Products you once thought had nothing to do with the internet are now being connected. Trainers, cars, nappies. Usage information is going online, and this data is an opportunity to savvy advertisers – Google.
Google is experimenting with the future of advertising. It’s created Art, Copy & Code, a series of experiments with brands such as Volkswagen and Adidas. It’s worth watching the videos below to get an insight:
A journalist, by Roberto Rizzato
You’ve got a new product or some news you want to get out there. How do you find the right journalist?
Read the papers. Every day for a week, go to your local coffee shop for one hour and read all the papers they have back-to-back. Note down the names of journalists who wrote something relevant. It doesn’t have to be about a product exactly the same, even if they just wrote about your industry or have a section that your product would fit into, that’s fine.
Write down their names and then research them online. Read through everything they’ve written and see whether they fit. Things to look out for are whether they write positively about things, or just slag everything off. Are they sarcastic and critical, or nice and optimistic? Try and find as many as possible that fit your match.
Now it’s time to get your news in shape. If you have the time, it pays to tailor your news to each individual publication. For example, The Sun uses massive words in bold and blasts the message out there (see an example I worked on). The Guardian, by contrast, tends to discuss things more tentatively with facts. Blogs and online news sites love to talk about rumours (as it means they get the story first) so perhaps you could offer them an exclusive into what’s coming up, or a behind the scenes video. Either way, always write the article in the body of an email, never in an attached word document.
For a major publication, magazine or online news outlet, you must call the journalist. If you send them an email without a telephone call, you can forget it. You must call them in the morning, before 9.45am. What’s going in the papers is decided at about 10.30am, so you have to get in before. If you can call them between 8.30 – 9.30 they are much more receptive.
To get through to them, call the publication’s News Desk. I wrote a blog post here which contains links to the contact information of every single major news desk in the UK. Make sure you call ALL the journalists on the same day. They will NOT publish your story if they’ve seen it somewhere else the day or week before.
Newsdesk: “Hello, Weekday Times newsdesk.”
You: “Hi, please can I speak to Joe Bloggs? I’m calling with some relevant news for them.”
Newsdesk: “Please hold…”
Joe Bloggs: “Hello, Joe Bloggs speaking”
You: “Hi Joe, I read your article yesterday about stereotypical names used in examples and how people with that name get really upset. I happen to be an author of a book about stereotypical names and I’ve got some news. Do you have a second?
Joe Bloggs: “Go on”
You: “Thank you. [Give a very brief 20 second summary of your news], can I send you a news release to look at?”
Joe Bloggs: “OK”
You: “Great. What’s your email address Joe?”
Now you’ve got their email address, you can send them the pre-written story. Make sure you send the email within 5 minutes of talking to them on the phone. Any longer and they’ve already had a few other phone calls and forgotten about you.
Send them the email, and make sure it’s crystal clear, includes all the relevant information including where they can go to learn more, and how to contact you. Don’t ask them any questions, and don’t expect a reply.
At 3pm, give them another call. “Hey Joe, it’s You from this morning. I spoke to you about my book of stereotypical names? Yes. Just wondering if you got the release and had any questions? Great. Do you know whether it’s going to make it into the paper/magazine?”
This follow up call is almost as crucial as the first one. All experience PRs know that a follow up call increases the chances of getting published ten-fold. If you’re not doing it, someone else is. You may even have to do a few follow-ups. I remember that to get my first ever piece of coverage in a regional paper called the Stirling Observer based in Scotland, I chased them four times. In the end I got a full article on page three.
Journalists often don’t know whether or not your story will get published. Even if they write something, that doesn’t mean it will. The editor decides what goes in, and the only way for you to check is to buy the paper or magazine and go through it. Don’t rely on Google Alerts (it misses a lot) or any other kind of online tool for digital versions of printed press.
If you get published, celebrate like crazy. It’s a wonderful achievement and I’m sure you’ll feel the buzz. Tell your friends and followers, link them to the article and if it’s from a credible source put it on your website, As featured on… Also, send the journalist another email thanking them. Within that email, say that you’ll be sure to get in contact with more news, and perhaps give them the inside scoop or exclusive next time. This is just a way to show your appreciation and keep the relationship open for next time.
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A testament to how much the company has changed.
I love how the picture above uses beautiful and simple graphics to amplify the message. Graphic design is an art, but also a tool. Love it.
The hunger to win is immensely powerful.
Two weeks ago, whilst working on a website, I received a message from a friend inviting me to join Lenovo’s Seize The Night competition and help him win. In short, it was a video competition and whoever got the most unique YouTube views won $15,000.
I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to put everything I had learnt to use, and build my own reputation as a hands-on marketer.
For the first time, I felt a real, deep-down hunger to win. As the competition moved on and we went up the rankings, that hunger only grew and grew. The more work we put in, the more hunger I felt: A mixture of anger, euphoria and teeth-clenching grrrrrr!
When we eventually moved into first place, that feeling lifted and was replaced by (admittedly) smug excitement. A lesson in itself, those smiles were slapped off our faces when a competitor got featured on FOX news and stormed ahead.
That made the hunger return and we worked harder than ever. In the last two days, we did ten times as much as we had done in the previous two weeks. We stayed up all day and all night and took big risks. That’s what hunger does and that’s why it’s so powerful. In these last two days, we doubled our video view count and won the competition by a 30% lead.
The funny thing is that I didn’t experience any wave of excitement or happiness when we won. For me, as I wrote to my friend in the early hours of the last day, it was the work that was exhilarating – and now for the first time I can understand why hunger is so addictive. The next question, is how do you utilise that?
There’s only so much you can teach yourself; there’s only so much experimentation you can afford; and there’s only so much work you can do.
Eventually, you need to become part of a team. And so I’m happy to announce that I’m now working with Blue Rubicon (disclaimer), a leading communications agency in the UK. What they are teaching me is far more than I could ever have taught myself.
To put that into perspective, I once wrote about how to contact every news desk in the UK which took me a week to uncover. On my second day of training at Blue Rubicon, I learnt how to contact every journalist in the UK. That’s the power of a team plus bigger resources.
Yes, joining a team means you have to sacrifice certain freedoms. But it also means you get to learn from the best. And if that’s who you want to be, then that’s who you’ve got to learn from.
I’m still not entirely sure what I’m allowed to share with you here (hence the disclaimer links), but it’s still my aim to give you kick-arse marketing advice from experience.
So keep an eye out, because Communication Is The Key has just turned hardcore.
Another benefit of joining teams are the social perks, such as Monday Cake Club
Great positioning and a well communicated message. This advertisement from Incredible India was modified and shown at all the relevant London Underground tube stations. With a similar concept to Coca-Cola’s it’s the real thing, it makes the viewer re-think their understanding of Elephant & Castle, and positions India in it’s place.
(For my global readers, Elephant & Castle is the name of a London Underground station).
What happens when you smile at thirty strangers a day? What happens when you remember the names of everyone you meet? What happens when you anticipate trends and patterns? What happens when you consistently maintain The Slight Edge?
This is what Jeff Olson questions in his The Slight Edge (lent to me by Vernon James, Network Marketer and member of London Startups - thanks!), and in this blog post I want to explore some of the ideas and look at what happens when you turn small behavioural changes into habits and their compounded effect on business and life.
Continue reading “What happens when you consistently maintain the Slight Edge principle?” »
Starbucks is losing its shine to Costa Coffee, and in this blog post, I’m going to explain why. Let’s start with some facts:
If you want to learn how Costa Coffee has grown so big, so quickly and how it’s taking on Starbucks, keep reading.
Continue reading “Costa Coffee vs. Starbucks” »
When you get your business into the press, try to leave a link trail. This means having one article lead onto another, onto another, onto another. It has huge SEO and branding benefits that you ought to know.
For example, I recently wrote about the Kooki app on The Huffington Post,
Launched only two months ago, Kooki has already been featured in The Guardian as a ‘Winning New Business‘ and looks set to be a hit with Londoners as it partners with new shops everyday.
You can see how this is then linked to their feature in The Guardian, which in turn, was linked to their website. A link trail like this is great for search-engine-optimisation and branding.
In terms of Google, you’re helping it find more backlinks to your website, increasing your pagerank and scoring higher on the results pages.
For branding, readers immediately see greater credibility and can learn more should they choose to. It’s alright to have just one article in a newspaper or magazine, but you can’t lean on that forever. Customers become much more aware of your brand if you’re being talked about again and again.
Once you’ve racked up ten or more articles from various well-respected news outlets (university blogs are even better), consider creating a Wikipedia page. Here, you can put a reference to all of these articles, making sure that Google and readers will have access forever more.
But, a word of caution. Wikipedia volunteers are extremely strict when it comes to establishing a new Wikipedia page. It’s meant to be an encyclopedia, remember? So when you’re writing about your business or product, think about it from that point of view. As a general rule of thumb, either the product, business or story of creation must be remarkable (and proven to be so).
Have you won any awards? Been referenced by celebrities or book authors? Been mentioned in the press over ten times?
It took me a long time to figure out what gets accepted as a new Wikipedia page, so if you keep that in mind, you’ll be on the right track.
