Canada’s first Advertising Week starts today, with events across the country. Speakers include Sir Richard Branson, and neural scientist – amazing speaker Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor.

In an article a few days ago in the National Post, the chief executive of Institute of Communication Agencies Gillian Graham argued that it’s the worst time to cut advertising spending:

“It has been proven that those who cut spending in these times will exacerbate their revenue challenges and ultimately, lose share.”

As with any statistics and most research, results are interpreted.

What the studies referred to above don’t do is compare revenue results if time and money is invested in advertising, versus less money invested and energy put toward getting free editorial.

In tough economic times, I’d argue, some of the advertising budget can be much better invested in publicity efforts. For far less money, clients can get more column inches, more airtime, more online presence and more visibility.

To get massive publicity coverage, you need:

1. someone who’s a huge media consumer, across all media
2. personal media contacts in your target market (I’ve re-thought this – I don’t think this it’s critical to already have these in place)
   
3. a kickass, current media database
4. a ‘hook’ – why this story now? why should readers/viewers/listeners care?
5. a high-level (ideally, top) person who:
   • will make significant time available to do media interviews, and will be willing to prioritize last-minute media requests for the length of the campaign push
   • is a ‘good talker’ – articulate, energetic, can speak concisely, uses anecdotes/storytelling, and can translate more complex topics to layperson language
6. someone other than your interviewee, to be the ‘pitch’ person
7. great-quality visuals, minimum 300 dpi for most newspapers
8. most of the publicity effort going to crafting individual media pitches
9. a media relations professional who:
   • has created and executed many campaigns
   • genuinely believes in the cause, the event or the product that they are pitching
   • ideally has worked as a journalist or producer themselves

In tough economic times, directing money to free editorial via publicity is the route to go.

photo by Altemark

]]> http://lmighton.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/publicity-tips/feed/ 0 lmighton 337248947_f1eadc7cc0 http://lmighton.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/lecturing-rarely-works-using-fun-to-get-americans-out-to-vote/ http://lmighton.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/lecturing-rarely-works-using-fun-to-get-americans-out-to-vote/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:12:37 +0000 lmighton http://lmighton.wordpress.com/?p=205 ]]>

Maybe the coolest political campaign video ad I’ve ever seen.

Who can break partisan gridlock in Washington on November 4? The answer in AARP’s
“Get Out the Vote” video may surprise you. Enter your name and see for yourself!

Works best if you enter your real name.
http://www.aarpvote08.org/

Will it get the voters out?

Interesting to read, via the incom mailing list, about employee protests against IBM in Second Life.

Before passing this off as a complaint to a tiny audience and unlikely to have much power or effect, consider this: IBM is estimated to be investing $10 million on building its presence in virtual worlds including Second Life.

In Italy, IBM employees are unionized, and there has been some unhappy back and forth with management – protesting over pay, pension and health rights on one side, IBM withdrawing a ‘productive work benefit’ in response. According to the article, an international affiliation of workers unions (Union Network International) launched ‘unions 2.0′ – they trained protesters in how to use Second Life and gave protest kits to their avatars. Avatars then went to IBM locations, put up banners and slogans, and encouraged anyone to sign a petition. Some of them found their way to an online IBM meeting that was taking place in Second Life – they asked to speak to management (the meeting was about website functionality, so I don’t think that would have got them too far), and they were asked to take their protest out of the virtual meeting room. From a union negotiation perspective the initiative may not have gained them much, but what it did do is give media outlets a ‘hook’ to hang a union story on. It made national TV news in Italy. As a PR strategy, that’s pretty smart.

As real-world protests enter virtual worlds, so virtual worlds are jumping over to traditional, ‘real-world’ media.

I wrote earlier about Canada’s National Film Board putting some money into exploring virtual-world filmmaking.

According to a recent article in a Vancouver paper, HBO not long ago won a bidding war (against MTV and Sundance Channel) to broadcast My Second Life - content created in the land of avatars. San Francisco filmmaker Douglas Gayeton assumed (borrowed? stole? impersonated?) a character called Molotov, and filmed the avatar’s online adventures. Some of it showed up on YouTube, and within 72 hours it was the most-watched video there.

The series will be on HBO in the spring, and it is already being screened in L.A. to try to qualify it for Academy Award consideration.

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Related links:

an interview  Nedra Weinrich did a while ago about some innovative health education initiatives being undertaken by Center for Disease Control in Second Life.

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The Society for New Communications Research is calling for entries for the Second Annual 2007 Excellence in New Communications Awards program. The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 28, 2007.

Submit your entries.

The awards recognize organizations and individuals who are pioneering the use of new media and communications and social media in the areas of marketing, public relations and internal communications, advertising, media, politics, entertainment, academics, community and cultural development.

Awards will be granted in six divisions:

Corporate
Government
Media
Nonprofit/NGO
Academic
Professional (Individual)

… and in seven categories:

Blog
Podcast
Video
Wiki and Collaborative Tools
Online Communities & Virtual Worlds
Mobile Media
Technology Innovation

All of the award-winning case studies will be published in the New Communications Review.

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