PR Chicago

Social Media: Too Trendy for Traditional Media Outlets?

All the blather about Social Media and the Social Media News Release assumes that our clients aren't looking for coverage from traditional media sources.  Wrong.

With the exception of tech and major media, most of the media outlets to which we distribute alerts and releases (and the information isn't unsolicited)  aren't even going to visit the client's web site. What's more, they don't like to click on links to download photos or obtain additional information.  As for blogs, forget it. Many newsrooms, especially at the smaller community papers, have outdated and slow computer systems. Some TV stations still want faxes, for heaven's sake.

So until cash-strapped newspapers get some major technology upgrades, and until the non-tech-oriented reporters/producers get comfortable with social media, we'll be talking amongst ourselves.  In the meantime, there's no substitute in traditional media for a well-written, well-timed and targeted pitch.

Technorati Profile

When is Guerrilla Marketing NOT Guerrilla Marketing?

When a large advertising/marketing/pr conglomerate executes a stunt to publicize the new logo for an office supplies superstore and calls the event guerrilla marketing.  Adweek covered the announcement last week with some fanfare. It seems a specially-designed vehicle projected an image of a giant rubber band ball bouncing along Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Very clever, and also cleverly timed to coincide with a retail trade show that opened last week.

Colin McKay covered this to some extent in his blog, Canuckflack, but I'd like to add that now it appears that big agencies are developing and executing PR stunts and calling them guerrilla marketing, possibly because of the trendier connotation.  Hey guys, guerilla marketing is under-the-radar and underground by its very nature. You don't do the following: 1) send out a press release that you are going to do some guerrilla marketing 2) use guerrilla marketing to promote a new logo for an office superstore and 3) think that it's guerrilla marketing simply because you haven't asked the city for a permit. And I'm not even getting into the use of the guerrilla marketing "campaign" as the topic of a presentation at the retail convention (and the "rollout" of the surprise guest: the world's largest ball of rubber bands). A PR stunt by any other name is still a stunt.    

The Power of Numbers

Colleague and PR pundit Lisa Faulkner-Dunne recently observed that editors love numbers. She observed this because she attended one of those ubiquitous media luncheons in which editors and producers tell PR people what interests them. They also tell PR people, generally in a world-weary tone, that 1) they should really read the publications they are pitching and 2) they shouldn't call harried editors asking about receipt of press releases. They're right, in a perfect world. Of course, if I only pitched the publications I read, the possibility of getting any ink for my clients would be very limited indeed, what with time spent reading the local papers and business journals, general interest pubs and watching the local news.  This is all sandwiched in between looking at blogs and Internet news sites and watching reality shows like Project Runway and Top Chef.

Back to the numbers: a cursory glance reveals that, like garden plantings, they're mostly odd numbers and multiples of five. Let's see...in today's paper we have a cover story about the Oscars with not one but three lists of five things ..5 blunders, 5 "smart moves" and the opinions of 5 critics. On the cover of another section, we peer into a celebrity's home (well, not really) to discover 15 things about him, including the condiments in his refrigerator and whether he puts his dirty dishes in the sink or the dishwasher. Whoa! I'm riveted. But wait! On the cover of another section, we find that 1,111,174 people in the Chicago area have sex on the average night. Did I want to know that?

What does this obsession with numbers mean for PR people? Will our news have to fit into a list of five things or thereabouts? Should we write news releases as lists of five things? Failing that, we should probably wait until this fixation on numbers passes, if it ever does.  Of course, the upcoming release of the Number 23 movie is bound to spur all sorts of lists of 23 things, or 23 lists of 23 things.