Global PR: Sell your story, not your products

In terms of Dollars, a good PR campaign may be much more effective than plain advertising or other marketing tactics. When information comes from a reliable source like the press, whatever you sell gains instant credibility.

But how do you get your word out? How do you get the press to comment on your product or service? Do you just pick up the phone and pitch these writers?

Well, that's when a good PR professional is needed. I have worked on both sides of the counter, in a PR agency and leading in-house PR, and I created campaigns for very diverse markets such as numerous European countries, South American regions, segmented demographics here in the US, etc.

There is no list with what is absolutely necessary for you to do in PR, it all depends on a matrix of elements. However, I would suggest avoiding certain things when pitching the press. Yes, your campaign must be innovative and creative, but beware of creating futile and irrelevant buzz. What will draw the attention of the press is neither a full and precise product description nor artificial hooks.

What you need is a good story around your product. Put yourself in the shoes of a journalist. Wouldn’t you be bored to death to copy and paste a product description from a press release into your column? And how would you feel if you had a chance of writing a really juicy story?

If you would like to comment on global PR campaigns, stories, ads, etc, please feel free to. I am eager to hear you opinion.

Visual Identity and color scheme 2.0

When creating or updating your visual identity, one of the most important things is to chose the color scheme that you will be using.

The color scheme you chose will be seen in your logo, your marketing collateral, your website, etc. Before creating your color scheme, I strongly suggest reading as much as possible about color theory, symbolism and psychology. Here’s are two links for you:

1)Wikipedia article on color theory
2) Wikipedia on color symbolism and psychology

Once you chose your color scheme, some of the problems that sooner or later you may face is that your collateral starts looking repetitive, or you may get bored of the color scheme, or even because company and services values shift with time, the color scheme does not reflect the current values anymore. If you want to update your visual identity, remember that you will need to have a significant budget to replace your business cards, marketing handouts and electronic collateral such as your PowerPoint presentations and pdf files.

Here is what Vivo, a Brazilian mobile operator did: they opted for what I call a chameleon logo, or a logo 2.0. That is, the logo remains the same, however, the color changes according to their need, such as packaging, website pages, ad campaigns etc.

I created a slide show where you can see these logos:

So, what do you think about it? Does it defeat the purpose of being recognized easily or is it a better way to adapt your brand to different values and communicate well within various target audiences? I’d be delighted to hear your opinion.

Tutorial 2.0: To acquire and expand a user base

Equally important as branding your products and services to your users is educating them how to use them. If we are talking about web and mobile consumer oriented services the user base acquisition is directly subordinated to how easy it is for these users to understand and use your services, especially if you are counting on viral growth. And if you intend to expand the user base to other countries, translating all of your material is not an option.

Of course the user experience plays a vital role here, in other words, how intuitive and friendly the user interface is, so that users can rapidly adopt your service. But what happens when you have to introduce new features, for example? Or if it’s a brand new app? What happens if there is more to explain? Well, that’s when you need to consider a tutorial.

FAQs offer a limited (and tedious) way to explain features and troubleshoot. Moreover many times the answers are not accurate. I am not saying that you should avoid FAQs, but think about offering visual and audio aids as well: images, audio bits, flash animations that can be interactive, even online reps to answer questions in real time.

I personally prefer using video clips. Here’s a link to a company that created a very innovative, unique and simple way to explain apps, services and products (one of these things that makes me ask myself why I haven’t thought about it…): http://www.commoncraft.com/. They are called Common Craft and here’s one of their tutorial clips:




If you have other clips (and topics) that you would like to suggest, please e-mail me at kgoldrajch@gmail.com or feel free to post a comment.

Guidelines to stand out and create a relevant and sticky message

In this day and age, it is relatively easy to create a viral campaign and generate some buzz around a brand, product or service. With the proliferation of channels where you can convey your message to a global audience, such as web 2.0 based websites and applications (blogs, social networks, widgets, etc.), it is essential to make sure that you are not only creating a buzz, but your message is relevant and sticky. Here’s a 101 on relevance:

1- Research each target audience
2- The language they speak
3- Where they get their information from
4- Their scale of values
5- Probe you brand against these values
6- If budget allows, focus groups
7- Translate what you want to say about your brand into their language and values
8- Be concise
9- Be bold
10- Convey the message on the medium where they get information from
11- Be sure you have a feedback channel and listen to their oppinion
12- Fine tune your message regularly

Brands Without Borders - 2007

Here are some of these global brands that were under the spotlight during 2007 and I would call the "2007 Brands Without Borders":

What are the other brands that you would add to this list?

Mobile Advertising in the UK

This video corroborates the statements of the previous post. Mathew White, Mobile Advertising Manager for Channel 4 and Thomas Curven, Planning Director for Publicis-Dialog talk about integrating the mobile medium into Marketing and branding campaigns.

Top 8 Reasons to Integrate the Mobile Medium in a Global Marketing Campaign

When creating a campaign in various regions or targeting a diversified audience, you must use a medium that optimizes your efforts, which can very much be the mobile phone. Yes, the mobile phone. Here are a few reasons why the mobile phone can answer your needs:

1) The mobile phone is an ubiquitous communication channel. You can reach your target audience 24/7, anywhere.

2) The mobile phone is a complete communication medium and the user is offered a variety of content. Besides using voice services, the user can stream or download videos, connect to the internet, send and receive various types of messages (SMS,MMS, and e-mails), play preset or download new games, use various applications including LBS (location based services), among others. Therefore, a global Marketing campaign can use any of these to advertise or offer ad based content.

3) Your audience does not need to be in front of a TV set, connected to the internet, listening to the radio or reading a publication in order to receive your message.

4) Most likely, your target audience carry their cellphones with them, in their pockets or bags.

5) You can demographically target your messages according to region, age, gender, etc.

6) Also, you can personalize your messages according to the different demographics.

7) The mobile phone offers interactivity and you can prompt your audience to go to visit a WAP site if you send a WAP push, for example.

8) Your audience had opted to receive advertisement or ad based content and applications.

Obviously there are much more than only 8 reasons for you to think of using the mobile phone as a global Marketing tool. Once you start researching you will agree with me and come up with your own reasons as well.

Nickled and Dimed PR

Interesting article today at the Wall Street Journal. It talks about a “pay-per-placement” trend in PR. That is, instead of hiring a PR firm and paying the regular PR retainer, you pay per article published.

This looks more like a solution for small and medium businesses that are interested solely in getting the word out there.

I am a strong believer that Marketing and PR must be cost effective and although this type of solution may sound fair, before hiring a service like this I suggest taking into account the following:

1- The scope of work: Which publications/ writers will be pitched?

2- If you are paying per article, what is the maximum amount of featured articles that fits your budget?

3- Relevance of the publications. Does the publication where you had a featured article hit your target audience?

4- Size of the publication. Are tier 1, 2 and 3 publications differentiated? However the concept of tier 1, 2 and 3 is still inaccurate. Here’s an example: an industry blog can hit a higher number of potential clients than a mainstream publication.

5- RSS/ feeds/ replicating articles. The same article can be featured in various online publications, and commonly industry blogs use feeds and replicate articles. Is a replicated article being charged as an original article? What about articles translated into other languages?

6- PR and media relations efforts should always start with developing a strategy. Before pitching the press, carefully craft your messages. Also keep in mind that it is better to build strong media relationships than aim to at short term achievements.

Click here to read the article


Click here to read pitching tips.

Web 2.0 as a Global Marketing Tool

I have been working with Internet (and mobile) based products/ services since the 90's and have witnessed the progress of the platform, not only as what they used to call the “new economy”, but as a global Marketing/ PR tool. Here's an excellent clip that helps understanding what these changes were and the possibilities that lie ahead.

South American Way: Entertainment as a key Marketing Tool

I am currently working on a South American consultancy and these last days I have been immersed in a Brazilian Market research. One of the interesting aspects about Marketing in Brazil is how Brazilian society is strongly influenced by the local entertainment industry, mainly by the daily TV soap opera episodes (more specifically the 9:00 pm telenovela).

If you ask me for a cookie-cutter Marketing/ PR formula to launch a product in the largest Brazilian capitals (such as Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Florianopolis) I would suggest developing an integrated ad/ PR campaign using product placement during one of their telenovelas. But of course, this is just a hypothetical regional approach with no target audience segmentation.

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Another interesting point is how often entertainers migrate to politics in Brazil. Take for example Gilberto Gil (Brazil’s Minister of Culture), one of the most notorious Brazilian singers, or the former mayor of Sao Paulo and current Minister of Tourism, Marta Suplicy, who is a psychologist and used to offer sex advice on a popular TV show. And also Helio Costa, the Minister of Communications. He was one of the most prestigious hosts of Fantastico, a Sunday night TV newsmagazine broadcasted by Rede Globo.

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As I was writing the title of this post I remembered a classic performance by Carmen Miranda called South American Way. Always entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDwQN4UeF8E