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Part 2–The Political Conventions: DNC Report Card
Public Relations…By Doug Simon, President & CEO, & Mike Bako, Marketing Manager, D S Simon Productions
Reviewing the DNC Speeches Doug Simon, President & CEO, & Mike Bako, Marketing Manager, D S Simon Productions, review the speakers at last week’s Democratic National Convention. Editor’s Note: Click here for Part 1–The Political Conventions: The RNC Report Card
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Marketing Case Studies: Tide — Bridging the Empathy Gap and Selling the Top Brass (Part 2)
Marketing…By Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan, Authors, “Beyond the Familiar: Long-Term Growth through Customer Focus and Innovation”
Editor’s note: A challenge for many businesses is that executives and most consumers lead such different lives. The resulting ‘empathy gap’ makes it hard for companies to ensure that their products, services and communications stay relevant to consumers. Formal market research can help, but the best companies complement it with direct face-to-face contact between executives and consumers.
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Creating Innovative Teams
Corporate Communications… By Chris Grivas, co-author, “THE INNOVATIVE TEAM: Unleashing Creative Potential For Breakthrough Results”
Pop Quiz: Who invented the iPhone? The microwave oven? The Space Shuttle? The reason you don’t know the answer is because these innovations were powered by a team, not just one person. In today’s marketplace, all companies are looking for that innovative edge — ways to capitalize on the creative power of their experts to put a breakthrough into the marketplace. You could rely on more innovative marketing strategies, or you could actually create something profound. Ready to change the world by keeping your teams truly innovative?
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Email Marketing Tip #16: Don’t Include Pre-Checked Boxes on Your Opt-in Form
By Christopher Penn, Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts, for the Effective Email Marketing Channel
Don’t include any pre-checked subscription boxes on your email opt-in form. You want to make sure subscribers are actively choosing to be added to your email list, and are not added by default. This will not only make you appear more trust-worthy in your subscribers’ eyes, but will also ensure you have a true opt-in list of subscribers who genuinely want to receive your emails. Should Subscription Opt-Ins Be Checked By Default? A common question we’re often asked about is whether email subscription opt-in boxes on forms should be checked or not.
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An Introduction to Public Relations Research, Measurement and Evaluation: Proving Value and Improving Performance
Google+ Hangout On Air…In The Green Room With Mark Weiner, CEO, PRIME Research
Welcome to PRIME Time … A series of free, online discussions about the ongoing challenge about proving the value of public relations. In this session, participants will learn the basics of research but, more importantly, how to go “beyond the numbers” to refocus attention from “why measure” to “how to apply research, measurement and evaluation” for the purposes of enabling better business decision-making; generating a positive return-on-PR-investment; and improving performance over time, versus competitors and in light of best-practice.
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President’s Latest PR Challenge: Analysis Reveals Obama Job Numbers Dismal Compared to Past Presidents
Examiner
Released Sunday, an analysis of job growth under every president since 1948 was compiled by Political Math under Republican and Democratic Presidents and compared them with President Obama’s job growth since he took office in 2009. The report was noticed by the Independent Journal Review and posted Sunday. The analysis was taken after President Obama felt attacking Romney’s jobs record was a good campaign material. The person behind Political Math stated. “These attacks got me thinking about executive job records. “Where” I asked myself “would President Obama place in a ranking of US Presidents in terms of job creation?” The analysis takes into consideration of inflation data and population numbers and references actual jobs created in relation to jobs already created.
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Oh, No, Nokia: Another Oopsie?
CNET
There are days when I want to bawl out loud. And then there are days when it’s just a need for simpering tears to course slowly down my face, rolling in time to a little Enya. Sunday morning was a time for the latter, as a company for which I have considerable affection — Nokia — has admitted to further dissimulation. You may remember that last week, as it launched its canary yellow Lumia 920 phone, the company showed a rather nice video to accompany it. It heralded the new PureView technology, which makes images just so pristine. Sadly, it didn’t count on the pin-sharp retinas of nerds, who forced the company to admit that the footage was not from any kind of Lumia at all. It was a pure view, but from some other camera. The guilt seems to have been weighing heavily on Finnish minds, as the Wall Street Journal now reports of further Nokia culpas.
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Instagram For Video-Massive Market Opportunity, Yes! Done Right, No!
TechCrunch
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Peter Csathy, President & CEO of online video technology company Sorenson Media. Csathy previously served as CEO of video chat company SightSpeed (acquired by Logitech) and as President & COO of online music pioneer Musicmatch (acquired by Yahoo!). Oh, to become the Instagram for video! THAT is the dream of scores of new tech start-ups. And, that is the Holy Grail for all the VCs who continue to plow money into those companies. After all, Facebook just dropped a cool $1 billion on Instagram (well, actually closer to $700 million) –and each of us can now easily capture pristine HD video on our smart phones that we carry at all times. That means personal HD video capture anytime, anywhere, and without any pre-planning. The sheer volume of personal UGC video has exploded. The potential market opportunity is massive. And, it is ripe. If it only were that easy.
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iPhone 5 Release Date Tipped for September 21
CommPRO.biz
The latest online “buzz” about the iPhone 5 release date was tipped Sunday on SlashGear.com. They report: On the 12th of this month we’re almost certainly going to be seeing the next-generation iPhone 5, a device that today has been tipped to be appearing in Apple stores on the 21st of September (just a couple weeks from now). This tip comes from GottaBeMobile where they’ve got a trusted source speaking on the subject making it clear that pre-order shipments will be made on the 21st of the month but that in-store deliveries might be made later on. The tipster also mentioned that shippers might be sending out shipment notifications before the actual devices are out on the trucks.
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US Companies Gloomy About Earnings Growth
Financial Times
Corporate America is more pessimistic about the prospects for short-term earnings growth than at any time since the start of the financial crisis, as a slowing global economy weighs on demand for US companies’ goods and services. Even as the US stock market hit a four-year high, year-on-year earnings growth for the S&P 500 slowed to just 0.8 per cent in the second quarter while the consensus forecast among analysts is for growth to turn negative in the current quarter for the first time in three years. Companies are even more downbeat. During the latest reporting season S&P 500 groups were three times more likely to say they would miss analysts’ expectations of third-quarter earnings than beat them. That was the worst guidance ratio since the final quarter of 2008, immediately after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. “Historically, we have only seen numbers like this during times of recession,” said Christine Short, who tracks earnings at S&P Capital IQ. “It tells you something about how American executives see the world.”
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A Nice Wall Street Rally While it Lasted?
NBC
At the start of the historically weakest month for equities, there are plenty of reasons to believe stocks may be just about reaching a top — at least in the short term. The S&P 500 has surged 14 percent this year and is at its highest level in more than four years. Not counting 2009 when equities rebounded from crisis lows, this could be the best year for stocks since 2003 — nearly a decade. A report showing hiring in the United States in August was much slower than expected and warnings last week of a slowdown at Intel and FedEx, that will likely foreshadow a very weak earnings season, have not been enough to deter investors buoyed by aggressive central bank action. After the European Central Bank’s pledge last week to buy the debt of troubled euro zone countries, the Fed is widely expected to introduce new stimulus measure in the form of more bond buying when it closes its two-day meeting on Thursday.
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Apple And Pandora: Why The California Fruit Company Should Take Control Of Pandora’s Box Of Tricks
Seeking Alpha
History has shown that when Apple (HYPERLINK “http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/aapl”AAPL) enters a new market, on average, it is better to bet on the California fruit company than against it. This happened with the music industry (iTunes), the mobile phone industry (iPhone), and the tablet industry (iPad). And in many cases, the previous industry leaders suffered greatly. RIM (HYPERLINK “http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/rimm”RIMM) is in chaos, Nokia (HYPERLINK “http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/nok”NOK) has had to do a 360-degree pivot to save itself, and virtually all MP3 player companies have withdrawn from the market. The latest rumor from Cupertino, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, is that Apple is looking to enter the streaming music market. If this is true, it would seem to place Pandora (HYPERLINK “http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/p”P) directly in the cross hairs of the world’s largest company by market capitalization. Pandora’s stock fell by almost 17% on Friday, September 7, the day after this report was published, as investors worried that Pandora may have finally met its match.
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Social Media Ranked as a Top Source of Corporate Risk
The Australian
BETWEEN the trolls who sent Charlotte Dawson @MsCharlotteD into hospital, an incident that she recounted on 60 Minutes, the ACCC announcing that companies that don’t moderate their social-media posts will be in trouble, and social media giant Facebook revealing that the global currency of social media, the “like”, has in fact been inflated by fake bots, it has been a rough few weeks for the modern digital medium. The rarely acknowledged risks of social media have punctured the well-crafted image of a marketer’s paradise. The recent warning from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission highlighting the need for big companies to correct “misleading Facebook posts”, combined with the increasing social-media crises engulfing local brands has started whispers that some organisations may vacate the social-media field in which they so hurriedly pitched a tent.
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Ad Growth Slows in the Second Quarter: TV Increases Its Take But Online Display and Print Slip
Ad Age Digital Next
Marketers spent $34.4 billion on advertising in the second quarter of the year, a meager 0.9% increase over the equivalent period a year earlier, according to Kantar Media’s latest report. Year-over-year ad spending had increased 2.6% in the first quarter. Spending in the first half grew 1.9% from the first half of 2011, according to the report. “Ad spending growth sputtered during the second quarter and was unable to sustain its early year momentum,” said Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar Media North America, in a statement. “The advertising market is mirroring the tepid, slow growth performance of the general economy.” “The third quarter results will get a short-term boost from the Summer Olympics and political advertising,” he added.
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Amazon, in Switch, Will Let Kindle Users Pay to Opt Out of Ads
Reuters
Amazon.com, in an apparent switch in its pricing policy, said over the weekend that it will allow purchasers of its new Kindle Fire tablets to pay $15 extra to turn off advertisements that are built into the devices. The change came barely a day after Amazon on Thursday unveiled larger Kindle Fire tablets, priced from $159 to $599, to challenge Apple Inc’s dominant iPad on price and additional digital content. Amazon had said the tablets would come with ads known as “special offers” that appear when screens are locked and in the corner of the home screen, helping keep prices low. But criticism of the company mounted in online forums after reports that the company would not allow buyers to pay to block the ads as it had done with earlier tablets.
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