Archive for the 'PR' Category

“You should probably be working at Starbucks.”

This is exactly the kind of thing authors of the unbearably famous Bad Pitch Blog tell those PR practitioners unlucky enough to see their latest debauchery end up on badpitch.blogspot.com.

For several years now, PR pros Richard Laermer (@laermer) and Kevin Dugan (@prblog) have joined forces to write the award winning industry watchdog blog, and now they are hosting their first live teleseminar. And everyone is invited.

Mark your calendars for Wednesday, July 29 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT. PR know-it-alls Richard Laermer (Punk Marketing, Full Frontal PR) and Kevin Dugan (Strategic PR Blog) are hosting the brand new “Bad Pitch Night School (During The Day).”

Admission gets you:

• A smart, step by step approach to pitching that includes hilarious case studies and goes beyond that simple email. From looking at the whole pitch lifecycle, including the truth about pitching bloggers and using social media, to tips that will no doubt make you better-informed (and tell you how) plus the keys to pitch inspiration, they’ll help you improve your game.
• Plus, a free e-book of Laermer`s classic Full Frontal PR handbook.

In this nonstop, ridiculously cool hour the boys are going to knock you out with more learning than you thought possible!

$49 bucks gets you admission for as many people as you can cram into a conference room (via speakerphone, natch), and your free e-book. What a deal!

There’s a Bad Pitch Blog Scholarship Program! What would a school (and a recession) be without scholarships? Bad Pitch Blog gives out five FREE student scholarships and five FREE professional scholarships to those professionals “between jobs/in transition/laid off/out of work.” If you qualify write the boys at badpitch@gmail.com Do it now. Time is fleeting.

Learn more, sign up and be cool at www.CrappyPR.com. Oh and laugh a bit.

Punk Marketing is out in paperback now…Buy it from Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/paperpunk. Here is our press release with all the details. Mark and I changed it a lot to make it up to date for a recession age.

Enjoy. Comments? Twitter us at www.Twitter.com/punkmarketing.

Hey Kids: For Immediate Release

–Now in Paperback–

Ever hear of WIMPLASH? Every economic indicator is moving in the wrong direction and the outlook seems grim. Instead of throwing themselves into the fight, marketers are suffering from what Punk Marketing’s Laermer and Simmons call “wimplash,” the inability to move up, down or sideways. So Punk Marketing is back and better than ever.

The paperback Punk Marketing—in stores and on street corners May 19—is peppered with examples, case studies, faux pas, jokes, and practical advice that every marketer needs right now. A recession provides a momentous opportunity for anyone selling ANYTHING to use whatever budgets they have intelligently. The faint-hearted will retreat to traditional while the wise engage consumers by recognizing a shift in power from corporations to consumers.

Laermer and Simmons, the established, unstoppable authors of PUNK MARKETING: Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution (Harper Paperbacks; May 2009; $16.99, trade paperback), are anxious to have their message heard. They write, “More and more and even more consumers are now not consumers but content creators and distributors of really good material too.” As consumers become less passive, traditional marketing campaigns are obsolete.

According to these dudes, snappy TV ads that used to sell products effectively are not potent during a crazy time like this. A myriad of social networking sites, video on and offline, below-the-radar sites, DVR action, teensy pamphlets and fliers, mobile meandering and whole mass of entertainment options have segmented the viewing audience. For companies to promote their products, they must target consumers accurately and work with them to serve their needs.

The book that critics called “blunt, fair, fearless and outrageous—just like the marketing style they espouse” gets its groove on by discussing organizations that have been successful by reaching out to their core demographic in new ways. The authors lift their hands and shout—err, write: “Consumers want to feel the company they buy from has their absolute best interests at heart; so for them that means being treated respectfully as sole beings and not units in some amorphus lump.”

In addition to some of the Punk approaches marketers are now taking, technology has revolutionized marketing. Smart marketers are finding ways to successfully reach consumers via text messages about exciting deals. RFID technology may some day enable a shop to tailor their product offerings to the personal dialections of the consumers. “One of your authors, a professional futurist/show-off, once envisioned a time when you or we can walk by a shop and a special discount or menu would pop onto our teensy screens,” Laermer and Simmons write.

Called a “Book You Should Have Read” by Advertising Age last year, the updated, PUNK MARKETING introduces a radical new approach and a new lexicon to a discipline desperately in need of an overhaul. Founded upon a 100% revised set of assumptions about how consumers interact with brands, it is more than theoretical analysis; it is a set of usable (and funny, and arguable) tools for the modern marketing revolutionary.

According to Laermer and Simmons, it’s high time for marketers to recognize this and change their Fail-oriented ways before the guy or gal who replaces them does it for them.


About the authors:

Richard Laermer is a top trends and marketing speaker, author of the best-selling book Full Frontal PR and the brand new 2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade, as well as the CEO of veteran agency RLM PR. He is known for his Marketplace commentaries on NPR, hosted the cult makeover series Taking Care of Business on The Learning Channel and is a frequent commentator on CNNMoney.com while co-managing the BadPitchBlog (badrelease.com) for the PR industry! He is also a regular writer for HuffingtonPost (www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-laermer) and helms the new teaching site, HowToFame.com, launching in June.

Mark Simmons has 20 years of experience as a top marketer in the US and his native England , and has been at the topmost edge of new techniques while running his own Anti-Corp agency and as the LA head of groundbreaking bad boy agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. Simmons recently launched social enterprise USELESS, dedicated to helping people use less while giving more. He is a full-time rock star marketing consultant toiling for, among others, Gore and Gates, which has brought the planet further from extinction. Prior to all this good, he was one of the top marketers at Coca-Cola in Atlanta. 

About the book
Title: PUNK MARKETING: Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution
Author: Richard Laermer and Mark Simmons
On sale date: May 19, 2009
Price: $16.99, trade paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 978-0-06-115111-8
Imprint: Harper Paperbacks

Contact:
Barbara Teszler
212.207.7727
barbara.teszler@harpercollins.com

In a business driven by trendy folks who spew stats and info, every so often something crops up that makes me feel ancient. Funny thing about getting older is that you don’t really feel it…until the song you remember dancing to at the prom plays on an oldies/retro station.

I find myself smack in a middle of an interesting demographic. My generation didn’t have a letter, but we’re now busy executives, soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads, and the generation that voted George Bush into office not once but twice (bad memories but they’re mine). I’ve gone from being the contemporary of cub reporters and interns to that of managing editors and executive producers. Has my perspective on the marketing businesses changed? You bet.

Here’s some advice for those of you who count us among your (potential) customers.

360-Degree Communication

Contrary to the belief of my younger colleagues, we are early adopters and avid promoters. Gee, kids, we were the ones who moved from eight-tracks to cassettes to CDs to DAT even, in record time. We were watching while MTV played “Video Killed the Radio Star” and CNN aired its first on-air piece about Vernon Jordan’s shooting. We made media lists with rotary (okay, push button) telephones and typewriters (IBM Selectrics…)and actually spoke with colleagues—and subsequently created the ubiquitous electronic communications you all dig. We went from missing telephone calls totally to having machines that answered them, to being available 24/7 with mobiles. That’s why we believe in the value of 360 Degree Communications; we remember when we had to actually work to get information. Now, we want to receive facts and figures—call them stories—from all the sources we worked our whole careers to develop.

Embrace the New, Sure, But Don’t Eschew the Old

Wise men and women will all tell you: reaching influencers effectively often involves a stamp (the United States Postal Service to you scratching you heads). I have a ton of information filed electronically. I also have a filing cabinet meticulously organized with all my notes; I use a fantastic device called a pen for those. I have and hold hard copies from clients, colleagues and people trying to sell me junk. I delete Spam without opening it, yet today received three pieces of junk mail which I in fact opened and read. Before tossing.

The Benefits of Writing Good

This is my soapbox, and I’m proud of it. I work in PR, a communications industry. Much of our communication is written. That means outlines, grammar, and channeling your creativity into materials—pitches, letters, collateral, online communications—that are absolutely in line with your client’s and/or company’s business objectives. PR is not about wild and crazy ideas (although stunts do have a time and a place); PR is about creative ideas that deliver solid business value. Have I made myself clear? Or, clearly?

Search and Then Research

Please try not to make assumptions about a target market of which you are not a member. If you are unsure how your audience views a particular topic or issue, ask. If you live in the Northeast, don’t assume everyone in the South or Midwest is a hick. If you’re in your 20’s and have read this far, don’t think that people twice your age don’t have a clue about pop culture or the Next Big Thing. We saw it coming. That said, at 40 what is important is different from what’s important to 20-somethings, no matter what you do for a living. Learn to embrace differences.

Done with soapbox.

Once you have all that down, remember: we are consumers who drive trends. We’ve been doing so for a long time and don’t plan on stopping. We buy stuff, and our earning and purchasing power seriously matters. We might not be as cool as we were, but darn if we don’t wield more power over the world than we ever did.

And that’s it. I’m stepping off now.

For more on this, get a clean, crisp copy of 2011: Trendspotting
Twitter: @laermer

Misguided teen queen Jamie Lynn Spears appeared last night on ABC’s new show, Miss Guided. In dictionaries all across America, the entries for irony just exploded.

The “second” Spears (gee, we need a spare) played a troubled teen debating between going to college or sticking around for a boyfriend. For those of you shacking up in Saddam’s old spiderhole, Jamie Lynn just made the decision to have a baby and take some time off from her acting career.

Is this life imitating art or the other way around?

Her sabbatical is treating her well - things have never been better for SpearsSpare! By taking time off, she meant taking time to get even more famous. Though her pregnancy goes against Nickelodeon’s wholesome image, ratings for her show, Zoey 101 have soared. And the hype around her appearance on Miss Guided… well, I’m even talking about it. (Shame on me, I know.)

Who’s to blame! Let’s go with Juno. Jamie Lynn’s publicists are not idiots, and we know the Spears clan has a knack for drawing attention (self-promotion is too generous). They saw the amniotic fluid on the wall after Juno went big and so they said “Here’s a way to make JLS super known.” Quietly dealing with the situation back home on the Bayou wouldn’t work for this management. Instead they SOLD the story to OK! magazine for seven figures. A nation of kids now considers her the real life Juno McGuff. Except, instead of being the cheese to someone’s macaroni, Jamie Lynn is the Easy Mac for the college kid on a budget (no offense meant to Easy Mac).

In my last post on celebrity babies, I intentionally barely touched on this. There’s just something unsettling about babies having babies. I’m old school, but there’s a way to handle very public scandals that, while acknowledging mistakes, deals with the repercussions soberly. It reflects strong character and just happens to be the healthy way to live a life. It’s a personal opinion, and the public, at least in the long term, appreciates it more than a naked parade around the town square.

That respect/goodwill counts when trying to make a career in the public sphere.

A wise man named Jack Handy once said, “To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.” These wise words remind me of the Spears clan. Their lives are primetime dramas, except there are no ratings, nothing but shame gained, and at the end of the third trimester, Jamie Lynn really will have a baby, G-d love her. Sometimes bad publicity is just bad publicity.

We all know the saying “Do as I say, not as I do.” But what happens when instead you preach “Do as I say, because if not I’ll climb down my insanely high horse and nail you to the courthouse door”? Well, you get the Elliot Spitzer story. Scratch that, the Spitzer Catastrophe.

While some are using this as an excuse to reargue the Clinton impeachment – “See? Slick Willy deserved to hang!” (which a lot of us know as “a vast rightwing conspiracy turned a BJ into a national catastrophe, yet it’s OK to lie about WMDs?”) – all that does is miss the evident point.

Facing a blood-seeking Republican Congress, Clinton lived to see the end of his presidency; Spitzie on the other hand was forced to resign within days of being found otu. Is it because one committed adultery while the other spent an estimated 80 Gs on prostitutes? Maybe. Or the real difference is, we think, Branding.

Sidebar: $80,000, wow, what were those women doing that made it worth $4500 a pop? I really can’t figure it out! If they haven’t started a how-to book, they’re need an agent. “Thousand Dollar Sex for Dummies,” there’s the title.

I’m back…. Politicians, like all public figures, consumer products, or corporations, are brands. They each use publicity and marketing to craft an image in the public consciousness. Clinton felt our pain cause he was one of us. He scarfed Big Macs, took an occasional toke, chased a little skirt. Was a dude!

But Spitzer, he was so much better than all of us, or at least that’s what he portended. The man used a shield of incorruptibility and a sword of integrity to smote those too morally weak to obey the law. He went after pillars or conmen of Wall Street (not to mention a few prostitution rings…I tell you undercover research must be mad fun) while glaring with open contempt down at those who failed to meet his standards. If your image is holier-than-thou Mr. Clean, you better make sure there’s truth in advertising.

When building a brand, you’ve got to leave room for human error, which is always inevitable as the absolute law of the universe. People make mistakes. PR and marketing strategies need to be flexible enough to allow for gaffes, lapses, peccadilloes, and, what the hay, even the occasional scandal.

It’s not what he did, right, but the hypocrisy that was immediately associated with the actions he pulled. Those nighttime activities conflicted with his brand and messaging. Were his actions that horrible? I don’t think so. But he was so buried in his own rhetoric that he had no choice but to step down before he was laughed down!

Want proof? Take Louisiana Senator and prostitute-lover David Vitter. After his recreational habits were outed by Larry Flynt, Vitter plum apologized. The verdict is not in on Vitter’s Hoegate, but it’s worth noting how, yep, he’s still there. While Vitter might have disappointed his constituents, nothing close to outrage followed.

So the lesson: Don’t let the messaging outstrip reality. And if you see a copy of “Thousand Dollar Sex for Dummies,” get it before the prurients protest it off the shelves. Cause according to a former high-ranking public official it’s worth the price.