Author Archive
By Caroline Kawashima
Nancy Blair, senior assignment editor, Technology for USA Today stopped by the Racepoint San Francisco office this morning for an informal chat on what’s going on with the Technology section of the nation’s largest daily newspaper and 8th most popular online news site.
Like most media organizations today, reporters at USA Today are experiencing increased demands for their time in juggling multiple distribution channels. Fortunately for USA Today, management jumped in early in the game by going online in 1995 and developing a strong community approach – what USA Today calls “network journalism” – to enable an interactive and immersive visitor experience.
As a result of this, Blair feels that USA Today has smoothly adapted to the new world of journalism, herself working very collaboratively and closely with online Tech Editor Michelle Kessler in ensuring a comprehensive view on technology in both the print and online news edition. While the print edition continues to be strong with more than 3.6 million daily readers, the online site enables increased experimentation and “fun” with expanded coverage into areas like video gaming with the Game Hunters blog, the popular Science Fair blog and Jefferson Graham’s Talking Tech video series.
Blair noted that USA Today encourages all its reporters to be active in social media, including Twitter. Unlike other media organizations that have been taking a more restrictive approach to reporters in this regard, Blair states that USA Today has entrusted its reporters to use “common sense” in understanding their role and representation, and through social media channels such as Twitter, readers can get to know reporter “personalities”.
You can follow Blair on Twitter @NanSanFran.
August 27th, 2009
By Caroline Kawashima
More than 700 brand marketers, advertisers and communications professionals are meeting in Monterey, CA this week for the fifth annual Sustainable Brands conference. Today I sat in a few of the morning presentations from some of the larger brand leaders such as Clorox and PepsiCo to hear more about some of their successful sustainable marketing campaigns.
While Clorox touted the success of their new GreenWorks line of natural cleaning products and their number one ranking in a recent consumer perception study about sustainable brands, PepsiCo’s Director of Marketing for Sunchip Thomas Oh promoted the world’s first fully compostable chip bag (to be accurate, currently only the outer most layer of the chip bag is bio-degradable but the company is working to make the entire bag 100 percent compostable by 2010).
What I found interesting was that both companies focused a lot of their presentation on the traditional marketing campaign elements – TV spots, print ads and product tours – and while Sunchip’s Oh briefly mentioned how a tweet by celebrity Demi Moore stimulated hundreds of tweets in the Twitterverse and more than 115 million impressions in only three days, both presentations would have been far more timely and interesting if they had discussed the role and power of social media in their respective campaigns. While seeing touchy-feely TV spots of women and families munching on “solar-powered chips” may be entertaining, wouldn’t it be much more compelling if the audience heard about the actual consumer conversations that are now taking place around their products, and what key learnings are being applied to the improved ability to emotionally connect consumers to products via social media?
The two presentations that actually featured some compelling examples that highlight the power of social media came from Blair Shane, chief marketing officer of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and Steve Newcomb, CEO of Virgance.
Tasked with “reinventing” a 150 year old institution into a thriving, rich and relevant consumer experience for visitors of all ages, Shane is successfully using social media tools as the single channel to communicate to and attract more than 4,000 young adults to the Academy for Night Life, an evening of music, cocktails and science each Thursday night.
Newcomb presented a distinct vision for what he calls the opportunity of a lifetime to make sustainability our generation’s greatest achievement. By creating Virgance, a company that effectively combines capitalism and activism, Newcomb debuted his latest venture – Lend Me Some Sugar, an American Idol-like “TV” program for sustainability that will be produced on Facebook. With Newcomb mentioning data that Facebook will have roughly the same demographics and size as the mainstream TV audience in as little as two years (he estimated between 250-300M users), Newcomb is betting on Facebook as the new channel to motivate consumers and reward advertisers.
June 2nd, 2009
By Caroline Kawashima
Larry Weber, Alexis Madrigal, Michael Kanellos
Contributed by Joy Engel
This morning, WIRED magazine’s Alexis Madrigal and Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media joined W2 Chairman Larry Weber in a panel discussion co-hosted by Racepoint San Francisco and Digital Influence Group on “Powering Clean Tech with Social Media.” Despite the early hour, the panelists jumped right in, discussing hot topics including green washing, alternative fuels and funding.
Alexis, who is writing a book on the history of the greentech movement in the U.S., called for a new sense of “Manifest Destiny” in relation to clean tech. He reasoned that since we have to transform systems on earth, we should acknowledge up front that its going to be hard, messy and part trial-and-error. Both Michael and Alexis agreed that the innovation needed to transform the space has to come from innovators from within and outside the clean tech industry. They cited the Gates Foundation’s work in health as a prime example of this type of collaborative innovation — working together the industry can achieve the changes needed to make real strides in clean tech.
As for social media, both panelists agreed that blogs, twitter and social networks can serve as effective conduits for organizations to get their messages to businesses, and that few organizations are successfully using social media to reach consumers. All is not lost on the social media front, though. This just means organizations have a lot of room to grow in their communications with consumers.
All three participants cautioned companies to participate in social media with a thoughtful approach and, above all, a clearly defined strategy. They noted that one of the biggest social media mistakes companies make is to engage without first learning the community’s standards. Overall, they expressed a sense of excitement that people are using social media more and more to communicate about clean tech and other issues of shared interest. It is, after all, a much more normal and personal way to communicate than traditional types of media.
May 20th, 2009
By Caroline Kawashima
Damon Darlin recently visited the Racepoint Group to share some thoughts about what it’s like to be technology editor of one of the most influential newspapers in the country and now the fifth most-popular online news destination.
While the New York Times like most major news organizations grapple with the ever-changing media environment, its early investment in online news is helping to keep its leadership position and enables the technology reporting team to “tell better stories.” According to Darlin, surprisingly many people still have a narrow and outdated view, thinking of the New York Times in only one dimension as a daily newspaper – a missed opportunity for companies that can now be featured in one of the publication’s many blogs, videos, online features and podcasts.
Given the influence and high credibility of the New York Times, reporters also have the added burden of ensuring their coverage does not appear to endorse or validate the companies they cover. This makes it sometimes challenging for start-ups and smaller companies, but Darlin confirms that they are still interested in great storytelling and that smaller companies should not be discouraged, especially if they have an offering that is truly game-changing and innovative.
Darlin also offered some key words of advice for technology companies targeting media coverage in the New York Times:
- Relationships continue to be important, now more than ever. With reporters receiving 200+ emails a day from eager PR reps and companies looking to attract coverage, and more distractions with social networking tools, it’s critical to have trusted sources with a reliable track record.
- Company spokespeople need to share a vision and tell a compelling story. Technology spokespeople, in particular, have a habit of just focusing on the product or marketing plan and would be better-served by telling the reporter what’s going to change as a result of their offering.
- Background briefings, while sometimes more difficult due to time constraints, are still helpful – especially if you have a market expert who is “plugged-in” to an industry.
- Think beyond the story. With multimedia options now available via the online news site, there are more angles and visual opportunities to enrich a perspective.
While Darlin leaves the frequent tweets to the reporting staff, you can follow him @ddarlin.
April 27th, 2009
By Caroline Kawashima
Wired.com Senior Editor and Blogger Dylan Tweney stopped by the Racepoint San Francisco office today to engage in some lively conversation around what’s happening at WIRED, how Wired.com is forging new approaches to online journalism and how journalists and PR people can more effectively work together.
Some key highlights from the conversation:
• Blogs and microblogging tools like twitter have made journalism more “personal” and yet impersonal at the same time. While tools like twitter have allowed journalists to more directly connect with readers, with more followers it becomes increasingly difficult to really have any meaningful 1:1 interaction with everyone.
• The ability for readers to post blog comments is currently an under-leveraged feature. While journalists gain the immediacy of feedback on stories and blog posts, there could be better basic moderation to enable more intelligent conversations that get past the tone and actual add value to a story. People who comment (on blogs) can be harsh and highly critical, but if journalists can get past the tone and forge deeper conversations and more meaningful interaction, there’s a lot of great information that can be harnessed that will result in a better story.
• The journalist’s role is not to provide the definitive answer, but to be a conversation starter. By pointing out interesting discussions, the journalist can make something greater, beyond his/her own point of view.
• Journalists and PR people need to better collaborate because journalists no longer have exclusive access to the news. With the proliferation of bloggers, pundits and other sources online good journalists understand that they need reliable PR people with useful information that will help them keep abreast of latest developments.
• twitter is largely suited for bragging in its current state and the future of twitter is in becoming an advertising platform. Tweney reminds us that the number one rule in twitter is to “be useful.”
• With the demise of daily newspapers, there will be an information vacuum for bloggers to access information. Companies and their PR leads have an opportunity to fill this void by creating useful blogs that can become reliable sources of information.
Tweney is certainly one of the most open and innovative journalists we’ve talked to, and perhaps one of the most evolved as well. When asked which print media are likely to survive, he mentioned Vogue as a great example of continuing to feature rich, engaging ads true to their brand. He’s also an avid follower of Jeffrey Steingarten.
March 13th, 2009
By Caroline Kawashima
One of the recurring themes being discussed at the Web 2.0 Summit this week is the opportunities to extend social networking into the enterprise. Yesterday, I blogged about SocialText, a developer of enterprise wikis and social networking applications, and this morning, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini shared two new offerings in development that will further efforts to bring Web 2.0 tools into the business market. The first is what Otellini called “professional networking,” a social networking-based application that will enable employees of a corporation to quickly identify and search for critical information that will speed that employee’s productivity and engagement. Through a custom dashboard, an employee will be able to visually identify key contacts within her organization, secure information about learning and development courses that are specific to her job level, access project files and collaboration groups that she will be involved in and use email, IM and video all integrated into one easy to use interface.
The second offering is what Otellini calls the “personal Internet” which aims to use the power of computing to bring relevant information to a user when and where its needed via a mobile Internet device. A demo was shown to the audience higlighting the technology, which Intel envisions as being critical in aiding corporations with a growing, global workforce. By using a mobile device, a person traveling abroad in China for example, would be able to simply point her device viewer at a sign and automatically see the sign translated into English. By shifting the device’s viewer to a restaurant sign, she can connect to information about the restaurant, menu options, the restaurant’s Web page or video blog with instant translation. Another handy feature is a speech recognition recording capability that will translate a uses’s voice into that country’s local language. All pretty amazing technology that Otellini says will be here quicker than we think – a mere 3-4 years. In fact, Otellini stated that advanced chip techology that will bring the power of the desktop to mobile handsets will be available by 2011.
November 6th, 2008
By Caroline Kawashima
If we learned anything from the historic Barack Obama presidential win last night, it was that the president elect’s campaign team changed politics forever through the effective use of mobilizing the youth vote, recruiting a massive volunteer army and securing unprecedented campaign funds through the use of social networking. Experts and pundits will be analyzing the approach all week, but it begs the question that’s probably on the mind of any CMO today – how do I inject the power of social networking into my organization and more importantly, how does it work within the context of an established enterprise organization?
According to Ross Mayfield of SocialText, one of this morning’s workshop presenters at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, the answer lies in understanding the power of “connected collaboration” as a strategic tool to help companies not only survive, but win in the current economic downturn. Mayfield founded his company on the belief that in order for companies to remain competitive and agile in response to the rigors of change, companies must also increase productivity to stimulate innovation and emerge as leaders.
But it’s not as simple as applying consumer trends such as Facebook and MySpace to the enterprise environment. While Mayfield says that these social networks are great for getting people used to the concept of being able to identify who knows who and who a user knows, in order for its application to be effective in an enterprise organization, a social network must encourage adoption and collaboration that helps to also identify what an employee knows, which employee knows what and which employee knows who knows what in order to facilitate shared knowledge and ultimately accelerate workplace productivity.
Connected collaboration, exemplified through Mayfield’s Power Law of Participation theory, works to 1) accelerate project and process cycles 2) saves time looking for information and people 3) delivers content that amplifies point — the culmination of which helps companies do more with less and innovate.
And, if you think social networking is only for Millenials, Mayfield argues that people by nature want to share information. While it’s easy to downplay the value of social networks by older workers, setting up the right kind of social network for the enterprise that is designed to address cross-generational usage needs (eg. embedded email based communication features for older works vs. widgets for younger workers), an increasingly mobile workforce that wants and needs to stay connected to the mothership and providing training is important.
Whether we like it or not, companies are moving from file-forced communications to people-centric collaboration or as Mayfield puts it, the “pdf is where knowledge goes to die.”
November 5th, 2008
