By Ben Haber
Today Racepoint Group is launching a new offering – Racepoint Labs – to help companies, communities, causes and countries leverage the power of social media. To mark this launch we sat down with W2 founder Larry Weber, to get his thoughts on what this means for the overall digital marketing landscape.
Racepoint Launches Racepoint Labs from Kyle Austin on Vimeo.
26 comments March 10th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
ExactTarget made fairly big news on Tuesday with their acquisition of CoTweet. The email marketing and one-to-one marketing provider acquired the popular Web-based platform that allows companies to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard. To date, CoTweet has teamed with brands such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, JetBlue, Ford, Pepsi, Sprint and Coca-Cola to effectively manage global Twitter engagement. So what does an email marketer want with a Twitter platform?
What they originally have planned for the service, may shed some light on that. According the their release, CoTweet will operate in San Francisco as a business unit of ExactTarget and will lead the company’s social media product development. CoTweet co-founder and chief executive Jesse Engle will also lead the San Francisco operation and spearhead the creation and expansion of the company’s social media lab.
“What we’re seeing in the market is organizations are moving quickly to try to capture the potential of social, but are discovering that it’s siloed and not integrated effectively with other forms of digital communications,” said Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget co-founder and chief executive officer. “By combining the power of ExactTarget and CoTweet, we can provide businesses a complete solution to tie together all forms of interactive communications and drive deeper customer engagement online.”
An end-to-end marketing tool, which includes social media functionality could be huge, but initially I would have some fears with an email marketing company (synonymous in some consumers’ eyes with spam), imploring similar tactics with social media. Do they really understand the back and forth engagement between consumers and brands that makes Twitter what it is? It doesn’t sound like Jesse Engle of CoTweet has that fear.
“We see a huge opportunity to build on ExactTarget’s incredible business and customer relationships to help companies drive more measurable value from social media,” said Engle. “As part of ExactTarget, we’ll have the global resources to cement our early lead, rapidly expand our platform and develop the next generation of social media communication tools.”
Perhaps then, they do understand the difference in the social media channel. If it allows for CoTweet to build on their services and offer more real-time measurement and CRM functionality then I’m all for it. If they can apply email measurement and CRM to social, and even mobile, ExactTarget could turn the acquisition into a future leadership position in the holistic Web marketing space.
1 comment March 4th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
It’s safe to say that Kevin Smith, the well known director and producer of cult-classics such as Clerks, is not nuts about Southwest. If you’ve been hiding under a rock and missed last weekend’s (turned this week’s) PR fire drill for SouthWest; Smith was asked off of a Southwest plane with the airline citing their two-seat rule for passengers who don’t safely fit in two seats. Smith, who is also a new media media influencer in every essence of the word, took to social media after that, giving his side of the story.
In a slew of Tweets following the incident, Smith detailed his take on the Southwest policy. Ever since then (now nearly a week after the incident), it has been “he said,” “she said,” between Southwest and a man with 1.6 million Twitter followers.
Such is corporate communications life in the world of new influencers. No matter how social media savvy your PR department and company is (Southwest is pretty savvy), Smith and others don’t walk around with Twitter badges on.
But a funny thing happened as this incident transpired. Southwest did a lot of things to make the bad situation better. They noted to their Twitter followers that they’d be contacting Smith by phone (code: offline). They posted an “apology” on their blog and updated it after talking with Smith (who voiced issues with the language in the post). They did a lot of things right. Smith even took hits from media members noting the incident was hurting his brand more than Southwest’s brand.
What can be learned from the incident? This won’t be the last time a high-profile person (with a large social media platform) is “wronged” by a company. Mistakes will happen and the Twitter-storm will follow. However, if you take the time to gather facts, take the conversation off-line, address it personally, don’t treat the person with the platform any different than another customer and mean what you’re saying – it can be handled.
1 comment February 20th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
Chat with a producer, beat writer or editor these days about what they’re interested in and the first word you’ll likely hear is “exclusives.” The “background” conversation usually goes something like this:
Executive or PR Guy: So what are you really following these days; any ideas what you may be looking at in the near future?
Pay-by-exclusives Reporter: What I’m really interested in right now is exclusives.
Executive or PR Guy: Great, yeah, I’ve seen a few of yours. You following the high speed Internet race?
Pay-by-exclusives Reporter: You have exclusive information there?
Executive or PR Guy: No, no inside information here or anything to announce, but what Google is doing will certainly shake-up things.
Pay-by-exclusives Reporter: “Google planning to shake-up telecom industry,” I may run with that on wire. You haven’t shared with others right?
Executive or PR Guy: Umm
Pay-by-exclusives Reporter: Don’t worry, you can trust me, how do you think I get all these exclusives? Going to chat with some other folks now before I file, thanks.
Albeit a bit exaggerated, it gives you a look at the extent of focus on exclusives these days (even if they’re not necessarily real yet) at all the major news services: Dow Jones, Reuters, AP and Bloomberg. Flatly, if they’re not breaking news, it’s not news. And if you’re (reporter) not producing news – you’re fired.
I’ve covered it before, but what is really changing is how tightly intertwined breaking news stories are with compensation and job safety.
And as Gawker covered this morning, it’s coming to a head within the walls of these news organizations. Following in the footsteps of the “breaking news points” system established by Bloomberg, the competitive field has established similar standards.
However, Gawker is reporting that AP staffers are planning to fight back against this “culture of fear.”
Our AP source says a majority of the staff — 90 percent, this person claims — are about to send a jointly-signed letter to Business Editor Hal Ritter accusing him of “installing a culture of fear.”
Will it help? Probably not. It’ not the management of these news organizations that are making these rules, it’s the market. Speed of “important” information, is the only revenue driver news organizations have left on the Web (unless they put up that wall). You can’t put the genie back in the bottle at this point. Unless these news organizations move towards some sort of non-profit model, it will only get more competitive and more fearful for the paid-journalists that remain.
3 comments February 12th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
Via the guys at PRNewser, here’s a video of AP planning editor Jon Resnick and Associated Press Editor Donna Cassata talking about what it takes to pitch a news story to the AP.
1 comment February 12th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
Live-blogging has become an important aspect of launching products and services at media events. The 1440-minute news cycle is influenced on a tweet-by-tweet basis and if you can maximize “live buzz” the chances of your news sticking around for more than a Hollywood-minute are pretty good.
Apple has mastered the craft of creating venues for live-blogging. They set up venues with stadium style seating and fast connections, while always saving the biggest piece of news for last. This creates the need to hang on every word, sentence and slide they present.
Despite Apple’s polish though; live-blogging has struggled to become enjoyable to follow for tech fanboys. In fact, mainstream publications like the New York Times proved again yesterday that they don’t quite get what readers are looking for in a live-blog. Namely, speed and visuals.
That said, tech blogs used yesterday’s event as a coming out party to illustrate that they’ve come a long way since the live-blogging of 2006. Today, live-blogging produces several high-quality photos a minute and real-time updates. There were probably too many live-blogs to count yesterday, but I happened to stumble across a few of the best as Leo Laporte and Ustream managed to loose me with their inconsistent audio. Here’s my thoughts on the best:
#1: gdgt: Ryan Block kept my attention the best. His posts appeared to be faster than anyone else that I saw and picture updates were seamless. Or as Nick Bilton of the Times’ Bits Blog called their posting “like an Olympic diver; not even a splash.” It sounds like Ryan may have had the Rackspace hosting guys working a little overtime to make it happen.
#2: Gizmodo: Jason Chen and Brian Lam took the live-blogging on in tandem, which was unique. True to their nature their sarcasm was a little stronger than engadget’s or gdgt’s and their pictures were just about the same. However, it appeared that Gizmodo may have been better prepared for the lighting than engadget.
#3: engadget: Joshua Topolsky, who pals around with Jimmy Fallon in his spare time, did almost as well, although he did seem to lag behind Ryan on speed of posting information. He was on pace with posting pictures but they appeared to be of slightly less quality and darker than Gizmodo’s (may have been his angle). Topolsky stayed focused on bits of information and direct quotes from Jobs’ himself. Engadget’s servers also appeared to be less prepared as the site struggled with traffic.
4 comments January 28th, 2010
By Molly Galler
One would have to be living deep under an enormous rock not to know that today Apple is launching its new product – the iPad. As the media continues to flood with buzz about the product launch, there are several key takeaways for businesses planning their next product launch:
1) Who are you again? – Part of the reason the Apple iPad is creating such a stir is that it’s attached to a major brand name. If the press and consumers already know about your company, they will be more eager to see what you do next. Building strong brand recognition should be a top priority in on-going business strategy.
2) Go big or go home – Although this may seem obvious, when launching a new product, be sure it is actually new. Offer your target market something completely unique that the industry has not yet seen or experienced.
3) Anything you can do, I can do better – Consumers are already able to read content on their laptops, mobile phones and e-readers, but those screens can be small. Apple is bringing to market a product that will enhance electronic reading with a large, sleek screen and agreements with newspapers and magazines to display their content on this new wider lay out. Why have something that only meets some of your needs, when you could have something that meets all?
4) X Marks the Spot – When blocking off a day on the calendar for a launch, be sure to do your homework. Find out what other stories and events are taking place that same day or week. For example, launching a product today, the same day as the Apple iPad announcement and the President’s State of the Union address would not be a good idea. Choose a date for your launch when the story will have the biggest impact.
5) Plant the seed – Want to make a splash on launch day? Let your top press targets know about the announcement in advance. Although the topic of embargoes is a heated debate amongst PR professionals and reporters, if a reporter is willing to honor an embargo, giving them time to research their story in advance of launch day is extremely beneficial. Highly informed, accurate news coverage is the best kind of coverage.
Disclosure: Racepoint works with Sony’s e-reader division.
3 comments January 27th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
I’ve written before about the need for press releases to evolve. Yes, the formal release that some folks still cling to may be dead – but there is a growing need for social or digital media releases that distribute multi-media information to consumers and media members.
At Racepoint Group we’ve been using PitchEngine for several of our clients who are interested in distributing announcements and news via a more social, cost-effective platform. The service has been good for the most part. The free service that PitchEngine offers, in it’s most basic form, distributes social media releases that live for 30 days. The use of this platform (which gets picked-up by Google News), in addition to a release going live and living on a corporate Website, has been a good mix for most companies.
PitchEngine allows you to add images and links to video to each social media release – in addition to making it easy to share on social networks. However, despite the growth of the service (they note 14,000 brands have created thousands of releases since it launched in October 2008 ), the ability to physically embed video and other multi-media files is still a challenge. The overall feeling you get is that the text is still more important than the visual – which in this day and age seems backwards.
This is where PressLift enters the equation. The new service and platform created by Drop.io - a New York-based, social, file-sharing service – will officially launch during Social Media Week in February. However the Beta or Meta version of the Website is now live at PressLift.com. PressLift aims to be the simplest and best way share multi-media with press and consumers – all of which will be easily embeddable.
While it doesn’t appear that PressLift, will offer a “free service” – its Drop.io creator Steve Greenwood noted recently that it would be competitively priced (although not subscription-based) – the paid service may be appealing to brands and digital-minded agencies who realize the need to address a better delivery mechanism for rich content.
Unlike PitchEngine’s customizable news rooms (paid service – ($35/mo or $400/yr for standard archiving/hosting for unlimited releases), which offers a slightly customized experience (Vanity URL’s often have numbers attached, video is hard to bring in); PressLift aims to create a real customized experience that offers a real sub-domain for brands (company.presslift.com).
In fact, one way to look at PressLift is as an “informational micro-site” rather than a press release or even a press room. One of PressLift’s promises is that creating a PressLift page “is as easy as creating a Facebook page.” Will the service deliver on its promises? Time will tell. We’ve begun to try out the service in its meta form and will have more to report back over the next couple weeks.
3 comments January 26th, 2010
By Ben Haber
Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help A Reporter Out) announced today that the service will become a little more personalized next week. In a blog post, Shankman reported that on Tuesday, HARO will begin offering users new ways to access the site, and trim down the amount of queries they receive daily.
Among the new features HARO will offer:
Shankman says that while each of these updates have come from user feedback, these are all optional, so that subscribers and advertisers only have to make these changes if they want to.
HARO’s turn towards personalization is a smart move, as recent emails have given subscribers as many as 75 queries to search through – which can be overwhelming and time consuming. Furthermore, making all changes optional allows HARO to keep its users happy, unlike every time Facebook implements massive mandatory changes to its layout.
HARO currently has more than 100,000 subscribers.
8 comments January 15th, 2010
By Ben Haber
What industry consistently frustrates people to no end? It’s an easy answer: airlines.
That’s why the movie ‘Up in the Air’ has been an absolute blessing for American Airlines. First, the company did not pay for product placement in the movie. They simply helped with the filming of the movie (filming space in terminals and and planes), in return for some really positive PR, says the New York Times.
Much of the film takes place in airports or on planes, with Mr. Clooney swiping his frequent flier card at American Airlines kiosks, interacting with its flight attendants and ticket agents, and luxuriating in its Admirals Club lounges.
On top of that, the movie actually shows Clooney having a positive experience with the airlines, from check-in to boarding the plane (maybe this movie should be listed in the “fiction” category). Could this have turned out any better for AA?
Since this movie may be the only positive thing that happened to AA in 2009, the airline has taken full advantage by marketing the movie in every way possible. They have shown trailers everywhere, including AA.com, during flights, etc., and even held a press screening during a flight.
For a movie that didn’t cost AA (for product placement and/or sponsorship), this is a sure win.
6 comments December 21st, 2009
