The state of California is currently considering a license plate advertising initiative that could help close the state’s massive $19 billion deficit and add yet another distraction for drivers.
State lawmakers are considering a proposal that would display advertisements on rear license plates while cars are stopped. When they are moving, the numbers and letters on the license plate would re-appear.
This would allow the state to create a new revenue stream – but not without some skepticism. Even though California has outlawed using hand held devices while driving, commuters are still faced with heavy traffic during their morning and afternoon commutes, and are likely using blue tooth to conduct business and personal calls. License plate ads would add to the distractions and could result in some displaced anger and/or accidents.
Some commuters may also feel slighted that they will not reap any financial benefits from advertisements occurring on their cars, which could drive increased vehicle advertising.
How would you feel about having one of these license plates on your car?
“The Social Network” won’t be in theaters until October, but the so-called Facebook movie has a trailer (below) that will leave viewers wanting more. In the film Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, while Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker) also has a staring role.
The movie is based on Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” an account of the birth and growth of Facebook. Mezrich was unable to interview Zuckerberg during his research (because he was not given access) and filled in a lot of details by speaking with third parties and Zuckerberg’s current list of enemies (i.e.: Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins – both whom filed lawsuits against Facebook)
For the pro-Zuckerberg Facebook story, RaceTalk blogger Kyle Austin recently reviewed David Kirkpatrick’s new book, “The Facebook Affect.”
Last night Racepoint Group hosted an event about social media and its return on investment (ROI). As social media continues to become a larger focal point in public relations and marketing campaigns, it’s critical to understand how to articulate it’s value to clients.
Last night’s event centered around a panel discussion with three social media experts: Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing for HubSpot.
After Larry Weber’s opening remarks, Qualman shared how he first dipped his toe into the digital space by sending a company-wide email instead of the standard hard copy memo. View his story here:
Volpe was up next and shared with the group the origins of his marketing career and the way tracking and reporting on ROI is evolving. Watch him provide tips here:
The evening was full of tremendous ideas and recommendations. The five big takeaways from the panel were:
1) Social media is not about technology. It’s about human interaction. It’s about sharing information and making connections. People who are intimidated by the technology aspect of engaging in social media should not view the applications as a hurdle. It’s simply the current mechanism to maintain relationships and reach out to new people.
2) When it comes to tracking social media, its important to focus not only on the quantitative (number of followers, number of re-postings) but also the qualitative. We need to take into account engagement and tone. Qualman said, “If social media is so trackable, we should just have robots running things. The human element is necessary here.”
3) Everyone and anyone can be a content creator, a publisher, a media property. As we shift away from traditional print and broadcast media, both we and our clients have the opportunity to get innovative and create and distribute our own content. Additionally, content creation should not be isolated to the PR and marketing staff. Volpe shared that, “50% of HubSpot employees have written posts for the HubSpot blog.”
4) Although much of PR and marketing is based in the written word, we need to start thinking more visually. We need to tell stories through pictures and videos. We need to make our content more authentic and dynamic.
5) On a personal level, Volpe stated, “The new resume is what comes up in Google when I type in your name.” As digital and social media continue to play an increasingly vital role in our PR and marketing efforts, we too have a digital and social persona, and that is now what employers are most interested in.
Thank you to Erik Qualman and Mike Volpe for joining us at Racepoint Group last night and providing such pragmatic, realistic, useful and inspiring guidance on the social media ROI frontier. Be sure to follow @equalman and @mvolpe on Twitter for real time updates on their social media adventures. You can also view all the live commentary during the event with the #smroi hashtag here.
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter Discussing the McChrystal Mess on MSNBC
Somewhat lost in the full blown media storm around Rolling Stone’s“Runaway General” profile of General McChrystal that ended up costing him his job yesterday, and could be a turning point in President Obama’s attempt to fix the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, was how this all played out behind the scenes. How could someone as bright as McChrystal open the door to this controversy with seemingly no regard for what he was saying to an embedded, freelance reporter with a tape recorder in hand? What was his staff thinking? Was he trying to get fired?
Michael Hastings, the freelance reporter for Rolling Stone who compiled the profile (who is still in Afghanistan BTW), discussed some of those details in an interview with his former news weekly yesterday. And, surprisingly, it only took one email to get access to Gen McChrystal:
“I was Baghdad correspondent for NEWSWEEK for two years, and I left the magazine after covering the elections. I wrote a piece for GQ before Obama took office that raised some serious questions about the direction we were taking in Afghanistan. So it was something I wanted to be writing about. I saw General McChrystal and his new strategy as a way to look at our Afghan policy to see if it’s working or if it’s a totally insane enterprise. I met with editors at Rolling Stone, they seemed into the idea, so I e-mailed McChrystal’s people. I didn’t think I was going to get any access at all. It’s one of those strange journalistic twists. They said yes, come on over to Paris to spend a couple days with us.”
Why McChrystal’s aides and most likely Duncan Boothby, a senior media aide (who has since resigned as well), gave access so easily is puzzling. Surely, McChrystal also weighed-in on the final decision, but why wasn’t there more consideration of the potential risks in opening the door to an outsider who had previously questioned the strategy in Afghanistan? Perhaps, McChrystal, who has never shied away from the spotlight, saw an opportunity to illustrate once and for all that the President’s strategy / lack of support wasn’t working in Afghanistan? McChrystal stunned the White House back in September of 2009 by making his 66-page recommendation for more troops public – noting that the United States could loose the war there if they didn’t get more troops. At the time, he went on 60 Minutes to get his point across.
“McChrystal, an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, has long been thought to be uniquely qualified to lead in Afghanistan. But he is not known for being media savvy. Hastings, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years, according to the magazine, is not well-known within the Defense Department. And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”
The stanza or graph, truly gives you an inside look at what goes on behind the lines and the balance a beat reporter must take in building relationships and balancing what they put out in print with the effect it will have on their future access, and how it doesn’t really apply when working with a freelance writer (or columnist for that matter). In fact, it was such an inside-baseball look that Politico pulled the graph later in the day, likely because they were scared of the scorn they’d take from fellow reporters on the White House beat.
Whether Hastings was far riskier than a typical beat reporter or not, the biggest mistake made by McChrystal and his staff was not having a cohesive objective going in. Or at least not appearing to. What was their objective for the profile? Why did they let Hastings tag around for a bar crawl in Paris and spend even more down-time with them as Volcanic ash grounded in them in Paris? If you’re going to agree to any interview, and especially to a profile of this magnitude, you better have a cohesive game plan going in that sets clear ground rules for you, your staff and the reporter. Perhaps a commander of General McChrystal’s ilk couldn’t bring himself to fear something as harmless as an embedded, freelance reporter. Unfortunately, in this case, the reporter was more dangerous than the enemy he was battling on the ground in Afghanistan on a daily basis.
According to Russell Adams’ post for the Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog, Conde Nast is working with Activate to launch the iPad application in the fourth quarter. Adams writes, “Though Gourmet Live is free to download, people who surpass a certain threshold of usage will be prompted to sign up for a membership.” Sounds a bit like a magazine subscription, no? Just the way you can access a magazine’s website and peruse the content for free, but they save the best content for the pages of the magazine; a reward to their loyal subscribers.
Conde Nast already has iPad applications for three of its magazines – GQ, Vanity Fair and Wired – with plans to launch apps for Glamour and The New Yorker as well. Could it be that print magazines will soon be a thing of the past? Will your beach reading now be exclusive to your mobile device?
Conde Nast’s Chief Executive Chuck Townsend isn’t exactly denying it. He told the Wall Street Journal, “The future of Conde Nast is a consumer marketing machine.” I find this statement particularly compelling. Rather than positioning Conde Nast as a publishing house, Townsend is shifting the company’s direction to focus in a more targeted manner at reaching consumers exactly where they are – on their mobile device.
Check out a preview of the Gourmet Live iPad application below:
Although the NBA finals didn’t turn out the way Celtics fans had hoped, they did prove to be great for Twitter. A record number of tweets – 3,085 per second – were posted during game 7 of the NBA finals last night, compared to their normal average of 750 tweets per second, an increase of over 410 percent.
While watching the game last night (and through the entire playoffs) I’ve been turning to Twitter to follow what local Boston sports writers and national NBA writers have been posting. Many have offered great insight, information and comments throughout the game, making the entire experience a lot of fun.
This is a guest post contributed by Micah Azzano from Racepoint Group’s Washington, DC office
As communicators, we continue to hear about the new communications landscape, where two-way communication is necessary for success. Nowhere is this more apparent than in than public affairs industry, where traditional tactics for influencing legislators — lobbying, advertising, writing op-eds and forming physical grassroots communities — can be expensive, limited and ineffective.
This week I was able to attend a panel in DC moderated by Marijean Lauzier, President & CEO of Racepoint Group on this very topic. The panel asked public affairs experts in DC to explore this new landscape and how public affairs teams can use social media to promote issues, reach influencers and engage grassroots and community organizations. Panelists included: Erik Hower of AT&T, Bill Knapp of SKD Knickerbocker and Allison Giles of Cook Medical.
Below are highlights from the panel:
Bill acknowledged that in the past DC and the government has lagged behind the rest of the world in social networking, but that’s changing at a rapid pace. He notes that social media provides a useful avenue for public affairs specialist to push out necessary communications and nullify incorrect or adverse information. The two examples he discussed are his work with Toyota during their recalls and ABC when considering pulling broadcasting in New York. View Bill’s complete response
Marijean followed up by asking Allison about what concerns she has about leveraging social media over time in a heavily regulated environment such as medical supplies. Allison’s response noted their public affairs team is starting out by slowly dipping their toes into the social media world and using it primarily for monitoring and staying updated with key members of the federal government, media and hill staffers. View Allison’s complete response
The conversation moved into the challenges in communications structure moving forward and whether big brands like AT&T view social media as an opportunity or a risk. Erik said that while AT&T has some of the best PR on the traditional side, there’s a lot more they can do in the online social media world. The challenge they’re facing is how to do social media strategically where it will have the most impact, and not just put up a Facebook or Twitter page just to have one.
Themes throughout the morning addressed the way campaigns have transformed and influenced social media uses inside and outside the beltway including the mobilization of the youth community by the Obama campaign. Because of that, it highlighted and illustrated the advantages of using social media not only for messaging but also for fund raising.
The panel also addressed the difference between traditional and social media messaging. The social media messaging is more segmented to smaller niches than traditional media does. Overall, the event takeaways included that while public affairs has a unique opportunity to reach and interact with key influencers and their audiences via social media, just building a community, social experience on a central hub or even simply opening a Facebook or Twitter account is not enough. The experience must be coupled with the ability to reach and engage key audiences on a constant and ongoing basis for the success of future campaigns.
Additionally, as digital and social media continue to expand as integral parts of media planning, it will continue to grow as the central influencer and information source for many. However, this means public affairs professionals must be prepared to further pare down and segment their messaging to address the needs of extremely targeted audiences.
On June 21st advertising executive David Perez will officially turn his life over to Twitter. Why? He wants his boss to send him to a conference.
Perez and his boss agreed that if Perez spends one week on Twitter doing anything (not illegal) that his Twitter followers demand, Perez will get to travel to France and attend the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. While this seems like a strange means to attending a conference, keep in mind that Perez and his boss work in advertising and picked this specific challenge (or whatever you want to call it) for a reason.
Perez will spend an entire week doing whatever his Twitter followers order. These tasks could be simple (drink a can of soda), tedious (jump up and down on one foot) or downright weird (let your imagination wonder).
Life streaming has already become quite popular, with sites like Justin TV taking off in recent years. Even celebrities, like former NBA star Stephon Marbury, have gotten in on the action (Marbury had what seemed like a completemeltdown on camera last summer). However, this may be the first time someone has left control of their actions in the hands of everyone else.
So what could prove to be a very boring, pointless and stupid experiment may also be intriguing enough to drive a lot of viewers and followers next week when David Perez officially turns his life over to Twitter.
For his sake, I hope the conference (and Cannes) is worth it.
This is a guest post contributed by Racepoint Group intern Allie Palmer
Dan Neely
Racepoint Group Chairman Larry Weber recently interviewed Dan Neely, the founder and CEO of Networked Insights – a Wisconsin-based company developed to analyze the data drawn from social media sources.
In this episode of Market Edge, Neely discusses customer and social intelligence, a relevant and pressing topic given the increasing access to current public opinion through social channels.
Neely points out the fact that businesses are currently spending about 80% of their time gathering data and just 20% of their time drawing conclusions from that data. Neely, however believes that the process should be just the opposite for effective business operations, product development and marketing.
Weber and Neely go on to discuss the application of social data analysis, including both the benefits and challenges Facebook presents, the future of Google, and the future of digital couponing. Neely highlights the efforts of businesses such as Research in Motion and Whirlpool, and uses their models (and success) as an introduction to the tools necessary for PR and marketing teams to start acting strategically, not reactively.
Live many other “reviewers,” I recently wrapped-up reading an advanced copy of David Kirkpatrick’s “the facebook Effect” (Simon & Schuster) that is now on newsstands nationwide. The first thought that came to mind in wrapping up was, “that was detailed” followed by “it’s the de-facto Facebook biography from here on out.” It was truly a great read.
I had joked with David awhile ago that he better get better access to Facebook for his book than Steve Levy is getting with Google right now for his book and he undoubtedly delivered. Levy, it seems, would have to live with Larry and Sergey year round to match the access it appears Kirkpatrick got to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The former Fortune scribe, who is also launching his own conference / media company (more on that another day), has always gotten executives to open up and he clearly used that quality to bring some new Facebook stories to light throughout the book.
Others have covered the ins and outs of the book, which really gets at Facebook’s social and cultural significance, but I was most interested in the new rocks he turned over in looking at Facebook’s affect on the media. Here’s a few of the juicy nuggets. Go buy the book for more!
