While I have worked in the Asset Backed Commercial Paper niche for over a year through two clients, the last few months in the Canadian industry have become very interesting from a PR point of view. I’m going to be writing more about this, and pointing you to critical points that make for good case-studies in litigation communication and crisis management.
The first one to note is my guest blog entry on the Clarity Financial Strategy website . A Canadian investment firm that prides themselves on being independent has sued a bank saying that they knew the ABCP market in Canada was going to crash, and yet they did nothing to warn the firms that bought the product from them. The suit is a response to the investment firm’s clients suing the firm for giving bad advice.
So, a company that calls themselves independent thinkers is suing a bank because they took bad advice (as opposed to looking on their own for products to recommend) and they didn’t do proper independent due diligence on the advice they received before giving that bad advice to their clients.
Please look at the Clairty blog entry. It’s an interesting story.
November 26 marks an important day in Bush’s legacy: it will forever be known as the day he tried again to bring something other than shame to his legacy.
The idea behind it is simple. Iraq, the war on terror, the war on drugs (yes, it’s still being fought) and the war against alien residency, are all being lost… so, why not go for broke and try to solve the middle east issues instead?
Bush hasn’t really been interested in the Middle East much over the past 7 years, and to me, it’s a bit late in the game to start now. His peace talks would be great PR, if only Bush were able to pronounce the names of his guests properly.
“I pledge to devote my effort during my time as president to do all I can to help you achieve this ambitious goal,” Mr Bush told Mr Abbas and Mr Olmert.
He has less than a year to make this happen. It’s his last year to leave a mark.
And while the publicity around the event asks the question if this could be the turning point for issues in the middle east, I think that since Abbas speaks for less than half of the people in the area, and there is riots in the streets very often, Abbas’s putting a plan together and the people he represents following the accord are two very different issues.
I wrote a post about how positive the PR was around the project. Its here. Read it before reading the article link above.
Since this is a blog about perspectives and perception. I have to say this is probably some of the worst PR Microsoft or AMD can possibly imagine.
It’s a poorly managed reaction to a campaign the public loved, and I am SURE that there are a number of ways the companies could have positioned the move to look a bit better than this. I know what I would have done, but I’ll save that for another blog post when the dust settles.
One of the things that facinates me about the Apple products is how well they are covered on the internet, and in a “grass roots” way. People always seem to be coming up with funny facts and ideas about them. Now, people are doing hacks and tricks with all kinds of toys, but its rare that they are feverishly forwarded around the internet.
Just think… this kind of a project could be done with your product… or candidate… or whatever. Random applications or points that don’t come directly from the people selling the message can be very important.
Apple would never tell you that you can charge an iPod with an onion, in the same way that Diet Coke would never tell you that you can make a rocket out of a 2-Liter bottle of its product… but thanks to some clever forwards and the internet, rumors like these can be put out by companies and fans as a very good way to boost sales without the message eroding the brand and upsetting its more mainstream consumers.
This is the campaign equivalent of currency inflation. Much like currency inflation, so too does the value of an ad, show, or other message to the public go from being valuable to expected the more it is used. When Survivor was put on the air it was edgy and amazing. Now, every show is reality based and so they need people like Tila Tequila to raise the bar however they can. [Sidebar note: Many, including TIME, feel she gets the web and interaction in a way few people do because she understands how to be the interactive part of Web 2.0.]
Jack Bauer raised the bar in his own way too. 24 made the new benchmark of action TV to kill off main-characters when needed. 20 years ago, LA Law or Dallas was about as edgy as it got. Much like Stephen Colbert was doing, Mike Huckabee has learned quickly that the lowest common denominator is the key to popular support in America. While the ad itself may not be a hit, there’s no question that the concept of the ad is a winner.
As articles like this in the New York Times show, his humor is what’s going to push this candidate to heights he wouldn’t otherwise see.
A report on Brandweek.com says that Starbucks is resorting to TV advertising to increase traffic to its stores. This, following a recent decline of traffic and ergo sales.
“As we grow our stores, we’re trying to reach out to this broader audience that maybe [has] not had a chance to experience Starbucks.”
The TV spots feature animation and the tagline, “Pass the Cheer,”.
The TV spots feature animation and the tagline, “Pass the Cheer,”.
As found on Brand Autopsy, this article in the Seattle PI paper adds that the company will also invest into providing a better customer experience. It will make sure managers are in store more often, will make sure the baristas are better trained, will offer personalized pre-pay cards, and do a few other things to make sure the customers get what they pay for.
While I think that Starbucks has hit a critical point in working to improve the customer experience, I believe they are totally missing the mark by turning to advertising on TV.
Two main reasons for why I feel this way: because television ads will further erode the prestige the brand currently has, and because a TV ad campaign is totally going against the very marketing strategy that has brought them to where they are today.
The band has been seen as a very high-end, yet accessible one for years now. While in the beginning, celebrities would often be photographed holding a cup of Starbucks $4.00 while walking their dogs, today this doesn’t happen as much.
Today, the stores are jammed with all kinds of people from students, to teeny-boppers, to… well … anyone but celebs. Not only that, but the coffee itself is everywhere. It used to be that you had to go to the store and have the full “Starbucks experience” to get coffee even to take back to the office - which reminded you why you pay so much for the coffee. Today, you can find it in much more easily accessible in places where you don’t get the benefit of the experience. This is costing the brand the exclusivity that it once had, and has even turned it into an American cliché (although some would say it’s been a cliché for a while now).
The TV ad campaign goes totally against the PR strategy that brought the brand to where it was at its height. People believe what they read in the papers and see celebrities do, not what they see on the television between segments of their favorite show. Heck, if Starbucks were to put the TV budget into product placement, it would be a better investment than ads.
Al and Laura Ries wrote a book that is widely available: The Fall Of Advertising And The Rise Of PR. Starbucks is a great brand that is pointed to in the book and one of the new breed of company that used PR, not TV ads, to spread their messages. To keep their promotion effective and on brand, perhaps they should go back to the basics that got them this far…
In the defense of the Starbucks execs, the authors also assert that advertising is lost on the public because it lacks credibility, and is only useful at strengthening brands that are already established, so I can understand how somebody may feel that Starbucks is such a brand that a strengthening exercises in the media would make sense.
Does technology (websites such as YouTube, and the radical increase of CCTV’s in recent years) create an increase of violent crimes, or does it simply provide an opportunity for the same ammount of crimes to be filmed more often, thereby increasing the ammount of violent criminal footage rather than decreasing crime (crime prevention is the intended effect of CCTV’s)?
To look at this question from a PR / marketing perspective, I think the answer to the question really lies with the audience. If the audience and cache of the “violent crime caught on tape” increase, there will be more money in the industry niche, and therefore more footage of people commiting crimes on camera because people who have the footage will be more likely to post it to YouTube or sell it to a TV show if they can.
I agree with Elizabeth that more research needs to be done, but if there is newfound money or glory in the niche, the ammount of footage available to the public will certainly go up. The market is being created for watching the footage on screen, but is probably increasing for doing jail-time worthy activity and putting your face on-camera.
The PR strategies behind what is happening in Pakistan continue to unfold, and there is no question in my mind that the only weak link in the PR chain here belongs to Bush. Musharraf is holding democracy hostage, but to those of us who don’t sympathize with America, there is a noted irony to the US reactions.
Benazir Bhutto, the 12th and 16th Prime Minister of Pakistan, sits at this moment in political prisoner purgatory. She does not know if she goes to prision, goes into exile, or goes into house arrest.
Pervez Musharraf, who serves Pakistan as President (and who is responsible for putting her there) has taken the state by force, in what many say is politically motivated seige of the city designed to bolster his carreer.
This blog entry on PRWEEK US, by Hamilton Nolan, points to a great quote Musharraf used when discussing his current tactics and comparing them to America:
“Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution?” Musharraf, in a speech to the world, quoted from Lincoln. The unspoken answer? Hell no! As dictator, it is Musharraf’s responsibility to destroy the Constitution to save the nation, with “the nation” meaning “his job.” Just like Honest Abe! Suck on that, Americans!
Perhaps even better is what US President Bush said to Musharraf on their first direct phone call since Musharraf declared a state of emergency:
“My message was that we believe strongly in elections and that you ought to have elections soon and you need to take off your uniform. You can’t be the president and the head of the military at the same time,”
As the world is so polar right now in how it feels about the US, Bush needs to be very careful with how he objects to events in Pakistan presently. I look forward to seeing if any other leaders will take as high profile a position on this, and if they do, how they will defend their position.
This CNN article by Linnie Rawlinson covers a PR goldmine for a very serious and potential very helpful campaign. Now, I’m not in any way saying that the designer of this project is a media whore, or that this isn’t being done for the best of intentions, I’m just commenting on the visibility and publicity of the projct.
… for each cutting-edge XO purchased in the West, another will be given to a child in a developing country.
The “Give One Get One” scheme, which launches Monday, is part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to equip the world’s poorest children with a learning tool. For $399, customers can order a laptop for themselves; bundled into the price is the cost of delivering a second XO to a child in the third world.
The laptops, which went into high-volume production on 6 November, go on sale online at 6 a.m. Eastern Time Monday until November 26.
The company founder, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte is charging consumers $399 for the XO computer. Quanta Computer Inc. is producing the green and white XO at over $180 a unit ($80 higher than the projected cost), but they say that as production ramps up, the unit cost will drop. This means that the end-cost of the machine is more than the cost of 2 units, and profit margins will only increase as demand grows. As its being billed as a charity product through, perhaps distribution channels will be easy on the products markups and not mind such a tight margin.
Costs aside, what makes this product different than the other cheap kids laptops and products this year is that its being marketed to adults… the adult decision-makers that “have a heart” they are ones that say they support Greenpeace but drive a Chevy Suburban. They are the people that talk of hating child labor while wearing Nike shoes. This product, and the PR around it, is a wonderful way of hitting the family decision-makers in a way they aren’t used to.
It’s Corporate Social Responsibility, but for the family unit. Buying the computer as a toy for a child makes the child happy, isn’t expensive, and gives the consumer bragging rights… probably the most attractive part of giving back to the world for most of us.
Customers wanting their XOs for the holiday season have been advised to order early: the first 20,000 units should be delivered by Christmas, with their partner computers heading to Peru and Uruguay. Later orders will follow in 2008.
And Negroponte’s message to those considering it as a gift this year? “Don’t hesitate. Don’t buy it because it is an inexpensive laptop,” he told CNN.
“Buy it to join a movement to change the world.”
Their approach to marketing the product is brilliant because it’s sexy and newsworthy. As this CNN coverage shows, the premise and the message is a very easy one to promote in the media, and for that, the company will get millions in free advertising… and why? So that the media can “do the right thing” and report on this wonderful initiative.
I applaude the team who put this together. It’s a brilliant way to compete in a very tough market.
