDFs. Add video if at all possible.
- Reach out early and often (within reason!): develop a robust list of contacts who can make a difference to the event – press, top industry bloggers, communications directors at top companies in the industries you want to have attend the event. Share your information in engaging ways – see Bullet #2 for tips.
- Craft a comprehensive message calendar: media outlets use editorial calendars – PR pros do, too. For every event, build an editorial calendar for your messaging outreach. Assign tasks, track progress: lather, rinse, repeat.
Rapturous PR News & Notes From All Over
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been a busy month, and it’s not even over … yet.
First, we had the highly anticipated LinkedIn IPO 
last Friday, May 19. Analysts initially recommended a share price of $32-35, but the stock was priced at $45 at the open, roared up to $108+, and then closed the day just above $94. Today it’s trading at $83+, which still puts it in the “win” column, even if it seems a harbinger of Bubble 3.0.
Earlier this month, we had the Facebook campaign to smear Google,driven by some creative
dingbats at Burston-Marsteller. On the creepy/evil ratio, Facebook is creepier than “don’t be evil” Google, even though both of them do all kinds of data mining and privacy busting that their users often aren’t aware of. Full disclosure: I use both, but I’m rigorous about reviewing my privacy settings. Caveat emptor, baby.
And last-but-srsly-not-least, we have the Rapture’s #epicfail. I’m not sure who I feel more sorry for: the misguided nut-case Harold Camping who made spreading the May 21 Rapture word his mission, or the other nut-jobs who sank their life savings into helping Harold spread his #epicfail message. Need I repeat – caveat emptor, believers. If you believe in a divine being, don’t take a human being’s word for what said divinity has on his/her schedule. Really.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.
Tabloids, Noise, and Handcuffs. Film at 11.
Posted by: Mighty Casey | Comments (1)Also around that same time, CNN (acronym for Cable News Network, was referred to as Chicken Noodle News by those of us in “establishment” TV news at the time) brought the 24-hour TV news cycle to life. That was, I think, one of the first strikes on the first nail in the coffin where the body of real news ultimately got buried.
As my grandmother used to exclaim, “saints preserve us!”
That 24-hour spin cycle has now delivered the most meta of screaming headlines. A media shark frenzy is now chowing down on media itself: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and its burgeoning phone hacking scandal has, so far, brought us the heads of Rebekah Brooks, chief of News International and the last editor of The News of the World (I so will not miss that rag) and Sir Paul Stephenson, who was the chief of Scotland Yard until his career got hacked by hiring former NotW editors as Scotland Yard PR flacks.
The wind sown on the day that 24-hour spin cycle started – April 1, 1980 – is now reaping the whirlwind, and taking down an entire profession. Both Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner have a lot to answer for – I’m wondering how wide a net might ultimately be cast as the feeding frenzy keeps bloodying the news-business water.
I’m no longer working directly for any news organization, haven’t been for five years. Part of that decision was driven by the writing I saw on the interwebs wall. The web was eating the lunch of mainstream media, and combined with “the internet wants content to be free!”-ocracy that developed in the first decade of the 21st century, it all meant that making any kind of a living in media was going to be problematic at best, impossible at worst.
But what really drove my decision was my utter disgust at what had happened to a profession in the 20+ years I had been in it. I was passionate about news, about that first draft of history that is the news business, about the feel of newspapers in my hands, about covering stories that I thought were important, exciting, and informative.
Democracy only fully works when an educated citizenry has access to unbiased information about what their overall society is up to, going through, exploring, learning, or pissed off about. By “unbiased” I mean that the reporter isn’t inserting his/her own opinions into their reportage.
Calls ‘em like they sees ‘em – those should be the rules of the game.
Unfortunately, the advent of a 24/7/365 “feed me!” mindset, along with the rise of info-tainment – which dictates that everything from how Tiger Wood’s wife deploys his 3-wood, to whether or not some celebutante is or is not wearing underpants, to which loser gets a rose from some other loser on some “reality” show that’s about as real as Pam Anderson’s rack – as “news” has brought us here.
At first blush, the crew who was phone-hacking might seem to be just the lower-than-pond-scum Brit tabloid jerks. However, the investigation has crossed the pond, and the FBI is now looking into allegations that Murdoch’s minions were hacking the families of 9/11 victims, seeking headline-worthy dirt.
So, the next time you pick up a People magazine or a supermarket tabloid, watch Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, read TMZ or Perez Hilton, you must understand that you’re supporting the lack of real information available to move our society, our culture, and our world in a positive direction.
Yep, I’m talkin’ to you.
Stop the insanity.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…