How do you interview a celebrity who has passed away? The San Francisco Giants and star pitcher in his day Tim Lincecum shows the way. I’ve always admired the marketing efforts from the San Francisco Giants acknowledging that some might miss the mark. If you live in the Bay Area and follow the Giants, you’ll …more
Every interaction with the customer offers a brand-building opportunity. This is particularly true for B2B companies that tend to pay less attention to the squishy things in life. Simply using conversational language that sounds like it comes from an actual human being — “Going from Point A to Point B to Point C gets you …more
This headline and the post below appeared five years ago. Well, the future has officially arrived. Our China team is now building self-contained campaigns around WeChat every week, some of which are designed for lead generation. Think of these campaigns as social CRM or if you insist SCRM. The New York Times created a …more
You’ve heard the mantra “every company is a media company.” While it’s true that thanks to the internet every company can fling digital information to the outside world, that doesn’t mean anyone pays attention. That’s why I reached out to Lena Hedén, content and communications manager at Axis Communications and one of our clients in …more
The best content wins. The rise of digital communications and forms of digital marketing see to that. This never-ending thirst for content is recasting the PR profession. The chart below (source: LinkedIn and Recode) depicts job hires in the U.S. by function over the past 14 years (source: LinkedIn). No surprise, the job …more
We’ve been touting the virtues of SEO in PR strategies since 2010. Our push to integrate SEO and PR accelerated in 2013 when Google revamped its search algorithm with the Hummingbird update. It was at this point that Google squeezed most of the gamesmanship out of organic search. Those backlinks sold out of …more
Most IT vendors have come to realize that their websites should be more than gloried product brochures. Yet, the transition has been more evolutionary than revolutionary. Blogs that initially highlighted breakthrough vegan dishes for the cafeteria gave way to communicating perspectives on industry issues. These same blogs transitioned to thought leadership platforms that begot a …more
Communicators have recognized for some time that people, otherwise known as the target audience, increasingly turn to mobile devices to access content. How has this phenomenon impacted the PR profession? In a word, notmuch. As long as our coveted media targets did their part to ensure their stories were mobile-friendly, we figured our bases were …more
Mark Twain famously said, “I never quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” Now that the internet has ended the correlation between barrels of ink and reach of audience, companies are more inclined to “quarrel” with the media. In the old days, if a company took issue with a critical article, it …more
