The PR ideas that get the most award-winning attention tend to be experiential/ambient/stunt related. There is, of course, plenty of great PR work that intentionally flies under the radar, but that’s for another discussion. Read the rest of this entry »
We have Twitter for instantaneous news collection, dissemination and research; Facebook for a mix of personal and professional networking and larger community collection; LinkedIn for keeping our professional profile updated and for recruitment; Foursquare for broadcasting your location; Facebook Places for following the location of others, blogging for deeper content and so on and so forth.
It seems we have all we need in terms of the large social networks. What we need now is services that filter, structure and personalise the kind of information that flows through these channels. In essence, this is the reason why the Old Spice virals took off. The minute the personalised videos started appearing is when it went from very successful to stratospheric promotion for the brand. We also need products that better connect the ‘real world’ with the internet, in a meaningful way of course.
A couple of resources come to mind here. One is Planely, a service that allows you to see if anyone in your network is getting on the same flight so you can meet for a drink or share a cab. That’s all it’s for, and therefore some would say limited. However, I’d argue that it’s useful for the very same reason – there is no confusion as to why you are using it so you are more likely to achieve outcomes for your input of time. Read the rest of this entry »
Media types sometimes refer to ‘word of mouth’ marketing as the most powerful form of communications. Social media is intrinsically tied into this as it is based largely on the fact that personal recommendations are the most powerful; certainly more powerful than a brand talking at you.
However, word of mouth marketing isn’t purely about social media. It can be embodied in ambient/experiential marketing, promotional stunts and also PR.
The slight difference with PR is that it’s a third party recommendation/endorsement from a journalist or blogger rather than a personal contact.
So, essentially, social media is very closely aligned with PR. Read the rest of this entry »
