commbasics

Last week a blog post popped up last week on the Ad Contrarian  about the "massive failure" of the Pepsi "Refresh" campaign.  The author, Bob Hoffman of the redoubtable Hoffman/Lewis add agency, was claiming this proved that social media didn't  work. Let's not point out that the advertising effort Pepsi was putting out before they tried social media wasn't helping them gain market share, which is the reason they went to a social media effort.  Because that would just prove that advertising doesn't work, using Bob's logic. Instead, let's take a page out of Bob's own book. Bob says:  1. Advertising is most productive when it is focused on changing behavior, not attitudes. 2. Advertising messages should be created for, and directed at, the heavy-using, high- yield customers in your category. 3. We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand; we get them to love our brand by convincing ...

Big news in social media is the app Color .  The app, available on iPhone and Android platforms makes it possible to "simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album. There's no attaching, uploading, or friending to do." Sounds cool.  My advice: run. The tech behind this tool is insidious.   We all know pretty much how GPS works. Geosynchronous satellites connect to mobile devices to pinpoint, within 50 feet your location.  Color makes this possible by triangulating the position of individuals taking pictures of each other, or landmarks or just signage on a store front, send that information back to the Color servers... and tell exactly where you are even if you aren't participating.. even if you don't have a smart phone. It's one thing to have voluntarily purchased a device that, when turned on, allows you to be found.  It's another thing to have your locat...

My buddy and business partner in the UK, Peter van der Sluijs , finally launched his own social media presence recently (way to be late to the party, Peter) but is making up for it by posting some really interesting stuff.  Specifically is the most recent post on the new regulations imposed by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority enforcing honesty on the web.  It used to be that the ASA only monitored traditional advertising, but an extension of that power has given it the purview of web content as well, including commercial websites and social media .  As Peter put it: "Reputable businesses would want their advertising  and PR to be ‘legal, decent, truthful and honest’ anyway, though it is possible to be caught out if you make claims you can’t back up.  Common examples are phrases like ‘the world’s leading…‘ or ‘the top…’. If a complaint is made to the ASA (commonly by a competitor) you could be fined and made to amend the page if you can’t ...

Just sat in a webminar on the use of social media in churches, hosted by TheCity (a division of Zondervan).  I wasn't as impressed by the product as I was by the representatives of churches talking about how they are using social media to reach their "market."   Churches have a pretty captive base market in the congregations.  A church of 130 regular attenders knows they are going to reach that 130 people, plus potentially another 6-10 people every week that the attenders interact with.  So that church, weekly, has a reach of 1300 people.  That's without social media.  Factor that in and the number goes to 13,000 very easily.  Put 10 churches like that into play and you are covering a small city.  But not all churches are doing that and for good reason.  It takes focus.  That's what the churches involved in the webinar were. Focused. Each one had a single person, either paid staff or committed volunteer w...

Disturbing, though not surprising news out of the EDA industry this week.  I've stated a few weeks ago that Cadence has been going through another round of culling in the marketing departments and last week I learned that Synopsys , too, has been quietly downsizing marketing (why market when you're number one and your competitors aren't even trying).  Haven't heard a peep out of Mentor, but with Carl Icahn barking at their heels they have other problems... and Magma cuts it's marketing budget every year so that's nothing new. None of that is disturbing, though.  At a recent company meeting in Cadence fairly recently, the executive team did a panel presentation on where the company was heading.  My sources (confirmed twice) reported that after the presentation, one brave soul rose to ask someone to clarify the vision for the company (because it just wasn't clear in the presentation).  Charlie Huang, chief strategy officer took ...

The tragedy hitting Japan is recovering from right now cannot be fathomed in its affect on the Japanese people.  It underscores the importance of being prepared for these kind of disasters, and for knowing how to cope in the middle of it.  That's why I support emergency preparedness training in local communities and am particularly proud of my own church that is conducting classes this month in how to help people cope with these kind of disasters. In the context of this blog, however, I would like to point out how important social media can be, in conjunction with mobile technology and I bring it up today in the interest of being prepared.   In this CNN video I was watching this morning, one of the points brought up was how people should stay off the telephone lines to allow first responders and government workers to deal with the problems.  You know this is the right thing to do but when you are in the midst of the crisis it is hard for those affected to res...

The recession for PR folks actually began in 2000 when non-marketing professionals figured out that by posting a news release on a wire service, they could show tons of "clips" to their bosses that stated, verbatim, the corporate crap in the releases.  They no longer needed press relations budgets and had become their own "news outlets."  Google did that to the PR profession. But recently, Google did a big favor for the hacks when they changed their algorithm to cut out hits on content farms .  This, effectively, eliminated the budget benefit of bad-press-releases-on-wire-services strategy.   I haven't done any press releases for companies for a while because they are really useless exercises, but I got roped into a contract with a company, after getting promises that they wouldn't have me do the same old thing, that forced me into that really bad strategy once again. I noticed very quickly that when the release hit the wire, It showed...