360PR Blog

And I don’t mean the chocolate candy (although a Snickers sounds pretty good right about now)! The other SNCR (aka The Society of New Communications Research) held its 5^th Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala recently in Palo Alto. John and I both were thrilled to attend and honored to accept two  “2010 Excellence in New Communications Awards” for 360PR!

Each year SNCR honors various individuals and organizations who are pioneering the use of social media. 360 was recognized for our work with Dorel Juvenile Group USA and their Safety 1^st brand (Multiple Platforms/Integrated initiatives category), as well as our work on behalf of You CAN Do the Rubik’s Cube (Online Publishing/ Facebook category). We are pumped to be among this group of 2010 winners, which included Old Spice, the 2010 SNCR Brand of the Year.

Actually, in addition to the awards ceremony, the highlight of the symposium was when Old Spice brand manager James Moorhead, presented the “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign case study. The campaign, which Cindy blogged about this summer, has led to almost 2 billion impressions to date! A truly unbelievable viral success!

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, Digital PR, Events and Conferences, Industry Organizations, Social Marketing, Social Media by EliciaBasoli - 3 Comments →

As the saying goes, sometimes the best conversations take place around the dinner table. This was certainly true at the M2Moms conference . Colleague Caroline Pierce and I crossed paths with incredible mom marketers at the conference and enjoyed amazing ideation conversations over dinner with eleven amazing women. Didn’t hurt that dinner was at Table Fifty-Two on Elm Street. Beyond the food (some of us are still talking about the Three Cheese Mac and Art’s Hummingbird Cake), and the chance to meet Chef Art, there was terrific connection and conversation. Our dinner guests shared their top 11 takeaways from M2Moms. Here’s what they had to say:

1. One key influencer is more important to your brand than numbers.
2. A social media campaign is greater than sum of its CPM parts. With brand ambassadors – loyalty is priceless.
3. It’s the Me + You era and marketing is about fostering sustainable relationships.
4. There are 6 Universal Tugs that influence 75% of moms’ decision marking – savings, health, environment, feel good, convenience and family. Brands need to highlight how their product solves for them in their marketing. They also need to be aware of “drag” tugs that may pull them down and compensate for them. So, if your product is not good for the environment, it better be really convenient, and save you money.
5. I liked learning what brands and agencies need to know (the gaps they are currently facing) to tap into the mom demographic and their attempts to fill that gap.
6. Mobile is quickly becoming Mom’s “first screen” (used to be TV and then laptop but now moms are turning to their phones more and more frequently to accomplish their online tasks). When creating a mobile app for mom- don’t try to create the Taj Mahal. Create an app that does one thing really, really well and then push updates based on the real time feedback you’ll get. (Oh, and free apps are downloaded more frequently, stay on phones longer, and get used 6X more than paid apps).
7. Mom’s primary goal now is spending quality time with her kids and family. She’s looking for products and services that help her do that.
8. Moms are optimistic! They’ve had a tough year (with lost jobs, reduced hours, and often extra family members moving into the household) yet remain confident that things will get better. (They have plans to make major purchases, believe the job situation will improve, and think things will be more positive next year).
9. Moms are proud of what they’re doing as family caregivers and have a big desire to share and broadcast their lives as moms online.
10. Moms in nontraditional families, minority moms (including those with disabilities), and stay at home/ highly involved dads increasingly expect marketers to recognize (and celebrate) them. Marketers who continue to focus only on white Mom+Dad+2.5 kid families will alienate a lot of spending power!
11. I have spent my life under applying mascara. Thanks to the Dior team I now know I need to really lather it on!!! (you had to be there to get this one)

Thank you to: Jyl Johnson Pattee, Kat Eden, Erica Mallett, Caroline Knorr, Ashley O’Brien, Shelley Delfino, Carolin Pierce, Donna Mirus Bates, Jennifer Burkitt, Rachael Herrscher, Jill Rourke. Lady Gaga might have been there in spirit. She sat at our same table one month prior.

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, Blogger Relations, Consumer Marketing, Events and Conferences, Social Media by Admin - 1 Comment →

By John LeRoy

This past Friday I was lucky enough to hear some great presentations made by fellows of the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) at Stanford University.  It was great to hear from some brilliant academics including SNCR Senior Fellow Jonathan Salem Baskin, whose presentation really stuck with me.

Jonathan spoke about the “Histories of Social Media,” which also happens to be the title of his latest book.  The title threw me off a bit, as I expected that this would be a timeline of the various technologies used in social media today.  Boy, was I wrong.  Jonathan went on for about 30 minutes about his main point – while the technologies used in social media are new, the connections that can be made between the social media and various historical events go back for centuries.  The comparisons, which might take a few minutes to truly “get”, were profound and thought-provoking.

To give you a better idea of what I mean, here are a couple of the highlight comparisons:

• When examining the topic of community, which is at the core of modern social media, Jonathan questions whether or not they are supposed to be built to “last forever” as many marketers strive to do when they launch a new community.  He compared modern social networks to villages in the old days, which would be abandoned once all of the usable resources had been exhausted.  This thought beckons the question, “Should we eventually move on to something different, or should we want our community to last forever?”
• Jonathan compared oral tradition to a wiki.  This goes to say in the same way that we are able to create and edit information with ease using wikis, oral tradition allowed our ancestors to create, and change, stories that were passed down from generation to generation.  In a similar vein, Jonathan argues that folklore is an example of crowd sourced information.  New technologies now make it easier for us to do the same things, but this does not mean that they are original ideas.

These examples just scratch the surface of how deeply this book looks into the correlations between history and social media, and I am looking forward to reading it.  You can learn more about Histories of Social Media here.

Filed under: Events and Conferences, Industry Organizations, Social Media by Admin - 4 Comments →

By Caroline Pierce

360PR’s very own Cindy Gordon moderated a panel last week at M2Moms: The Marketing-to-Moms Conference on how brands can attract the Cool Mom.  The session was called “Moms Gone Wild: Winning Over The Cool Mom.” Joining Cindy on her panel was Molly O’Donnell from Xbox, who is in the midst of launching one of the coolest new products Xbox Kinect; Donna Mirus Bates from Universal Orlando, who just opened the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and Jyl Johnson Patee, Founder of Mom It Forward/Girls Night Out, who has mastered the technique of motivating moms to advocate on behalf of brands.

Marketers may think that it can’t be hard to win over the cool mom with cool brands like Xbox and Universal, but the insider tips shared even won “cool” praise for a baked beans company.  If these girls can make baked beans cool, anything can be cool!  Some of the top takeaways from the session were:

• Cool goes beyond aesthetics, style and packaging to include brand ethos. What a brand does outside of selling their product is important to mom – especially as it relates to helping families and the community
• Cool is naturally about packaging, branding and style, but also for mom it’s sometimes about a cool find, and something can be cool to mom if it is pragmatic and affordable
• Mom thinks brands that have a dialogue with her are cool – she’s looking for a relationship that shows the brand is listening and responding to what she has to say
• Cool used to be reserved for fringe brands discovered by NYC kids; now mom also discovers and decides what’s cool, i.e. Cynthia Rowley band aids anyone?
• Mom needs to be comfortable with making decisions, and information is key to her comfort.  She also likes to involve her friends, family in the decision process, so shareable videos, tips are important for a brand to be cool.

Also, the cool brand results from 360PR’s “Cool Brand Panel” are in! Check out which brands moms think are cool in 2010 and nominate your favorite cool brand for next year’s picks.

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, Events and Conferences, Marketing to Moms by Admin - 1 Comment →

I just spent a couple of days surrounded by leaders in the PR industry, at the Council of PR Firms annual Critical Issues Forum.  One clear take-away for me is that this is an industry that’s more than bouncing back.  It’s invigorated – with ideas, new technologies and new ways to help brands fuel conversation, particularly in social media.

Another key take-away: PR’s value has grown tremendously in the new communications economy.  This was articulated by CMOs and senior communications officers from P&G, Heineken, IKEA, AT&T, American Express and Monster Worldwide.

The “huge shift” in how marketers advance their brands is peer-to-peer recommendations, said Heineken USA CMO Christian McMahan, who cited Trip Advisor as a shining example of a brand benefiting from peer-to-peer communications.

“The only way we’re going to get there is not paid media – it’s by earning the trust of consumers through peer recommendations,” added Leontyne Green, CMO for IKEA USA.

Building trust by listening to customers and through transparent, authentic conversation have always been core PR competencies.  That’s one of the reasons PR is driving the hottest area of brand communications – social media.

“PR is the most authentic form of marketing,” said P&G CMO Marc Pritchard, fresh off successful campaigns for P&G’s Old Spice, Head & Shoulders and Olympic Games campaigns.  “PR is the megaphone that amplifies the campaign,” Pritchard explained.

PR can also spark the conversation.  A successful campaign today can start with just 10 of the right influencers if the platform and the delivery are compelling, with social media as the thread that keeps the conversation going.

A third and final take-away: Big ideas can come from anywhere – advertising, PR, research, customer service – and what makes the big idea bigger is integration.  The fact is there are a lot of big ideas and your brand and your idea are in the most competitive communications environment marketers have known.  “From a PR perspective, you need to bring in people who understand [broader] marketing.  There’s no way you cannot be integrated,” said Monster Worldwide CMO Ted Gilvar.

For more, read Advertising Age’s coverage of Marc Pritchard’s remarks to the Council of PR Firms, and check out the Council’s Twitter stream.

Filed under: Digital PR, Events and Conferences, Industry Organizations, PR Industry, Social Marketing, Social Media by LauraTomasetti - 2 Comments →