PepperDigital

Will The Olympics "Get The Best Of Them"?

By Brooke Winebrenner, PepperDigital

Recently, I was not surprised to hear that Obama’s Chicago based, 2016 Olympic dream was shot down by the International Olympic Committee, but I was surprised to learn that the committee could face being shot down by its youth target audience. According to an article from The New York Times, the IOC has come to the realization that many teens are simply overwhelmed with a number of distractions and have far more interests today, and those interests may no longer include the Olympic Games. The IOC fears that these distractions will hinder the number of participants for future Olympics Games, will cause the loss of interest in viewers to watch athlete’s at their best on television, or even buy the products sold by Olympic sponsors. 

With this challenge, the IOC has thought of a way to bring both the youth and Olympic athletes together through the use of online digital and social media. They are sponsoring a global campaign they have dubbed “The Best of Us Challenge,” where young people ages 12 to 19 will be encouraged to create video clips that illustrate them responding to challenges from various Olympic athletes. Some of the athlete’s participating in this campaign effort include, beach volleyball player Natalie Cook, swimmer Michael Phelps, gymnast Shawn Johnson, tennis player Rafael Nadal, snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva and skier Lindsey Vonn.

These athletes will ask teens to complete simple challenges like, how many tennis balls can you pick up in 30 seconds? How many clapping push-ups can you do in 30 seconds? Playful yet challenging dares for them to complete. These videos will be hosted by YouTube and placed on the Olympic website, as well as a YouTube channel for the challenge. The campaign will have a presence on both Facebook and Twitter to create a cohesive presence through various outlets of digital media. The IOC is also asking the athlete’s to blog about the challenge in hopes to create interest as well.

Creating a connection through the use of technologies between the young target audience and Olympic athletes is genius. This consumer-generated campaign may bring out a new generation of star athletes in the future and could potentially increase youth viewership of the Olympic Games. Olympic athletes are a brand in themselves and the IOC is hopeful teens will desire to be just like them and sport their products.

I think it’s important to point out that the IOC’s tactful plan of placing the Olympic brand right in the middle of one of a younger generation's greatest distractions (digital and social media) is very smart. I can’t imagine a world without the Olympics, and I am sure many people share my feelings. So let’s hope this campaign does "get the best of them"; otherwise, many teens won’t be eating their Wheaties, and we won’t be seeing them in the Olympics.

Museum Of Idiots

By Jackie Kolek, PepperDigital

Mistakes happen; it’s a fact of life.  Whether it’s an organization or an individual representing that organization, wherever humans are involved, human error will occur.   Most reasonable people can accept that and are willing to make allowances.  An organization can’t prevent mistakes from happening 100 percent of the time, but they can control how they handle those situations.  How they manage those moments and deal with the people affected ultimately leaves more of a lasting impression than the gaffe itself.

Yesterday, I took my kids to New York’s famed Museum of Natural History to see a free concert by alternative rock band They Might Be Giants. TMBG has what you might call a very “loyal” fan base -- from fans like myself who loved them in college and now rock out with my kids to their Grammy-winning children’s albums, to Grateful Dead-like devotees who travel hours to get to the band’s “Family Shows” (despite the fact they have no families and look rather odd at a children’s concert without any children of their own).   

 

So, when I saw they were doing a free family show under the giant blue whale at the Museum of Natural History, I simply had to go.  I was, however, prepared.  I’ve been to several of the band’s shows (okay, I admit it:  this was my forth one this year), and I knew there would be tons of people and long lines.  I’d packed plenty of snacks and toys for the kids; we left the house early and had several discussions with the kids about the need for lots and lots of patience.  The instructions were simple: the museum opens at 10 AM:  buy your admission, and then you’ll be directed downstairs to wait in line for tickets to the show.  Tickets were to be handed out at 10:15 AM on a first-come, first-serve basis to the first 300 people.  I was ready.

We arrived at the museum about 9:00 AM, and I was pleasantly surprised.  About two dozen people were milling around on the front steps, only a few of them without a toddler in tow.  At about 9:30, everyone began to line up by the front doors, and I thought, “Okay, this won’t be so bad.”  Then, about 9:55 AM, a security guard emerged and told us that everyone had to go downstairs to a different entrance in order to get concert tickets.   

To say bedlam ensued is putting it mildly.  Families ran as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped off at the front door.  There was a mad rush to the lower entrance, where another, longer line awaited us.  Then, to add insult to injury, we were informed that you could not buy admission to the museum from that entrance and had to go back upstairs, buy admission, then come back and get on an even longer line to get into the concert.  People were screaming, kids were crying and those of us with a toddler in risk of losing out on a ticket broke into a cold sweat.   

As it turned out, Mr. Security Guard made a mistake. We were in the right place all along.  People who waited patiently by the front doors lost their place in line and now faced missing out on the “extremely limited” tickets.  

My husband ran back upstairs to purchase admission tickets.  However, at that point, the printers broke, and he was unable to get the admission tickets.  Downstairs, in the chaos, I got in line with the kids to get concert tickets.  However, when I got to the front, I was told I could not get into the concert until I had my admission tickets.  I explained the situation to the guard, who looked oddly like Judah Freidlander in 30 Rock.  I’d waited in line, been told to go to some other line (which turned out to be the wrong place) and then couldn’t even get admission to the museum.  His response was stunning: “Yeah, we made a mistake, but there is nothing I can do about it.”  

“Nothing I can do?”  I was shocked and appalled.  They made the mistake, yet there was a complete lack of concern and even awareness as to what they had set in motion.  In this economy, people are scaling back on these types of outings and museums, and educational destinations have been decimated by budget cuts and curtailed spending.  Ironically, my favorite TMBG song came to mind:  “Museum of Idiots.”  These institutions need to bend over backwards to bring in visitors and ensure they go away with a positive feeling that makes them want to come back.

The Natural History Museum should learn a lesson from our friends at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. This past summer, the aquarium launched a new program called Penguins on the Loose, where visitors got to get up-close with a live African Penguin. It was a new and innovative idea designed to bring in more visitors.  The aquarium had never done anything like it before and was completely unprepared for just how popular the show would be.  Aquarium staff quickly realized that they had some angry visitors on their hands, those who waited in line and never got to see the show.  They moved swiftly to address the situation: they brought in risers, added additional staff to manage crowds, gave free passes to disgruntled customers and stationed greeters along the lines to continually update people on what they needed to do.   

As part of our work with the aquarium, we conducted a sentiment monitoring audit to determine what people were saying about the event and how the aquarium staff managed the situation.  Overall, the sentiment was very positive, and a large majority of online voices felt that the aquarium had done a great job addressing the problem and making people feel cared for. As a result, the Maritime Aquarium had the second most successful summer in its history, even in the face of the worst economic recession in decades.

As for the TMBG situation, I finally tracked down a supervisor who knew what had happened and took steps to address the mistake.  She gave me complimentary admission and personally escorted me and my kids over to the concert.  The concert was awesome. Confetti guns under the blue whale were amazing, and a great time was had by all.  Thanks to the supervisor, my family spent the day at the museum, dropping lots of cash at the restaurant and gift shop rather than leaving in an angry huff.   

As for the Judah look-a-like, he belongs upstairs in the hall of apes. Customer service is the first line of building a reputation and how those interactions are managed ultimately determine what people say about your brand to others and whether they emerge as recommenders or detractors.

Campaigns: An Outdated Way of Thinking?

By: Sam Ford, PepperDigital

George Carlin had his "seven dirty words" routine, but I am beginning to see quite a few "dirty words" circulating when it comes to the social media space as well. For me, the word I focus on is "viral." As those of you who have heard me speak or lead a workshop in the past few months know, I have a bit of a hang-up about how language shapes how we think about issues. In social media, making a video or blog post or podcast "go viral" leads companies to still think they can be broadcasters in a social space and that people turn into impressions because of something in the content that makes them not be able to help but share it. (See more here.)

When I was participating in the Advertising Research Foundation's inaugural launch of its Social Media Council last week, I had the chance to rail on a few of this issue. And one of my panel colleagues, Chris Andrew from Digitas (Twitter feed here), had a dirty word of his own: campaign.

His point about moving clients away from talking about campaigns really resonated with me because of how often it has come up with clients. I liken it to fictional television content: there are shows that are episodic, which come at regular intervals but in which one episode has little or no relationship to those that came before. So, in the most traditional example of all, Lucy tries to find a way to become part of Ricky's show in almost every episode, and it fails. In the next episode, she starts all over again. On the other end of the spectrum are serialized television shows, where "previously on..." becomes crucial, and each episode picks up where the previous one left off. Soap operas have traditionally been that content, and most of the more critically acclaimed dramas today fall into this mold (from Dexter to Friday Night Lights to Ugly Betty).

In short, a brand is a storyteller, and that story has to be larger than any particular one-off campaign. As Joel Rubinson of the ARF says, maintaining a social media presence is not a campaign at all; "it is on-going and self-perpetuating."

The conversation also provided a few aspects of online communication that should NOT be treated as dirty words. Mark Studness from Verizon talked about the importance of customer service in social media spaces and Verizon's experiences with managing an online forum for their customers to share advice with one another and draw on their collective intelligence to solve problems, with Verizon being amongst but not driving the conversation (and then was surprised with customer service questions directly from the crowd during the Q&A, reminding us all that marketers aren't just marketers...they're customers, too.) Meanwhile, General Mills' Heather Maxwell spoke about how online research is not a dirty word and the importance and value in connecting customers in communities and gaining customer insights from facilitating and listening to their conversations.

All in all, it was a fantastic session, and a reminder not only at the many ways advertising, marketing, public relations, customer service, and research are all converging but also how many kindred spirits there are in so-called other industries. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants to add "campaign" to the dirty words list...although I still don't know if I can get others on board for doing away with "consumers."

Is Twitter the Next Arena of Free Speech Regulation?

Amanda Bonnen is being sued for a Tweet she made about an apartment she was renting from Horizon Realty, a property management company in Chicago. The offending Tweet: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

Horizon Realty’s considers the Tweet libelous and has filed a $50,000 lawsuit against @abonnen because they believe the Tweet is damaging to their reputation. In an article in the Chicago Sun Times, Horizon Realty’s Jeffrey Michael claims the Tweet is “obviously false” and that his company is a “sue first, ask questions later” organization.

This case raises two issues:

1. Where is the line drawn between opinion and libel in social media?

True statements are legal to publish. Libel is anything that is a blatant lie or is written with the intent to defame or injure someone’s reputation. The safest course in Tweeting about a brand is to be factual in your communications. Consumers need to be aware that although Twitter is free, and that we are a nation of free speech, there are limitations to what you can say. Just like you don’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater unless there really is a fire, you don’t defame someone on Twitter just because you don’t agree with their approach to customer service.

2. How can companies manage their brands and customer service better in social media (notably Twitter) spheres?

Any brand manager knows a consumer’s voice is powerful. A customer’s voice on Twitter adds volume to the message.  A company concerned with brand reputation doesn’t “sue first and ask questions later.” That approach has a more damning effect to a reputation and brand than a single Tweet about a problem with an apartment. Especially from @abonnen, who only had 20 followers—most likely friends and family members. This situation could have been handled much better by Horizon through keeping a close eye on customer opinion and resolving the issue. Perhaps resolving the mold issue would have resulted in a positive Tweet commending Horizon’s handling the issue so promptly. We see this everyday on Twitter. A perfect example of brand management via Twitter is JetBlue’s handling of an issue my colleague Rob Longert had earlier this year.

The increased popularity of Twitter this year requires brands to listen more diligently and attentively to consumers. The power of the 140-character Tweet can spark wildfire-like discussions. Brands and consumers need to realize this potential, both parties need to be prepared for the consequences of their actions. For consumers, the simple rule of thumb is are you prepared to post a Tweet that you would also be willing to post your message on a busy highway billboard with your name, picture and email address visible to everyone. For brands, how you respond to a Tweet can have a more powerful effect on your image and reputation than the “offending” Tweet.

Good Customer Service = Good PR

by Carl Foster

In case anyone needed reminding, good customer service equals good PR and bad customer service can morph into an unstoppable PR disaster. The latest lesson comes from United Airlines, whose baggage handlers damaged the guitar of Canadian country singer, Dave Carroll. Not heard of Dave Carroll? Well 3.5 million people on YouTube have, because that is how many people have viewed his video chastising United Airlines for damaging his guitar and their subsequent lack of interest in dealing with the problem.

In what has become Dave Carroll’s biggest hit, ‘United Breaks Guitars’ is a funny little song and video about Dave’s experience at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Some media reports, such as this one, imply that the video has led to a share price drop of 10%, or $180 million. That is a lot of money compared to the compensation Dave has been offered, albeit a full nine months after the incident occurred. In an interview with the BBC this morning, Dave says he has written more songs inspired by the incident, including one about his conversations with United’s customer services department.

So while airlines such as Southwest benefit from excellent viral videos such as this one, and Jet Blue Tweets its way to a positive word of mouth experience for passengers, United Airlines looks set for more bad online PR. If I was to counsel United Airlines I would suggest they capitalise on the momentum this has built up online and turn it to their advantage. Maybe make a humorous video that includes Dave and shows they can laugh at themselves? Maybe make Dave the headline act at a free concert for passengers at O’Hare, or a concert under a tailfin in a hanger to repay hardworking employees? Whatever the case, United have an opportunity to do more than just pay Dave some compensation to make the problem go away.

Find Your Niche

by Jessica Slevin

This afternoon I had the opportunity to attend Internfest, an event put on by the Council of Public Relations Firms for PR interns in New York City. The panelists spoke on a variety of topics but soon enough the discussion inevitably turned to social media.

Let’s face it – social media is becoming increasingly relevant for this industry every day. There is no way to ignore it, and as one speaker pointed out, if you try to ignore it you are only doing your clients a disservice. However, just because social media is the hottest thing in PR right now and “everyone is doing it” does not mean that you should dive right in and try to be involved in every single social media outlet that exists.

When using social media for public relations, it is important to always keep in mind your strategy for each individual client. Maybe some brands would do great with a blog or a Twitter account, but it’s something that deserves some careful consideration. Is this client’s audience active on Twitter, do they read blogs? A strategy that is perfect for one client may be a waste of another client’s time. Which brings me to the next point from this discussion. Is the client capable of maintaining all of these various social media sites? Some clients have more time and budget to devote to these activities, while others just may not be able to afford it right now. This line of thinking is important for personal social media use as well. While it’s great to establish your personal brand through various social media sites, there is no point to setting up all of these different profiles if you don’t take the time to update them frequently.

There will always be new social media tools coming out, but it is important not to get distracted by the “next big thing” just because it’s new. As public relations professionals, we have to keep in mind the fundamentals of our industry and remember our original strategy before we can implement these tools effectively.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Blogger Scorned

by Jacqueline Kolek

Any PR professional worth their salt knows the opportunity and risk associated with product reviews.  Getting Walt Mossberg to review your client’s product can be a blessing or a curse.  A journalist’s love or hate of a product can send sales sinking or soaring.  Yet today’s New York Times seems to report that there is significantly less risk associated with reviews by bloggers and many are profiting from it.

"Approval by a Blogger May Please a Sponsor" starts with the position that bloggers who don’t like products simply just don’t write about them.  Now, while my mom always told me “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” I don’t think this applies to media – traditional or digital.  Many a company, product and person has been filleted by online journalists.  In fact, many bloggers can be more vicious, direct and personal than traditional print reporters.  To assume that they simply don’t write about things they don’t like is misguided and extremely dangerous.  Social media has opened up an entire universe of opportunities to get honest, open and direct feedback on everything from cars to books to travel destinations.  Amazon and Yelp, for instance, are built around negative audience reviews.  I was recently looking to book a trip to Block Island and having never been there, turned to tripadvisor.com to get some input.  One review of a hotel I was looking at said “if you have a choice between staying in this hotel and sleeping in your car, choose the car.”   That was all I needed to know!

The article goes on to say that companies are taking advantage of the world of blog reviewers by giving away free products to try, funding trips and sponsoring Twitter programs.  Many of the bloggers quoted in the piece mention various states of transparency, from disclosing when products are giving to labeling tweets as {SP}, meaning sponsored post.  This is a very slippery slope for both the company and the blogger.  Social media is built on foundation of authenticity and transparency.  Any violation of that trust is likely to permanently tarnish the reputation of a company employing a “pay of play” model with bloggers and the bloggers themselves will lose significant credibility with readers. 

The FTC is looking into the matter of sponsored product reviews and considering disclosure guidelines.  Of course, WOMMA has been promoting transparency since its inception.  At PepperDigital we often tell clients that in the world of social media, you need to take the good with the bad.  Yes, leveraging social media enables you to create creative and targeted programs, build a dialogue with key audiences, reach niche markets and get real-time feedback.  But along with that comes risk, such as having your own Wikipedia page.  Many clients want one, but they have to ready to live with the true, but sometimes ugly information that people have the ability to post.  

Social media brings with it great risk, but even greater reward.  In fact, negative reviews can serve as a great tool for companies to essentially conduct free focus groups, generate honest and insightful feedback and improve their products or services. But in the end, the greatest way to mitigate that risk is to be as authentic and transparent as possible.

PR: Public Relations, Not Just Press Relations

by Carl Foster

You can always rely on the prolific Bob Lefsetz to bring you the news you need to know. For the unaware, Lefsetz is the author of the The Lefsetz Letter, a daily (sometimes thrice daily) newsletter on the state of the music industry. But music is just the hub for many other topics that Lefsetz touches on, and today it was PR. Specifically how social media is turning PR on its head.

Lefsetz draws on a must-read article for any PR person from Sunday’s New York Times. Entitled "Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley", the article tracks how the days of press releases, pitches, embargoes and parties have long gone and how blogs, wikis and Twitter have changed our industry. The focus of the article is on Brooke Hammerling, who is what Malcolm Gladwell would label a connector. Hammerling is not just a flack but a go-to person for businesses looking for strategic growth. Name-dropping seems to be the name of the game with Arianna (Huffington) and the Twitter boys (Biz Stone and Evan Williams) all casually dropped into conversation.

One of the best illustrations of how the PR world has changed comes towards the end of the article when Hammerling suggests that she approach Quentin Hardy at Forbes about her latest venture, not so he’ll write about it in the magazine but so he’ll tweet about it to his followers.

They very end of the article sums up why PR should own the digital space. As Hammerling says “it’s still about relationships.”

To Blog is Human... To Successfully Pitch a Blogger is Divine

By Rob Longert, PepperDigital

A few weeks ago, I penned a post about how we can take the ideas of a “successful PR campaign and apply the things that made it great to the digital world.”

In the post, I mentioned six points that can be applied to traditional and digital PR and marketing, one of which focused on building solid media relationships online and off.

For now though, let’s keep things focused in terms of online channels.

Last week, Text 100, a “global boutique PR consultancy,” released survey results based on the responses of 449 bloggers from 21 countries based on “preferences of chiefly technology, business and lifestyle bloggers across the globe.”

Check out some of the takeaways mentioned in the press release, below.

1. Corporations are increasingly recognizing the influence of bloggers – The increased contact points to the “mainstreaming” of blogging as a communications channel, and the recognition by corporations that bloggers have increasing influence over their desired audiences.

2. Corporate News Releases are out - Bloggers say Social Media Releases will experience far greater usage in the coming months.

3. RSS feeds are a key source of information for bloggers, second only to other bloggers – If companies aren’t making their information available via RSS feeds, then they’re failing to use one of the bloggers’ most-trusted channels. Corporate bloggers and Web sites are also consistently deemed more credible sources than microblogging, newspapers, social bookmarking sites and television (and magazines in Europe and Asia Pacific).

4. The majority of bloggers are still part-timers – adjust your strategies accordingly - Outside of the United States, the majority of bloggers surveyed blog for less than nine hours per week.

5. Most bloggers will acknowledge when a post is supported by a corporation - While more than 80 percent of bloggers, no matter their region, say they would acknowledge sponsorship of blog posts, North Asian bloggers in particular tend to be less likely or willing to acknowledge sponsorship.

If you are in the social media space, some of these takeaways are no brainers, but as PR people, we know how important it is to put numbers behind our thoughts.

There is no question that Twitter is all the rage right now, but when we know that “microblogging is used by more than 75% of all bloggers, and those in APAC and Europe believe they are blogging more often because of microblogging,” it tells us something about how bloggers worldwide like to communicate, and that is what we can take away from this survey.

It is not necessarily eye opening to find out that “PR professionals are failing to read the blogs and truly understand their target bloggers’ communities,” as many of us know from reading the Bad Pitch Blog, but what is eye opening is that bloggers realize that some PR people are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

Take a look at the findings when you have a chance, but if you don’t, just remember that your client may have the best product, service, idea or spokesperson in the world, but if you do not know how to communicate with the media you are pitching, whether it is print, online, radio or broadcast, you won’t get too far, and you will wind up with some frowning clients.

Thanks to Jessie Dienst for passing along this Text 100 survey.

Tracking Online Discussion: Social Media Monitoring and Market Research

by Lauren Begley

A few weeks ago, I attended a panel session on social media and market research. The panel consisted of social media gurus, market researchers and public relations specialists. It was interesting to see representatives from each camp defend their professional mode of evaluating consumer behavior in the digital space, as each brought something different to the table.

On one hand, the market researchers felt their work was valuable because they were able to answer the ‘who’ question. Who is saying what online? In their defense, the market researchers brought up the 1-9-99 Principle. This is the notion that one percent of people online are extremely vocal, meaning they regularly comment on blogs, message boards, forums, etc. Nine percent are somewhat vocal, meaning they occasionally share their opinion in digital form. That leaves 99 percent of online users who rarely or never share their opinion in the digital space.

Their argument was that merely analyzing the organic online discussion only captures one percent of the online population’s sentiment. This is where, they believe, market research comes in; professionally facilitated research studies are able to gain insight from a cross section of online consumers, and allow practitioners to pull information from those who are online but might not leave as obvious a paper trail.

On the other hand, the public relations camp supported their role in online sentiment monitoring, either manually or through paid search functions such as Compete or Radian 6. While it is important to determine the “who” when monitoring consumer sentiment in the digital space, the PR pros emphasized the fact that they are able to “listen in” on what consumers are saying to each other, as opposed to tracking what consumers might say in a focus group.

By tracking organic consumer sentiment—whether it’s negative or positive—we can understand the ‘buzz’ and where it is coming from. More importantly, these organic expressions come from consumers who are so compelled by a brand they feel the need to share their opinion. In a sense, they become brand ambassadors as soon as they post their comment publicly, so it is essential for the company to evaluate their opinions.

After listening to both sides, I see value in each. I think in order to be as informed about consumer sentiment in the digital space, it is important to understand both the organic ‘buzz’ while also finding a way to quantitatively measure the who, what, when and where online.