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Win and Win Big! Five Tips for Using Online Contests to Raise Brand Awareness
Marketing… By Sandra Fathi, President, Affect
Raising brand awareness in a competitive media environment can be a challenge. Many companies struggle with developing creative strategies to engage their target audiences effectively, and as media platforms become ever more crowded, brands face fierce competition for attention. Leveraging online contests to raise awareness about brands and generate interest in products and services can be extremely effective. Specifically, online promotions can help you:
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Blowfish: A Private Life in Pubic Relations – Episode VI “Mexico Bound”
PR Fiction… By Steve Lundin, Author
Recap: Jack Vance, the colorful CEO of Blowfish Communications, has been hired to engineer the launch of VGlobe a new online video network. He has just explained the premise of a program that will put the network on the map: “Some Will Die” – a reality weight loss program engineered to render all contestants dead. Their proposed host, Vladimir Berber, is being held in a Mexican jail. Vance and a team are heading down to Mexico to free him.
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Edison Investment Research Continues Expansion, Filling Void in Equities Research
IR Therefore I Am… By Gene Marbach, SVP, Makovsky+Co.
Headquartered in London, Edison Investment Research is a leading international investment research company. It has grown to a team of 90 including over 55 analysts supported by a department of supervisory analysts, editors and assistants. Edison writes on more than 400 companies across every sector and works directly with corporates, fund managers, investment banks, brokers and other advisers. Edison’s research is read by institutional investors, alternative funds and wealth managers in more than 100 countries.
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PR Myth: Social Media Monitoring and Analysis Is All about “The Tool”
By PRIME Research for the PR ROI Channel
Truth: The emergent recognition that social media listening is the first step in developing meaningful interaction, engagement and relationships with customers and stakeholders created a cascade of technologies to monitor and analyze social media. Technology pledges countless benefits including speed, accessibility and low costs…some are free.
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Texting for a Cause: U.S. Government Embraces Mobile Clicks to Help LGBT Community
By CSRWire for the Corporate Social Responsibility Channel
If you thought that national governments were stuck in the Dark Ages of Bureaucracy encumbered with tedious, administrative paper-pushing, the U.S. State Department is out to prove you wrong. Perhaps that’s not surprising. With President Obama fully understanding the meaning of “trending” and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going viral, you might not be surprised to see a U.S. government department leveraging the power of modern communications technology and online tools to spread its message.
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Brand Experience vs. Branded Experiences – Free, Google+ Hangout Event
Champions of IMC… Free Event hosted by Russ Meyer, Siegel+Gale
Expertise: As global strategy director, Russ helps deliver remarkably clear and unexpectedly fresh brand experiences. His expertise includes corporate and brand positioning and communications strategy, as well as new product ideation and formulation.
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16 Days to Win: Compete Like an Olympic Sponsor with Edelman & comScore – Free, Google+ Hangout Event
Champions of IMC… Free Event hosted by Dave Armon, Critical Mention
SESSION OVERVIEW: The 2012 Olympics offers a 16-day window to reach a highly engaged audience, and is one of the most effective international marketing platforms in the world, reaching billions of people in over 200 countries and territories throughout the world. Exploring the most recent technologies, platforms, and marketing strategies, participate in a Google Hangout with Edelman’s Steve Rubel, comScore’s Eli Goodman and Critical Mentions’ Dave Armon as they discuss what it takes to compete and win in a highly competitive and time-sensitive media environment.
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PR Pros Missing Digital Opps: 2012 Online Newsroom and Digital Media Relations Survey
PR Web
The PRESSfeed 2012 Online Newsroom and Digital Media Relations Survey results highlight that many PR pros are missing opportunities for media coverage because they are not supplying features that the media need and want. Among the findings: 86% of media websites use images and video with a story. 80% of journalists and bloggers regard images with news as very important and say it significantly improves the chance of them using that content in a story. They expect to find images readily available in a company newsroom. More than a year ago a PR Newswire study clearly showed that adding visual elements to a release can increase views by as much as 77%. Yet when asked what features journalists and bloggers think are important only 4% of PR people said they thought images were very important, 22% said they were important and just over half (56%) of the respondents routinely add images to their press releases. When asked why they don’t add images 39% said they thought it was not necessary, 7% said they don’t know how and 54% said they do not have the resources to produce visual content …
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Dale Olson, Publicity Agent for Rock Hudson, Other Stars, Dies at 78
The Los Angeles Times
Dale Olson, an elder statesman of the Hollywood publicity corps whose assignments over a four-decade career included representing Rock Hudson during the last months of the actor’s struggle with AIDS, died Thursday of complications of liver cancer. He was 78. Olson, who lived in the Hollywood Hills, died at a nursing facility in Burbank, said his spouse, Eugene Harbin. A savvy promoter of Oscar-worthy movies, Olson helped craft campaigns for stars such as Maggie Smith in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), Shirley MacLaine in “Terms of Endearment” (1983) and Robert Duvall in “Tender Mercies” (1983). During 18 years at Rogers and Cowan, he rose to head the agency’s motion pictures division, leaving to run his own Beverly Hills publicity firm, Dale C. Olson & Associates, in 1985. That year, Olson found himself in the middle of a media storm when reporters began raising questions about Hudson’s health after the actor appeared shockingly gaunt at a public appearance with his former leading lady, Doris Day …
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Sports Marketers Hope for Olympic Committee Reversal on Social Media
ClickZ
In the world of sports, fans and athletes willingly or unknowingly accept the fact that advertising and major marketing campaigns are part of the game. The Olympic Games, albeit a unique sporting spectacle with unmatched reach and interest, is no different. But this year’s competition has left many Olympians feeling muzzled by the International Olympic Committee’s Rule 40, which prohibits athletes from appearing in advertising or mentioning sponsors on social media outlets during a 29-day period that includes the official 17 days of the Olympics. The major sticking point for most amateur athletes is that this rule and other IOC guidelines extend to social media, meaning they can’t tweet, post or blog for any marketing or advertising purpose. Most brands and marketers haven’t found that middle ground yet, and indeed many were surprised by the IOC’s rules governing social media engagement in particular …
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A Whistle-Blower Ended GM CMO’s Career
Examiner
You could argue that it was the results of his advertising decisions — imitative, meaningless and misleading commercials, dropping sales and profits, loss of market share, loss of number-one worldwide position to Toyota (again) — that cost GM global marketing chief Joel Ewanick his job. But if you did, you’d be wrong. According to reports emerging today, it was something much worse in a conservative, business-as-usual corporate culture that values process over results (a trait Government Motors shares with its largest shareholder — the United States government — and its CEO). According to GM insiders, a whistle-blower ratted Ewanick out for the capital offense of…cutting corners — over the Manchester United jersey sponsorship deal. The seven-year deal Ewanick negotiated for GM, to start in 2014, costs $559 million. That’s an average of $79.9 million a year, or 2.5 times what Aon’s paying — and that’s not including a $100 million activation fee …
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Goldman Says SEC Closed Probe of Firm After Threatening Case
sfgate.com
Goldman Sachs Group said U.S. regulators ended an investigation of its role in selling $1.3 billion of mortgage-backed securities and won’t sue the firm, reversing course after investigators warned in February that they intended to recommend legal action. SEC lawyers told Goldman Sachs on Aug. 6 that they no longer planned to pursue claims against the bank, the New York-based company said today in a regulatory filing. The regulator had sent Goldman Sachs a so- called Wells notice in February, which typically gives recipients a chance to dissuade investigators from recommending the agency authorize enforcement action. The SEC’s investigation looked at disclosures during the late-2006 offering of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities underwritten by Goldman Sachs, according to the firm’s filing. It didn’t elaborate on the SEC’s decisions. David Wells, a spokesman for the firm, declined to comment …
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Jobs, Trade Data Supports Modest Economic Growth
Reuters
The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell last week, offering hope that some of last month’s improvement in job growth could be sustained and give the U.S. economy a lift. Other data on Thursday was also positive with the international trade deficit in June the smallest in 1-1/2 years as the petroleum import bill dropped sharply. While the smaller trade gap implied upward revisions to the government’s estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product published last month, the impact was blunted somewhat by an unexpected drop in wholesale stocks in June. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 361,000, the Labor Department said. Economists had expected claims to rise to 370,000 last week ….
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Olympics Ads Boost Brand Perceptions for BP and Others
PRNewser
A survey conducted by YouGov BrandIndex to gauge the public’s perceptions of Olympics advertisers may prove expensive sponsorships are worthy investments, especially for certain brands with PR problems. Surveyors asked: “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” YouGov then derived scores ranging from 100 to -100 by subtracting negative feedback from positive (for instance, a score of zero means a brand received equal parts positive and negative feedback). Oil company and international pariah BP, whose public image has soured since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf Of Mexico, saw its score jump from a negative 5.9 in the week prior to the Olympics to a positive 2.6 during the first week of the games thanks to ads like this one. Only Visa, which spent $100 million to be a “Worldwide Olympic Partner”, saw its brand perception rise more during the same time period …
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Crisis PR: Canada Pipeline Firms to Boost PR Effort After Big Spills
Reuters
Widespread concern about high-profile ruptures involving Canadian pipelines shows the industry has not done a good enough job of demonstrating how safe it really is, a top industry official said on Thursday. Among the pipeline companies, Enbridge Inc has been the target of much of the chagrin after suffering two big leaks on its U.S. network in the last two years, prompting senior American officials to harshly criticize its operations. The spills have also prompted plenty of negative media coverage about Enbridge, which wants to build a pipeline from the oil-rich tar sands of northern Alberta to a port on the Pacific Coast so Canadian crude can be exported to China and other Asian markets. Brenda Kenny, president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, said her members must do more to assure Canadians that the industry has a very safe record and is trying to eliminate totally what she said is an already small number of serious spills …
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Monster Discloses Probe of Advertising Practices
BusinessWeek
Shares of Monster Beverage Corp., the country’s biggest energy drink maker, sank Thursday after the company disclosed that it was being investigated for its advertising practices. The Corona, Calif.-based company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it received a subpoena last month from an unspecified state attorney general’s office concerning the advertising, marketing, promotion, ingredients, use and sale of its energy drinks. A representative for the company, Roger Pondel, declined to comment beyond what was disclosed in the filing. The company said in the filing that the investigation is in an early stage and that it’s unknown if the state attorney general will take any action, or whether such action would significantly impact its business. Shum Preston, a spokesman for the California Justice Department, a division of the state’s attorney general’s office, said the agency does not confirm or comment on any potential investigations. Although Monster is based in California, the company is still subject to investigation by other jurisdictions where its drinks are sold …
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Apple Products Shown in 30 Percent of Hollywood’s Top Movies, for Free
Hollywood Reporter
In the so-called “tech trial of the century,” Apple is showing off just how much it has captured the hearts and minds of Hollywood. Apple is in the midst of a jury trial that accuses rival Samsung of infringing its patents and trademarks on its iPhone and iPad products in creating and marketing the Galaxy devices. Apple’s product placement prowess has become evident during the trial. In fact, according to a survey by Brandchannel this year, Apple-branded products have appeared in more than a third of all films topping the box office from 2001 through 2011 (and 17 of the 40 top films last year). That’s more than McDonald’s, Pepsi and the Sony Vaio combined for the past decade. In Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, for example, Apple got more than five minutes onscreen, which analysis from Front Row Analytics estimates to be worth more than $23 million. Perhaps most amazing, according to Brandchannel, is that Apple says it doesn’t pay for product placement …
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