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Strategic Public Relations

Focused on public relations strategy within integrated marketing communications. Hosted by Kevin Dugan since July 2002.

Does Your Brand Have a Point of Difference or a Red Flag?June 29

During a recent hotel stay, I saw a brochure promoting a cultural destination that singled out two of its accomplishments. This destination was chosen as “one of six best buildings in the world for 2007.” It was also the first building of its kind in the world to meet a set of exacting environmental specifications.

While both accomplishments were surely hard-earned and worth touting to some degree, are these dusty factoids drawing visitors to this destination? Similarly, if it turns out I’m the tallest marketer in the 45202 zip code, does a basic fact do anything to establish my abilities?

When choosing ways to differentiate your brand from the crowd, claims like “first one in the world” seem like a safe bet. But if these claims don’t resonate with your target audience and reinforce your goal they’ll come off as overcompensation.

The next time you’re establishing a brand, topic or source with a target audience make sure you ask an important question on behalf of your audience: “Who cares?” This will help you stand out for the right reasons.

GM Taps Social Media for Recession CommunicationsJune 2

WSJ’s Digits blog tipped me off to this commercial from GM that was launched online via YouTube and Facebook, I assume in lieu of media buys, as it filed for Chapter 11 protection.

Get the Picture or Get Lost – Why PR Needs Visual ThinkingJune 1

Between PR Newswire and BusinessWire, around 2,000 press releases go out over the wires each day.

Wow, 2,000 press releases! How many of those actually contain news? Noise from traditional PR tools across fragmented media channels are fueling bad pitches and stunts that have little or nothing to do with helping the client’s business.

As a result PR people are struggling to help clients stand out – in any way possible. But more isn’t the solution to any problem. Better is the answer. How do we improve?

We must embrace the visual.

Visuals decrease our word count and increase our effectiveness. And in a Web 2.0 society it's become cheaper and easier to make our efforts über visual. The evolution of news and search is making this visual leap essential.

The rest of this post is actually available as a free .pdf file that you can grab here if you're interested. This is also cross-posted to The Bad Pitch Blog.

Empowering NewsMay 13

Five weeks ago I became a free agent. Perhaps more accurately the recession paid me a visit.

Fine. I was laid off.

Since then I've been pretty focused on three things--networking, interviewing and freelancing. Not to mention the mortgage, food and money.

OK, six things.

So I'm pleased to note I've found a new home. I'm now the Director of Marketing at Empower MediaMarketing.

It's a hybrid of everything I want in a job--applying marketing, public relations and social media. It's a client-side role, but I'll also work on some client projects as well.

Empower manages every facet of media--buying, planning, strategy and consulting. They also have a full-service digital practice and a consumer research team with a set of proprietary tools.

They have many stories to be told and I can't wait to get started.

Thank You
I have many people to thank for helping me through my transition and I'm following up with each of you individually.

Prezi.com
In my zeal to announce this, I took Prezi.com for a test run. Unfortunately I did the presentation on my desktop. So

Social Media Starts with Experiments and (Beautiful) MistakesMay 13

This Ad Age article rightly stresses the need for first-hand experience when implementing a social media project.

“The biggest challenge that I see is getting people who have practiced traditional marketing for their entire careers to adopt a new set of values. The first instinct is to treat any form of social media as a channel that you use to drive a corporate message. It's relatively easy to grasp the tools but more challenging to understand how new technologies have changed communication behaviors and patterns.”

Spot on.

This is why some clients are experimenting with it. Others might focus on a particular site like Twitter. But most everyone sees the value in this facet of communications.

Regardless of where clients are on the social media curve, I stress is the concept of campaign vs. commitment. This phrase, crystallized for me in a presentation by Mitch Joel, is more than fodder for a t-shirt, bumper sticker or ppt slide.

Campaign or CommitmentSeveral projects I’m involved with are using a specific event or a