New rules of marketing AND PR ....week 9

It seems as though most of our reading this week was geared toward reaching buyers directly and not through mainstream media outlets. I believe this is true and I don't think it's fair that large companies such as Apple can still get away with using media exclusively. However, if you think about it, recent success stories such as Cervelo Bikes have created great online content and directed their Web sites toward their buyers. As a result, these companies have succeed in reaching their audiences not through media, but by their own means. Nevertheless, this proves that organizations have the power to reach their audiences directly, but what about those people who want to stick with the old rules of marketing and PR? What if the higher-ups in your organization are from an older generation that refuses to try these news rules? David Scott mentions that the best way to figure out whether the new rules are right for you organization is to consider your goals for communicating via marketing and PR. Most small organizations just want their visibility to increase, therefore these new rules will be useful. I suppose if you have a CEO or executive that refuses to reach buyers directly, I would point out (with hard-core evidence) the organizations that have had success by telling their own stories. Perhaps that would change their minds.

Reaching buyers directly....week 8

This week's chapter about building your marketing and PR plan really grabbed my attention because it replaces the some of the old rules of marketing and PR. For instance, David Scott talks about how PR practitioners are told to focus on the four P's: product, place, promotion and price. If you think about, we, as students are also taught this as well. However, David Scott talks about the new rules, which include reaching your buyers directly and not using the media to tell your story. As college students we are quite familiar with the world of social media and Internet research. Therefore, we have a great advantage. Those of us that are graduating can truly apply these new rules when we enter the PR world and this may make us more marketable as well. For instance, we are Internet savvy and love Facebook, Twitter and Digg. These resources allow us to research buyer persona's and develop profiles. David Scott gives the example of a buyer persona for a male high school student who is a varsity athlete. I feel that we are easily able to find this information because we are so cued into all the latest Internet changes and research options. Basically, PR agencies and organizations should be begging for us to work for them because we offer a way to reach buyers directly. We know how to research, define our buyers, and find out every detail about their lives. Therefore, allowing us to write content that will grab the attention their attention and increase revenue for the organization.

Viral media....week 7

I'm going to start out by quoting David Scott "create a number of campaigns and see what hits, then nurture the winners along." I like this quote a lot, but I also disagree with the statement. First, I believe that for viral media/marketing to truly work, a campaign must be extremely innovative and not forced as mentioned by Paul Gillin. If you look at the recent history of viral marketing campaigns such as the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment, you will notice the creativity it took to make the video. Plus the two men who created this video were not affiliated with either company. However, Mentos took advance of this video and pushed the viral excitement forward. This goes along with what David Scott said, where winners should be nurtured and pushed along. Nonetheless, I don't really think that a number of campaigns need to be created. Launching several campaigns can become costly. Also Paul Gillin states that the more campaigns launched, the more crowded the space becomes. Therefore, in my opinion, I don't think the quantity of campaigns matters, its the quality. A company must launch campaigns that are unique and creative, rather than multiple weak campaigns.

Consumer--news release....week 6

I'm definitely in agreement with David Scott in our reading this week. His thought about the direct-to-consumer news release was brilliant because no longer do we primarily focus on journalists, instead we should also target the consumers themselves. With the Internet available to essentially anyone, new releases should be more focused on the consumers. Like Scott, I don't think the original news release will ever be replaced, but creating a consumer-focused news release would greatly benefit organizations. Scott writes about the new rules of news releases and I won't repeat them because I know you've read them, but I wanted to highlight two of the rules. One, add social media tags to Technorati, DIGG, and del.icio.us so your release will be found. This rule is extremely important, especially with the growth of social media. I think that if these new releases were written well, and truly focused on the consumer the organization would generate numerous hits on their web site, if they displayed their new releases on these social media outlets. Also, the other rule that I like talks about writing releases that are replete with keyword-rich copy. David Scott explains that when writing these customer-focused news releases we must write more phrases and keywords and don't stick directly to AP style. In addition, I feel that when writing these new releases it is important to have some sort of humanistic component that truly captivates your audience, because these readers are just like you and me, they are not necessarily journalists looking for the cold hard facts, our readers want something to draw them in and something they can relate to. So, in my opinion and to add to David Scott's ideas, I think playing off of different emotions would be most beneficial in writing these new releases. What does everyone else think?