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Today, I think most clients in most industries would agree the trade show is about PR - selling happens elsewhere.  We’ve seen clients pull out of a variety of shows in recent years and for good reason.  But the right approach around the right show can still prove valuable.  It takes a different approach, one that’s less and less about what happens on the show floor.

The big outlets typically have their stories researched and written – and often out – before the curtain goes up, like The Associated Press’ coverage of Toy Fair earlier this month.  Helping press and bloggers build their story remotely, weeks in advance of the show, is key to being part of feature coverage and the show buzz.

At CES, which is an extremely tough show for media and bloggers to traverse, you can’t count on everyone making it to your booth.  The preview events held the days leading up to CES are a hit with media and add minimal cost (and some let you participate without being an official exhibitor).  Mini-events within the main event, such as the “Silvers Summit” at CES, are another way to break through, putting the product story in context of a larger trend.  Check out USA Today’s CES story that ran on Day 1 and featured some Silvers Summit exhibitors.

Other shows, like Housewares (next month in Chicago), have seen media attendance steadily dwindle.  If media are going, there are fewer of them having to cover more ground.  That can make freelance relationships very valuable, as well as in-persons with press not traveling to the show.

Another trade show challenge?  Timing.  Take Toy Fair, for example.  Manufacturers debut the “hot holiday toys” for the coming season just six weeks after last holiday season and, in most cases, months before the new toys are on shelf.  How useful is February-timed coverage of a product that’s not releasing until August?  Sure, it can help to prime the pump.  But you’ll need an encore.  If budget allows, do more than mine the leads coming out of the show.  Time your biggest PR activity away from the show clutter and closer to your product’s release – when the resulting coverage will be truly meaningful for sales.

It’s easy to get swept up in the hype around trade shows.  But a trade show should be seen for what it is and not more – part of a comprehensive PR strategy, not THE strategy.

Filed under: Events and Conferences, Industry Organizations, PR Industry by LauraTomasetti - No Comments →

Last week was school vacation week in many parts of the country.  I was struck by the number of clients who were juggling work while “on vacation” with the kids.  School vacation comes at a tough time - just six weeks after the holidays, when we’re knee-deep into the year’s campaigns.

Indeed, one of the most pervasive mom trends currently is moms returning to work.  Some moms are being driven back to work, full- or part-time, by economic conditions.  Others are re-tracking and re-launching careers after a hiatus at home raising their children.  While many companies are downsizing, the marketplace is seeing the biggest influx of mompreneurs yet.

An opportunity exists for marketers who offer or can reshape their products, services and content to support moms returning to work.   A new conference series has sprung up to help.  The latest Detours & OnRamps Forum will be held March 25 in Boston (actually just outside, in Waltham).  It’s worth passing to moms you may know who are transitioning back to work.  Conference Leader & Founder Meghan McCartan  has been there (and back).  360PR will be there scouting for new members of the 360PR MomSquad.

 

Filed under: Events and Conferences, Marketing to Moms, Parenting by LauraTomasetti - No Comments →

With millions of blogs in the blogosphere, it wasn’t a huge shock (note: sarcastic tone) that the 360PR Blog didn’t make it to TIME’s Best Blogs of 2009 list. As much as the team enjoys posting to our own blog, we revel in reading a variety of other blogs on a daily basis. So, while we didn’t make it to the list, it was great to see that some of our favorite blogs did. Below is the full list with links to TIME’s description of each:

TIME’s Top 25 Blogs of 2009: 

• Talking Points Memo
• The Huffington Post
• Lifehacker
• Metafilter
• The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan
• Freakonomics
• BoingBoing
• Got2BeGreen
• Zen Habits
• The Conscience of a Liberal: Paul Krugman
• Crooks and Liars
• Generación Y
• Mashable
• Slashfood
• Official Google Blog
• synthesis
• bleat
• /Film
• Seth Godin’s Blog
• Deadspin: Sports News without Access, Favor, or Discretion
• Dooce
• Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
• Said the Gramophone
• Detention Slip
• Bad Astronomy

It may be in the print version and just not on TIME.com, but it would have been great to see an explanation of what the editors were looking for when determining the top blogs. They’ve clearly chosen blogs with a lot of traffic, but I wonder how deeply elements such as community/comments and uniqueness were considered compared to other factors? I also wonder how many editors were involved in determining the list? Was it a collaborative effort?

Filed under: Media and Press, Social Media by EliciaBasoli - 1 Comment →

Twitterholic.com has been a source of intrigue for me on this Friday, the 13th and is worthy of a shout out. In a nutshell, the website scans the Twitter public timeline and, multiple times a day, calculates which Twitter.com users are the most popular based on number of followers. As part of this list, Twitterholic includes the location and URL of the Twitter user as well as the number of followers and updates that the user has, as well as when they joined Twitter.

Top 5 Twitter Users (according to Twitterholic as of 2/13/09 at 11:00am ET)

1. @BarackObama 
2. @StephenFry (An English actor, comedian, author and television presenter)
3. @CNNBrk (CNN’s Breaking News Twitter account with over 175,000 followers)
4. @KevinRose (Founder of social news site Digg.com)
5. @Twitter (Twitter’s own Twitter account)

Among the Top 100 list, a handful of categories of tweeps emerge including celebrities, technology execs, consumer brands, journalists and bloggers, politicians, and PR/marketing folks. It gives you a good snapshot of the types of people that are using Twitter.

Other Tweeps from the Top 100 List:

Celebrities:

@BritneySpears

@LanceArmstrong (bicyclist)

@WilW (Wil Wheaton: Actor - Star Trek: The Next Generation - blogger, author, self-proclaimed “geek”)

@TinaFey

@THE_REAL_SHAQ (Shaquille O’Neal)

@MCHammer

@StephenColbert

 

Technology/ Social Media:

@GuyKawasaki (founder of Alltop.com)

@Scobelizer (Robert Scoble, tech geek blogger)

@JasonCalcanis (founder of Weblogs, Inc., TechCrunch50 and Mahalo)

@AlexAlbrecht (Creator/Host of Totally Rad Show - Project Lore - Diggnation - Internet FTW)

@DarrenRowse (ProBlogger.com blogger, author)

@JOwyang (Jeremiah Owyang, social computing Forrester analyst)

@FeliciaDay (Gamer! Star of the popular Online Show about MMO players “The Guild”)

 

Consumer Brands:

@Zappos (Online shoe retailer, Zappos.com)

@WholeFoods 

@Starbucks

@JetBlue

 

Media, Journalists, Bloggers:

@TechCrunch (start-up and technology news blog)

@NYTimes

@dooce (”mommy blogger”)

@Mashable (social media blog)

@NPR (National Public Radio)

@theOnion

@ESPN

 

Check out the full list at Twitterholic.com.

Filed under: Social Media by EliciaBasoli - No Comments →

We’ve addressed the topic of marketing to men, specifically dads, on the 360PR blog before (see Laura’s blog post “The Dad Factor” ) and, yesterday Advertising Age published a somewhat related article about marketing to men that caught my eye. Not only does the author, Abigail Posner, encourage companies to reach out to this relatively untapped consumer group, but she emphasizes the importance of reaching men especially in a tough economic climate.

Women make 80% of the buying decisions in all homes, so when marketing a product used in the home, it seems logical to stick to the tried and true and reach women. However, Posner argues that “Tough economic times demand innovation to motivate people to buy. And bringing men into the marketing equation doesn’t just give you a larger group of consumers; it means a new set of benefits, a new story to tell and even new product ideas.”

[Read more →]

Filed under: Consumer Marketing by StephanieShih - 1 Comment →

We know that the Web is an unbelievable resource for absorbing new information about topics like Web 2.0, digital media, PR and a gazillion other topics in a list miles long. Well, this week was one of those weeks where I encountered so many articles, blog posts and news stories that I simply couldn’t decide which would be best for a blog post today (if there were only more hours in a day!) So, instead of sharing just one, I’ve pulled out a few that I thought were worth sharing:

• How to Get More Followers on Twitter (TwitTip): This is a question many people are asking these days. Darren Rowse from TwitTip rounds up a handful of his posts that help answer it.
• Most Social Brands of 2008 (AdAge): AdAge published this list of the most active brands in social media last year, compiled by Vitrue. There is mix of industries here - from coffee, to retail, to media, consumer tech, and cars.
• Announcing the AllFacebook Pages Tracker (All Facebook Blog): These guys have been studying the most popular pages on Facebook and posted some great findings. For example, The New York Times fan page got 135,000 new fans from the inaugural home page ad campaign!
• 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter (CopyBlogger): Social Media “Scientist” Dan Zarrella shares some of his findings about the importance of “ReTweeting” on Twitter.
• Facebok Turns 5 (Inside Facebook): This blog re-posts snapshots of Facebook throughout the years and lists stats that Facebook just released on its birthday (e.g. 15 million users update their status at least once a day and 3.5 million users become fans of pages each day!)

If you have any other resources/links from the week to add to this list, let us know in the comments!

Filed under: Digital PR, Internet, Social Media by EliciaBasoli - No Comments →

Kudos to MillerCoors for leveraging the “economic crisis” to their advantage in a smart, tasteful, 1-second ad during the Super Bowl for its Miller High Life brand. If you have yet to catch a glimpse of this fleeting spot, you can do so on the web – though keep in mind that outside the context of the Super Bowl’s extravagance, the wit and message may be lost.

With companies like Coke, Pepsi, GoDaddy.com, and Frito-Lay’s Doritos paying $3 million for 30-second ads (not to mention competitor Bud Light brewer Anheuser-Busch’s seven game-time spots), the Miller High Life ad is more a subtle economic statement than a frugal budget decision.

Based on the buzz on Twitter, which accounted for 67% of the online reaction to the Miller High Life ad, the ad was a huge success, transcending the gratuitous violence and disdain for corporate America that permeated other ads. The 1-second ad’s implied restraint created synergy with the High Life brand, sending a clear message the company had taken the “higher road.”

In a company press release, High Life senior brand manager Kevin Oglesby confirms that the commercial was in fact a strategic move: “Just like our consumers, High Life strives to make smart choices. One second should be plenty of time to remind viewers that Miller High Life is common sense in a bottle.”

While the fiscally-prudent card is an easy one to throw down in today’s climate, is it truly altruistic or more opportunistic?

Furthermore, what effect does this have on the advertising industry - especially if brewing companies with deeper pockets (compared to the auto industry) are scaling back?

You be the judge: In New York alone, media companies account for more than 160,000 jobs and $15 billion in wages.

Filed under: Consumer Marketing, Media and Press, PR Industry by MikeRush - 6 Comments →