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/2009/01/23/a-real-page-turner/ http://lmighton.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/a-real-page-turner/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:43:06 +0000 lmighton http://lmighton.wordpress.com/?p=349 ]]>

I don’t like reading multi-page documents online.

I’m trying to be more environmentally responsible with the amount that I print, but like most people I scan rather than read online text.  With more than a few pages, or with complex topics, online information just doesn’t lodge in my brain in the same way.

But I know I could do better with my tree-consuming behavour.  So I was intrigued when I happened across FlipViewer.   I don’t know if more book-like (‘multimedia interactive’) software has existed for a while, but this was the first time I came across an e-book that really felt like reading a book.

The Lancet sent out an email that they’re currently offering a free e-book online, Darwin’s Gift.  The visuals are like real pages turning, and for me the experience is way more pleasant.  I also love the cover art.  There’s even audio of paper pages turning.  So I’m going to try again to do more big readings online.

–

My next quest in improving my environmental behaviour:  an all-in-one printer that offers easy two-sided printing.

Any printer I’ve ever owned has pitiful functionality for two-sided printing.  The whole document prints out on one side first, and then  you have to manually feed the same pages back in again.  Every printer I’ve ever done this with either misses a sheet, or sucks in several pages at once, and the numbering of the pages ends up chaotic – pages missing, pages only partly-printed, and a real annoyance to try to find pages as you’re reading through a document.  Though at an office I almost always ensure I’ve selected two-sided printing, at home I’ve given up.  If anyone knows of an inexpensive small office/home all-in-one printer that does an excellent job of two-sided printer, I’d like to know.

–

The free e-book is a promotion to bring in new subscribers to The Lancet, but you don’t have to subscribe to read the book.   I couldn’t find a way to download and read it offline, so from what I figure, you have to read it online.

This is an excerpt from the blurb (the links are mine):

Darwin’s Gift celebrates the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. You’ll find essays about Darwin’s life and work, and the enduring legacy of his remarkable theory of evolution. These were Darwin’s gifts to all of us.

I took a photo of a huge banner of this image below when I was working in Sri Lanka – an experience I wrote about some time ago here, and in other posts.

And it seems, so little has changed. So frustrating, so unjust, and so tragic.

The country is still rated as having the worst press freedom of any democratic country in the world. In the 2008 Press Freedom Index, it rates next to Iran, down toward the very bottom of the list.

In this incredibly well-written editorial, a journalist predicted his own murder. It was published recently, just a few days before he was killed.

I want to include an excerpt from his editorial. The journalist writes about why, in spite of the dangers, he is compelled to speak out about the injustices taking place in his country. The excerpt below is from the journalist’s editorial. He is writing about German theologian Martin Niem”ller.

It gives me goosebumps.

In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niem”ller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niem”ller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Diversity in Place: Documentaries on the Multicultural City

As I’ve written before, one of the things I’m really interested in is the possibilities for evidence-based communications, including media, to effect change in multicultural acceptance and racial tolerance.

I’m excited about the possibilities in the announcement below. Wheels are turning. Stay tuned in the next couple of months…

‘Diversity in Place’ isn’t just a video and photography contest. It seems it could have enormous potential in engaging youth citizenship; in exploring multiculturalism and racial

l tensions in a solutions-oriented way. It seems so extra-important given current situations in Gaza in particular, but also in other fragile states.

[post below is from http://diversityinplace.wordpress.com/]

More than half of the population in the world now lives in cities, and the urban share of the globe will continue to increase dramatically to reach 70 percent by 2050. Migration, both from within and among societies, is a major source of urbanization, with multicultural cities on the rise everywhere.

Call for Documentary Film/Video Entries

In an innovative way toward mutual learning, we invite the submission of video and photo documentaries whose emphasis is on exploring multicultural cities and processes of place-making. Scholars, teachers, students and practitioners alike are searching for alternative methods to conventional data analysis and academic writing to be able to capture ethnic diversity and multicultural interactions in real world settings. The use of documentaries to show the daily practices of multiculturalism in the city can make several key contributions to research, teaching and action.

Videos not in excess of 15 minutes are requested for submission to screenings which will be held at the conference

venue at the University of Hawai’i Manoa Campus on April 24th, 2009. Selections of videos to be included in the seminar will be made by a committee of students and faculty who are organizing the event. Artists, video- and filmmakers, researchers, writers and others interested in the relation between people and places and the making of multicultural cities are invited to join the project, participate to the seminar to discuss their ideas and work.

Questions, themes, topics and issues to be addressed in the documentaries can include, but are not limited to:

* How documentaries by recording the presence of people of different origins over time can reveal ‘invisible’ minority cultures in a way that no other media can.
* The efforts at historic preservation of elements of the city that might otherwise have been overlooked but are of high cultural value to members of a community.
* How multiculturalism can work well in practice and thus contribute to a more positive attitude about and pride in the multicultural city, and thereby assist in fostering mutual accommodation and tolerance.
* In an age of global migration in which significant segments of multicultural cities do not have citizenship or are otherwise marginalized in the city, how documentaries can help identify issues of social justice.
* How multiculturalism inscribes itself into the city by everyday uses of urban space and lead us to a greater appreciation of the many different identities that make up the multicultural Cosmopolis of contemporary times.

By combining the reflections and findings emerging around the objectives of the conference, and understanding the inevitability of increasing diversity in urban places, this conference aims at drawing lessons and recommendations as to what makes the creation of ethnic spaces possible, and further what helps to form and shape livable cities with healthy intercultural relations, namely, cities as multicultural places where migrants’ place-making is understood and acknowledged as an inherent human right to the city.

This conference is sponsored by the Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Initiative (SEED), University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Submission Deadline and Guidelines

The purpose of the call is a selection of a maximum of eight documentaries to be screened in a one-day conference on April 24th, 2009 at the University of Hawai’i.

Submission deadline: March 1st, 2009

Guidelines

Videos should be short — no longer than 15.00 minutes. International and domestic submissions are encouraged.
The formats accepted are: DVD
Please include: Synopsis, Bio, CV and Contact Information.

All submissions will be added to the Diversity in Place Video Library for possible inclusion in future projects. If included in other projects, artists will be contacted for permission.

Send submissions to:

Vera Zambonelli, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Saunders
Hall, 2424 Maile Way, 96822 Honolulu HI

Travel and lodging aid:
Pending application, the Project will cover part of travel expenses and lodging in a Youth Hostel for participants residing outside of Honolulu. If traveling to Honolulu is not an option, we will arrange videoconferencing through skype.

For more information: diversityinplace@gmail.com

http://diversityinplace.wordpress.com/

Photo credits:
Untouchables Cameraman by Eco-Photographer
Immigration Is Not a Crime by daveknapik
Multiculturalism by TaleyehS