We worry about the smallest things.
We worry if our boss will like us. We worry if our colleagues will like us. We worry if our online “friends” will like us.
We worry.
But the truth of the matter is, we worry about the little things. We worry about peers; about colleagues; about promotions; about the little things.
Now to some of us, we may worry about big things. But, unless it’s life-changing, how big is that worry? Truly?
Want to see real worry? Here you go.
image: Len Matthews
There’s a lot of talk about where the future of PR lies. Much like its brethren marketing and, to a degree, advertising, PR is at a crucial juncture – where does the industry go to keep evolving and moving forward?
After all, despite the great work being carried out by forward-thinking professionals in the space, it’s clear the mainstream (you know, the people that really count) still see?PR as a shady backwater mud hole. Even if out-of-date thinking skews the arguments put forward by those people, it doesn’t matter if the people reading those pieces don’t see what’s really happening in the PR industry.
So does that mean PR should just skulk away and accept that it will never be seen as anything other than a profession full of spin doctors? Far from it – but there does need to be a continuing adoption of new thinking, forward thinking, and sheer hard work just to keep beating the new thinking drum until it reverberates in more dusty halls.
One of the accusations often thrown at the PR industry is that agencies and professionals are clinging to the belief that they should control the message. From client news to product launches to crisis countering, only the most positive and accepting of news outlets should be used and approved.
This approach won’t move the industry forward. Nor will it help to counter the incorrect thinking that this is the norm for the PR industry.
At the same time, companies and agencies afraid of losing control aren’t seeing the bigger picture -?you still control the facts.?That cannot be changed. Whether they’re accepted or not has more to do with your track record in authenticity and openness than it does with the medium on which these facts are being reported.
This is where the Disruptors – those new channels and outlets, like bloggers, citizen journalists and?influencers?- need to be collaborated with as opposed to feared and mistrusted.
It’s not just for promotional use, either. Much like marketing, PR is often seen as putting out puffed-up information and fluff in order to part customers with their money (or, in the PR industry’s case, separate truth from fact). So use Disruptors to counter this.
This is a basic set-up, but you start to get the picture on how Disruptors shouldn’t be feared, but accepted and worked with/respected.
One of my biggest pet peeves – and not just with the PR industry – is the turf war mentality that seems to pervade when disciplines clash.
Whether it’s marketing vs. PR, PR vs. advertising, or even PR vs. PR, there’s one thing that rings loud and clear -?it benefits no-one.?Seriously, does anyone think that beating your chest and saying, “We showed them!” makes sense? Who cares? It’s not about you, and never has been -?it’s all about the result.
So what if marketing is a better lead for the customer acquisition part of a promotion or campaign? So what if advertising is a better lead for that native content program? Who cares if PR is the better lead for the overall strategy and what part needs to be placed where?
While the disciplines may still have core differences, at the end of the day PR, marketing and advertising have the same basic directive – get the result through allocating the right approach at the right time.
Turf wars are stupid. They belong in the playground where we have our little imaginary lines and flags to capture – they don’t belong in the modern business world, and anyone who thinks they do needs to have a serious look at how their results are panning out for them.
Integrate and cross-collaborate, people. You know it makes sense.
Perhaps the biggest shift in thinking, though, is around the terminology itself. For some reason, we’ve allowed ourselves to get sucked in by the word “digital”.
And on, and on, and on. Why? Why is it so important to make the distinction? Does the thinking behind a strategy really change? No – the tactics, and what platforms/channels to use, change. But the overall strategy remains the same – what’s our goal and how are we going to achieve this, and then measure the success?
The thinking that the PR industry needs to adapt to the digital landscape is the exact reason it’s struggling with this so-called digital landscape, because – essentially – people do not change.
We’re creatures of habit. It’s why we’ll keep dating the wrong kind of person; or we’ll complain about the same bad menu at our local diner, as opposed to finding another diner.
Consumers are the same (not surprising, given that they’re, you know, people too). While research channels have evolved, the basic questions remain – can your company meet my needs and are your products reliable? And will I be looked after once I become a customer?
This question is asked in-store; on FAQ reading; on forums; on telemarketing calls; on email; and, yes, on digital. See the pattern? The channel is irrelevant – it’s the answer that matters. So stop focusing on how to be better at digital, and simply focus on how to be better, full stop.
It’s not that hard – is it?
A version of this post originally appeared on the Spin Sucks blog.
image: RawheaD Rex
There’s a large movement currently for brands to “tell their story”, to enable them to be more approachable to customers.
Communications pro Gini Dietrich does a great job of showing the strengths of storytelling for brands on her leading Spin Sucks blog.
There are some great examples of brands that win when they insert a more story-like feel to their ad or marketing campaigns. Take Apple and Google, for instance, as highlighted by the two videos below:
http://youtu.be/nhwhnEe7CjE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk
Yet, as good as they are (and both gave me a chill when I originally saw each one), they’re still clearly promotional pieces for technology (even though that technology does a great job of bringing people together).
Because of that, they can never quite live up to the same kind of emotion a real human story evokes.
Two stories came into my radar in the last couple of days, and – for me – show exactly why natural human stories trump brand storytelling.
The first is about two twins in Akron, Ohio, who suffered a rare condition called “monoamniotic birth”, which meant they shared an amniotic sac and placenta while in their mother’s womb.
This is a dangerous condition that could see the twins become entangled in each other’s umbilical cords, starving them of oxygen and leading to major complications.
However, the twins – Jillian and Jenna Thistlethwaite – were born without any major problems last Friday, May 9. And the truly amazing part – they were holding each other’s hands when delivered.
There may be many reasons for this to have happened – but for me, the twins knew the challenges they had to overcome just to survive, and gave each other the strength to do so, and continue to do so outside the warmth of their mother’s body.
As the mother Sarah said:
They’re already best friends. I can’t believe they were holding hands. That’s amazing.
The second story, shared by my friend Justin Kozuch, is about a mother who showed the love for her 18-month old son far outstripped concerns for her own safety when she saved them both from a fire in the apartment where they lived.
Christina Simoes was lying in bed with her son Cameron when she saw flames in the building. The speed of the flames trapped the pair, and the only thing left to do was jump out of the window.
Knowing the fall could be dangerous, Christina wrapped her son tightly to her chest, hugged him and told him she loved him, and then leapt from the building. The fall broke a bone in her back, which may lead to complications and limit Christina’s ability to walk. Cameron escaped with just a bruise on his head.
When asked about her heroism, Christina brushed off the term and simply said:
I didn’t think about it. All I was thinking about was getting him out of there. He mattered way more than I did.
We, as marketers, talk a lot about connecting emotionally with our audience. Roger Dooley, a consultant and author based in Austin, Texas, has a fascinating blog (and books) on the topic over at Neuromarketing. It’s well worth your time and subscription.
It’s something my co-author Sam Fiorella and I also look at in Chapter 2 of the Influence Marketing book, and how the human psyche controls a lot of our decision-making process when it comes to taking an action.
However, the “problem”, for want of a better word, with emotional marketing is it treads a very fine line between being authentic, and being a slickly-produced video or narrative for a new product. Get this part wrong and the connection you’re looking for is broken.
A real human story, on the other hand, doesn’t suffer from this – because we know it’s real, and that’s where the power comes from.
Brand storytelling is a useful tactic when it comes to awareness and acquisition/retention – but it still plays second fiddle to real human stories (just look at the success of the Humans of New York project).
And as long as people can see the difference between a brand and a human vision, that gap will remain. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…
There’s currently a fund-raising initiative for Christina Simoes over at gofundme, to help pay medical bills and replace the stuff she lost in the fire. Its aim is to raise $30,000 and presently it sits at $26,027. If you’d like to donate or support, click here for more details.
image: ashabot
One of the things marketers and brands alike are excited about at the moment is the potential of Big Data. This excitement is understandable – the ability to tap into previously unheard of sources of information about our customers is a very big thing indeed.
Whether the excitement being generated is fully warranted is another thing, though, especially given the fact that Big Data more than lives up to its name when it comes to the reality of using it effectively.
At a conference earlier this year, one of the speakers – from a data analysis company – spoke of the craziness of trying to make sense of the amount of data we have access to. By her reckoning, it would take 1,000 data analysts working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, more than 300 years to sift through everything currently available to us.
And that’s just with today’s data. As more users come online and begin to share their own information and preferences, the numbers continue to escape the folks trying to make sense of it.
Even with that, though, Big Data is, and continues to be, a valuable resource when used in the right context. However, there’s another opportunity just waiting for us – that of finding context in the meaningless data we discard.
For most companies mining data, the goal is to find the nugget of gold that can help them with a variety of business goals – lead generation, customer acquisition, customer retention, crisis prevention, brand reputation, HR head-hunting and more.
All good stuff; all the kinds of the things businesses should be looking for, and all the kinds of questions that Big Data can answer. Yet while this kind of approach has been proven to yield results, the opportunities when we go beyond the obvious is where it gets really exciting.
For instance, a typical data mine might look like this:
Given, that’s a pretty basic overview of what a typical social search/data mine comprises of – but it does show you how the data can be found, filtered and used.
However, this is going after specific pre-defined targets – keywords and groups based on the business goal. So, it’s fair to say that the results achieved are only meeting the immediate targets set.
But what would happen if we stepped outside the immediate target area and started thinking beyond the obvious?
One of the biggest challenges facing monitoring platforms, even with today’s technology, is they’re still (mostly) relying on scripted conversations to glean data from.
Sure, NLP and text analytics can help filter out certain emotions and sentiment around a conversation to give us the kind of data we need to make decisions – but the human mind is a far more complex beast than the flow of conversation traditionally used for monitoring reports, especially when complemented by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
It’s this complexity and the way it adapts on the fly while continuing the same conversation – or even taking an action based on a non-targeted conversation – that offers the greatest opportunity for analytics, monitoring and data companies to build for.
Let’s say Mary is the target audience of a business that sells shoes. They might set up certain searches around how she decides what shoes to buy, and when – historical purchases, brands she follows, age group and similar consumer follows, seasonal choices (back to school, new job, etc.)
Based on these searches, any time Mary takes an action that involves the specified keyword(s) – a Like on Facebook, sharing a video on YouTube, an extended conversation on Google+, participating in a fashion chat on Twitter, etc. – will pop up as an opportunity for that brand to engage with her, either directly (a tweet, a blog comment) or indirectly (banner ad, Sponsored Story).
However, let’s take it a little bit further. Undetected by the search algorithm, Mary occasionally uses a hashtag on some of her updates. The hashtags don’t seem related – they’re innocuous, random, and spread across multiple networks.
While the automated search is ignoring them, though, a behavioural analyst or an AI program decides that there is a pattern to the hashtags, no matter how infrequent and haphazard they seem.
This leads to the discovery that the hashtag refers to Mary’s crowning moment at high school, when she beat the high jump record. The hashtag – say, #WIWYAF – stands for “When I was young and fit”, and is a reminder of Mary’s youth that she’d love to get back, hence her love for certain sports shoes.
Sending a new search spider out connects her social graph together and uncovers multiple conversations and images around her reminiscing.
This little nugget allows the brand to reach out and say, “Hi, Mary, wouldn’t it be great to revisit the summer of school sports ’85? Well guess what – our new Running Shoe X is built from the memories that made that year so great.”
Instant connection. Instant relevance. High on context and memories and direct to Mary.
Another way to look at is is by thinking of alternatives to what we believe we’re being told by public updates.
John is in Vancouver, and posts an update to his networks that he hates the cold. Being Canadian, this could mean that John hates the winters in Vancouver, and wishes he was elsewhere.
A vacation company monitoring opportunities could see this update, and perhaps reach out with a special offer valid for the next 48 hours. The time-sensitive offer, and the likelihood that John is in that company’s target audience, could see a sale and a new customer.
Then there’s the thinking beyond that.
One simple statement has now opened up a myriad of possibilities that, if we dig deep enough, could offer several opportunities to meet John’s need.
Each opportunities; each resolving a need. All that’s needed is the hidden context of an unremarkable update.
Now, given, this assumes a lot of permission marketing and public acceptance of how data is used. Then again, who says data needs to be the sole domain of the marketer?
Think of identifying and activating new donors or activists for a non-profit or cause. Think about helping people in danger – depression, loneliness, abuse – by proactively digging beyond what may be a limited call for help but goes much deeper. Think about law enforcement spotting dangerous new drug avenues before they hit the streets.
The data we monitor today can often be hiding the real data we can use tomorrow. It’s going to take experimentation and respecting, as well as garnering the respect of, the people we’re monitoring to start the process.
However, as a starting point in truly meeting the needs of the people we say we want to help, it’s not a bad goal to be thinking of now.
Is it?
image: kris krug
image:?Francis Rowland
In December 2011, the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) published a damning report on the impact rising food costs and lower income levels were having on healthy eating and malnutrition for schoolkids in the U.S.
The full 38-page study can be found here, but some of the key takeaways were:
These are just some of the statistics from the study. And that’s just one particular study and example, from one country. Globally, there’s a huge problem with childhood hunger and affordable healthy foods. Consider this image:
Is it any real wonder that there’s an issue with food hardship and access to quality food when it’s cheaper to buy junk food?
It’s into this territory that the problem of delinquent school lunches has arisen. In many countries, including the U.S., there are various subsidized food programs to try and ensure that kids get at least one healthy meal per day – their school lunch.
The problem is, these subsidies and programs still don’t always help those who need it the most, due to continued economic hardship, personal finance reasons, and (at times) simply poor management from parents, well-meaning or not. Because of this, accounts fall into delinquency and the kids suffer.
It’s something that Ryan Cox is taking a stand against and trying to change.
Ryan would be the first to tell you he’s “nothing special” (and that’s meant in a respectful way).
He’s not a celebrity; he doesn’t have the ears of millions through political or media channels; and he’s no Superman.
He’s simply an entrepreneur that doesn’t believe kids shouldn’t eat through no financial fault of their own.
To counter the delinquent school lunch accounts in the U.S., Ryan decided to pay off the delinquent accounts at his local school. And then things snowballed…
One school became another, then another, and another. Friends across social networks began donating, helping, supporting, sharing, and more, and the project took a life of its own. The goal now is to expand across the U.S. and out of Ryan’s home state.
I caught up with Ryan to find out more about his project, and how you can help.
[question]Why did you start this now? What was the “tipping point” versus last year or the year before that?[/question]
[answer]To be perfectly honest, there wasn’t a tipping point, because there was never really even a “point”. It all started when I tweeted about buying Starbucks for the woman behind me at Starbucks. I realize that people who can afford Starbucks aren’t exactly the most “needing” of a good deed, but the whole idea is just to put more good into the world.[/answer]
[answer]
A friend, Cheyane Bradley sent me a private message on Facebook saying how that was a cool idea and if I was looking for something new to try, she recently called into her daughter’s school and anonymously paid off 11 delinquent school lunch accounts. Four days later I was getting back from a field trip with my nephew and that FB private message conversation popped back into my head.
I went down to the lunchroom and told her I was there to pay off some delinquent lunch accounts. She said to me, “Okay what are your kids names?” I told her, “I have two nephews that go here but their accounts aren’t delinquent. I just want to pay random accounts.” I paid off $100 worth of delinquent accounts, and then I got a bright idea: “What is the total balance due right now?”
I’m an extremely competitive person. Right or wrong, it’s just the way I’m built. I wanted to take Cheyane’s 11 accounts, and trump her by doing 11 schools. Latiousha (the cafeteria supervisor) gave me a total of $1,261.98. I then hug her and say, “Okay I’ll see you next Friday.” “What’s next Friday?” she asked. “I’m going to walk in a check and pay off the entire balance,” I said. She looked shocked.
Well, I got serious about it the following Tuesday, and WTHR picked up the story and we filmed the next day (Wednesday) the bit for the 11.00pm news that night. By the time we met at the school at 11.00am on Wednesday to film it, I had already passed Lakeside Elementary’s total.
It snowballed from there.
[/answer]
[question]What has been the reaction from the schools?[/question]
[answer]
Shock, mostly. We’re raising for school #5 now (I still have to drop off the check to pay-off school #4), but the first three schools have mostly just been shocked. I don’t think any of the?administrators know how to react, to be honest.
They have all been more than gracious, very thankful, and beyond respectful and compassionate to just how big of a deal this is. But a lot like someone winning the lottery I guess (I’ve never won)…they just seem to be in a pure state of shock.
[/answer]
[question]Why do you think it’s “normal people” stepping up and not the politicians?[/question]
[answer]
My personal belief? Because the majority (whether that’s 51% or 99%) of politicians are ‘bound by a set of unwritten rules they accept’. Those unwritten rules of blurring lines to get things done, and it is my belief that they are cut from the cloth of “me first”.
To a certain extent, I understand why because that is the way politics goes, and no one has the interest in changing it, they just jump in and play by those rules. I think “normal people” are governed by a principal of “do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do” — at least that is how I was raised.
Again, it is my personal belief that if our country (ies) infused more common-sense law into our actual law, it would seem to me that a lot more would get done or fixed. I think normal people step up because they see it for what it’s worth, and not from a position of power (politician, NBA star, music mogul, etc.)
I don’t have the right to tell anyone how to spend their money, but I would like to think that if I was worth $1 billion dollars, I’d put that money to better use making others better too. Again, it isn’t my right to tell anyone what to do with their money — I’m just giving you the perspective of what I’d do in their shoes.
Whether my power is political or financial.?
[/answer]
[question]How do you feel this problem can be addressed?[/question]
[answer]
This question is loaded because there are a bunch of?varying?factors that go into a ‘ticking time bomb’ of an issue. I don’t believe parents should be bailed out, because they can’t make financially smart choices.
The financial?literacy of America (I’ll speak to my country only) is all out of whack. Hell, I still don’t make great financial decisions – I had $271 in my checking account when I gave the $100.
But the point I’m trying to make is that the financial literacy of parents is an ENTIRELY different topic. At its bare roots, this is all about the kids.
So I think we can pool together to help the kids?so that every kid in school to be able to eat the exact same thing, every day, and never have to suffer from the stigmatism of the “brown bag” lunch, or not getting to eat lunch.
Then we need to tackle the big issue, which is financial literacy of parents.
[/answer]
[question]What are your future plans for the project?[/question]
[answer]
To build off of how I feel this problem can be addressed, I want to jump in and help the kids. I’ve made the statement, “Even if for one day, I want all of the kids to eat like kings.”
That simply means the same meal, and avoiding any/all?stigmatism’s for what they cannot have. Because of how well this “idea” took off, I’m starting a non-profit called Feed The Kids. We’re in the process of filing the 501(c)(3) paperwork with the state of Indiana.
A friend, Nick Harrison of Dashal, donated his time to build a website. We want to create a platform that is a mix of Kickstarter and GoFundMe (basically fundraising sites) that allows someone who wants to raise money to pay off or pay forward lunches for a school that is near and dear to their heart.
We want to create a simple interface that can get someone activated to help, someone who isn’t as socially forward or active as myself. I’ve had so many people reach out from other states ask, “How can I get that started here? What can I do to get going? How did you start?”
The only thing I can tell them is that I put it out on Facebook, and made a blog post. In actuality, that is all I did. However, I’m super active socially and I have a lot of friends (reads: connections) on social media, so most people wouldn’t be starting from that level of a “social microphone.”
Because of that, I wanted to create a way for anyone to start and begin to drive awareness.?
[/answer]
[question]So, how can people help you or find out about helping their local state/province?[/question]
[answer]
If you go to my website RyanCox.com, there is a donate button on the right sidebar. Also, while on the site,?any of the four blog posts about #payitforward #feedthekids also has donate buttons.
If you want to mail a check because the Internet scares you, mail a check to Ryan Cox at this address:?1160 E. Washington St. PO Box 29484 Indianapolis, IN 46229. The non-profit paperwork isn’t filed/accepted yet, so we don’t have 501(c)(3) status yet.
[/answer]
I’m truly inspired by what Ryan’s trying to achieve. I’ve known him for a while on social, and he’s always struck me as one of “the good guys” – this project of his shows that in spades.
I’m equally impressed at how level-headed he is about who’s “at fault” here – multiple sources, as opposed to blaming one party or part of society.
Yes, politicians need to step up and force this issue more, and whatever government is ruling needs to look at how we’re placing junk food so cheaply and easily in the hands of those who need more quality nutrition.
But that only comes with actions from all of us, whether that be looking at lobbying our local councilors, looking at where our taxes could be spent, how we can help our local schools (in whatever country we’re in), and how we can work with corporations and food suppliers to alleviate this problem.
Ryan Cox has shown one way we can start – it’s up to us to support and keep the conversation and movement going, however that may take form.
Let’s start here.
image: Lubs Mary.
