Today finds hundreds of brands huddled in their war rooms, rehearsing how they will respond to what-if scenarios at the Super Bowl. I loved the line uttered by David Matahia, director of marketing communications for Hyundai, at the Holmes Innovation Summit last week: “Oreo screwed us all with their Super Bowl moment.” Because Oreo generated …more
The tidy sandbox called PR no longer exists. Social media, search engine marketing (SEM), owned media, endorsement, native PR, paid media and content marketing – they all overlap into the PR world. Even software programming comes to bear on these blended campaigns. Work from our China team demonstrates how this plays out in the real …more
Social media democratizes ____________ (fill in the blank). Anyone can express a viewpoint with the potential to reach far beyond their established “circles.” If Justine Sacco didn’t know that last week, I suspect she knows it now. We need to invent a word that combines the concept of viral and mob mentality. With Ms. Sacco’s …more
Dear Jeff, I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn. Your mashup of a digital Rolodex and content creation – both original and curated – has a certain business purity that appeals to the white-collar crowd. Just last week I was singing your praises in sharing three LinkedIn hacks: While the social media platform started as the …more
It’s one thing when the local dry cleaner closes for a week due to a family vacation. But shutting down the federal government because the politicians can’t play nice in the sandbox? Thankfully, the boys in Washington discovered that elusive common ground; hence, the U.S. government is once again open for business. Playing my humble …more
That’s not a typo in the headline. Nor am I trying my hand at keyword stuffing. Back in June a post detailed how social media, in this case Facebook, reshaped the storytelling behind a Navy squadron rescuing a family lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Here’s an example of interactions on social media …more
Conducting a training session for a client yesterday, I was reminded that many people still associate LinkedIn with the job market. While the social media platform started as the darling of recruiters, it’s evolved into something much more, blending the attributes of social media with storytelling (content creation) and what amounts to a news service. …more
If there’s one safe haven to push beyond the status quo and experiment, it’s universities. With this idea as the backdrop, I thought it would be a revealing exercise to review 100 or so university Twitter profiles and select the best five. The winners would show what happens to the simplest of communications – 160 …more
Gaining followers on Twitter has become a national obsession. Plug [how to get Twitter followers] into Google, and 529,000,000 listings surface. For context, a similar exercise with [how to lose weight] doesn’t even hit half that number. Now, there’s a Huffington Post headline in the making: “More people care about increasing their Twitter followers than …more
