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A Tale of Two Conventions
Public Relations…By David E. Johnson, CEO, Strategic Vision
The Republican Convention is over. The last speech has been given and balloon dropped. The public relations challenge for Mitt Romney at the Republican Convention was to define himself as a person and tell Americans his vision for America. So did he succeed? Mitt Romney entered the Republican Convention under unique circumstances. Despite being on the political scene since 1994, many voters believed that they didn’t know who he was as a person.
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Crisis Response Leadership: Will Leaders and Companies Ever Learn From Their Mistakes?
Corporate Communications..By James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA
Among the most frequent questions I get when speaking to groups or talking to clients, and especially to victims and survivors, are: “Why do companies and their leadership continue to make the very same mistakes time and time again?” “Don’t they read the papers?” “Don’t they watch the news?” “Don’t they talk about how to avoid the problems they see their colleagues, peers and friends having?” It’s a question of ethical leadership.
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RNC Report Card: The Speeches, the Sound Bytes and the Strategy for this Week’s DNC
Public Relations…By Doug Simon, President & CEO, & Mike Bako, Marketing Manager, D S Simon Productions
Before and after Clint Eastwood turned the Republican National Convention into comedic red meat for every late night host and social media user there were important speeches delivered and yet to be delivered to the attendees and audience watching at home. On the first night of the convention those listening got the Republican version of a both ends of the speech spectrum.
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Amplifying ROI — Return on Influence! (At Content Marketing World 2012)
By PR Newswire for the Agile Engagement Channel
What do you, me, Derek Jeter and Eva Longoria have in common? (Hint: The answer isn’t “nothing”.) We’re all – or have the potential to be – influencers. “This is the era of citizen influencers,” declaredMark Schaefer during Wednesday’s Content Marketing World 2012 session. As a marketer, this wasn’t news to me, but it struck me. ANYONE has the opportunity to influence. What a powerful statement! And what and immense opportunity for the content marketer inside each of us.
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PRIME Research to lead PRWeek Dashboard Virtual Event: The Bottom Line on Data
By PRIME Research for the PR ROI Channel
Purchasing habits, usage, and brand sentiment are key indicators for any company. The ability to collect that data from consumers and transform it into programs that lead directly to business outcomes is an increasingly vital component of PR, one that clients are demanding more and more from their in-house teams and agencies. PRIME Research CEO Mark Weiner, will lead the “Winning over the C-suite…” segment of this virtual event.
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Penn State Legal & PR Fees Reach $17M in Sandusky Costs
CommPRO.biz
According to recently released documents, reported on WHIOTV.com and “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” Penn State’s costs for legal fees, consultants and public relations firms hired to help deal with the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal have reached nearly $17 million, the university said in an online report that it updates regularly. The university said it has spent almost $16.8 million through June 30. Nearly $10 million of that went to seven firms for what Penn State calls internal investigation and crisis communications, including a report by former FBI director Louis Freeh, who led the school’s internal investigation in the scandal and said that former coach Joe Paterno and three former school officials concealed allegations against Sandusky. Those conclusions are firmly denied by the Paterno family and the officials. Nearly $4 million went for university legal services and defense, plus $1.6 million for the legal defense of the three former officials, former university Athletic Director Timothy Curley, former university vice president Gary Schultz and former president Graham Spanier.
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8 Lame PR Stunts at Conventions
Politico
Editor’s Note: Here’s a review of Politico’s top PR stunts at the RNC and DNC. Commpro.biz wants to hear from you. Any stunts to be added to the list? Please share your comments with us. / As reported on Politico.com–With so many cameras in town, it’s hard for some folks at the Republican and Democratic conventions to resist the temptation to draw attention to themselves in order to draw attention to a particular cause, message or business. Tampa and Charlotte have seen plenty of them. Here’s POLITICO’s roundup of the eight most head-scratching publicity stunts: 1.) Sarah, the stripper. Porn star Lisa Ann made her way to Tampa to impersonate Sarah Palin at the Dollhouse strip club. Did it work? You betcha. A Google search for “Lisa Ann” and “Sarah Palin” and “Dollhouse” yields over 15,000 results.
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Why Amazon, Not Apple, Should Be Your Marketing Inspiration
Business 2 Community
We’ve all been there. Somebody comes along and tells us that they want their marketing to look like Apple’s. What they are really saying, of course, is they want their brand to be like Apple’s, a goal that is unrealistic as they come. The truth is Apple-envy won’t produce real-world results. And Apple’s branding doesn’t work for every size business. The real inspiration for marketing today should instead be a site that most of us visit on a daily basis, even if its visual identity doesn’t give you the warm-and-fuzzies: Amazon.com. Rather than creating a superficial relationship with its customers, Amazon has created an online marketing experience built on a deep intelligence gains overtime. The more a person uses Amazon, the more relevant their shopping experience becomes. Today, nearly every business can create the same dynamic experience online, which means Amazon is not only an inspiration, but one that you can actually mimic on both B2B and B2C websites. So why should you be more like Amazon instead of Apple… Long before technical SEO lost its value thanks to a focus on fresh, relevant content, Read more at http://www.business2community.com/marketing/why-amazon-not-apple-should-be-your-marketing-inspiration-0271353#2vBetXFMhdMotOrK.99
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Content Marketing World: Budgets Rise, Social Media Dominates
BtoB Magazine
Columbus, Ohio-Marketer commitment to content marketing is on the rise, with greater portions of marketing budgets being devoted to content creation and distribution, according to a new study from the Content Marketing Institute, unveiled at its annual Content Marketing World conference and expo here. Marketers are devoting 31% of their budgets to content marketing, according to CMI’s report, which was based on an online survey of 2,400 marketers in August. That is up from 26% reported in last year’s study. Also, 54% of the marketers polled for this year’s study said they planned to increase their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months. Only 2% said their content budgets would decrease. On average, marketers are using between five and six types of content, with social media being the most used, cited by 86% of respondents. Other most-used types of content include articles posted on companies’ own websites (84%), email newsletters (78%), blogs (73%) and video (70%). However, when marketers were asked to name their most effective type of content, in-person events ranked highest, followed, in order, by case studies …
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Wall Street Treads Water, Stays on ECB Watch
Reuters
(Reuters) – Stocks closed out a second straight session of thin trading on Wednesday, with investors reluctant to make big bets ahead of a crucial meeting of the European Central Bank, which could announce new policies to help contain the euro zone’s debt crisis Media reports that European policymakers would unveil a bond-buying plan to bring down crippling borrowing costs in euro zone economies boosted sentiment, but it wasn’t enough to drive gains in stocks. Shares opened lower, hurt by FedEx Corp (FDX.N), which late Tuesday cut its quarterly profit outlook on weakness in the global economy. FedEx is considered an economic bellwether because of its role as the No. 2 world shipping company. The stock fell 2 percent to $85.80, United Parcel Service (UPS.N) fell 2.4 percent to $71.94 and the Dow Jones Transportation index .DJT lost 1.1 percent. “While FedEx is only one company, it’s one whose warning is indicative of the global economic slowdown we’re dealing with,” said Leo Grohowski, chief information officer at BNY Mellon Wealth Management in New York.
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Facebook Stock up on Zuckerberg’s No-Sale Pledge
ABC
Facebook’s stock increased nearly 5 percent on Wednesday following a disclosure that its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, won’t sell stock in the company for at least a year. Zuckerberg holds about 504 million shares and options and had been eligible to start selling them in November. The company currently has about 692 million shares eligible for sale. The concern is that if Zuckerberg floods the market with additional shares, prices would go down further. The stock is still trading at less than half of the $38 that it went for in Facebook’s May initial public offering. It gained 85 cents, or 4.8 percent, to close at $18.58. That more than wiped out Tuesday’s loss, during which the stock hit an all-time low of $17.55. It had closed at $17.73. Since the IPO, Facebook’s stock has been down on 45 trading days, up on 29 and unchanged on two. Facebook revealed Zuckerberg’s commitment in a regulatory filing late Tuesday. It also said that two of its board members, Marc Andreessen and Donald Graham, have no “present intention” to sell stock beyond what they need to cover taxes.
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How to Keep Employee Cave Dwellers Away
Forbes
Amidst continued economic uncertainty, it’s ever more important to recruit and retain employees who will show long-term loyalty to your company. Staff turnover is a costly exercise, and it’s particularly damaging when you lose top talent. According to Curt Coffman, co-author of First, Break All the Rules, engaged employees are builders. “They use their talents, develop productive relationships, and multiply their effectiveness through those relationships. They perform at consistently high levels. They drive innovation and move their organization forward.” On the other hand, Coffman describes “actively disengaged” employees as the “cave dwellers” (Consistently Against Virtually Everything.) “Every day, actively disengaged employees tear down what their engaged coworkers are building.” Understanding the keys to employee engagement is important because employee retention can be a major source of savings in both training time and money. According to a 2012 Gallup study, replacing an employee can cost a company three times the employee’s annual salary, affecting the overall economy by more than $350 billion dollars per year.
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Charity Begins In-House
Marketing Week
Many brands would claim to be pursuing corporate social responsibility policies long before the onset of the economic slump four years ago. But against the ongoing backdrop of flat growth and austerity, companies of all shapes and sizes have stepped up their efforts to show a more caring, compassionate side by expanding their charitable activities. Next week, McDonald’s will launch the “biggest” push for its Ronald McDonald House charity that provides accommodation to families whose children are in hospital, while shoe brand Crocs relaunched its Crocs Cares charity in Europe this summer. The US-based charity, which has been running since 2007, has pledged to donate 20,120 pairs of shoes to people around the world if it could secure the engagement of customers on the Continent. Michael Marshall-Clarke, European marketing director at Crocs, says: “It’s a great way of engaging customers by telling them about our philanthropic side and our social responsibility but also by enabling customers to give something back to other people by the action of shopping.”
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Search Loses Millions In Co-op Advertising Opportunities
Mediapost
Merchants and brands could capitalize on co-op digital marketing opportunities, especially when it comes to search engine marketing and advertising for local and neighborhood stores and services, but a “very substantial portion” of co-op agreements prohibit all Internet advertising, according to a white paper released Wednesday. In what some consider a lost opportunity, a white paper published Wednesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Local Search Association (LSA) analyzes how to move the strategy online, and ways that manufacturers and retailers can split the cost of advertising when it benefits both. Co-op advertising isn’t new, but less than 1% of the dollars are invested in the online channel, according to Bob Houk, executive director of the Trade Promotion Management Associates (TPMA), which the study cites. Search remains one of the biggest losers when it comes to missed opportunities.
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Pandora to SEC: It’s Taking a Huge Hit on Mobile Ads
Business Insider
Pandora, the popular online music streaming service, filed a 10-Q Wednesday morning describing in more detail how it’s handling the massive influx of mobile advertising revenue it booked in Q2 2012. The context here is that Pandora has still not figured out how to sell ads profitably, and the company has repeatedly posted net losses. Nonetheless, it is probably one of the five biggest mobile ad businesses in the U.S. Pandora previously told investors that mobile ad revenue increased by 86% to $60 million in its fiscal Q2 2013. Total revenues were $101 million. On Wednesday, the company disclosed the downside of all that. Here’s the summary: A 112% increase in the number of ads delivered. A decrease in the average price per ad of approximately 27%, due in part to the mobile ad mix …
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