maggie+media

The Do's and Don'ts of Online Publicity, For Some Reason

Yes. Yes. Oh, and Yes.

I’m especially intrigued by the Rule of 8. It’s not one I’ve been following but it makes a lot of sense. Paring down and focusing my publicity list even more will likely yield better publicity—and, as Lindsay notes, could have a higher success rate. That means less wasted time, which is the most valuable resource of all.

lindsayrobertson (via debbiestier):

[This is long and obvious, but it’s been driving me nuts for years. So here is my Guide to Online Publicity (For Dummies).]

There’s a question that has been bugging me for years: why are 99% of publicists and promotion/marketing people complete useless failures when it comes to blogs and online outlets? I keep waiting for the industry to figure things out and catch up, but it never seems to happen. So I’m taking the time to write this guide. If you work in online PR or know someone who does, this is a must-read — NOT because my observations here are anything other than obvious to the bloggers and editors you’re targeting, but because they’re clearly not obvious, or even known, to seemingly most of your industry. So here are some things that are true, at least right now, and if you incorporate these concepts into your work, I promise, you will have far greater success. And also we will stop laughing at you and forwarding your emails around to each other in awe of your complete ineptitude (yep.) (Note: as someone who blogs mostly about pop culture, this guide is probably very skewed toward that field, but most of this advice is, again, so obvious to bloggers that it will probably ring true for all topics. Also, I use my own experience as examples, but not because I think I’m some sort of expert - this advice is pretty much on behalf of all bloggers.)

First, the Don’ts:

1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE means FOR IMMEDIATE DELETE to any blogger with any influence. Period.

2. Do Not Publicize the Wrong Content: I get at least 40 emails per day asking me to listen to a band, or announcing an album or tour. These emails are often written in a convincingly personal manner, even though aside from a few personal blog posts about Neutral Milk Hotel and the Mountain Goats and my ex boyfriend’s band, I have never written about music or worked for a music blog. Just because you see me on Stereogum’s blogroll does not mean I write about music, and the most cursory research would make that obvious. Extrapolate from this lesson to all subjects, please, especially if your company also publicizes things the blogger actually IS into. I’ve put a lot of promotional companies in a direct-to-trash Gmail filter for this sin. I’d rather miss out on one item per year than clog my inbox with things I don’t care about.

3. Don’t Lie, Part 1: Similarly, this kind of thing (which I received yesterday from a real PR company) should never, ever be done. It’s all bullshit, of course, but I’ve bolded the outright lies:

Hey Lindsay!
How are you doing? I checked out your site and I love everything you have going on there. I also checked out your other sites you posted as well.  You have a lot of my favorite bands and even some I didn’t know of, but now discovered thanks to you.
I have an artist that I hope YOU will enjoy…

It’s best when pretending to write a personal email, you don’t reveal yourself to be a total phony. (Also, though I enjoy them in a FAIL way, please don’t send emails that begin “Dear Perez.”)

4. Don’t Lie Part 2: Stop Being Days Behind on Your Own Announcements, And Don’t Try to Cover it Up

Don’t wait on announcing new content - the blogosphere will find it on its own (we have these things called google alerts). Or worse, for the love of god, do not EVER send an email saying that something has just been posted (like a movie trailer, for example - this happens daily), when it’s actually been on the internet for more than, say, an hour. If you’re sending it to anyone with any idea what they’re doing, they saw your trailer (and, often, posted it on the blog you’re trying to court) DAYS AGO. And if for some reason they, I don’t know, took one day off from the internet and actually BELIEVE you that something is new and post it when it’s not, they will hate you and your company forever. Forever.

5. Mass Emails: Bad

Mass emails in general, UNLESS they’re from the artist his or herself or are sent to a carefully tended list of people with both a demonstrated interest in the subject matter and a seeming lack of prior knowledge of the news in question (and yes, you have to check) are generally frowned upon. The fact that this is not obvious is sad.

So now that that takes care of what 99% of online PR people do all day — and now that they have to stop it, what should they be doing? Is anyone out there actually doing online PR right? I can think of several people who are — and they all have the following Dos in common. One publicist in particular has impressed me enough that she basically single-handedly inspired this blog post. I won’t use her name because I suspect that a lot of what she does on behalf of her clients probably breaks the stringent rules-of-assured-suckage that most large companies enforce to their detriment, but over the years I’ve seen this person work nothing less than PR magic, often when she’s given very little to actually work with, and she’s been promoted accordingly. Here’s what I’ve learned from her.

The Dos:

1. Research is worth it: a site’s demonstrated interest in, or similar sensibility with, your topic is far more important than that site’s traffic.

Obviously, this is more of a formula (the site has to have a certain amount of traffic, obviously, to even be worth the time) than a strict rule, but not knowing about the sites you’re targeting isn’t just a momentary waste of your time and theirs: it can have a measurable long-term affect on you and your company’s credibility. If you keep ignoring their needs and shouting false alarms, like the little boy who cried wolf, eventually, your target editors and bloggers will simply tune you out.

2. Pick Eight Blogs

I went to drinks with the Brilliant Online Publicist one night, and asked her how she did such a good job while everyone else was failing. I was also curious about why she chose to invest so much time in the then pretty new (partially) TV-focused site I co-edited - frequently sending me emails about what was going on on one of her client’s shows at that very second, and asking me if I was interested in a clip. In probably the majority of cases, she’d nailed something that I actually was interested in, but hadn’t seen, because I was blogging constantly and couldn’t watch every goddamned TV show. With me, this publicist had a success rate of probably 60%, because she chose her content carefully and made sure it fit my needs. I’m sure she had a similar success rate with her other seven blogs.

Was she clairvoyant? No: she just actually READ MY BLOG and knew the kind of things I liked to write about. How did she have time to give so much attention to the needs of a then relatively small website? She told me her secret: she only publicizes to eight blogs. She picked the eight blogs that covered her client’s subject, TV, that she liked the most on a personal level, read them religiously, and only sent them only the content she thought each blog would be into. While the rest of the publicists in her company were sending out mass emails to everyone, hoping to get bites from Perez Hilton, Gawker, HuffPo, or wherever, this publicist focused on a lower traffic tier with the (correct) understanding that these days, content filters up as much as it filters down, and often the smaller sites, with their ability to dig deeper into the internet and be more nimble, act as farm teams for the larger ones. A site can be enormously influential without having crazy eyeballs, because all eyeballs are not equal. MANY times - I would say almost every time, that I posted one of her client’s items on my site, they were linked back within hours by the big guys, who probably would have tuned her out otherwise. As counter-intuitive as it might seem to publicists, the “pick eight blogs” (or however many, but a manageable number) strategy is much more successful than the throw it against the wall and see what sticks theory. It also has the added benefit of making the publicist feel like his or her hard work is meaningful, and that his or her successes are not flukes.

3. A blogger’s resistance to marketing/publicity is directly proportionate to his or her influence as a blogger.

Bloggers depend on the trust of their readers. Publicists depend on the trust of their bloggers. If someone is putting up everything you send, that blogger probably has zero influence (and might even be a spam bot.)

4. A Monkey Can Send a Mass Email: Build Relationships and Understand What Your Real Job Is

I don’t know why one of the oldest truisms of publicity, marketing, salesmanship, and basically every other field is ignored by online publicists: it’s about relationships! I’m not talking about bloggers having fragile egos, here — it doesn’t bother my ego one bit when a publicist spells my name wrong or writes me an obvious form letter or makes the “Dear Perez” gaff. I can find my own content without the help of any publicist — any blogger worth his or her job can. I just get annoyed that my time has been wasted. If a publicist shows that they know what they’re doing, the resulting surprise on behalf of the blogger/reporter/editor will lead to more attention paid to that publicists offerings. Duh. I can’t believe I even have to point this out, but publicity and blogging are (or can be, ideally) symbiotic relationships that will only be successful if the publicist considers the needs of the other party as much as their own. A publicist should ask him or herself not “How can I get my news/content on a blog?” but “What news/content do I have that this blogger will want, but doesn’t even know it yet? And especially: what do I have that’s better than what this blogger has already found on his or her own?” To paraphrase the famous Dale Carnegie quote: when you go fishing, you don’t put what you want (strawberries) on the line, you dangle what the fish wants (worms). Duh to that. Duh to this whole thing, really, but it needed to be said.

A Whole New Ballgame?

Yesterday saw the launch of the Publishing Point, an industry group—originally called the Digital Publishing Group—dedicated to bringing together forward-thinking people in the book industry for education and interaction. The first Publishing Point event also took place yesterday, with Hanny Hindi, a Clickable Guru, speaking to the group about SEM.

I’m lucky enough to have been able to learn about SEO/SEM basics through my job, but nevertheless Hanny’s talk gave me lots to think about. One of the best nuggets I took away from his talk was this statement, roughly paraphrased:

This isn’t totally new. This is still Don Draper stuff—the same marketing questions, the same need for quality campaigns. It’s just a new way to ask those questions, do market research, find and connect with buyers.

With SEM there are terms to learn and new concepts to cover, but fundamentally it’s just marketing—what we’ve been doing for years.

It seems to me this is also an apt and helpful way to think about massive changes that are transforming publishing. So often we—and the press—get taken by hyperbole: we hear that the “death of publishing” is nigh; that the Kindle is a “book-killer.” I don’t think the book will ever die, nor do I think publishing will die.

But what we can—and must—change is how we think about the role of the publisher. People will always want quality content to read, and they value publishers to find that content for them (and they also value “real,” physical books, too). As Craig Newmark said today, it’s about trust and curation, which are the heart of the publisher’s mission. The rest of it—formats, production, returns, pricing—is details, and clinging to the details as we’ve always known them is slowing us down. I don’t mean to downplay how important these “details” are to our industry, nor how big—and sometimes painful—their evolution will be. But they’re not, to return to Hanny’s comparison, the Don Draper stuff. They’re just the packaging.

The name of the game has changed. But it’s not a whole new ballgame. (Plus 10 points for the timely baseball metaphor!)

So let’s stop “being distressed” over digital and figure out how to make publishers’ most valuable asset—their knowledge, taste, and expertise—work in today’s market.

David Karp: Young and Wise

David Karp, the founder of Tumblr (this here blog’s platform) spoke to The Digital Publishing Group today. He’s young—younger than I am—but he’s wise/smart/successful/awesome beyond his years.

He spoke about what makes Tumblr special, including the uniquely positive vibe Tumblr cultivates via the inclusion of features like reblogging and “liking” features. (And the absence of regular comments.)

One nugget I took away from the presentation was what a friend of mine referred to as the “America’s Funniest Home Video Principle.” That is, to get folks emotionally invested in your blog/site/project, offer them the possibility of being featured in the project, the way people who submitted videos to the show hope their submissions will be chosen. If folks have the promise of being a part of the product, their interest in the project becomes personal and deep—and it’s more likely to be something they share with their friends. In other words, make your consumers feel like creators too. Then they’ll be as enthusiastic as you are about spreading the word.

It’s marketing via community. It demands transparency, engagement, and, most of all, effort, but the payoff can be huge.

Bad Ads

Recently I’ve noticed a number of interesting advertisements/branding campaigns.

First, Miracle Whip introduced a new campaign designed to connect with today’s youth. Behold: “We Are Miracle Whip.”

Via Marketing Daily:

Themed “We are Miracle Whip. And we will not tone it down,” TV ads are set to a jangly soundtrack from rock band The Datsuns, featuring people who “proudly embrace the flavor of Miracle Whip without apology,” says a Kraft spokesperson. “We will not be quiet,” the voiceover says. “We will not blend in. And when we are in a salad or a sandwich or a panini or crostini, you’ll know it. We are Miracle Whip.”

The campaign also includes a Facebook App called “The Zingr,” which apparently allows you to create your own “zing.”

Pizza Hut also unveiled plans to rebrand itself as “The Hut.” As their chief marketing officer explains (via Consumerist), this is apparently not meant to link eating Pizza Hut’s product with becoming grossly obese, like the more famous Hut, Jabba:

“We’re also introducing another vocabulary word with Pizza Hut, which is ‘The Hut.’ That ties in nicely with [today’s] texting generation….As we expand our online and mobile businesses, ‘The Hut’ is the perfect icon for our mobile generation.”

It almost goes without saying, but I think both of these moves are badly misguided attempts to connect with a young target markets. “Young people” know when they’re being pandered to, especially when it’s this obvious, and when something tries this hard to be “cool,” or to tell people what “cool” is, it’s probably going to fall flat. (Anyone remember the Poochie episode of The Simpsons?) Oh, and being the object of this sort of ridicule is probably not what they had in mind.

Let’s move now from stupid to tasteless. Check out this Burger King ad, which is apparently running in Singapore (image via Copyranter).

Where to begin? The obvious fellatio association is heightened by the creamy mayonnaise and the ad copy (“Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled…Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger….”). And the fact that the woman looks like a blow-up doll is, as Copyranter notes, a “nice misogynistic touch.” Granted, women probably aren’t the target market, but it’s probably not a good idea to offend them anyway.

By way of explanation Burger King offered this statement (via Gawker):

“Burger King Corporation (BKC) values and respects all of its guests. This advertisement is running to support a limited promotion in the Singapore market and is not running in the U.S. or any other markets. It was produced by a locally-based Singapore agency and not by BKC’s U.S. advertising agency of record, Crispin Porter and Bogusky.”

Don’t worry, people! We didn’t do it! But we apparently don’t mind our brand being associated with it.

And, finally, the Dean Cain ad from Microsoft about the phenomenon of “OMGIGP,” or, “Oh My God I’m Going To Puke,” which features—you guessed it—a woman vomiting. Repeatedly. You can see it here. Gross.

The taste level of these ads is stunningly low. Jokes about sex and gross bodily functions may be de rigeur in Judd Apatow movies, but they don’t belong here: I should desire the product, not cringe and say, “really?”

Indeed, in all four instances, I’m left wondering who created the ads and, more interestingly, who approved them? When major corporations reach out to a prime buying audience—young adults—you’d think they could do better than this. In today’s connected world, being genuine, transparent, and responsive are key to branding and marketing. It’s obviously easier to tear down bad efforts than create successful campaigns, but thinking at a base, fundamental level, it seems to me these ads are not in touch with the reality of marketing today.