It was bound to happen, and now it has. A big-time digital agency (R/GA) has opened up a full-fledged brand development arm. And whom do you think they will be competing against with this new branding department? Other digital agencies? Nope. They are aiming for traditional agencies and the branding, media placement, and creative budgets [...]
3 Secrets Rock Stars Can Teach the PR Biz
R&B star Jonelle Monae has burst on the scene recently, with guest spots in the Outkast movie Idlewyld and new tracks co-produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, who says Monae may be the most important new artist signing of his career. In addition to loads of raw talent, Monae (who has self-directed much of her career [...]
The World’s Best PR Blog – Vote Today
To celebrate its 10th Anniversary, PR Week has launched a “Best PR Blogs” contest with YOU the agency community as the judge and jury. PR Week nominated 16 well-known PR blogs, and asked each blogger to nominate another blog for the contest. The result is a 32-blog, March Madness-style blog off. Each week, blogs are [...]
4 Winners, 2 Losers in SEC’s Press Release Decision
In a major announcement yesterday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provided new guidance to public companies stating that corporate Web sites and blogs are a suitable means for official information dissemination to investors, provided those sites are a “recognized channel for distribution.” This apparently means that if the corporation has an openly available [...]
3 Reasons Why Social Networks Are Bad Ad Buys
A recent article by Michael Estrin in iMediaConnection asks whether social media has lost its luster from an advertising standpoint. Traffic and usage of the major social networks continues to soar, with traffic to Facebook and Linked In up considerably in the past 30 days. In fact, LinkedIn which is considered to be the least [...]
Social Media – Your Customers Are Talking About You Online
The Roar of The Crowd As appeared in bizAZ Magazine July/Aug 2008 edition Unless you’re selling specialized rivets to the military industrial complex via no bid contracts, chances are your customers are talking about you online. And not just via email, in a “hey mom, I think your accountant totally messed up your taxes” way, [...]
What’s Your Word Worth? Measuring Word of Mouth Online
Fascinating article in BrandWeek today about putting a value on word of mouth marketing. BzzAgent, a word of mouth marketing agency (how’s that for a good gig if you can get it), says they figure an online conversation about a brand is worth 50 cents. It’s admirable that somebody is trying to put a value [...]
Why Social Media Isn’t Marketing At All
What’s the worst thing about social media? The name “social media.” It’s incredibly vague, and that lack of definition has enabled “social media” to become a watered-down, catch-all term with different meanings for each person – like “recreational drugs” and “process improvement.” The Characteristics of Social Media: Duration: Ongoing Target: Current and previous customers Goal: [...]
Blogs and the new transparency of communication
Unless you’re a recently thawed caveperson, you’ve heard about blogs. No current-day buzzword is as buzzy as “blog” which leapt from geek-dom to mainstream faster than the evaporation of Bode Miller’s career. (author’s note: Since this was written, Mr. Miller has been resurgent and won this year’s overall World Cup skiing title. Apologies Bode) Blogs [...]
