version 2.0 | 103 posts since 11.03 | 
Increasingly, clients are looking at ways to outsource big parts of the marketing, PR and/or marcom function. It’s a trend that current economic and technological underpinnings support and one that’s likely to to accelerate, so figuring out what works and what doesn’t should be on every manager’s to-do list.
Some things to consider: Read more …
TechCrunch has a piece on Digital Telepathy, a San Diego-based PR firm that’s morphed into a services shop for web start-ups – and that’s a damned interesting evolution.
Is it the future of our industry? Not for lots of folks. But they are doing some things that are smart and worth paying attention to:
I know they’re in a whole other business now and so some of the comparisons to a pure PR agency are unfair. But it’s satisfying to see PR people who understood a lot of the shortcomings of the agency model and left ‘em by the side of the road as they evolved.
Greg
I wrote this about 15 years ago and came across it while cleaning out some files. It’s a quick guide for those who have been through media training but who, right before a big interview, could benefit from having the basics repeated.
REMEMBER THE KEY DYNAMIC that takes place in any interview with the press: You know far more about your business and its relevant issues than any reporter you will encounter. If a reporter is being aggressive, he may be under deadline pressure or (more likely) is just covering up his lack of preparation and knowledge. You can use either to your advantage — helping him meet a deadline in a timely manner and/or educating the reporter during the interview in such a way that he’s ready to accept your key messages.
Read more …
While going through some old articles I clipped, I came across The Half-Truth of First-Mover Advantage, written by Fernando Suarez and Gianvito Lanzolla, and published in the April 2005 Harvard Business Review.
It’s a gem of a piece, and should be required reading for anyone looking at market-entry or market-creation strategies. The short version of their well-argued treatise is this: The mythical first-mover advantage is more than a business fairy tale but no where near a sure thing, and the clearest predictors of success come from looking at the pace of change, both in the market and in the underlying technology behind the market.
This is more than material for the C-level set; it’s the kind of strategic business analysis more marketers should bring to the table as as a defense against costly mistakes.
The article is behind a paywall, but well worth the $6.50 it’ll cost you to get it here. Want to know a little more before you lay down the cash? I’ve adapted two of the article’s graphics into a summary after the jump. It’s a lot of information and, frankly, it’s worth keeping around, so here’s a link to a PDF as well.
Network World summarizes a recent study with big implications for online marketers and SEO experts. In short: What you see in search results depends heavily on which search engine you’re using.
No surprise there, right? Except there is a surprise in just how widely the results vary. In first-page search results, on average:
All in all, according to the survey, only 1% of results appeared on the front page of all four search engines.
The study’s not perfect — it was commissioned by Dogpile, a search engine that combines results from many different engines, and so there’s plenty of self-interest in the concept of single-site search bias. But the study itself looks academically rigorous and was conducted by proper researchers; a copy can be found here.
A couple of definitions:
Advertising: Think of it as sitting in front of a cozy, warm fireplace, patiently tossing in $100 bills. Every now and then, someone walks by, notices an interesting little tendril of smoke or maybe a crackle from the fire, and says, “Neat!”
Public relations: My goddaughter (an ad-agency account supervisor) counters the above by by defining public relations as: Walking around with a piece of paper that has lots of words on it, calling out: “Is this interesting to you?” over and over…
On a bad day, we may both be right.
