October 2015 archive

Welcome to episode #6 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Christopher Penn, vice president of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications; Laura Thomas, Chief Blogger at Dell’s Direct2Dell; and Martin Waxman, president of Martin Waxman Communications and co-host of Inside PR on the FIR Podcast Network.

On today’s show, we explored these topics:

• Beginning on November 7, The New York Times will mail 1 million google Cardboard headsets to its subscribers, a joint project of the Times and Google dubbed NYT VR. The goal is to deliver immersive journalism, but also immersive native advertising. The marketing world is abuzz over Virtual Reality. The PR world? Not so much.
• IBM has introduced the idea of the “citizen analyst,” which Chris recently addressed in a blog post. Like citizen journalists, citizen analysts will use widely available data and analytical tools, often for activist purposes. What do PR practitioners need to do to be prepared for data activism?
• Snapchat has been in the news — a lot. One marketing agency, Giant Spoon, has used it to produce Snapchat Stories that serve as pitches to prospective clients. Some agencies and brands are producing unique content for Snapchat rather than repurposing existing content. And now Snapchat is introducing branded geofilters, which some think could be a killer tool for marketers.
• Dan York’s tech report covers Country Top-Level Domains like .ly that could cause problems down the road and Facebook’s decision to make all public posts available for search.
• How seriously should we take demographic givens that suggest the older you are, the less likely you are to understand and embrace digital media?
• The role of agencies in content marketing, according to David Berkowitz, is to build trust with clients and then get out of the way of the creatives. That sounds a lot like what PR does, particularly when it comes to building trust.
• When building trust, a key element is agreeing on the measures of success. Impressions have become the go-to metric for social media in the PR world. There must be a better way to use impressions to convey real, meaningful results.
• Medium was the channel of choice for both Amazon and The New York Times in a give-and-take following publication of a Times article critical of Amazon’s distribution center practices. Could Medium be the PR wire service of the future?

Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

Join us next week for our sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Olivier Blanchard, Sharon McIntosh, and Ike Pigott.

About this week’s panel

Christopher Penn works among different fields, professions, and ideas to help people understand each other. He can write code, but he’s not a developer or IT pro. He can design campaign strategies and run ads, but he’s not an advertising professional. Christopher defines himself as a marketing technologist: Digital marketing is Christopher’s laboratory. He is Vice President of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications (a national PR firm). He also co-hosts of the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast with John Wall. He is a Google Analytics Certified Professional and a Google AdWords Certified Professional. And Christopher has been a practitioner of the martial arts for 20 years now, and currently hold a black belt in ninjutsu under Sensei Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center.

Laura P. Thomas is Chief Blogger for Dell. Laura brings More than 15 years experience in corporate communications and digital marketing roles to her work,  including jobs in public relations, employee communications, branding, community engagement, event management, online commerce, social media and virtual world development. In her role as Dell’s Chief Blogger, Laura is responsible for the development, coordination and execution of strategy and content for Dell’s corporate blog, Direct2Dell. Since taking the Direct2Dell reins, Laura has recorded an 80% increase in time on page at the end of the first year in this role. She also leads the company’s cross-business unit editorial team and engages with marketing, product line, operations and corporate communications colleagues worldwide to enhance the company’s brand.

Martin Waxman has over 25 years of experience in creative and business writing, video and audio producing, public relations and journalism and can work with you and your team to help his clients discover, shape and develop their content marketing programs, set up online newsrooms, and identify and build relationships with influencers to amplify their stories via social PR. Based in Toronto, Martin is aa blogger and podcaster. He also speaks on social media trends at events around North America. Martin currently is president of Martin Waxman Communications. He is also the incoming chair of the PRSA Counselors Academy.

The post FIR #6: What could be better than millions of impressions? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #5 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Shonali Burke, President and CEO of Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc.; Dave Fleet, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital; and Kami Watson Huyse, CEO at Zoetica Media.

On today’s show, we explored the following topics:

• Volkswagen has brought a new board member to the company, who most recently applied her expertise to bringing a culture of integrity to Damiler. What impact can she have at the beleaguered VW?
• The Internet Advertising Bureau has confessed, as ad-blocking continues to expand, that “We messed up” In response, the IABC has introduced a new alternative set of standards called LEAN to improve online advertising. Is it too little too late, and is the solution from advertisers to invest more in earned media?
• Meanwhile, native advertising continues to be a big deal that may (or may not) elude ad blockers. A new study explores consumer perceptions of native advertising.
• Facebook is getting ready to release a new app called Notify that will dish up notifications — filtered by users — when publisher partners like The Washington Post publish content directly to Facebook. It’s one more sign of the fracturing of news. Given that PR practitioners spend much of their time earning media coverage, these changes have profound implications for the practice of public relations.
• Dan York’s tech report covers the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Dublin this week, a United Nations meeting on the so-called “zero draft” of the World Summit on the Information Society, the Internet of Things, and more.
• The New York Times has introduced a new component to its newsroom, which will cover the web’s most compelling and fast-moving stories. With PR “newsrooms” churning out little more than clever tweets associated with news and cultural events, is the Times model one agencies and brands should adopt?
• Ad agencies are giving up on new hires with ad agency experience and are turning instead to “internet kids.” Is it a replicable practice in PR?
• Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce company, has raised customer hackles by announcing its services will be available by app only — no more website.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

Join us next week for our sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Christopher Penn, Laura Thomas, and Martin Waxman.

About this week’s panel:

A veteran of small and large PR agencies, Shonali Burke is the award-winning president & CEO of her eponymous social PR consulting firm, Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc., where she and her team(s) help for- and non-profit organizations small and large reach business goals by taking their communications “from corporate codswallop to community cool.” Shonali also serves on the Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University in its M.A. /Communication program, as well as the Rugers University School of Communication and Information.  Before launching her own consultancy, Shonali worked as Vice President of Digital Media and marketing for MSL Group, and as Vice President of Media and Communications for the ASPCA.

Dave Fleet is Senior Vice President of Edelman Digital for the Canada East region, where he leads the practice with a team of more than 35 communicators who develop and implement innovative digital engagement strategies for brands like kraft, Mondelez, payPal, eBay, TELUS, Intuit, and a host of others. Before joining Edelman, Dave was Vice President and Account Director reponsible for social media at Thornley Fallis Communications. He also co-organized Podcamp Toronto as a volunteer gig. Dave spent several years working in communication jobs for the Government of Ontario.

Kami Watson Huyse founded Zoetica Media. She writes an award-winning blog, Zoetica Talks, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. Kami is a national leader in the use of social media for public relations. She speaks at social media events and conferences all over the country and her work in social media has earned her the SNCR’s 2008 Reputation Management award and IABC’s 2009 Gold Quill of Excellence Award. Kami was a 2010 fellow of the Society for New Communications Research where she pursued a study on how cause marketing in social communities can benefit companies.

She is is also the cofounder and organizer of the Social Media Breakfast Houston.

The post FIR #5: Online advertisers messed up appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.