Staying Relevant in a Tough Economy

c21’s Sharon Goldmacher shared the stage with Patrick Fitzmaurice of The Capre Group and Moira Vetter of Modo Modo Agency at a recent American Marketing Association luncheon. Richard Warner of What’s Up Interactive moderated the panel, which addressed how small businesses can effectively market in the tough economy. Click to hear the full hour-long podcast, including valuable tips such as:

· View the current economic climate as an opportunity to invest and experiment – you’ll be surprised how quickly your competition will zoom past you when the economy recovers if you’ve dramatically cut your marketing efforts.
· Treat yourself as a client – test the techniques you’re selling. This gives team members first-hand knowledge and demonstrates that your company walks the walk.
· Consider developing a board of advisors to assist with business development and major operational decisions. An outside perspective can be invaluable.
· People look for capabilities; they hire people – a company’s employees are a differentiator. Communicate not just what you do and how you do it, but who is going to do it.
· If you pursue new business but don’t win the account, ask why. You can’t change your pitch unless you know why it wasn’t effective.
· Focus on a product. What “space” do you own? Everyone can be a generalist – identify your core capabilities and communicate them.
· BusinessWeek reported that 18% of Fortune 500 companies are reducing salaries across the board and 24% are considering it. Be clear and transparent about business revenue and forecasts – communicate openly with employees to alleviate fears and dissipate rumors.
· Develop your business pipeline with a mix of industry and trade involvement, social media, e-mail marketing and other tactics where you can measure audience response.
· Industry associations are ideal for sharing best practices and gaining skill building opportunities. Trade associations can get you in front of customers through networking, white papers, speaking engagements and more. Don’t fall into the trap of finding yourself in a pond with your peers, but not your buyers.

To learn about other upcoming AMA events, click here.

Reinventing the wheel…

Something happened to me in May: I became a Twenty-Something.

Although I’ve only been in these new shoes for two months, already the gap is growing between college life and the real world.

Ads on Facebook remind me that I’m no longer the target audience for beer commercials and spring break rentals in Panama City but instead for diamond rings and Monster.com.

Friends only a year or two older are constantly asking me: “Wait, what’s Twitter?” While those a year or two younger are beginning to refer to me only as @Wbiber.

And, as I watch the way my friends still in college use Twitter and Facebook versus the way companies, such as c21, use the same social media sites, I realize my feelings of being caught between two very different worlds are legitimate.

For the last four years, every professor, counselor and career advisor warned us to deactivate from Facebook prior to beginning the job hunt. We were told that employers were creating Facebook accounts solely to watch us and make sure we behaved in the ideal manner for a potential employee. College students all around me constantly changed their privacy settings, took their last names off their account, or deactivated altogether.

But when I began working at c21 this summer, I quickly realized social media had changed, and we’d been so busy hiding from employers, we failed to notice.

We thought employers were on Facebook to find us (college kids tend to be narcissistic- which I can say now that I’m a Twenty-Something), when in actuality companies are using social media for their own advancement.

Facebook, a social site we thought only our generation had truly mastered, can be an amazing and inexpensive engagement tool for companies. While my peers use Twitter to discuss plans for the evening, my colleagues use it to gain insight into their clients, discuss marketing trends with other industry experts, and facilitate relationships. Although the two are equally as proficient and reliant upon the resource, each one uses it for entirely different reasons.

This versatility is what makes social media so genius. We all need it. We all forget what life was like without it. And we’re constantly asking ourselves why we didn’t think of it first.

Social media has become so engrained into our lives that “I heard it through the grapevine” really means “I saw it on Facebook.” It’s part of the daily routine for computer-users both young and old.

Although I was sad to say goodbye to college, I’m grateful for what I’ve already learned and excited to watch my perspective continue to change as the definition of “public relations” evolves.

c21 Is Looking for a Fall Intern

c21 is looking for a Fall intern to start in late August. Our paid, full-time internship is ideal for marketing, public relations or communications majors. Responsibilities include media list development, writing of press releases and media alerts, as well as e-newsletter stories and collateral copy, media relations and general administrative duties.

Anyone who applies should be a talented writer with strong oral and computer skills, and demonstrate the desire to learn in a team-oriented environment. College juniors, seniors or recent graduates preferred.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter, resume and one writing sample to Ruth Mitcham at rmitcham@c21pr.com.

No Business is too "Niche" for Social Media

Great article from NYTimes.com about the impact of Twitter on super-small businesses. In my opinion, the key takeaway from the article is that no matter the size or subject-matter of your business, smart social media use must be part of your marketing efforts.

Enjoy!

c21 Gives You Moore Contest Winners

Congratulations to our “c21 Gives You Moore” Facebook contest winners: Amy Roush, Lindsey Laband, Monica Thomas Yano, Jessica Kirkwood and Marion Yoder. They will post photos of their visit to the Henry Moore exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, so check c21’s Facebook page regularly for pictures, marketing news and "Moore."

New Opportunities for PR

With the decline of traditional media outlets – newspaper circulation fell 4.8 percent in the past year and an estimated 5,000 reporters lost their jobs – PR practitioners are looking for new ways to get their messages out. Traditional public relations involves sending a press release to the major newspapers, TV and radio stations in a market, making follow-up calls and waiting for the clips to come in. Now, decreasing numbers of newspaper jobs mean that there may no longer be a contact dedicated to your company’s or client’s beat, and you have to cut through even more clutter to generate interest in your company’s news.

While print coverage may be increasingly difficult to come by, opportunities for online coverage are ever-increasing. More than 60 million people are blogging; reporters are contacting people through Facebook and Twitter to obtain information; you can post your own content on blogtalkradio.com and YouTube, in addition to opportunities to live-stream content through Kyte, UStream and other online applications. It’s simply a matter of finding these outlets, providing quality content and using them to your benefit.

c21i – c21’s interactive marketing team – recently helped the Atlanta Botanical Garden enhance its online presence and secured outstanding traditional media coverage for the Moore in America exhibition as well. Through the Garden’s Facebook page and online media portal, we provided robust content, including press releases and media alerts to bloggers and online editors, as well as traditional print editors. The result was more than 19 million online media impressions for the exhibit.

Useless promotional items, or are they?

Emblazoning brand logos on various pens, jump drives, stress balls, etc. has long been a staple of the marketer’s handbook. I’m sure if you look around your desk right now, you’ll see a cup of pens with various logos, a couple of stress balls you picked up at a trade show, maybe a coffee cup with a vendor’s logo and various other tchotchkes that you’ve accumulated from vendors, clients and even your own company. These do serve as brand reminders, but, honestly, how often do you even take a second look at one of these items on your desk?

Smart marketers are now taking promo products to the next level by incorporating social media elements. Two examples on my desk right now are a stress ball in the shape of the duck and an inflatable dinosaur. I’m sure you guessed that the duck is from Aflac, after all, the Aflac duck is enshrined on the Advertising Walk of Fame, has its own Facebook page with more than 110,000 fans and has an online store for merchandise featuring the duck. But, even if you don’t have a highly recognizable brand, you can use creativity to develop something memorable.

The dinosaurs on my desk came from Bronto Software, the engine behind Direct Dialogue, c21’s award-winning e-mail marketing service. Bronto incorporates interactive media, including Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, with its promo products. The company invites anyone with one of its inflatable brontos to snap a pic and send it to them so they can add it to the “Traveling Bronto” feature on their Flickr page, and then link it to Facebook and Twitter. And yes, this tactic even works on other marketers – click here to see the c21 brontos on the Flickr page.

Successful marketing tactics require a combination of audience targeting and creativity to break through the clutter. Since everyone loves tchotchkes (whether they admit it or not), they are a great way to give current and potential clients a way to remember your brand. Taking the next step and using them as a conduit to encourage people to interact with your brand can be very effective in building brand evangelists.

If you think your company has an interesting tchotchke or you just want to share one of your personal favorites, just e-mail me and I’ll post it here and on our Facebook page.

Still want Moore?

There’s still time to enter our “Give You Moore” contest! Post a comment on our Facebook wall by June 30 telling us why you want to see the Moore in America exhibit, what you’re planning for your summer vacation, or what you love about c21, and you’ll be entered for a chance to win one of five pairs of tickets to use between now and October to see the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s blockbuster Moore in America exhibit. Good luck!

Facebook Announces Vanity URLs

Ready, set, go! On Saturday, June 13, Facebook pages with more than 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009, will be able to create a vanity URL. What's this mean? You can protect your brand and better identify your business page, making it easier for fans to find you. Instead of a long string of letters and numbers, your URL can reflect your company (www.facebook.com/name). Check out this Ad Age article for details, or read Facebook's note.



This brings up the point that if you have a well known brand or your company has a common name, it's a good idea to reserve a spot now on social networking channels like Twitter and YouTube, even if you don't currently have a presence. You want to keep your options open for future outreach - and claim your brand name before others do.

Facebook Promotion Creates Buzz for Student Housing Developer

c21 just completed a really fun project – a Facebook contest for a national student housing developer, University House (UH). Many of the communities have established their own Facebook pages and profiles, but UH needed a page that provided information to both current residents and non-residents about the company as a whole without duplicating the efforts of the individual properties. c21i, our dedicated interactive practice area, had just the solution.

We developed the UH Facebook page and launched it in conjunction with a contest to generate fans. Playing off the popular talent contests that air each season on TV, including America’s Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance, we created the UH Best in Show contest. College students were encouraged to become fans of the new UH page and upload videos of their best talent, or vote for their favorite by posting to the wall. The grand prize winner received a $500 VISA gift card, and a randomly selected winner from those who voted received a $250 VISA gift card.

To generate activity and spread the word about the contest, we worked with the UH community managers, called “mavericks.” They were eligible to enter the contest, and used their already established social networks to encourage both residents and non-residents to do the same. Those who submitted videos spread the word virally to generate votes. The result? The contest, which only lasted a little more than two weeks, resulted in growing the fans from 0 to over 800, with almost 600 votes for the various video entries. There were some pretty hilarious stunts – check them out on the page – but kids, don’t try some of these at home.

c21 Gives You Moore!

Want to see the biggest art exhibit in Atlanta? Enter our “Give You Moore” Facebook contest for the chance to win one of five pairs of tickets to the Moore in America exhibit, which is on display now through October at Atlanta Botanical Garden. Just post a comment on our Facebook Wall telling us why you want to see the Moore in America exhibit, what you’re planning for your summer vacation, or what you love about c21. Check out our Facebook page for more details.

Fewer Outlets = Better Pitches?

By now, it’s common knowledge traditional media outlets are suffering. Advertising sales are way down, which means print publications are closing their doors at an alarming rate, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the Ann Arbor News. This ever-shifting media landscape means it’s even more important for PR pros to stay on top of who’s still out there and what they’re looking to cover. In light of this, here are some tips on pitching both local and national media - everyone can use a refresher every now and then.

Know the publication or online outlet. Understand its format, target audience, frequency and reporting style, and what beat a reporter covers. Read articles previously written by the reporter you are contacting.

Target the pitch specifically for that media outlet. For example, we’re pitching a rheumatoid arthritis (RA) communication kit to national media on behalf of the Arthritis Foundation. For publications like Good Housekeeping and Cosmo, we’ll focus our pitches on how RA affects women and offer interviews with women who have RA. For the Associated Press and the evening TV news programs, we’ll focus on breaking RA news (like new study results) and offer the toolkit as a free resource for those with the disease.

Be cognizant of breaking news and whether your pitch is relevant at that moment in time.  For example, don’t pitch to local media in a city just hit by tornadoes unless your story is about helping with the clean-up, housing the victims or donating supplies. The same goes for national daily news.

Keep these tips in mind, and check out HARO (Help a Reporter Out) - beneficial for journalists and PR pros alike. You’ll receive three e-mails a day with queries from reporters who are looking for something specific. For example – one of my clients, Kevin Rej of Raise Studio, has an amazing vintage lunchbox collection. A few weeks ago, a writer for a magazine in San Francisco was looking to speak with a lunchbox collector. I pitched Kevin, they did the interview, and the article is scheduled for the magazine’s July issue. It’s like having a constantly updated editorial calendar delivered to your inbox! It’s important to note that Peter Shankman, the HARO facilitator, is serious about on-target pitches. He’s been known to blacklist PR people if reporters/journalists report off topic submissions.

The bottom line - the competition for editorial coverage has gotten tighter, so we have to work smarter by taking time to do our research before picking up the phone or sending an e-mail. The pitch has to be succinct and relevant in order for the news to turn into a story. Use news sites and social media to stay on top of the changing media landscape and constantly update your list with media on the way out, and new outlets appearing on the scene.

Vote for HandsOn Network

Nonprofits - those organizations whose sole focus is to improve people's lives - are struggling in this economy. However, innovative partnerships can help nonprofits to raise the money they need to continue their good work. Target, which gives five percent of its income to communities — over $3 million every week, is putting the power of the people to work. From May 10 - 25, you can go online to Facebook and vote for the charity you would like to see receive $3 million (or a portion of that).

As a friend and longtime supporter of HandsOn Network, all of us at communications 21 hope you will vote for them. The money raised through your vote will go to HandsOn's work in schools across the country. You can vote once a day until May 25 - so click here.

Moore Scoop on Going Green!

Yesterday, we helped the Atlanta Botanical Garden reach a major milestone—they introduced media to Moore in America and the $55 million Green Expansion, highlighted by the Garden’s new green-built Hardin Visitor Center. So what’s all the fuss about?

Well, when you see it for yourself, you’ll understand moore (yes-pun intended) than the words can ever portray on a blog, but suffice it to say that the Garden’s Visitor Center is a hallmark of modern technology, ecologic design and beauty. Gardeners, hold your shovels and get ready for my description. From rooftops that showcase growing expanses of sedum juxtaposed against the backdrop of Atlanta’s downtown skyline, the view just couldn’t get any better than this. Frothy lamb’s ear dance against the lawn perpendicular to osmanthus trees that look 50 years old, but have recently been planted. Elated for the Garden over its eco-friendly efforts, I resolved to make some changes in my own “green plan.” What could c21 or I do differently to help sustain the planet?

Then, I read this inspiring article by Paul Hoffman that offers 10 tips for a greener business that provide immediate results for this new resolve. These are ideas we all can implement today. Check back with us in the future and see how we have put these tips into action to make our “gardens” greener.

Highlighting Atlanta's Green Efforts

Happy Earth Day!

Our team recently had the pleasure of working with Atlanta Recycles and the Green Foodservice Alliance to promote the first Zero Waste Zone in southeast. Zero Waste Zones are designed to reduce the environmental impact of waste in homes, workplaces and in the community. Phase One of the Zero Waste Zone focuses on the convention and dining district downtown, where more than 12 Downtown Atlanta restaurants, hotels and even the Georgia World Congress Center have pledged to recycle, reuse spent grease for the local production of biofuel and compost or donate food residuals to drastically decrease the amount of waste going to landfills. We're proud to be a part of such an inspiring effort.

Want to know more? Check out CNN's recent coverage of the story.

Henry is Coming!

Henry is finally coming – that’s right, Henry Moore and his famous bronze sculptures are coming to the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s fifth major art exhibition (I’m talkin’ MAJOR as in GIGANTIC) since 2004. These bronze sculptures will begin to take their place in the Garden’s 15 magnificently manicured acres in the heart of our city starting today. c21 is partnering with the Garden to tell Moore’s story—helping provide more news, more scoop, more events, more hoopla through a donation of our time for marketing PR support.

Here’s the deal—these 20 sculptures weigh anywhere from 300 lbs. to 12 tons (that’s about the size of Ralph, Atlanta’s whale shark at the Aquarium). Henry created each piece by hand from natural, green products like bronze and granite, in the serenity of the English landscape outside Hampstead. These massive structures, which have previously been on exhibit at only London's Kew Gardens and The New York Botanical Garden, are arriving on trucks where gargantuan cranes will lift them up into the sky and place them on custom stone slabs architecturally designed to manage their weight and display their beauty against the backdrop of one of America’s top 10 gardens.

While Henry is gone, his work lives on. When the Garden opens on May 5, I’ll be there to welcome Henry for his last dance in the United States. It's America's last chance to see Henry's 20 sculptures together in one exhibition before his gifts return to London and are dispersed to various owners forever. You’ve got 158 days to climb into his “Hill Arches” arms and photograph your child against Henry’s 10-foot bronze “Oval with Two Points.” While at the Garden, tour the new LEED-certified Hardin Visitor Center, learn about their award-winning conservation efforts and more (or Moore as Henry would prefer…).

Let's explore more, see more, do more. See you in the Garden!

Dos and Don'ts for Spokespeople

A great post from the team at Bad Pitch Blog about the dos and don'ts of spokespeople. My favorite? Number 8: Don’t make one group look good at the expense of another. What a great tip to keep in mind whenever you're speaking! All of the tips in this post can be used whether you're speaking to reporters or presenting to a group, making it all the more valuable.

Three Questions to Ask Before Launching a Social Marketing Campaign

I have a confession to make. I’m a slacker blogger. That’s right, c21’s VP of Interactive Services has a three-year-old personal blog about a topic I’m quite passionate about, yet I can go for months at a time without uploading a single post. This fact was formerly my shameful secret, but when I work with clients who want to launch innovate social media marketing initiatives that impact the bottom line, it’s my very public example of the importance of proper planning before diving into the deep end of social media marketing. Yes, anybody can start a blog or Twitter feed, but without a strategic approach, a schedule and measurable goals, the effort and expense are unlikely to achieve the desired results.

Below are what I consider the top three key questions to ask on the front-end of any social media marketing effort:
1. What’s the primary objective?
Sometimes our clients don’t know what their objective is for social media marketing –and that’s ok. We figure that as the marketing experts, it’s our job to help them uncover those objectives and determine the best course of action to meet and exceed them. Your needs will impact the mix of social media tools best suited for you – whether you need to drive sales, build brand awareness or change public perceptions.

2. How will effectiveness be measured?
This can’t be over-stated: measurement in social media is KEY. Of course, what you measure may run the gamut from engagement, to site traffic to direct sales, but the point is the marketing team must establish the key metrics on the front-end. Check out Jeremiah Owyang’s article about measuring ROI.

3. What are your available staff and budget resources?
Ok, here’s the deal: Social media is not 100% free. Sure, there are tons of awesome free tools available that allow you to participate and monitor the social media space, but there are time costs associated with that participation and monitoring. You must have an estimate of the people and hours can you devote. Comcast and Zappos are prime examples of the human capital required for true social media interaction.

And the list goes on. Actually, there are at least 10 more questions we work through with our clients looking for social media marketing solutions. Click here if you’d like a copy of the complete list. And leave a comment here to let us know what you think are the top three questions.

Me, Myself and I. Common Grammatical Mistake Plagues President Obama

those of us who write for a living know firsthand the constant questioning and checking required to achieve proper grammar, punctuation and sentence construction. Thank goodness for talented editors. The New York Times has a great piece today about President Obama's grammatical flubs. He's not the first to use these words incorrectly - and he certainly won't be the last, but hopefully the little tip provided at the end of the article will help him and maybe me. Or is it I?

When I think of the Super Bowl, even though I'm a marketer, my mind drifts more to food, drink, fun with friends and ranking the commercials. I'm into the game if it's a grid iron battle - and would be a fanatic if my Dolphins were there, but sadly we haven't been to the show in sometime.

Regardless, what I don't think about is the Super Bowl's logo. Brands are likely one of the most argued over in terms of importance and impact on consumers. For example, my colleagues and I have been wondering why time honored brands like Pepsi and Gatorade have changed their brand marks to now look like a beachball and the single letter "G". I'm assuming some marketer convinced them it was time to 'modernize.' In truth, I am less motivated to buy Gatorade because now it seems trendy instead of effective.

But when I read the following from Reveries magazine's Cool News of the Day, it made me realize the logo for the Super Bowl just hasn't been that much to look at - and for a day that is one of the most watched events every year, it's kind of surprising.

From Reveries... "The 43 Super Bowl logos 'draw a line through the league's growth, the trends of graphic design, even the vagaries of one nation's popular culture,' reports John Branch in the New York Times (1/28/09). John observes: "Flourishes arrive in the disco era, leading to a decade-long phase of red-white and blue badges. They look more like corporate logos, tinged with cold-war-era patriotism ... As designers moved to computers, their logos became more complicated, their palettes more varied" (gallery). Design critic Stephen Heller has a more brutal assessment: "I'll go out on a limb and say that all the logos starting with XVII are based on beer labels." However, he thinks this year's logo (designed by Landor Associates) marks a departure, suggesting it "looks like the Bank of America logo." The current logo is also the first to use the color green, in a nod to "the surf and turf of Tampa," where the Big Game will be held on Sunday. That's part of the design spec, as each logo, in addition to including those Roman Numerals, is meant to convey something of its host city or stadium.That's a tradition that started with Super Bowl XXI, with a rose representing the Rose Bowl. Only once was the logo changed, and that was post 9/11, when it was switched from a "festive" New Orleans motif to a more "patriotic" theme (images). Among other uses, each logo "is reproduced on $100 million worth of licensed merchandise."

If however you'd like to see new options, or create one of your own, the New York Times is inviting its readers to submit their own designs via email (link) with the best ones published on its blog, The Fifth Down.

If the game turns out to be a blow out - maybe creating a new logo will make you feel better. If not, have another beer.