Posts Tagged ‘campaigns’

Ten reasons why Public Relations should play the central role in Social Media

September 26th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Social media

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The ongoing debate about who ‘owns social media’ continues apace. Here is my pitch for the PR industry, which I believe has a very strong claim.

Ultimately, all of the back and forth is irrelevant. The sector (or individuals) that gets closest to owning social media will be the one that delivers the most value over time.

Here are my thoughts…

  1. PR’s heritage isn’t selling. It seeks to influence and build relationships. This makes it more suited and better equipped to initiate, engage and hold a conversation.
  2. PR is expert in content creation. They can’t be blamed for trying to get involved with social media but what expertise do media buying agencies have in content creation? Content creation is a central component of marketing and specifically social media.
  3. The advertising industry is focused on promotions, launches and campaigns. I heard an advertising executive at a conference last year talk about their ability to ‘turn on’ and ‘turn off’ the community that they had successfully built for an FMCG client. This is a great illustration of the point.  This attitude shows a high degree of arrogance and a low degree of empathy.  The community would quickly see through this kind of approach to managing relationships. The advertising industry isn’t set up culturally or operationally (including its fee structure) to maintain an ongoing or continuous dialogue.
  4. The PR industry is subtle. The sector gets a lot of flack for spinning but subtlety is at the core of spin. Digital media requires subtlety, including the ability to understand context and respond accordingly.
  5. The PR industry is close to the business leaders. The C-suite calls on PR in a crisis and is reliant on PR when the organisation’s reputation is threatened. PR has a central role to play in educating the C-suite about the benefits of social media and is a trusted advisor on reputation management, unlike other marketing disciplines.
  6. The PR industry is something of a sole operator when compared with the other marketing disciplines. Communication often functions as a stand-alone department along side Marketing but is part of the mix. One of the key challenges for the social media strategists is that they are on the outside, they may have deep expertise in their field but few things operate in a vacuum and its clear that social media is most effective when  integrated with offline marketing efforts.
  7. Strategy is at the heart of good PR. It could be argued that PR has a been a little slow to come to the  (socialmedia) party. There are lots of reasons for this. PR’s approach is always circumspect, it has to add value when your dealing with corporate reputations otherwise its not worth doing. I think  this will play out well for the PR industry in the long term.
  8. The culture of the PR industry is to allow others to create content. i.e. journalists. The industry has been built on this fundamental characteristic. The key message is designed to assert as much control as possible over the process of content creation. The approach changes in the context of social media but I think this is one of the strongest arguments in PRs favour. PR has never had control of the message when it comes to the end result.
  9. Search. I think the PR industry has a long way to go in this space but that content is fundamental to search strategy – see point 2. Search seeks to ‘game a system’. The tool of the gaming is content, which has to be of the highest quality.
  10. Most (all?) organisations need to adapt culturally to engage their customers in authentic conversations. I genuinely believe that the businesses that most effectively listen to customers and is able to incorporate their insights into product development and services will be the most successful. This requires an organisational change and is not something that a snazzy social media program can deliver. This, for me, is PRs biggest opportunity as the function that advises and implements change management strategies. PR has a great opportunity to take the lead in making this change happen – the outbound social media campaigns will become the natural output and realisation of this cultural and organisational change in business.

As ever, keen to hear your thoughts and disagreements. Here is a good analysis of the debate from the AdAge.

 

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MySpace launches demographic targeting capabilities at Ad:tech Sydney 2009

March 10th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Music, My Blogroll, Social media, Technology

I attended the ad:tech 09 conference at the Sydney Convention Centre today, which provided plenty of food for thought on a wide range of digital marketing issues.

The conference kicked off with two keynotes in the morning and then split into three tracks.

The presentations that I saw were very case study driven, which is nearly always the case with these types of conferences. Agencies and clients were happy to talk about the revolution that ‘is occurring’ or ‘has occurred’ and to report back on successful campaigns and projects but few were willing to tackle some of the more challenging topics and issues facing the industry. I saw four members of one panel swerve the question of: What is influence and how can it be measured?

This is a topic that I plan to come back to.

Fox Interactive Media announced ‘four new initiatives‘ to ensure that it ‘enables marketers in their fight to be more efficient and relevant’.

One of the four initiatives – MySpace Lifestages’ will allow marketers to target Australians in a range of lifestages, including:

  • When a MySpace user has graduated from Uni
  • Is engaged to be married
  • Is Pregnant
  • Has given birth
  • Has lost a job
  • Has entered a new job
  • Has had a birthday

MySpace will provide marketers with access to this data in real-time (its based on the users’ self expressed interests on their public MySpace profiles’.

Some facts about MySpace Australia:

  • More than 2.4million uniqe Australian visitors in Jan 2009 – according to Nielson Online
  • Australians spents 2.3million hours on MySpace during Jan 2009
  • 65% of MySpace Australia users are 18 years or over

The theme of brands engaging with consumers via existing social networks was a dominant one during day one of Ad:tech and its clear that huge value lies in the access that these social networks have to user data. Further, the value held in this data is the key to successful monetisation of social networks. The ability of social networks to harness information and present it in ways that are useful to marketing people will determine the future of social networking.

Users have – in the most part unwittingly – accepted this process by agreeing to the End User License Agreement, which is an essential step when signing up or becoming a member of a social network but one wonders how consumers will react in the long run when it becomes apparent to them that brands have access to this information and are using it to target them with offers and promotions. The onus is on the marketing industry to do this in a way that is truly engaging, entertaining or useful.

There were examples of some creative and engaging campaigns today.

I think there is an inherent danger for today’s popular social networks – the pressure to successfully monetize will increase over time (accelerating from now) resulting in them making more and more information available to marketers and potentially alienating their members. This may create the opportunity for new social networks to come in with promises not to share personal information with marketers.

Of course, there are other methods of monetizing social networks. This post by Laurel Papworth provides a comprehensive run down while Robert Andrews at The Guardian predicts a tough 2009.

Some more thoughts on day 1 from Ben Shepherd at Talking Digital here.

More from me from Ad:tech tomorrow.

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