Tiger Woods in the News: Tabloid Revelations and Blind Eyes

Jay Busbee, sports writer, says as we wind down from TigerCrashGate -- yes, it's true, we're almost done, at least until he returns to the course -- it's worth taking a look at the way that this story spiraled from one-car hydrant-bump to worldwide scandal, one whose cost will eventually be measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Here's the key question to all of this: did we need to know about Tiger Woods' secret, off-the-course life? Many argue that this is an unforgivable invasion of a family's privacy, that we're interested in Tiger Woods as a golfer, not as a family man. As long as he keeps sinking long putts on Sunday afternoons, who cares what he does later that evening? But that just-golf-it mindset doesn't account for the fact that Woods is not "just a golfer," he's the public face of an entire corporation. What he does on his own time is not his own business, not when his actions can do financial harm to those who have invested hundreds of millions in his image. That financial impact, not the "more mistresses or more majors?" question, is the real story here. Still, the reason why this scandal exploded the way it did is because Woods' secret dealings were allowed to continue unabated, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The more Woods got away with his misdeeds, the bolder -- and stupider -- he got. (Leaving your name on a voice mail? Sending texts from your own phone? Really, Tiger?) Part of this is surely because of the coverage bubble that Woods enjoyed for all of his career, a bubble that was born fully formed in Gary Smith's absurdly over-the-top introduction/sanctification of Woods in a legendary 1996 Sports Illustrated article entitled "The Chosen One." The see-no-evil approach to Tiger then dominated the golf media for more than a decade, partly because everyone was so in awe of Woods, and partly because Woods would cut off any access to any media outlet daring to poke around the edges of the mystique. Did Tiger Woods have everyone fooled? Did the golf media know about Tiger's affairs and cover them up? Did everyone just happen to look the other way at the proper time? Those are questions that each media member will have to answer for him- or herself, but here's one huge clue: there are several golf media members who have not written a single word about this, the biggest story to hit golf in decades. Why? Well, you'd have to ask them, but it's a fair bet that they're setting themselves up as good guys when Tiger eventually does return. ("See, Tiger? All those other guys piled on, but I didn't! I'm still your pal!") On the flip side, credit longtime golf writers like Steve Elling who actually did call out Woods, knowing full well that they'll find that next one-on-one interview that much tougher -- if not impossible -- to secure. Many in the golf media got completely outplayed on this story because of their insistence that it was no golf story at all, it was nothing but celebrity garbage, tawdry trash-digging that was beneath them. And again, if it was nothing but the personal affairs of a private family, that would be true. But Tiger's absence from the tour is going to cost people and corporations hundreds of millions of dollars and fundamentally alter the game of golf for the short term -- so, yeah, that very much is a golf story. Journalists who complain that the tabloids were setting the agenda in this story should have been practicing a little shoe-leather journalism themselves. After the initial revelation on the day before Thanksgiving that Rachel Uchitel was somehow involved with Woods, it was a blogger, Ryan Ballengee of Waggle Room, who trumped the mainstream media and first contacted her. In the absence of comments from Team Tiger, the tabloids filled in the gaps, and despite their "bat boy/UFO abduction" rep, were on the whole more accurate than not. (Tiger's admission of "infidelities" plural is a testament to that.) There were some notable missteps on the tabloids' part. The RadarOnline.com story about Elin Woods moving out proved to be completely groundless, even though many outlets picked it up and ran with it. (We decided not to here because of the flimsiness of the sources.) More significantly, the Life & Style story about two professional golfers calling out Woods turned out to be an utter falsehood; we had decided to mention it here because there was on-the-record attribution, not "unnamed sources." Surely, we figured, no magazine would be foolish enough to print actual names without verifying. Wrong. Lesson learned -- and that's an aspect of this story that deserves further scrutiny. This is not to defend the tabloids' approach to celebrity -- they look at stars the way that the rest of us look at a Thanksgiving turkey right out of the oven -- but their dogged method of running down a story does indeed have its merits. (Paying interview subjects is not one of them, nor is publishing articles without bylines.) Still, if other journalists were similarly unconcerned about their future access to their subjects, they'd be able to uncover some secrets on topics more important than celebrities' sex lives. For now, though, the Tiger story has reached a natural stopping point. We can take some time over the holidays to breathe deep, stop wondering about how many more mistresses will come out of the woodwork, and -- thank you, heaven -- stop hearing lame Tiger jokes. The old Tiger Woods is gone. The new one -- well, we haven't met him yet. But he won't be on the same celebrity-worship pedestal as the old guy ... and, all in all, that's probably for the best.

YouTube Monetizing More than 1B Video Views Per Week

Liz Gannes of the gigaom network asks: When will YouTube be profitable? “In the not-too-distant future,” said Google CFO Patrick Pichette. He did offer a “sound bite” to appease investors and industry watchers: “We’re monetizing more than a billion video views every week on YouTube.” That’s out of “well over” a billion views that YouTube recently said it gets every day. So, let’s put on our fuzzy and unauthorized math thinking cap: There are seven days in a week. YouTube is monetizing in the neighborhood of 14 percent of its total views. Google’s Nikesh Arora, president of global sales operations and business development, noted campaigns on YouTube’s home page have been undertaken with 90 percent of the top 50 advertisers. He said 90 percent of YouTube’s home-page inventory was sold out in the third quarter. Further, YouTube is beginning to release pre-roll inventory to advertisers — not the most-liked format for watchers or many in the industry, but a good way to make money. And the site is getting more premium content; it tied up a deal with Channel 4 and straightened out its relationships with the music labels in recent weeks. Google has come a long way from last year in its attitude towards YouTube, when CEO Eric Schmidt called YouTube monetization “the holy grail” and “our highest priority this year.” “In general we’re really pleased about YouTube’s performance — it is going very well,” said Pichette. Arora added: “We’re pleased with our ability to monetize YouTube so far, and we like the trend.”

Marketing for Small Business

To succeed, entrepreneurs must attract and retain a growing base of satisfied customers. Marketing programs, though widely varied, are all aimed at convincing people to try out or keep using particular products or services. Business owners should carefully plan their marketing strategies and performance to keep their market presence strong based on the following: 1. All company policies and activities should be directed toward satisfying customer needs. 2. Profitable sales volume is more important than maximum sales volume. To best use these principles, a small business should: • Determine the needs of their customers through market research • Analyze their competitive advantages to develop a market strategy • Select specific markets to serve by target marketing • Determine how to satisfy customer needs by identifying a market mix Successful marketing requires timely and relevant market information. An inexpensive research program, based on questionnaires given to current or prospective customers, can often uncover dissatisfaction or possible new products or services. Market research will also identify trends that affect sales and profitability. Population shifts, legal developments, and the local economic situation should be monitored to quickly identify problems and opportunities. It is also important to keep up with competitors' market strategies. A marketing strategy identifies customer groups which a particular business can better serve than its target competitors, and tailors product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services toward those market segments. Ideally, the strategy should address unmet customer needs that offer adequate potential profitability. A good strategy helps a business focus on the target markets it can serve best. Owners of small businesses usually have limited resources to spend on marketing. Concentrating their efforts on one or a few key market segments — target marketing — gets the most return from small investments. There are two methods used to segment a market: 1. Geographical segmentation — To specialize in serving the needs of customers in a particular geographical area. For example, a neighborhood convenience store may send advertisements only to people living within one-half mile of the store. 2. Customer segmentation — To identify those people most likely to buy the product or service and targeting those groups. Every marketing program contains four key components: 1. Products and Services 2. Promotion 3. Distribution 4. Pricing These are combined into an overall marketing program. Products and Services — Product strategies may include concentrating on a narrow product line, developing a highly specialized product or service, or providing a product-service package containing unusually high-quality service. Promotion — Promotion strategies include advertising and direct customer interaction. Good salesmanship is essential for small businesses because of their limited ability to spend on advertising. Price — The right price is crucial for maximizing total revenue. Generally, higher prices mean lower volume and vice-versa; however, small businesses can often command higher prices because of their personalized service. Distribution — The manufacturer and wholesaler must decide how to distribute their products. Working through established distributors or manufacturers' agents generally is easiest for small manufacturers. Small retailers should consider cost and traffic flow in site selection, especially since advertising and rent can be reciprocal: A low-cost, low-traffic location means spending more on advertising to build traffic. The nature of the product or service is also important in siting decisions. If purchases are based largely on impulse, then high traffic and visibility are critical. On the other hand, location is less a concern for products or services that customers are willing to go out of their way to find. The recent availability of highly segmented mailing lists, purchased from list brokers, magazines, or other companies, has enabled certain small businesses to operate from any location yet serve national or international markets.

The End Of Advertising As We Know It

The next five years will hold more change for the advertising industry than the previous 50 did. Traditional advertising players - broadcasters, distributors and advertising agencies – will need innovative new approaches to respond to major industry shifts underway, according to “The end of advertising as we know it”, IBM global surveys of more than 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising experts. Imagine an advertising world where spending on interactive, one-to-one advertising formats surpasses traditional, one-to-many advertising vehicles, and a significant share of ad space is sold through auctions and exchanges. Advertisers know who viewed and acted on an ad, and pay based on real impact rather than estimated “impressions.” Consumers self-select which ads they watch and share preferred ads with peers. User-generated advertising is as prevalent (and appealing) as agency-created spots. The surveys point to four change drivers shifting control within the ad industry: 1. Attention – Consumers are increasingly in control of how they view, interact with and filter advertising in a multichannel world. 2. Creativity – Thanks to technology, the rising popularity of user-generated and peer-delivered content, and new ad revenue-sharing models (e.g., YouTube, Crackle, Current TV), amateurs and semi- professionals are now creating lower-cost advertising content. 3. Measurement – Advertisers are demanding more individual-specific and involvement- based measurements, putting pressure on the traditional mass-market model. 4. Advertising inventories – Will be bought and sold through efficient exchanges, bypassing traditional intermediaries. As the advertising value chain reconfigures, broadcasters, advertising agencies and media distributors will need to innovate in three key areas: 1. Consumer: Drive greater creativity around traditional ads, while also pursuing new ad formats across media devices to attract and retain customers. 2. Business model: Pioneer changes in how advertising is sold, the structure and forms of partnerships, revenue models, advertising formats and reporting metrics. 3. Business design: Support consumer and business model innovation through redesigned organizational and operating capabilities across the advertising lifecycle – consumer analytics, channel planning, buying/selling, creation, delivery, and impact reporting. There is no question that the future of advertising will look radically different from its past. The push for control of attention, creativity, measurements and inventory will reshape the advertising value chain and shift the balance of power.

Engagement: What Does It Really Mean?

As with any recent marketing term, there are many definitions out there for engagement. Jose Villa, marketing consultant, says a good one is: Engagement is measured as the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence a customer has for or with a brand over time. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Yet the concept of engagement has ushered in a new paradigm in the advertising world - one that has dramatically changed how marketing and advertising need to work in 2009 and beyond for both the general and Hispanic markets. The term engagement is a result of marketers' efforts to navigate the brave new world of advertising. Engagement manifests itself most clearly with the collision of two of the most established paradigms of the marketing world - the awareness model (expressed through the concepts of "reach and frequency") and the marketing funnel - that have, for the most part, been irrelevant in 2009. At some point we have all spoken about creating "awareness." In fact, most of us have probably spent more than a few years and more than a few dollars developing programs built around the concept of awareness - trying to get "top of mind" with certain target audiences. The way we've probably gone about this is through some controlled expression of a brand that we anticipate will change "hearts and minds" with the right message delivered at the proper reach and frequency. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, in today's consumer-driven media world, this model does not work. Consumers filter out "one-way" messages as noise. That's of course if they are even consuming the media you are depending on to reach them. Although the Hispanic media landscape has evolved more slowly than the general market, these transformational shifts in media consumption are reverberating throughout the U.S. Hispanic community. The marketing funnel, while still useful in some instances, generally misses the boat of the new consumer-driven marketing world we live in. Why? For one, consumers' trust in traditional media has significantly diminished. More and more people are looking to their peers, who are now more vocal than ever, for information. The primary role of advertising is now about creating conversations. Therefore, the ultimate goal of getting someone down a linear path from awareness to transaction no longer fits nicely into a funnel. The funnel fails to capture the bi-directional conversation and asymmetrical influence of peers. When looking at the Hispanic consumer, the influence of peers, which is driven by network effort, is only multiplied as a result of Hispanics' organically larger social networks (family, friends, all those "primos," etc.). Add to this data that shows that Hispanics over-index in social media activity (whether it's social networking, blogging or simply creating and sharing content), and it's clear that Hispanics are influenced and influence others more than their general market brethren. The good news is that engagement measures what we need to focus on moving forward. Going back to Forrester, it outlined a four-part model that can be used to measure the interaction of consumers with brands and how to track it: Involvement tracks site visitors, time spent, page views, reach, frequency, media impressions, etc. Interaction measures the contributions to blogs, content creation and uploads, and purchases. Intimacy monitors consumer attitudes, perceptions and feelings about a brand through surveys, service calls and brand studies. Influence measures the likelihood that consumers will recommend or advocate products or brands. Summarized well with gauges such as Net Promoter Indexes (NPi), brand affinities, etc. More simply put, involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence sum up how much time a consumer spends with your brand. The more time spent with a brand, chances are, the greater the affinity for that brand. This engagement model is not new and has been championed for a number of years by digital agencies. As digital agencies increase in prominence and the efficiencies and models used in digital advertising spread to traditional advertising it is inevitable that engagement will increase in prominence. In the Hispanic advertising business, the effects of this paradigm shift toward engagement are popping up all around us. Whether its Hispanic agencies forgoing their corporate Web sites for Facebook pages or the growing "Latinos in Social Media" movement, Hispanic advertising is quickly moving to engagement.

How Much Does a Brand Cost?

How much you can expect to pay for the creation of your brand is the $64,000 question. The answer is that the fee doesn't have to be astronomical, but it can be depending on who you decide to do business with. Creating a brand is often a classic case of getting what you pay for. Your cousin may create a name and commensurate logo (without applications like letterhead, signage and packaging) for $500, or you can pay an international identity and branding company $100,000. In theory, that $100,000 should by you higher quality images and plenty of targeted branding theory, but that isn’t always the case. All Business recommends that emerging companies look for an in-between solution. Look for a company that is experienced in branding small or start-up businesses, and that understands your timing and budget constraints. Reputable firms charge anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000 for a name and logo. You should be thrilled with the product and get terrific results from a firm in this range. Before choosing a branding, naming or identity company, scrutinize its portfolio to make sure their style matches your tastes. Also, don't hesitate to ask for references—they should be proud to provide them. Call a couple of the references and find out whether they liked working with the firm. Finally, remember that branding is a serious, long-term investment. If you're going after or have received outside financing, it should be a line item in your budget. Building a brand is a core business activity, as important as leasing office space, recruiting the right people and developing your product or service.

How Tiger Woods Should Handle His Sudden PR Crisis

Kevin Sullivan, former White House communications director under President George W. Bush, and former communications executive with NBC Universal, NBC Sports and the Dallas Mavericks, has some advice for Tiger Woods: Tell it first, tell it yourself and tell it all. That is the tried and true formula for handling a messy public relations crisis in the smoothest possible way. When Tiger Woods let 13 hours lapse after Friday's early-morning accident without issuing an explanation, he ceded control of his story not only to legitimate news outlets, but also to celebrity gossip mongers on the hunt for a tale –- made up or otherwise -– of adultery and mayhem. The story of Tiger's first major off-the-course bogey was in their sights and the race was on to fill in the juicy details. Woods hired attorney Mark NeJame, which shouldn't raise eyebrows -– after all, the police are investigating Woods' crash -– but repeatedly declining to be interviewed by the police makes it look like he has something to hide. When Woods finally responded with a Sunday afternoon statement, he called the rumors false, malicious and irresponsible. Good for Tiger, who has a track record of successfully taking on the tabloids. But while he took responsibility for the crash, he provided scant information. ”I want to keep it (private),” Woods said of the details surrounding the middle-of-the-night incident. Good luck with that. Woods' strategy leaves many questions unanswered, which has ignited a media frenzy to fill in the blanks and take down the world's most successful and well-known athlete. Tiger's problem is that we've seen plenty of public figures in hot water make stern denials only to later be backpedaled into confessions after third parties talk or more information is unearthed. Remember the cases of Marion Jones, Michael Vick and Pete Rose, to name a few -– along with a parade of politicians, most recently former Senator and Presidential candidate John Edwards –- who misled and later came clean. We want to believe Woods that all those salacious rumors are false. We certainly don't blame him for wanting to keep private whatever happened that night between him and his wife, Elin. But it's unrealistic. The state police want answers about the incident. The media won't let it go. And while Rachel Uchitel has denied the National Enquirer report that she had an affair with Woods, watching the video of her at LAX Sunday standing silently before the cameras alongside celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, it's hard to imagine that we're not going to hear from her soon. So here are three suggestions for Woods: 1. Don't delay. Hold your scheduled press conference Tuesday to kick off the Chevron World Challenge, which, since it benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation among other charities, makes it the perfect backdrop. Without going into every private detail, provide a sense of what led to the collision. Give an explanation, take a couple questions, and then move on to previewing the tournament and how it will benefit the work of your foundation. 2. If you have something to own up to, do it completely and you will be forgiven. Just ask Kobe Bryant. 3. If not, disarm the skeptics with your sense of humor. Gary Peterson of the Contra Costa Times had a suggestion: Say you were excited about a Black Friday sale and got carried away. Then give a sincere explanation. Anything that actually addresses the incident will bring Woods one step closer to putting it behind him. Otherwise, he better get used to seeing the TMZ.com van hanging around his subdivision.

Newspaper Industry Ad Revenue Far Down

Martin Peers of the Wall Street Journal writes on the critical question of how much of the recent plunge in media companies’ fortunes has been a cyclical decline versus a secular one. It’s obviously some of both, but the mix will decide what the next five years look like for magazines and newspapers, the critical providers of original reporting in the country. A cyclical decline is one due to the inevitable ups and downs of the broad economy. Most businesses get hurt in the recession part of a cycle but do well in the expansionary part and their fortunes more or less move up or down with the economy at large. But structural changes in the economy or a specific industry can result in secular changes for a business. Think for instance, the classified-ads business of newspapers, which has been walloped by eBay and craigslist (with a final indignity provided by the cyclical collapse of the housing bubble). Most of those revenues aren’t coming back. That’s a secular decline. Overall daily newspaper-industry ad revenue just flat-out crashed last year, plunging 16.7 percent to $37.8 billion from $45.4 billion in 2007, which itself was a bad year with ads down 7.9 percent from $49.3 billion in 2006. It gets worse. So far 2009 has been more dismal than 2008. It was predicted that newspaper revenue would tumble 17.3 percent this year to $31.6 billion, or just below 1993 levels. If anything, these numbers may be optimistic. Several major newspaper companies have reported declines of about 30 percent so far this year. But even that $31.6 billion understates just how awful the numbers are. Remember $31.6 billion in 1993 bought a whole lot more than $31.6 billion does today—49 percent more to be exact. Ryan Chitum of the Columbia Journalism Review went back through the Newspaper Association of America’s data on newspaper-industry revenue, which goes back to 1950, to see what year we’re actually even with now. It’s ugly: You have to go back to 1965 to find a year with revenue lower in 2009 dollars than what this year is projected to be. That year, the industry took in $4.42 billion, which works out to $30.22 billion in current dollars. The industry can only hope this year hits 1966 levels, which work out to $32.4 billion in real dollars. (A caveat: there are fewer papers now than there were in 1965 and production is more efficient.) What stands out immediately looking at real dollars (which are all that really matter), is that the peak of the last recovery, in 2004, with $55 billion, never got close to the peak of the previous recovery, 2000—when real ad revenues hit $60.9 billion. To make matters worse, the 2002-2004 recovery never reached the peak of two recoveries ago, in 1988, when real ad dollars hit $56.8 billion. Recall, this year ads are projected at just $31.6 billion—if they’re lucky—a 44 percent decline from twenty-one years ago. That folks, is secular decline, and the vast majority of those dollars are not coming back.

Ask the Expert: Should your Business Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon?

A reader asks in the Minnesota Star Tribune: As social media (Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, etc.) provide a new form of marketing, how much of a company's overall marketing effort should be geared solely on social media? And if there is not a "magic number," is there a way to gauge, by industry or customer base, for example, online-only customers vs. storefront? Consumers' media habits are changing rapidly and current trends suggest a greater number of consumers will spend more time online in the future. While this does not point to a "magic number" of promotional dollars one must invest in social media strategy, it suggests that today's marketers cannot afford to ignore the Internet space. The first step in gauging whether to spend on social media is assessing the techno-graphic profile of your consumers. This will help you understand the extent to which your customers access the Internet and other social media, and their usage patterns: for example, whether they use these channels to connect with other customers, write product reviews or make product recommendations to others. Once you understand the profile, the next step is to define your social media strategy objectives. Do you want to use the social media to have a dialogue with customers or create word-of-mouth advertising? Do you want to listen in to what customers are saying, generate new product ideas or seek customer feedback? This will dictate the online tools you will need to create as you embark on your social media strategy. The next step is to create an implementation plan that provides guidelines about the frequency of contact you may have with your customers online and the nature of "dialogue" you may engage in with your customers. Once you have these steps in place, it becomes easier to determine how much to allocate to your social media budget. Investing in social media should be a strategic decision -- not an ad hoc or a reactive one. Firms that benefit from such endeavors are those that use social media to gain crucial consumer insights and constantly create and deliver superior customer value based on those insights.

Online Shopping for Price Comparisons

Online shopping has made consumers’ lives easier in so many ways. But it has also increased expectations, Kathy Crosett, of Marketing Forcast, says. Today’s savvy consumers expect to find exactly what they’re looking for, want the product to ship immediately and believe all this service should be available at a reasonable price. And how do they know they’re getting a reasonable price? Until now, consumers have been using comparison shopping sites to be sure they’re not paying too much. But that strategy may be about to change. According to a new survey by e-tailing group, “Comparison Shopping is a Way of Life”, more marketers are using their Web sites to show how their price compares to the competition. This strategy is winning consumer loyalty and ensuring return visits to Web sites. The survey revealed the following consumer attitudes about retailers who display competitor prices: • Likely to return to a retailer who displays competitor prices: 78% • Feel an increased sense of loyalty to retailers who provide competitor prices: 36% • No longer feel that it’s necessary to comparison shop for the item: 53% • Believe that the displayed competitor pricing data is correct: 52% The e-tailing group survey indicates that consumers often spend up to half an hour using a variety of tools to research products before they make the purchase. Analysts believe that retailers who begin offering this information on their Web sites will win consumer loyalty early, especially since they’re making the shopping process easier, and may be able to continue the positive relationship with the consumer far into the future.

Know Your Mobile Web Visitors

A recent study done at the Nielsen Company found an increase in mobile Web visitors over the past year, and surprisingly, growth in the 13-17 and 65+ age groups comprised the largest growth of the of the total mobile Web audience. Comparing July 2008 with July 2009, here are ways Ann Pruitt, marketer, says you can use the stats that were found in the research: 1. Know the mobile Web usage audience: • youth increased 45 percent • seniors increased 67 percent • women increased 43 percent • men increased 26 percent Men were early adapters, and still make up the majority of mobile users. 2. Know the top Web activity on the mobile device: Women – a variety of sites, including online shopping and social networking. The top 5: • People • AT&T Search • Horoscope.com • Target • MySpace.com Men – news, sports and online games. Their top five start with a tech news site: • Gizmodo • Maxim • NBA • IGN • NFL Teens – texting, both sending and receiving. The top 5 things teens do on their mobile devices: • Text Messaging • Picture Messaging/MMS • Ringtone downloads • Instant messaging • Picture downloads

Branding Through Differentiation

It’s not enough for your company to merely offer a great product or service. To get ahead of the field, today’s competitive marketplace demands that business owners establish and develop a distinct brand. It’s important that your brand help create and further a clear identity, one that every employee, from the CEO down to the sales team, can understand and get behind. The brand must be your mantra, and it needs to be one that can be stated succinctly. It also needs to translate easily to advertising, marketing, graphics, display, and collateral campaigns. The real key to increased market share is differentiation. How you approach differentiation depends on your particular product or business. The critical starting point is understanding whether your business or your product is the brand. For instance, Procter & Gamble manufactures and sells countless products but consumers far more readily recognize P&G’s individual product lines: Mr. Clean, Tide, Crest, Folgers, and Charmin, for example. That’s intentional branding that favors the product, not the company. However, for most small businesses, the business itself will be the brand. How you proceed depends on whether your company or product varies greatly from your competitors or whether you’re one of several companies offering similar goods or service. No matter what, you must determine with certainty who is and who is not the intended audience. Good branding also considers how best to position your company, so you might weigh age, class, or lifestyle factors if your goal is to appeal to one of these groups. With a general demographic in mind, you can further differentiate your product. The key is zeroing in on what makes your company or product most noticeable or special. If the point of differentiation is that your product is the least expensive item on the market, that point can become part of your branding strategy, allowing the positioning of your product as the best bargain. Conversely, if your product is expensive, positioning it as the most luxurious could be smart branding. Some products might be more suited for an attitudinal approach to branding. For instance, a special events planning business or singing telegram company might be able to go wacky, zany, and fun with its branding, whereas a financial planning services company or health-care provider would be more suited to a steady, measured, confidence-building approach. Differentiation is more difficult when products seem less outwardly different. For example, insurance agencies often offer the same basic types of insurance programs. In such cases, the brand identity of the business must be more inherent, so these companies might be more successful by playing up the trust, loyalty, or experience angles of their reputations rather than exploiting differences where there are few. Companies need to be smart about branding so they don’t waste time. One way to be efficient is to be conscious of the desired and targeted overall market share. If you’re one of several businesses providing a basic commodity or service, such as an insurance agency or a financial planner, you’ll probably want to take a conservative approach with broad appeal. If, however, you’re a niche sporting goods producer of an extreme-snowboarding accessory, focus your branding on the narrow margin of dedicated athletes who crave the latest product. If your brand manages to communicate your company’s core values and distinguishes your product, you’re on your way to success. Expend energy determining your differentiation strategy and your brand may very well take on a life of its own. Differentiation can lead to that edge your brand needs to gain consumer recognition in the market, and once you’ve got your brand and identity percolating, you can get down to the business of building and growing your brand. Remember that your brand is permanent. It consistently reinforces the appropriate messages to your key audiences. A brand is the core identity of your company and represents the personality that goes to the heart of your positioning. Your brand is bigger than any advertising, public relations, or direct mail campaign you will ever do. It is the one thing that doesn't change.

Social Media is the New Advertising

According to Rajani Baburajan, contributing editor for TMCnet, the power of social media is best utilized by advertisers today. The evolution of microblogging technologies such as Twitter confirms the success of social media advertising among several businesses that communicate with their target customers through Internet. Social media optimization, or “SMO,” is also gaining traction among businesses that aim at improving the page ranking of their Web sites by connecting with different community Web sites. A recent study by BIA/ Kelsey analyzes the influence of various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace in the marketing activities of SMBs today. The latest wave of BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor study shows that 9 percent of SMBs currently use Twitter to market their businesses. BIA/Kelsey also found that there is growing interest among SMBs to leverage the power of social media to improve the business. About 32 percent of SMBs surveyed in the study indicated they plan to include social media in their marketing mix in the next 12 months by using a page on a social site such as Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. To invite more traffic to their business Web site, several SMBs – 39 percent – plan to include customer ratings or reviews on their own Web sites and 31 percent plan to include links or ads placed on social sites or blogs. Steve Marshall, director of research and consulting, BIA/Kelsey, said, that as local consumers increasingly gravitate to social networks, local businesses understand they need to be part of the conversation. “This opens up a market opportunity for local media companies that offer products and services that enable local advertisers to easily integrate social media into their marketing efforts,” Marshall said. BIA/Kelsey study also shows that use of social media advertising is more common in startups than the established ones. Among the SMBs that use Twitter for advertisement, 16 percent of them are in business for three years or less, 11 percent of SMBs are in business for four to six years, 6 percent of them are in business for seven to 10 years, and only 2 percent of SMBs are in business for more than 11 years. As the popularity of social media escalates among businesses as well as end users, service providers are looking towards exploiting the opportunity by offering innovative services such as free voice chat and video chat. According to another report published in TMCnet, Twitter is adding a free VoIP calling feature using JaJah’s VoIP technology. Twitter’s VoIP feature announcement comes just days after Facebook’s announcement about the launch of a new “voice chat” feature, using Vivox’s VoIP technology.

Multicultural Young Adults

Although multicultural audiences typically have racially mixed social circles and younger or second-generation Hispanics and Asians may be highly acculturated into mainstream American culture, Market Reasearch.com found significant differences still remaining amongst different racial and ethnic groups. For example, Asian audiences typically have higher incomes and a greater level of sophistication with technology, and are also more likely to be married, while black and Hispanic audiences often have lower incomes. PC ownership levels and frequency of web usage are also typically lower amongst these groups, although these differences also may be driven by differences in education and income level. Meanwhile, Hispanics are also more likely to begin families early and live in multigenerational households. Additional differences emerge by age, with those ages 18-24 having a strong interest in entertainment but limited household income available for shopping online and other expenditures, while those ages 25-34 are likely to be spending on furnishing their first homes and raising their families. Multicultural audiences are also likely to enjoy different types of entertainment, with dedicated music genres, TV channels and movies targeting the various groups. Although hit TV shows like American Idol, “big tent” movies and hit songs will still have broad reach amongst all of the multicultural audience, the overall mix of entertainment enjoyed by individual racial and ethnic groups is likely to vary. Certain groups may also be likely to have different interests and hobbies - for example, young Asian respondents to Mintel’s surveys have evidenced a strong interest in shopping, while young male black respondents are very interested in sports.

Fantasy Football: The Best Marketing Program Ever!

Cory Treffiletti, president of Catalyst SF says that fantasy football is without a doubt the most perfect example of integrated marketing in existence today. It marries the best of online marketing and social media with real-world events and that most basic of human traits: pure, unbridled competitiveness. First and foremost, fantasy football is an integrated marketing platform. It takes an offline event, one that is still considered appointment viewing in television and is less likely to be DVR’d and time-shifted, and marries it with online tools that allow you to keep track of the games no matter where you are and what time it is. It generates enormous page views and it is also one of the fastest growing online video plays. Fantasy football is also a social networking opportunity, with more and more people engaging in competitive leagues each year for money and bragging rights alike. There are numerous platforms for creating and managing a league. Active fantasy team managers don’t just wait till Sunday to log in to their teams. They are interacting daily: checking injury reports and waiver wires, reading local news on their star players, etc. Some fantasy team managers log in and spend as much as 30 minutes or more just doing research (much of which is likely done at work). Fantasy football is also an open, distributed platform, much like Twitter and Facebook Connect. Fantasy football apps are all the rage this time of the year. It would appear there are just as many people accessing their teams through mobile devices as through the Web and the standard PC interface. And of course, fantasy football is the ultimate social lubricant. Fantasy sports, especially fantasy football, are a unifying factor in the U.S. for just about all casual sports fans because they force you to watch and root for multiple teams beyond just your hometown. The NFL has embraced this pastime with a marketer’s eye. They understand that marrying together social and standard online media with an offline event can help tap into the innate passion for a product and drive consumer engagement.

Balloon Boy’s PR Escapade

"Those who will come after us will be as wise as we are, and as able to take care of themselves as we have been," Thomas Jefferson said in 1811. Ted Anthony, AP writer, posits: Let us say, for argument's sake, that Jefferson is returned to Earth fleetingly to check in on his beloved United States. Let's say that we must tell him what became of the nation whose birth he masterminded. And — one final leap of faith — let's say that the day he reappears happens to be today. Jefferson's state-of-the-union snapshot might include health care. It might include the economy and Iraq. But how could it exclude the one event that serves up a stunningly multifaceted window into America exactly 200 years after he left the presidency? Said event being, of course, the Balloon Boy Saga. Rarely are we given such an opportunity to press pause and take stock of the American experience as it is unfolding in our moment in history. And almost never does a single event so starkly illuminate the constantly shifting sands of who we are as a nation, which may, right now, be this: We have become so enamored with the spectacle that, sometimes, we risk confusing it with real life. "This thing has become so convoluted," one observer concluded. That the observer was Richard Heene, the father at the epicenter of it all, made the statement no less true. Think about it. Pretty much everything in the ravenous modern American pop-culture pantheon is present and accounted for. The imperiled child and the Gosselin-style parental unraveling. The marketing of your story to the world. The hangers-on, jockeying for a sliver of limelight. The eagerness — no, desperation — to take a shortcut to stardom through storm-chasing and reality television. The near-instant journey from victim to celebrity to villain. There's more. Cable news, amplifying a local curiosity into a national nail-biting moment that unfolded in real time. The emergence of shaky home video. The expectation that little Falcon Heene would make the rounds of the national talk-show rounds, because that's simply what Americans do when something big happens to them. And finally, the balloon-borne saga echoes another enduring American archetype — the fraudulent but colorful Wizard of Oz, the embodiment of a snake-oil tradition that reaches back to P.T. Barnum. People grappled to characterize the moment using American tools, from sarcasm to souvenirs. "American news at its best," documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock said. "Own a piece of history!" shouted the Web site hawking Balloon Boy T-shirts. And this, from 6-year-old Falcon Heene himself, a statement we're still sorting out: "You guys said that we did it for the show." Weird, weirder, weirdest. What do you expect, though, in a land where, when people speak about the disaster/car chase/crime they've just seen, they say, simply: "It was just like a movie." And much of the time, they're thrilled to make the comparison. "It may have been a grab for attention, but people were happy to take a look at it — perhaps to distract from the real business that we're supposed to be getting down to here, health care and everything else," says Emily Godbey, an Iowa State University scholar who studies how America gawks and rubbernecks at spectacle. Barnum's famed hoaxes, showcased in his touring 19th-century "American Museum," were whoppers for sure. Yet many of the Americans who shelled out their shillings to enter the tent suspected, or outright knew, that they were being fed a put-on. They didn't mind; it was part of the fun. (Barnum, incidentally, was no stranger to making money off hot-air balloon rides.) And what of Falcon himself, in the eye of the media storm that has carried off his family's home with the force of Dorothy's cyclone? He looks at turns sad, bewildered, playful, taciturn — all the unrestrained emotions you'd expect to appear on the face of any 6-year-old boy whose life has been upended. What was once the purview of the world's Shirley Temples and Jackie Coogans is now available to anyone who can command the news cycle. "I don't understand them thinking that this is good parenting — put a bunch of lights in the living room and expose this kid to all of this attention," says Ada Calhoun, former editor of the parenting Web site Babble.com and author of the upcoming book, "Instinctive Parenting: Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids." "It's so taken for granted now that there is this very thin line between public and private," she says. "Whatever you do inside your home, even if you're little, is for everybody to comment on and see over and over again." And, increasingly, to doubt. For when we finally emerge from the balloon boy fever dream, we're going to be another notch more disbelieving of our fellow Americans. "The next time something like this happens, you're going to have a lot of people going, `It's probably for a reality show,'" Sherri Shepherd of "The View" said. "You have desensitized us a little bit." "We did this for the show." An American epitaph if there ever was one. No need for the big tent anymore; these days, the entire republic is the Greatest Show on Earth. And every TV, every laptop, every handheld device is a ticket to admission. The Wizard of Oz would be proud — brain, heart and courage aside.

Conde Nast to Close Four "Lady" Magazines

Well, there go four more media properties: Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride and Modern Bride. Condé Nast announced that it is shuttering the four magazines because of these dark economic times. Magazine closures hardly come as a surprise anymore -- but, Gourmet! Really? It premiered in 1941 -- amid the Great Depression and just ahead of World War II, as NPR points out -- and soon achieved iconic status for its spectacular recipes and accompanying photos so vivid you could swear they were scratch-and-sniff. (I dare you to look at any of these pictures without drooling. It's like the National Geographic of food!) Cookie, a relatively new title, comes as much less of a shock -- and that is even more so for Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. Looks like amateur chefs will have to turn to Bon Appetit or any of the innumerable cooking blogs out there and Cookie readers always have online parenting publications like Babble or any number of awesome "mommy blogs." Readers of the final two mags will have what still seems an overabundance of bridal glossies and books, in addition to the loads of niche Web sites for each and every type of wedding imaginable. That's the glass-half-full perspective (which is admittedly much easier for someone who isn't terribly interested in cooking, weddings or babies). The half-empty view is not only that it's unfortunate all of these are "women's" mags, but, barring a major institutional reorganization, it also means three prominent female editors in chief are out of a job (the two bridal titles share the same editor). Any way you cut it, it's yet another sad day for the publishing world, and for women's place in it.

Blog’s Lessons for Email

Marc Munier, commercial director at Pure 360, says there are things we do with blogs that can be applied to email: Regularity. Surprising as it may be, people get used to the regularity of your emails and tend to react badly if you mess with the schedule, very much the same if a blogger posts erratically. Informative. This is related to the frequency, recipients don’t mind getting very regular email communications as long as you have something new and interesting to them within the content. Monthly emails can be very dull if you are only talking about the latest version of your software, whereas daily emails can be fantastic because there is always something new. Comments. . This is the key factor, blogs are two-way communication channels, one-way blogs are just website content with lower copy writing standards. And of course you don’t need to actually comment for it to be a two-way communication, just the fact that you can comment if you want to is enough to engender that feeling of engagement. And it’s exactly the same with email; replies are your listening portal. Replies should be encouraged, you are never going to get loads, after all, there are rarely more than a handful on blogs, but you have to make it easy and follow up when people do. So the worst thing you can do is have a “do not reply” email address, and the second worst thing you can do is send a static automated response when people do reply. Make it shorter. People’s attention span is shortening by the minute. Honestly nobody will read down to the bottom unless you have something amazing to say – and if you do, put a snippet on the email and the rest of the story on your site. After all email is the channel not the content, email gets people to do things and go places, it isn’t the end destination. Put the unsubscribe link at the top of the page. This will show to your recipients that you are a legitimate marketer and that you don’t want to email people who don’t want to receive your emails. Even ignoring the massive improvements in your delivery rates that you can achieve, unsubscribe links belong at the top of the email. On the flip side it is really easy to follow, so make it easy for people to subscribe. Newsletter sign-up forms should be prominent on your site. Email is a great channel but on its own it can’t achieve all your marketing goals. But email used in conjunction with other marketing mediums is brilliant – it’s like adding Vodka to a cocktail, it doesn’t shout about itself but it makes all the flavors work better. Email can be used to bring together different elements and stretch the channels that people interact with you on. It would be difficult to run an email data capture program through Twitter, Facebook or a blog; driving email subscribers to these social networks is by comparison a walk in the park. The ubiquity of email is its main strength. Twitter has over 4 million users, Facebook a hefty 150 million but there are 1.5 billion internet users – 90% of which have an email address, making it the top on-line activity just ahead of search engines.

Without Subscriber Names, Murdoch Might Break with Kindle

When you go to a kiosk and buy that day's Wall Street Journal, you can be fairly certain that no one's going to request your name and address and send that information back to News Corp. says Wendy Davis, Media Post writer. And when you go to a library and borrow, say, Selena Robert's "A-Rod," it's not likely that your librarian will ever tell Harper Collins -- or anyone else -- that you've done so. Should the situation be different for digital newspapers and books? Rupert Murdoch apparently thinks the answer is yes. In a statement that appears tone deaf to the privacy concerns surrounding digital media, the head of News Corp. recently announced that the company might stop allowing its material to be sold on the Kindle because Amazon doesn't disclose subscriber names. "Kindle treats them as their subscribers, not as ours, and I think that will eventually cause a break with us," he said this week. Techdirt's Mike Masnick points out that consumers might not be thrilled by an Amazon decision to reveal users' identities. And, realistically, at least people would almost certainly object to Amazon sharing any information at all with publishers. On the other hand, many others might not be troubled should Amazon share information about them. In fact, they might be happy to reveal their identities to publishers -- perhaps because they hope to then receive discounts. But that doesn't mean that companies like News Corp. can demand that Amazon share information about consumers. Consider, News Corp's own advertisers probably would like the names or contact information of people who click on ads at the Journal's site. Perhaps those readers wouldn't mind sharing that information, either. But News Corp. presumably wouldn't just hand that information over -- at least not without people's consent.

10 Things You Should Know About U.S. Hispanics

1. Hispanics are connecting twice as fast as the general market (14% growth vs. 7%) adding over a million users per year. In 2008 there were 23 million Hispanics online, about 52% of the Hispanic population. In 2012 more than 29 million will be online increasing Internet penetration to 58.6%. Living a connected, collective and spontaneous life is a fundamental Hispanic value and desire. Technology that facilitates connecting, sharing, entertaining and learning is rapidly becoming indispensable for the majority of Hispanics. We are referring to those that are connecting on their computers; recent figures put 57% of Hispanics going online through their mobile phones. 2. The growing Hispanic middle class is super connected: 88% of Hispanics with a household income of $50,000 + are online. For categories such as technology, consumer electronics, financial services and travel, connecting with consumers where they explore your products, research options, share experiences with communities, and ultimately buy your products is not an option, it's a necessity. 3. Hispanics are early adopters of mobile technology: 31 million have a mobile phone. By the age of 15, penetration of wireless services is 64%, by 17, it rises to 78%. Hispanics have the highest proportion of cord-cutters among all segments. For the most part, mobile marketing is not really on the radar as a consistent Hispanic marketing strategy. The challenge and opportunity of mobile marketing seems to lie in truly capitalizing on the relationship people have with their mobile devices. The mobile phone is not just another screen onto which ads are sent. It represents an opportunity to fundamentally change the relationship between brand and consumer. 4. Hispanics will spend money on what they really want: They spend 42% more on mobile devices and 35% more on data services than the average user. Convention tells us that the Hispanic market is very value-conscious and often makes purchase decisions based on price. When it comes to technology, the opposite has proven to be true. 5. Roughly half of the Hispanics online prefer Spanish, and for 66% it's important to be recognized as Hispanic through culturally relevant content. Online Hispanics move from Spanish to English and back again in different moments of an interactive brand experience. And far from being a disadvantage, this kind of fluid activity opens up interesting opportunities that helps them to customize their online experience. 6. Hispanics are dynamic content creators and consumers: Two-thirds of online Hispanics use the Web to view other consumers' content and 40% create content and provide their opinions online. Initially generated due to a lack of relevant and in-language content, consumer-generated content in the Hispanic market has taken on a life of its own. Hispanics dramatically outpace the general market in creating and sharing content, and few brands have figured out how to be part of the process creatively. The challenge is to support consumers, provide resources and even become part of the process without imposing artificial restrictions or values. 7. Entertainment content main appeal for online engagement: 37% listen to Internet radio vs. just 30% of non-Hispanics and 36% download music vs. just 29% of non-Hispanics. They represent a captive consumer that is willing to spend time, and in many cases, money for entertainment content online. 8. An online collective life: 77% engage in some kind of online socializing. 40% are part of a social network. An estimated 20% of Hispanics online are considered "Hispanic-fluentials." If word of mouth is key to any successful Hispanic marketing initiative, the online space has taken the dynamic to another level. Online, the collective hyper-social Hispanic cultural dynamic can be expressed, explored and developed without limits. 9. Multi-tasking: Part of the Hispanic DNA. On average, Hispanics spend 17 hours per week online, but they spend 14 hours per day with a technology device (versus 8 hours for the general population). The big opportunity: moving focus from one screen to three, dynamically connected screens. Because of their higher propensity to use converged technology, this consumer is the perfect target for developing truly integrated multi-channel campaigns. 10. Hispanic online landscape is less crowded: Interactive Advertising Media Investment represented 4.6% in 2007, while in the general market, it is around 7%. The online Hispanic opportunity is not only about a big and growing market, or about consumers that are eager to engage. Brands that go in and engage the consumer first have a unique opportunity to establish themselves as first movers and true resources for Hispanic consumers.

Building a Credible Brand for Your Small Business

Kim Wimpseff reports in All Business that three-time startup veteran and software developer Thomas E. Burns could spend his days writing code. Or he could write a book on branding. Burns founded his first company when he was just 22 years old. He then joined another company as its first employee. Then the entrepreneurial spirit came calling again. This next move came about the same time that Sun Microsystems introduced Java, the programming language. As a software developer at the time, Burns knew that Java was the technology for which he had been waiting. So in 1995, Burns, together with Mel Berman and Terence Parr, founded the MageLang Institute to provide customized training courses on Java. The company did well but wasn't the $3 million company that it is today. “The first year we only made about $600,000 in revenues,” Burns says. “But what we were really successful at was building a strong brand.” Burns discovered that, when building a brand, credibility counts. And when establishing credibility, there’s nothing like being a part of your own core audience to understand what is important. Quickly the MageLang Institute discontinued its training business and morphed into jGuru, a Web portal for Java software developers. Now as a media company, the business relies more than ever on its brand to drive traffic to the Web site. Building a credible brand required knowing thoroughly jGuru's audience "The best thing we did is that we know what our audience values and what they care about. And so we associate ourselves with those things," Burns says. "In essence, it's more about emotional values than practicality.” Software developers -- jGuru's audience -- care about technology first and foremost. "It's almost like a religion for many," Burns says, "in the sense that technological advancement is a good thing. They get very annoyed with those who want to hold back technology." Developers are also very individualistic and tend to have a "libertarian streak," he adds. The purpose of jGuru, as stated on its site, is to "advance and improve software technology and development." But Burns takes his company’s philosophy much deeper. JGuru’s mission statement is only the first step in aligning itself with its audience. "At first we associated with other people who could lend us credibility," Burns says. JGuru partnered with well-respected companies like Sun, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard in order to raise its profile and reputation. The next step was to employ credible software developers. Burns refers to these credibility-boosting characters as "celebrity developers" -- in other words, the gurus that make up jGuru. To attract top developers, jGuru encourages its employees to maintain their individuality. The company gives them free reign over their opinions posted on the site and in the software community. In fact, the company has no official opinion on anything -- only that the gurus who work there can express their own opinions freely. "The highest collection of famous developers work for us,” says Burns. “And this lack of control over them -- developers hate control -- and their knowledge came across from the beginning."

7 Ways to Leverage Your Advertising

If advertising is currently your main driver of sales, you can make surprisingly minor and easy changes in your existing advertising that will produce major results – and you won’t have to spend a dime, according to Jay Abraham, author of The Sticking Point Solution. There are several leverage factors at your immediate disposal, each of which can increase sales 20 to 500 percent: 1. Write great headlines: No matter how good the rest of your ad is, your audience won’t ever see it if they don’t get past the headline. Your headline must telegraph to your prospects the biggest, most appealing specific benefit or payoff they can expect to receive. It must be catchy and contain key words that will pop up from the page. 2. Set yourself apart: Distinguish your business from every other competitor by addressing an obvious void in the marketplace that you alone can honestly fill. Set your prospects’ buying criteria for them, so that only you, your business, or your product can clear the bar. Focus on one specific, relevant niche that is most sorely lacking in the marketplace and make it your own. 3. Offer proof to build your credibility: Provide substantiation for your claims, including client testimonials, quotes from experts, and excerpts of media articles about your product. Contrast your performance, construction, or support with the competitions’. 4. Reverse your customers’ risk: Put the onus on yourself. Tell your clients that you’ll offer a full refund, or at least some element of the transaction. Taking the burden of risk off a client will result in higher (and quicker) sales. 5. Include a call to action: Now that your audience has read your ad, don’t make their next step ambiguous. Tell them exactly what to do, why to do it, what benefits they can expect – and what penalties or dangers will result from delay. “Call now!” “Visit our store!” Such phrases may sound old school, but they’re still in use for a reason. 6. Offer a bonus: Whether it’s a coupon, a discount, an extended warranty, or the promise of preferential treatment, a bonus on top of your already fabulous product or service proposition can only further entice and multiply sales. “Be one of the first to join and receive a free companion book!” 7. Summarize your offer: By summarizing your offer at the end of your ad, you are seizing the moment to “Bring it home”: Reiterate the problem you are able to solve, the benefits your buyers will gain, and the upside with no downside. Then tell them again how to act now.

How to Measure Public Relations Results

Often, PR outputs are used to assess campaign performance rather than trying to determine whether or not the campaign actually touched and moved the targets in the ways we intended. The continued industry reliance on the use of advertising value equivalents (AVEs) is perhaps the most common misuse because AVE does not measure what the PR result actually accomplished – did we reach the intended targets; did they engage with the content; did we cause them to rethink existing perceptions; did we change their attitudes; did we increase the likelihood they would consider the brand? The most common PR metric today is Impressions. While it is a somewhat dubious metric for traditional media, it really loses meaning in social media where engagement not eyeballs is what we seek. Impressions also (greatly) overstate actual relevant audience. Generally only a fraction of any particular magazine or newspaper’s circulation meets your target audience demographics. And impressions merely represent an opportunity to see, they do not attempt to estimate the (small) percentage of the potential audience that actually saw your content. To compound the problems, many PR practitioners use a multiplier on impression numbers to account for pass-along readership or a mythical credibility advantage PR has over other communication tools. The simple fact is there is no factual basis (e.g. research proof) that multipliers should be used in any case. The need to put PR results in a business context has never been greater. We need to be able to address the question – what are we doing to help drive the business? If you are focused on output metrics like impressions or message delivery, you will always have a hard time explaining business impact. Instead, we need to focus on outcomes and answer the question – what happened as a result of our program or coverage? Understanding outputs has primary benefit as a diagnostic tool rather than a ‘scorecard’. PR is a tool for reaching outcomes that make a difference on the bottom line: Exposure – to what degree have we created exposure to content and message? Engagement – who, how and where are people interacting/engaging with our content? Influence – the degree to which exposure and engagement have influenced perceptions and attitudes. Action – as a result of the PR/social media effort, what actions if any has the target taken? ROI is a form of value/impact, but not all value takes form of ROI. ROI is a financial metric – percentage of dollars returned for a given investment/cost. The dollars may be revenue generated, dollars saved or spending avoided. ROI is transactional. ROI lives on the income statement in business terms. Value is created when people become aware of us, engage with our content or brand ambassadors are influenced by this engagement, and take some action like recommending to a friend or buying our product. Value creation occurs over time, not at a point in time. Value creation is process-oriented. Value lives on the balance sheet. Your investments in public relations remains an investment, creating additional value if done correctly, until which time they can be linked to a business outcome transaction that results in ROI.

The Pitfalls Of Pay Walls

Wendy Davis writes in MediaPost that two years ago, when News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch purchased the Wall Street Journal, he talked about taking down the pay wall and making many articles available for free online. But now that we're in a recession, Murdoch says he intends to start charging for Web articles at his newspapers, including not just the Journal but also The Times of London, The New York Post and other papers. Obviously News Corp. isn't the only company contemplating charging for online articles given the economic climate, which has made the ad-supported model more challenging. Other news companies like The New York Times, and industry players like Steven Brill, are also talking about charging readers for online access. But some newspaper executives seem oddly unfazed by a significant flaw in this plan: Many digital articles are going to be available for free whether the newspapers want them to be or not. That's because readers have always shared the stories they like, with or without the publishers' blessing. What's more, other Web sites are going to rewrite those stories and sell ads against them, again with or without the newspapers' approval. Murdoch told The Guardian that he anticipates resorting to litigation to enforce the company's copyright. But U.S. copyright law doesn't currently prevent people from rewriting stories because facts can't be copyrighted. While the Associated Press, and some industry observers, are attempting to revive the "hot news" doctrine -- which would give news outlets an exclusive right to publish scoops -- it's not clear that courts will go along with this plan. In the U.S., there's a very good argument that the "hot news" concept violates freedom of speech, at least as courts have interpreted the First Amendment in the recent past. Besides, even if these types of lawsuits prove feasible, copyright litigation is very costly. Just ask the Recording Industry Association of America, which has spent millions to sue individual file-sharers without even coming close to recouping its legal bills. Given the crisis facing newspapers today, the last thing publishers should embrace is a new business model that will depend on expensive, potentially unwinnable lawsuits.

How to Improve your Email Etiquette

Here are a few ways Marci Alboher says will ensure that your email style makes you look as smart as possible and doesn’t annoy those on the receiving end of your messages. Change the subject line every time you start a new conversation. The email subject line should tell the reader what the message is about. So if an email strand about “next Thursday’s meeting” suddenly morphs into a discussion about “Mary’s retirement party,” consider changing the subject line. Having descriptive subject lines helps people quickly scan their inbox to decide which messages to read first and also helps when searching for a message after a conversation has ended. Don’t use email when another medium makes more sense. Use email only when it's the best method. In many work cultures (like at Yahoo!), instant messaging is popular for quick conversations and sending links back and forth. If you know a colleague is on the road a lot and more likely to see a text message than an email, then use text messaging. If you know someone is at her desk and might not check an email about a meeting change in half an hour, the old-fashioned land line might be the best choice. Answer questions inline. When someone sends an email asking several questions, train yourself to reply inline, inserting your answers directly beneath each question. Don’t get the last word in. There is usually no reason to cap off a long exchange with "thank you" (and certainly, "you're welcome"). An email conversation has to end at some point. Use the cc function sparingly. Try to cc only those who need to know and avoid cc-ing long lists of people unless it is important that everyone know who else received a message. Certainly don’t use the cc function if you don’t want people on the list to know the names of the other people receiving the same message. You don’t want to scroll through 50 email addresses before reading a message from a colleague who used the cc rather than bcc function, so why should they? Keep it brief. When was the last time you read a work-related email and wished it was longer? Ask whether people prefer attachments or inline pasting. Many people dislike receiving attachments, but it's good to ask someone's preference if you're going to be sending documents back and forth. Consider tools like these that allow two people to share and work on a document together rather than attachments: Google Docs, Zoho, and Approver allow collaborators to share documents. Give up cutesy handles. Try to stay as close to your name or a short hand for your name as possible. "Purtygrl" might be just fine for your online dating life, but give it up when you're corresponding about work matters. Use personal email for personal correspondence. That includes job searching. Say no to chain letters and jokes. While the rare forwarded email evokes a smile or a warm feeling, they are mostly irritating. And while you expect those emails from your batty aunt, you don’t want to be getting them from professional contacts. Avoid shared email addresses. Do not share an email with a spouse or partner (either the professional or the business kind.) Grown-ups should have their own email addresses.

Branding in a Recession

Consumers lost trust in brands this year as the recession deepened, according to an industry report, although longtime staples Coca-Cola and IBM retained their spots as the world’s two most valuable brands. Emily Fredrix, AP Marketing writer, says that this is the first time the combined value of the world’s top 100 brands as ranked by Interbrand, a branding agency, has fallen in the 10 years Interbrand has assessed them. The list’s total value, including brands like Google Inc., Nintendo and Sony, fell 4.6 percent to $1.15 trillion, Interbrand estimates. “That says something about the environment that we’re in, especially when you consider that brands are by nature less volatile than business valuations,” said Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton, who called a company’s brand its most valuable asset. The environment — a recession the likes of which the world hasn’t seen for decades — has eaten away at people’s trust in specific brands, starting with financial companies, he said. Consumers even started to question retail brands as stores slashed prices to get sales, leading consumers to wonder about pricing, and why they had to pay so much before. “All of these things lead you to re-evaluate the nature of the relationships that we have with brands and indeed how confident we feel in brands to live up to the promises they make,” he said. “Brands are promises which we value and are prepared to pay for and if we feel those promises have been broken we’re less likely to trust.” Brands are more than just names, colors or logos — think Coca-Cola’s red or McDonald’s golden arches. A brand includes all the elements of a product or service from its design, ingredients and manufacture to its marketing, advertising and logo. A well-honed brand evokes in consumers an emotion and a promise of what it will deliver, without the consumer having to do much — if any — research, said Allen Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor Associates. Brands are important for all businesses, and critical in categories that have direct consumer contact, like autos, he said. “In a cluttered world where people are time-compressed, brands are short cuts to help them make decisions,” he said. Each year, Interbrand ranks companies by the amount of their revenue that is attributable to their brands, using a formula that takes into account the brand’s future strength and its role in creating demand, whether among consumers or business customers or both. The firm assigns a monetary value to each brand and measures annual growth, in this case from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009. Given the recession, it was not surprising to see financial companies posting the steepest decline in their brands’ values this year, with drops by American Express (now number 22, down from 15) HSBC (now 32, down from 27), Citi (now 36, down from 19), and UBS (now 72, down from 41). Merrill Lynch and AIG both dropped off the list. Automakers also dropped in the rankings as their sector’s sales slumped in the recession. In addition, major U.S. automakers General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group LLC received government aid to stay afloat, which generated negative feelings among consumers. Neither of those brands made the top 100 Interbrand list. Even Toyota’s brand — top-ranked among auto companies at number eight, down from 6 in 2008 — suffered, while BMW went from 13 to 15, and Ford was unchanged at 49. Honda edged up two slots to 18. Despite the economic uncertainty, the top 10 brands this year stayed relatively stable, with Coca-Cola Co. in the first slot, a place it has held since the rankings started in 2000. The soft-drink maker retains its recognition around the world, Frampton said, and it has been releasing new products as it hopes to woo consumers shifting to healthier juices and teas. Coca-Cola’s brand value rose 3 percent in 2009 to $68.73 billion, while IBM’s gained 2 percent to $60.21 billion. The technology giant, often known as “Big Blue,” also rolled out new products that increased the value of its brand in 2009, according to the report. The company — which sells computer servers, software and technical services to businesses — received more than 4,000 U.S. patents during the period, marking the 16th straight year it has received the most. Rolling out new products keeps customers interested and spending, even in a recession, Frampton said. Companies can’t be idle when times are tough, he warned. “Innovation is the bedrock of any successful company in the future,” he said. “Nobody can stand still nowadays.” The remaining brands in the top five all lost value but retained their ranks from last year. Microsoft’s brand value fell 4 percent to $56.64 billion to take third, while General Electric’s value fell 10 percent to $47.77 billion for fourth. Nokia lost 3 percent to place fifth at $34.86 billion. The value of online giant Google’s brand grew the fastest in the world again, rising 25 percent to $31.98 billion to place seventh, up from 10th place last year and 20th the year before. Frampton said the company’s brand growth is “miraculous,” though the report notes that as it gets bigger, “it has to deal with the inevitable mistrust and ugliness ascribed to being a very large, diversified and very profitable company.” But Deborah Mitchell, executive fellow at the Center for Brand and Product Management at Wisconsin School of Business, thinks Google already has found balance by earning consumers’ trust even as it becomes nearly omnipresent in their lives. That’s partly due to Google’s value statement — “Do no evil” — which resonates with consumers, especially in a downturn, she said. Mitchell said consumers are increasingly focusing on a company’s values and don’t want to associate with businesses whose values they question. “There’s been a shift in the focus on values and not just economics to consumers,” she said. “They’re looking more closely at who is selling them what.”