Toyota Dealership Gets Social - Embraces New Media

Hey folks, I posted something on Franchise Marketing Blog that you may find interesting regarding a local Toyota dealership's social media campaign. It's fairly rare for an individual franchise operator to embrace new media, so I wanted to give these guys some props. Check it out if you get a second.

-- my two cents

Speak Media Blog

Viral Marketing Can Be Beautiful: Matt Harding and Stride's Global Dance

You know, folks, sometimes "viral" can be really beautiful.

I'm sure many of you have already heard about Matt Harding's "Dancing" video sensation. More than 4 million people have viewed his latest release on YouTube and, according to the New York Times, at least another million have watched it on other sites in the two weeks since it first appeared. It has also spawned unprecedented media coverage around the world.

The video consists of Harding dancing a rather silly dance in 69 different locations, including India, Kuwait, Bhutan, Tonga, Timbuktu, the Korean DMZ and, at the 3:22 mark, in my hometown of Atlanta. This is a beautiful piece of Internet art; I defy you to watch and not smile as your heart fills to the brim with global goodness. (article continues below)



The current video is actually the third installment of a project that began in 2003, when a friend filmed Mr. Harding doing his dance in Hanoi where he worked designing video games. The whole thing blossomed from there as Harding soon discovered he really didn't like working a 9 to 5. So, he took the money he'd saved and embarked on a trip around the world where he performed his little dance in various cities as a way to show his travels to friends and family back home. As I always say, it only takes one good blog to launch a campaign...soon a blogger got a hold of his first video and then another and another. The next thing he knew, he was an Internet sensation, even before YouTube made such a thing commonplace. (Harding told his story in this great clip posted last year).

Soon after that first video, the Stride Chewing Gum Company offered to underwrite Harding’s subsequent travels with virtually no strings attached. While I don't quite get the connection between Stride and Harding's delightful global jig, this is one case where I'm not entirely sure that matters. In fact, it is the lack of brand connection and product promotion that makes the tie-in work. As the NY Times points out "the company is acknowledged at the very end, but amazingly, in this era of shameless commercial tie-ins, Mr. Harding is not obliged to wear a Stride T-shirt or deliver a little pitch for the product."

Had there been a more blatant promotion, there is no way this vid would convey the magic that it does; the fact that Stride kept the artistic integrity of the original global project has brought them extensive praise. Again, to pull from the NY Times article: "you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music ... is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus."

Of course, the real question is: did it work? Harding's 2006 video saw more than 10 million views and delivered major spikes in web site traffic for Stride Gum, plus a reported 8% increase in sales, not to mention global media coverage and brand awareness. Today, Stride has become the 5th best-selling brand in the sugarless gum category, up from 6th place in in 2007, when it tallied sales of $65 million, according to IRI. Prior to its relationship with Harding, Stride didn't even register on IRI's list of 20 top-selling brands. Clearly, the goofy dance is moving the needle.

So, I say congrats to Harding and Stride for proving that viral can indeed be beautiful, tasteful, remarkably subtle, and highly effective.

-- my two cents

BRIEF UPDATE: Check out the Stride Gum site for some great outtakes that didn't make the cut. Some are beautiful, others are hilarious!

Some content pulled from the reporting of CHARLES McGRATH of the New York Times.

Required Reading in Social Media (from Regular Geek)

Hey folks, I wanted to direct your attention to a blog called Regular Geek.

A few days ago, they published a list of Required Reading in Social Media. They identify some great sites and blogs that cover Social Media strategy and the latest news in online communities, blogs and new media in general. Check it out!

Thanks to Regular Geek for putting together this great resource.

Enjoy!


-- my two cents

Converse Goes Viral with Wacky, Goofy, Funny Vids

Converse has launched a new viral campaign featuring more than a dozen rabbit holes and videos, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with the iconic shoes, or really, with anything at all. Some of them are clever and some are downright bizarre. Yet, each one does grab your attention. Rather than spoiling your fun by detailing all of them, I will just outline the ones that I think have the most potential.

Converse Spelling Bee, in which a shoe string leads the viewer on a search engine spelling bee. When you spell the word correctly in the search engine (i.e. Google), the ad on the right-hand side takes you to the next round. It's clever because it keeps you actively engaged in the game and subsequently, with the brand.

On A Shoe String Films, a compilation of hilarious videos in which some Converse shoe strings attend their first college class; go to a dance party; arrive early at the movies, play music; and list their grievances, among other things. Needless to say hilarity ensues. Plus, it's just goofy enough to get passed around. Truly, the voices behind these shoe strings are some of the funniest people online.

I'm still not sure what At Least You're Not Lost At Sea For 13 Days has to do with the brand, but the video did get a chuckle from me - particularly the bit about the golf club membership. And, there are different videos for different days covering this man's adventures lost at sea - again - to keep you watching and anticipating the next round.

As odd as some of the sites/vids are, this campaign is brilliant in my book because "odd" gets people talking just as much as funny or controversial. The mere fact that I have no idea why someone would put their Chucks in Soda makes me want to send the link to everyone I know...and tune in for more.

It's a great example of good viral that is silly, wacky and is not overtly selling the shoes -- or in some cases -- selling anything at all. The only thing missing is audience participation. You get a little of that with the spelling bee, but I hope there is a second stage that brings the viewer into the campaign a bit more. That said, check them out and let me know what you think.

And, remember when things aren't going your way, Converse understands you just wanna know Is Everything Going to be Okay?

-- my two cents

MarketingSherpa's 08 Viral Hall of Fame

Marketing Sherpa just released their Hall of Fame Viral Marketing Inductees for 2008. A little early to close the book on this year's viral wins, in my view. But, it's a great list nonetheless. Below is a brief look at their top picks, as well as the "common threads" they noticed running through the campaigns.

Common Threads in Winning Viral

Rise of social media - Most of this year’s candidates sent videos to YouTube, created Facebook pages or organized communities on MySpace -- or all of the above.

Peer-to-peer sharing is critical - There were two distinct groups in this year’s entries: fantastically thought-out campaigns and wacky content. Either way, success hinged on peer-to-peer sharing.

All hail mighty content - You’ve heard the adage -- we’re not even going to say it -- but all it took for some campaigns to go wildly viral was great content.

So, without further introduction, here are MarketingSherpa’s Viral Marketing Hall of Fame inductees for 2008:

VIBE Media Group
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: This VIBE contest drove young and hip viewers to an urban music and culture website. Participants in an online rap music contest created and submitted videos to be voted on by the VIBE community. They received MySpace widgets to share their videos with friends and drive voters to http:/ /www.vibe.com where they could interact, view and vote on more entries. VIBE saw an 800% ROI on their efforts and captured 60,000 new registered members.

General Mills’ Pink for the Cure
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Bolstering the battle against breast cancer, General Mills launched this campaign to spread hopeful stories of those touched by the disease. An elaborate MySpace page was created and partnerships were formed with celebrities and a network of breast cancer survivors and activists. Visitors could share their stories, comment and download badges and backgrounds for their own pages. The campaign reached more than 2.7 million people, gained thousands of MySpace friends and received great feedback from participants.

Sporting Portugal
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Sporting Portugal created a website that let users submit their name and telephone number to become part of an interactive ad. A video showing a well-known soccer coach stressing out in a locker room ended with a phone call to the submitted number with the coach encouraging the visitor to come to the stadium because “the team needs you.” The idea attracted plenty of blog coverage and more than 610,000 people to the site in two weeks. The all-time record for season ticket sales was shattered on the first day of the season.

Pazazz’s Printing’s Alive
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Pazazz’s edgy video shows that viral success is possible without breaking the bank. Pazazz wanted to convey its love for printing by making people laugh, and this 3-1/2-minute video does just that on a shoestring budget. Seeding consisted of an email to Pazazz’s house list, a YouTube video, links on Facebook and LinkedIn and press releases to industry publications. The video has received 133,000 views and more than 20 requests for a high-resolution copy to show at conferences and corporate events, plus a speaking gig for the CEO at major conference.

Columbia Sportswear’s Tested Tough
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Columbia Sportswear built its brand in this campaign by asking customers to test just how tough the outdoor-wear firm’s products are. Customers were invited via email, display ads and contest websites to brutalize Columbia’s products, tell the tale and send photos and videos of the action. Visitors to the contest site could view, vote and comment on entries. Columbia received more than 3,000 entries. The projected response rate was surpassed by more than 33%.

VeriSign’s Liberty Fillmore, the Cart Whisperer
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Ask any eretailer: abandoned shopping carts are a challenge. And nobody cares more about that challenge than Liberty Fillmore the Cart Whisperer. Internet infrastructure provider VeriSign created a series of fun videos featuring the fictitious Liberty Fillmore, who teaches that website shopping cart abandonment is preventable. The campaign included submissions to YouTube, a MySpace page, a Facebook page and a website for Fillmore’s poetry, videos and contest. The videos delivered a heap of blog coverage and more than three million views on YouTube.

THQ’s Frontlines: Fuel of War
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Looking to promote a new video game, THQ launched this campaign using a microsite, contest and social media. Participants’ chances to win increased with the number of friends they recruited to enter. PPC promotion mixed with some “shoe leather” work at a gaming conference helped to bring this campaign 70% more registered contestants than hoped for.

StyleFeeder
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Social networks are fertile ground for viral seeds. Facebook users, for instance, love applications and are quick to share them with friends. StyleFeeder had this in mind when it created a product suggestion app for Facebook to expand its user base. Less than a year after launch, the app passed the milestone of 1 million installations.

Northwestern Mutual Insurance’s Letyourworriesgo.com
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: This Northwestern Mutual Insurance campaign encouraged microsite visitors to “let it go.” Visitors to the interactive page could select concerns, such as financial troubles or illness, and dispose of them via catapult, rocket, submarine or hot air balloon. The microsite leveraged a tell-a-friend feature and could be shared on social media sites, such as Digg and Del.icio.us. By the third month of the campaign, the site’s traffic was 213% higher than Northwestern Mutual’s total microsite traffic for 2007.

McKinney’s Snowglobe Boy
Click here to see campaign details
MarketingSherpa Summary: Sometimes elaborate tactics aren’t required to stimulate a viral response; all it takes is one great idea. Ad agency McKinney’s idea was to take holiday ecards to a new level by putting an employee inside a giant inflatable snow globe for four days and broadcasting it on a microsite 24 hours a day. Visitors could receive “season’s greetings” from Snowglobe Boy and chat with him. In a week, a small seed of a Facebook page, a YouTube video and about 1,000 emails to McKinney’s friends attracted about 50,000 unique visitors, network press coverage and lots of search traffic.

(content courtesy of Marketing Sherpa)

CNN's iReport New Channel For Savvy PR Pros

As you may know CNN purchased, revamped and re-launched a citizen journalist site called iReport.com, which is basically YouTube for news where people can submit their videos, photos and even fully-edited news stories, complete with citizen-anchors, fancy graphics and investigative reports. In BETA-form for the past few months, it seems the site is now locked and beginning to pick up some steam with more than 100,000 news stories submitted.

The submissions are uncensored and unverified, unless they are selected to appear on CNN, in which case some fact-checking is done. When a submission is selected, it is stamped with an "On CNN" label so viewers know that it was picked up.

Some have criticized the site as a contradiction of CNN's reputation as a trusted name in news and have suggested that libel and defamation suits could come from harmful submissions. For instance, says the Wichita Eagle, while you're out of town, someone who means you harm goes to your house, posts one of those "Sex Offender Lives Here" signs and does a feature story about the problems neighborhoods run into in such situations. Your enemy puts it -- unverified by anyone -- on iReport.com, where the entire world has access to it courtesy of CNN. And if it's done properly, every time anybody Googles your name, guess what they discover about you.

A rather paranoid assumption in my view, but I suppose I just don't consider myself as someone who has enemies -- especially anyone who would go so far as to create a fake news story about me. Besides, the scenario suggested by the Wichita Eagle could easily occur via YouTube or Google Video without the help of user-gen news sites.

CNN executives acknowledge that iReport.com's openness is something of a departure for a news organization that prides itself on accuracy and editorial judgment. But citizen-reporting has become increasingly popular and in many cases has even proved beneficial in the reporting of breaking news. (Some of the most compelling footage from last April's shootings on the Virginia Tech campus came from the 420 user-gen video clips CNN received, while last year's California wildfires yielded more than 11,000 submissions.)

It's also important to note that iReport is not entirely new. Sites like Fox News' uReport, MSNBC's FirstPerson, ABC's i-Caught have been operating in largely the same way for quite some time now and there haven't been any defamation lawsuits filed to-date.

For PR pros, these kinds of sites are super cool as we now have a new channel through which to distribute news about our clients, including speaking engagement highlights and new product launches/demos, a practice already seen on YouTube and Google video. Although, I would strongly advise you use caution when creating these reports, as deceptive tactics will most assuredly result in flamed comments and damage to the brand. PR-generated reports should be identified as such, just as we would identify ourselves in a video press release. If you approach citizen-news sites with the same creativity and complete transparency as any good news announcement, you should come out strong - and your product demo might even get picked up by the sponsoring media group.

-- my two cents

Social Media Sites You Should Know

A lot of people ask me about my favorite social media sites. This is a challenging question to answer given that every day new sites emerge and bring with them great possibility. Likewise, the best social sites are the ones that speak directly to your target audience, so in many ways the whole "favorite" or "best" question is really subjective to the content.

That said, I have compiled a list of the social sites that have already proven to drive traffic and some that I believe are going to gain critical mass because of their niche status.

And, listen, when it comes to social media, do not forget about message boards/forums. I have yet to find any other medium in which you can spark conversations faster and generate content that moves online among target groups. Just use caution in message boards; don't try to be clever. Be transparent or you will be flamed, ruthlessly. If you can talk the talk, do so. If you can't just be honest about who you are and your intentions.

I will update this list as new sites are identified. In the meantime, happy socializing!

Agent B (deal/promotions site)
ArmChair (sports)
AutoSpies (cars)
Babblz (parenting)
BallHype (sports)
BuzzFlash (news)
Care2 (social action)
DayTipper (tips on a variety of subjects, gardening, cooking, auto-mechanics, etc.)
Dealigg (deals)
Digg (news)
DesignFloat (design)
Dissect Medicine (Health & Medicine)
DNHour (Domaining)
DZone (Developers)
Game Diggity (Game Videos)
Hacker News (Web Development)
Hugg (Environment)
iliketotallyloveit.com (Shopping)
KillerStartups (Startup Reviews)
LinkedIn (professional networking)
Meme or Lame (Gadgets)
Mixx (Anything)
PhotographyVoter (Photography)
Pixel Groovy (Web Design)
Plant Change (Environment)
PlugIM (Online Marketing)
qoolsqool (Education Resources)
ScoreGuru (Sports)
ShowHype (Entertainment)
Sk-rt (Lifestyle)
Small Business Brief (Business & Entrepreneurship)
Sphinn (Search engines and Online Marketing)
Stylehive (Fashion)
tipstrs (Tips & Tutorials)
TTiqq (Tips & Tutorials)
Tweako (Computers & Technology)
Twitter (News)
Value Investing News (Investing)
VideoSift (Videos)

-- my two cents

Microsoft Vies for Hipper Image with PR Stunt

Consumers tend to associate “creative” with Mac and “corporate” with Microsoft, a brand position which Apple has brilliantly and consistently fostered since the infamous 1984 commercial. Now, with a new social media PR campaign, Microsoft aims to change that perception.

Here’s the break down:

It’s an online movie-making contest called Ultimate Video Relay aiming to improve Windows Vista’s reputation, particularly for the higher-end version of Vista Ultimate.

Director, Kyle Newman began the story with a six minute clip called "The Cube" that some are calling a cross between The Matrix and The Office.

The clip has an abrupt and incomplete ending. Contestants are supposed to finish the story by creating a second and third act using Vista Ultimate and site visitors will judge the best submissions.

To execute the campaign, Microsoft partnered with TriggerStreet, the online production company owned by Kevin Spacey. TriggerStreet and Microsoft were brought together by Omelet, a Los Angeles advertising company that focuses on entertainment-based campaigns.

Of course, it’s always risky to invite consumers to create content around your brand. Remember Chevy’s 2006 call for consumers to create a new online spot for the Tahoe? Most of the ads people created highlighted the Tahoe's fuel in-efficiency and subsequent damage to the environment.

Clearly Microsoft is hoping by starting the story, consumers will pick up where they left off. I assume they are also counting on the association with Spacey to lend credibility and spark interest from genuine aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers who want their talents noticed. Of course, talents can get noticed in a well-done negative piece too.

“One of the things that makes me feel O.K. about this,” said Barry Goffe, director for Windows client product management at Microsoft, “is that we’re not asking people to write a script that says ‘Windows Vista Ultimate is great’ or romances technology.” Rather, he added, the idea is to create content that in its tone would mirror the lighthearted approach of Act I of "The Cube."

Given the number of complaints and reports about Vista glitches, it’s definitely a risky move. But, at least Microsoft is transparent in their goals and it is a clever way to tell consumers that Windows has movie-making apps too -- something I certainly don't associate with the brand. So, we'll see how it shakes out. I will keep you posted, and if you hear of anything new, please let me know!

-- my two cents

The New Media Impact: How & When People Are Online

Below is a compilation of new media usage statistics and quotable quotes I lifted from The Strategist. Enjoy!

The blogosphere doubles in size every 7.5 months with 120,000 new blogs created each day. (source: Technorati)

MySpace has 320,000 new user profiles created each day, with 25% coming from outside the U.S. (source: comScore)

YouTube plays 100 million videos per day and 100,000 new videos are uploaded daily. (source: YouTube)

59% of 6-to-11 year old children used the Internet during the past 30 days. (source: Mediamark)

When 18-to-34 year olds were asked about their top media choices, 46% chose the Internet and 35% chose TV (source: Online Publishers Assoc.)

An NBC survey reports that 75% of respondents across age groups agree they are overwhelmed by the amount of media available to them. (source: NBC Research)

Americans spend 9.5 hours in a 24-hour period online -- by far the most time spent on any activity, including sleep (7.5 hours.) (source: Veronis Suhler Stevenson)

9.5 hours online! I don't know why I'm surprised; I certainly I exceed that myself. I used to laugh at people who spent all day in front of the computer and then would go home and get right back online. But, now I can't watch TV without simultaneously posting on IMDB about the show I'm watching. (You'll see me there during tonight's premiere of House!)

I've said it before and I will say it again: never before has there been a better time to work in the communications/marketing/PR field. Information drives the dollar and we drive information. Nobody buys anything anymore without first seeking blogger or user reviews and product information online. These stats only demonstrate that fact. So, let's get busy and influence those dollars!

-- my two cents

When Marketing Becomes PR

I’ve been asked a lot lately about the blurring lines between marketing and PR. It’s certainly true what was once a clear and distinct difference is now more of a hazy smudge and (of course) I have a theory as to why.

In traditional marketing, you speak directly to the customer.

In traditional PR, you speak to the customer through the media.

But, today, the customer IS the media.

Today, the customer is out there reporting on his experiences with your brand. Perhaps, he's writing a blog about a new laptop. Maybe, she's scrawling on a Facebook wall about a PDA; or making a video for YouTube documenting the purchase of a first car. Maybe your customer is posting on boards about walking out of a home improvement store because she couldn’t find a single person on the floor to help her despite pressing that useless call button for assistance! (I’m just saying it could happen.)

Bottom line, customers are online telling the story behind their brand experience. And, isn’t that what PR is all about? Getting others to tell the story you want.

Look at viral campaigns. Mainstream media, bloggers, and the average customer make viral marketing work because they report on it. They're not just talking about the product; they're talking about how they learned about the product and the marketing concept behind it (including the pitching style of publicists.) The campaign itself becomes the story.

Because of this, it has never been more important for marketers and PR pros to converge strategies and allow one tactic to feed the other, to blend into each other, creating news that stands on its own; news that spawns more news as the campaign grows.

We need to embrace this convergence and speak to the customer the way we would a reporter -- give them a story to tell. We need to engage the customer in the brand and make the journey of the purchase as much the story as the purchase itself. Because like it or not, it already is.

-- my two cents

Blogger Gets Book Deal Through Viral-PR Success

If you've ever doubted the legitimacy of the blog itself, the power of viral marketing as a PR tactic, or the value of bloggers as media contacts, you’ll want to read today’s post.

First week of January 08: Chris Lander, an internet copy writer, launched a tongue-in-cheek site called Stuff White People Like which pokes fun at Caucasian stereotypes. (A favorite entry of mine is “The No. 1 reason white people like not having a TV, is so they can tell you that they don’t have a TV.” Priceless.

Mid-January: The blog moved virally as friends passed the link to each other online and Stuff White People Like saw about 200 hits a day.

End of January: Bloggers picked it up and the publicity buzz began with site visitors jumping to 4,000/day in just 1 week.

Early February: Quoting bloggers, morning drive-time radio and online media talked about Lander's site, delivering 100,000 unique visitors a day.

Mid-February: Wired Magazine, The LA Times and various others reported on the blog’s content and, six weeks from launch, daily visitors hit 300,000.

End of February: The hosts of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” debated whether the site is racist or satire, spawning more media coverage, and Stuff White People Like sees 1.5 million hits.

March 20: Random House announced a book deal for Lander with a paperback scheduled for release in August. Reports put the deal at around $300,000, an unheard of sum for a book spawned from a blog, written by a previously unpublished author.

Now, I’ve always said, the beauty of the web is it allows business to move at the speed of information. This book deal is living proof. In what other medium can one become a global success and a published author in three short months? It’s phenomenal.

And, apparently, it’s the new trend.

The site I Can Has Cheezburger, which features lolcats, (photos of animals with humorous, ungrammatical captions) debuted in January 2007. Three months later, the site had 1.6 million page views and literary agents were calling. After a bidding war, Gotham Books won the deal and the first book hits shelves this November.

The creator of the Skull-A-Day blog, a blog which features images of skulls made from candy, sparklers and other stuff, has a book deal for an October release.

And, the best seller “Julie and Julia,” about a woman who cooked one Julia Child recipe a day, started out as a blog. Likewise, “The Hipster Handbook,” spawned from freewilliamsburg.com in 2003, has sold 39,000 paperbacks, according to Nielsen BookScan.

So, the blogger legitimacy question has taken a new twist as literary agents are now scouring blogs for their next big deal. And, to that I’d like to say, I can be reached through the "Contact Me" links above.

-- my two cents

Holy Viral Marketing, Batman!

In January, I pondered the future of The Dark Knight’s viral marketing/PR campaign after the tragic loss of Heath Ledger. As you may recall, a Hollywood pal of mine confided that he hoped it would continue as planned since, as he said, it would knock my socks off.

At that point, all we'd seen were some teaser posters and texts from Ledger’s character, The Joker.

Well, the second phase of The Dark Knight’s campaign has rolled out and I have to hand it to the folks at 42 Entertainment (to whom Warners subcontracted the marketing), this is undeniably the most comprehensive viral marketing campaign I have ever seen. It was precisely crafted for the fanboy/comic book geek crowd and they are eating it up. The media coverage has been staggering and I imagine it will continue to the film’s release this summer.

Here’s a run-down the rabbit-hole that is The Dark Knight's promotional strategy:

Faux Politics
The new issue of The Gotham Times has been posted and the Harvey Dent campaign website has announced that Harvey is running for DA. The campaign site lacks any references to Batman. In fact, as someone not familiar with the depths of Batman lore, when I first saw the graffiti-laden posters in a theater window display a few months ago, I thought Dent was a movie in its own right and went online seeking it out. The faux political site urges "concerned Gotham citizens" to "take back Gotham City" by backing Dent and organizing faux grass-roots rallies, filming videos and coming out to meet the Dentmobile touring target cities.

Rowdy Real-World Rallies
Further blending the lines between fact and fiction, on March 12, a rally for the fictional DA candidate was broken up by very real and very confused police. Fans had come out to meet the Dentmobile and when police arrived to remove the crowds, the cops seemed genuinely bewildered by volunteers handing out Harvey Dent bumper stickers, buttons and T-shirts.

Opponent Sites
Of course, what would a political campaign be without opponents? Roger Garcetti, acting DA of Gotham City, and Dana Worthington, founder of the Gotham Victims Advocate Foundation have joined in the fray. More info for her can be found at DanaWorthington.com.

Faux News Coverage
Other Gotham-related sites include a Drudge Report mimic called Maiden Avenue Report.

New sites for more Gotham City services including GothamCableNews.com, SaintsWithunsChurch.org and GothamCab.com have also launched. And, of course, there is the CitizensForBatman.org site.

Texts and Voicemails
Harvey Dent and The Joker are using text messages and voicemails to communicate with their supporters.

ARGs
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) including scavenger-hunts and role-playing are also in the mix: a page appeared at whysoserious.com/steprightup with a hammer game and some teddy bear toys. Each toy had an address on it located in a number of cities around the US. The note on the game told people to go to that address and say their name was "Robin Banks” (robin' banks, that’s pretty funny!) and to await further instructions. What they were given was a cake with a phone number written on it. Now here's the best part: inside the cake was an evidence bag (complete with Gotham City Police printing) that contained a cell phone, a charger, a Joker playing card and a note with instructions.

Red Herrings
Various red herring sites have launched to throw people off the trail in the ARGs. I don't know if these are created by the 42 Entertainment or by fans who are playing the game; it's just part of the beauty of the whole thing!

Plot-Point Sites
Another website, www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com provides teasers about some connection between the Joker and Two Face that I assume will be explained in the film. (Maybe it’s already known. Again, I’m rusty on my comic book lore.)

ComicCon Tie-Ins
Well aware of their core audience, the marketers put it all out there at San Diego’s Comicon with specially defaced dollar bills with yet another web site’s url. On the site The Joker offered fans the chance to become his henchmen with special prizes for those willing to carry out his demands. These players gathered at a set location (offline) to obtain a phone number that was written in the sky by a plane! From there, they embarked on an elaborate scavenger hunt around the city.

Faux Kidnappings
The Comicon promo ended with a fan being abducted by "thugs" in a Cadillac Escalade and getting symbolically "murdered" by armed men who mistook the player for the Joker.

Whew! So, fellow PR pro/marketer -- what did YOU do today?

Some colleagues have said this is overkill and that by the time the movie hits this summer, people will be sick of it after all this hype. (The campaign began nearly a year ago.) But, the power here is that you have to seek these sites out. You have to be the kind of person who wants to run around town in a text-based scavenger hunt and look up in the sky for clues. For the comic book audience, I cannot imagine a better fantasy come true than to play with the superheroes and villains they love so much. Well done 42 Entertainment! You've set the bar into the stratosphere and made The Blair Witch campaign look like a pageboy hollering, "extra! extra!" on the street corner.

-- my two cents

The Press Release Is Not Dead, It Has Evolved

I saw today that someone on Linked In asked if press releases are dead. As usual, it sparked quite a debate just as it has among PR pros for years. (Google "news release is dead" to see one such debate, which includes the notion that Facebook Walls have replaced the release.) With that in mind, I figured I’d toss out my usual two cents on the subject.

Allow me to state unequivocally: the press release is not dead, quite the opposite, in fact. A solid release can be one of the most useful tools you have if you think strategically and write efficiently.

The value of a good release:

They can deliver significant SEO in driving traffic to your site.

They have a long shelf life within search engines and aggregate sites.

They are still widely used by vertical trades.

They are sometimes reprinted in their entirety, ensuring your message gets out (particularly online).

If your news is of national or international significance, you will get the word out fast.

Consider that a web search can return sites featuring customer complaints. The more you can stock engines with positive news via releases, the better first impression you can make.

A steady stream of releases ensures spider-friendly content that will enhance your page rank.

Online releases can include rich media (videos, podcasts, etc.) which will only further optimize your place among engines and get your message out.

It’s not just for media anymore. Through search engines, consumers now have access to press releases, especially if your headline is “findable.”

Price is no longer a factor. The days of BW and PRN owning all release distribution are gone. Free distribution sites like PRWeb, PR.com and 24/7 are just as effective.

It's in the way that you use it.

We've all heard the adage that people don't read stories, they read headlines. Well, the same is true for a search engine. A good release has a "findable" headline, using only the words that give you a postive ranking. Tools like Google AdWords Key Word and WordTracker are very useful in ensuring you are optimizing every phrase.

Keeping it brief is more critical than ever as some search engines will not accept a release containing more than 500 words (and reporters will appreciate it too!)

The same is true for links. Too many links in a release could be considered spam and will subsequently be denied by search engines. A good rule of thumb is one link for every one hundred words.

Of course, it’s important to remember that a press release is merely a tool and it will never replace one-on-one pitching. Media want a scoop; they don’t want the same news that everyone else is getting. Oftentimes careful, targeted media pitching can be more effective than a mass distributed release. It all depends on the news, the target audience, timing and your end goal.

But for now, I say long live the optimized release!

-- my two cents

See'N'Search New Form of Product Placement

In January, I predicted plinking to be the next big thing in consumer-related new media. Plinking, which stands for product linking, is the act of embedding a product or service link in an online video so viewers can purchase a product directly from the video they are watching. Now, Samsung has launched its own version of plinking with See'N'Search. Their application takes existing plinking away from just the web and onto our TVs as See'N'Search automatically scans TV programming for keywords and generates links that are accessible by jumping to a different menu with the remote – no keyboard and mouse required.

So, while watching your favorite American Idol performance, you can instantly link to the AI web site where you can buy that outfit the judges are so conveniently raving about.

What makes Samsung's application so interesting is unlike plinking, which is limited just to the products on the screen, See'N'Search will pull up information on the actors as well as whatever they are discussing in the show. So, when Kramer says to Jerry, "How can you not like Junior Mints? It's chocolate. It's peppermint. It's very refreshing," viewers will be able to buy some right then and there. Okay they probably won't click on Junior Mints; I just wanted to use that quote. But, for some products this could create a new revenue channel and instant ROI for marketers. Plus, it could enable us to finally measure the difference between sight-line and the more costly scripted product placement.

I also wonder if this would enhance ROI on press coverage. If while watching a broadcast news clip, customers could link to our client's products or services, our campaign measurement would be forever changed.

Samsung hasn't said when See'N'Search will be available to the public. But, I maintain this is going to be a fascinating year for product placement. And I, for one, can't wait to see what's to come!

--- my two cents

Americans Turn to Web For News

According to Reuters - Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news.

While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll showed.

"That's a really encouraging reflection of people who care A) about journalism and B) understand that it makes a difference to their lives," said Andrew Nachison, of iFOCOS, a Virginia-based think tank which organized a forum in Miami where the findings were presented.

The stats break down like this:

Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago.

Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.

More than half of those who grew up with the Internet, those 18 to 29, get most of their news and information online, compared to 35 percent of people 65 and older.

Older adults are the only group that favors a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38 percent selecting television.

Howard Finberg, of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, said the public often doesn't understand that the sources they are accessing online such as Google News and Yahoo News pull stories from newspapers, television, wire services and other media sources.

"It's delivered in a non-traditional form, that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't traditional journalism underneath it," he explained.

But Finberg said the study does support the belief among many large media companies that focusing on local issues is important to their journalistic and economic survival.

Traditional Vs New Media: Is It Really Either/Or?

When I was a kid, I saw All the President's Men and Absence of Malice in the same week (thanks to HBO) and decided then and there I wanted to be a reporter. (Of course, a few weeks later, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and wanted to be a swash-buckling archeologist. But, that's a different story altogether!)

Watching those movies, I was fascinated by the important role media plays in our daily lives -- the way they could right a wrong -- the responsibility they have in finding the truth and getting it out there. Today, of course, I'm not a reporter, I crossed to the "dark side" and my job is to persuade reporters to tell the truth I want them to tell. Still part of my success, I think, stems from that early and continued respect for the media.

Ad Age and the Bureau of Labor Statitics just reported a steady decline in traditional media jobs since 2000. Given the increase in the 24-hour news cycle since 2000, one might assume the opposite to be true. However, as I continued to read the stats, I wondered how much new media contributed to this drop in the traditional journalist job market.

So, let's do a timeline study, shall we? One of the first blogs came from Jorn Barger in 1997 -- he's the man who coined the phrase weblog. He was soon followed by Peter Merholz who shortened it to blog. The next year, Open Diary launched and the first network of blogs entered the scene. By '99, Brad Fitzpatrick launched Live Journal which had a more user-friendly interface and suddenly blogs were popping up all around us. Pyra Labs launched Blogger.com that same year and the formerly-email subscription Drudge Report went global in an aggregate blog form.

A year later, in 2000, traditional media jobs began falling by the wayside. Now, this is a little like saying, I see the sun when I wake up in the morning, so I must be the cause of its rising. Still, I can't help but to connect the dots a little bit.

Of course, it's not just blogs. Webzines also began to rise around the same time. Suddenly, you didn't need a publishing house and a major investment to start your own magazine. All you needed was an internet connection and compelling content. I recall writing movie reviews for e-zines as early as 1998 and at that time, I began seeking out other reviews of films, music and books from non-traditional channels.

Here's a question: when is the last time you watched your local news, or even the national nightly news? In the 70s and 80s, my folks watched the local news and then NBC Nightly News every single night. I remember the local news interrupting Happy Days and Mork and Mindy to report on the Atlanta Child Murders, basically scaring the bejesus out of me every day! Now, I can't tell you the last time I sat down to watch an entire news program on TV. I get nearly all of my news online and I'm not the only one. As I've mentioned here before, in 2002, the EVP, Marketing for CNN, Scot Safon gave a speech in which he said college students didn't even think about CNN as a broadcast channel, they only viewed it as a web site.

Next, consider newspapers. I remember in 1998 when online versions of newspapers were nearly all subscription-based even I said "I still like the tactile feeling of holding the paper, I'll never read all my news online!" Of course, this was back in the day when you watched the screen for 5 minues as each page downloaded. Today Newspapers are laying off staff left and right because of the efficiency of the web. And, I gotta admit, reading a printed newspaper today is like reading last week's news.

So, back to the original Ad Age report...where are all these traditional media jobs going? According to the statistics, to marketing and PR. Yep, all those laid-off reporters can now get jobs pitching reporters and/or blogging for Corporate America. According to Ad Age, "marketing consultancies over the past year added 14,500 jobs (up 10.8%) nearly matching staff cuts at major newspapers (down 16,900)."

In other words, while the number of target media we pitch declines, the competition for our jobs grows.

Now, I'm a huge advocate of blogs and ezines and the strength of independent voices. But, the part of me that cheered for Woodward & Bernstein in All the President's and whose heart sank for Sally Field and Paul Newman in Absence of Malice wonders are we de-valuing the traditional journalist a bit too much here?

I think Neil Henry of the SF Chronicle said it best last May when he wrote: "[this means] Fewer resources will be available to investigate stories as nationally significant as the BALCO scandal; fewer professionals to doggedly uncover shady financial practices at the University of California, forcing top officials to publicly acknowledge their mistakes and work to fix them; fewer journalists to cover local city halls, courts and schools, reporting community news that the public often takes for granted -- and which other media, including local television and radio outlets, rely upon to set their own news priorities."

Fact is, I love new media. (Those of you who attended a recent dinner party at my house and witnessed the great blog debate of 08 know it!) I love the citizen-journalist. I love the immediate ROI found with digital PR. I love the idea of reporters who aren't tied to a corporation that controls the content.

But, I also love that hard-nosed journalist who digs and digs and uncovers the stories that no one believed in. I also love the tradition of integrity that we all identify with days gone by. It's an interesting time out there folks; let's keep the conversation going and the trust in our traditional watchdogs high.

-- my two cents

Viral Marketing, Bloggers and Instant Celebrity

Today, I learned about John Fitzgerald Page. While I am loathe to contribute to his newfound Internet celebrity, the whole story is a fascinating study of viral marketing, the power of bloggers, and why people/marketers must embrace these new voices online. Therefore, please forgive me for adding another notch to this non-celebrity's publicity belt.

If you don’t know the story, here’s the skinny.

1. John Fitzgerald Page was/is on Match.com.

2. A woman “winked” at him.

3. He sent her a form-letter in which he boasted his accomplishments: high rise condo, Ivy League school, big money career, etc. He then asked her how much she weighs and if she works out regularly. (To his credit, he did acknowledge the rudeness of the inquiry.)

4. The woman clicked “no thanks” so Match.com sent him a polite note saying “thanks but we’re not a good match based on personality.”

5. Instead of leaving it at that. John sent her a nasty email stating that since she rejected him, she must be fat. He goes on at length to insult her and describe himself and his "caliber" including how much he can bench press.

6. She sent his email to a few friends. They sent it on to other friends and so on and so on…

7. Soon, the blog Gawker.com (which covers "media, gossip and pop culture") got a hold of it and ran the story.

8. It spread like wildfire with bloggers because well, let’s face it – his arrogance is funny and everyone loves a good villain.

9. Now, I always say, major media follow-the-lead of bloggers. True to form, soon the AJC, CNN, FoxNews, CBS and the NYT interviewed him.

Today, John is reveling in Internet stardom. He is releasing his own online videos, putting together book deals and a 20-city tour, all the while securing as much publicity as he can, while he can. He has even become an official escort selling dates for $250-$500 a pop proving in this age of hyper-voyeurism, anybody can be famous, if they want to be.

Certainly none of this is newsworthy. And, I do feel a bit smarmy talking about it here. But the whole story is another example of the speed of viral content online and why people/companies should embrace bloggers. As Target learned, bloggers have the luxury of writing what they want and with each blog linked to another blog, content moves like lightning.

So, bottom line: Bloggers can be a marketer/publicist's (and even a guy trying to find love) greatest advocate or greatest annoyance -- which one is entirely up to you and how much publicity you really want.

-- my two cents