This May, the wireless industry will gather for one of its biggest events, CTIA Wireless. In addition to the trade show packed with vendor booths, the event will offer a variety of educational sessions. This presents an excellent opportunity for executives at forward-thinking wireless and mobile companies to position themselves as thought leaders at one of the industry’s most significant events. CTIA is currently accepting proposals for potential panelists and presenters at the event. This is an excellent way to build a reputation as a leader in wireless. Here are some of the tips we offer to our clients seeking speaking positions.
• Develop your proposal around a hot topic. The mobile industry is innovating quickly in a number of areas, from mobile payments to mobile device management, machine-to-machine communications and dozens of other areas that impact both consumers and businesses. These sweeping trends are catching the attention of CTIA attendees – your buyers. The speaking organizers at CTIA have assembled an agenda that helps explain emerging trends to attendees. In your proposal, focus on the emerging and broad trends where you can offer expertise.
• Struggling to find a topic that’s best for you? Engage in discussion with analysts in your market space and ask them what they’re hearing from the industry. Your investors can also be useful in providing a bird’s-eye view. Also comb through magazines and blogs for the hot topics that are most relevant to the industry.
• Develop relationships with decision-makers at CTIA. On a daily basis, CTIA staff and executives communicate with the industry’s leaders. Meet with influential leaders at CTIA team to share your opinions about industry trends from the front lines. You may then find yourself invited to speak on a panel.
• Propose a full panel, not an individual speaker. Executives from the leading companies in the mobile industry are chosen as keynote speakers and panelists. However, if you’re with a smaller company, you’ll need to get strategic. Think of the relationships you’ve built and leverage them. Is there a well-regarded analyst that shares your views? Do you have a customer that can provide real-world insight into your topic? How about a key partner from a highly visible wireless organization? Assemble a panel with all of these experts and offer an irresistible proposal to CTIA.
• If you are invited to speak at CTIA, pull out all the stops to make sure you ace the assignment. The CTIA staff closely monitor the success of individual speakers and panels. If your session attendees rate you highly, you have a greater chance of being invited back.
Make sure to get your speaking submission in by the deadline of January 15th. The competition for speaking opportunities is high, but the time spent in crafting a successful abstract is well worth the effort.
Need guidance in preparing a speaking submission? For further insight contact Schwartz MSL Boston at (781) 684-0770. The agency’s wireless practice represents some of the leading companies in mobile, and we can help you, too.
Over the years, I have probably been to hundreds of trade shows. My clients frequently ask me what I think of trade show/Expo X and if they should exhibit/speak there.
To me it always boils down to:
Who will be there?
Will you have a chance to engage meaningfully with prospects (and the media/bloggers)?
How crowded will it be?
What commitment is involved.
How much will it cost?
This weekend I ran across a company that deserves praise for picking an absolutely perfect trade show for them - Bissel.
I took the family to LEGO Kidsfest. A three day 140,000 sq. ft. LEGO extravaganza.
One of the exhibits was "Big Brick Pile” a 50x100' file of LEGO bricks. At the end of the pile Bissel was there demonstrating the power of its Super Sweep Turbo (it is not a vacuum) to pick up LEGO bricks of all sizes.
Kids were lining up to use the sweeper, pick up bricks and dump them out again.
This is a great example of experiential marketing where the company identified a use of its product, and provided prospects a chance to try it in a real work environment. The Bissel staff was also handing out coupons and explaining the three different stores you can purchase the product at.
What really drove this home to me was after my four year old swept up LEGO bricks for the third time and almost go into a fight with a six year old over who got to pick up the bricks next - My wife turned to me, grabbed me by the collar, looked in my eyes and told me "I don't care about the 'husband rule' that says 'thou shalt not buy your wife appliances as a gift.' I want this. I want this. Do you understand me?"
I am positive my wife was not the only person with that reaction.
So a tip of the hat to the Bissel marketing executives, and a story for all companies to think about. Does your trade show participation and display create that type of reaction from prospects? If not, what can you do to create that scenario.
Wyonona Redmond, president of the National Black Public Relations Society (NBPRS) speaking at the opening reception held at the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee
The National Black Public Relations Society (NBPRS) held their annual conference, October 27-30, 2011 in Milwaukee and this year I had the opportunity to be there. The theme for this year’s conference was:“The Network at Work: Managing Transitions, Techniques and Technology for Business and Career Success.” Some of the most respected African Americans in the communications industry were there including former journalists who started their own boutique PR agencies, corporate communications professionals, agency PR practitioners, bloggers, PR freelancers, authors and community relations professionals.
Throughout the conference I had the opportunity to attend a variety of workshops but one that particularly stood out to me was:“Breaking In & Staying In: Realities & Strategies for Blacks in PR.” The panel highlighted the importance of building relationships with co-workers to bridge racial differences and we discussed the value of not focusing on being the only minority at the company but rather being aware of how to constantly develop new skills, think outside the box, promote integrity and stay up-to-date with the clients business.
Although only 4.7% of the marketing, advertising and PR industries are made up of ethnic minorities, conferences such as this are a huge step to help diversify the industry, recognize African Americans in the industry and showcase their achievements. Wyonna Redmond, president of NBPRS, defines PR as this: “Our job in the public relations field is to communicate ideas, evoke feelings, shape images, enhance or change perceptions and build relationships.”More diversity in the industry will mean more perspectives and different ideas being shared, which can only lead to helping grow the industry. Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American female senator, said it best in her keynote address at the conference: “When all the cream is allowed to rise to the top, the butter is bound to be better!”
With the Mobile World Congress call for papers closing on Thursday, it is now time to turn your attention to the Global Mobile Awards which are now open for entry. The annual awards, now in its 17th year, will be presented at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday 28th February 2012.
Global Mobile Awards for 2012 will be presented in the following categories:
Apps of the Year
Best Mobile Handsets and Devices
Mobile Marketing and Advertising
Mobile Innovation
Best Technology
Social and Economic Development
Best Mobile Services
Outstanding Achievement Awards
A full list of awards categories can be found here.
This year, 18 new awards have been introduced for a total of 32 awards across the eight categories. Other noteable changes to this years’ awards include:
'Apps of the Year’: the GSMA has consolidated the awards in the ‘Apps of the Year’ category. In that category, the GSMA has introduced three new awards, two of which will be based on statistical evidence of global downloads and usage, and one, the ‘Most Innovative Mobile App’ award, which is open for entry to all. This category will also include a ‘Judges’ Choice - Best Overall Mobile App’ award which will be determined by an independent panel of experts.
‘Best Mobile Handsets and Devices’: the 2012 awards will expand this category with specific awards for ‘Best Smartphone’, ‘Best Feature Phone’ and a new ‘Best Mobile Tablet’ award. In addition, a panel of judges will search for and select the best and most promising ‘Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet’ on show at the Mobile World Congress 2012 event.
'Mobile Innovation’: focused on the convergence of mobile in the vertical sectors such as health, transport, automotive and utilities and education, this category will now also include specific awards aimed at expansion in mobile publishing and mobile money services.
Additional notable developments are included within the ‘Mobile Marketing and Advertising’ category to elevate and recognise innovation and creativity within this rapidly emerging sector.
New categories have also been introduced within the ‘Best Technology’ and ‘Social and Economic Development’ categories, with additions such as ‘Best Use of Mobile in Emergency or Humanitarian Situations’ and the ‘mWomen - Best Product or Service for Women in Emerging Markets’.
The Global Mobile Awards 2012 can be entered online and nominations close on Wednesday 30th November 2011.
For more advice on making the most of PR and marketing opportunities at Mobile World Congress 2012, download our free ebook, Blueprint for Barcelona.
If you haven't already submitted a speaking proposal for Mobile World Congress 2012, you can now breathe a sigh of relief: the deadline has been extended to 23:59 GMT on Thursday, 8 September 2011.
This year’s conference programme will focus on topics that demonstrate the power of mobile in the 21st century and what this power can enable. Competition for a spot on the agenda is fierce, with more than 2000 submissions expected this year. The GSMA's research team will review nominations with a critical eye, asking: "mobile is re-defining how we connect with people, places and information. How are you contributing to this transformation?"
The research team has identified 22 areas on which they'll focus for the 2012 Congress but also welcomes submitting companies to suggest their own topics for inclusion. The full list and descriptions of key themes can be found here.
For more advice about public relations and marketing at Mobile World Congress, download our free ebook, the Blueprint for Barcelona.
The Call for Papers for the 2012 Mobile World Congress opened on 29th of June and thousands of companies are now vying for spots on this coveted schedule. This year, the GSMA’s research team has introduced a new step in the selection process called Research Open Days.
Research Open Days are an opportunity for companies to meet with the GSMA at the London headquarters and present a topic for consideration. The goal is to provide the research team with a deeper understanding of submitting companies and to level the playing field for smaller players.
We’re told that there are a few slots remaining in the Research Open Days schedule but that requests are coming in daily and the calendar is filling up quickly. If you’re hoping to secure a spot, don’t delay!
The remaining dates for the Research Open Days are as follows:
18 July 2011 26 July 2011 01 August 2011 03 August 2011 10 August 2011 15 August 2011
For a more complete guide to all of the PR and marketing opportunities available before and during Mobile World Congress, download our free ebook Blueprint for Barcelona.
Schwartz Clients Use Mobile PR to Get Word Out at CTIA
Schwartz clients made waves at the International CTIA Wireless 2011 conference on both the speakers' podium and with award-winning offerings–a testament to the impact of mobile and technology public relations at the show. While we can all but guarantee that AT&T and T-Mobile had very successful PR activities around the event, this post focuses on five Schwartz clients.
KORE Telematics, MicroStrategy, Fiberlink and WellDoc all used PR to help drive success at the show. Each demonstrated that an effective PR strategy goes beyond issuing press releases. Technology PR is all about creative storytelling via social and professional media to power marketing programs during conferences and beyond them, across industries and geographies.
The following is a quick summary of how PR helped lead to a successful CTIA Wireless 2011 for these Schwartz clients.
• When KORE Telematics first began working with Schwartz five years ago, the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications market that it helped pioneer was only known in a few wireless industry circles. Now, the major wireless carriers discuss M2M on a regular basis. At CTIA Wireless 2011, Schwartz arranged nearly 20 media and analyst meetings for KORE, including the Wall Street Journal and Gartner. At the show, KORE announced the industry’s first global M2M network and its president spoke on two panels—Smart Energy and the Connected Car. In addition, KORE won the M2M category of MobileTrax’s 2011 Mobility Awards.
• Recently MicroStrategy announced a new telecom industry application—The Telecommunications Channel App, which helps telecommunications companies improve customer retention and allows users to analyze and compare the success of multiple customer revenue channels and touchpoints (e.g., web, in-store, call centers) from an iPhone or iPad.
• At CTIA, mobile device management (MDM) leader Fiberlink announced a free version of its MDM platform that enables companies to manage up to 25 devices at no charge. Fiberlink’s MaaS360 platform helps enterprises manage and secure their mobile devices. Fiberlink conducted in-person meetings with analysts at CTIA and spoke at the Wireless Innovators dinner.
• For the first time at the International CTIA Wireless conference, a Schwartz client was selected as a finalist for the prestigious CTIA Emerging Technology Awards. WellDoc®, a clinically proven mHealth solutions company, was awarded second place in the “Mobile Applications: Health, Wellness & Fitness” category. For the past five years, the CTIA E-Tech Awards have promoted some of the most innovative wireless products and services in the areas of consumer, enterprise and network technology.
Shweta Agarwal and Joe Palladino of Schwartz contributed to this post.
Well it has been a week since the end of SxSW Interactive 2011. By this time, most of the attendees have recovered from the five days of non-stop seminars, parties, meet-ups and informal hallway networking. What did it all mean?
There are a few key takeaways from Schwartz’s discussions at SxSW that I thought would make sense to share with our readers.
Group Communications Overload – The “hot” market is definitely group messaging and communications. Between Foursquare, Gowalla, Scvngr, Whrrl, Hurricane Party, and others, there are more networks than ever before. To be honest, I see significant hurdles for most of these apps. The benefits of the new services are at most incremental over Foursquare and Gowalla, and do not give a reason to move. Hurricane Party impressed with its focus on parties, and is something I will check out at other industry events. But beyond that nice, I did not see market disruptors. We are seeing dot revs, not new products. The true innovators will need to be even more creative to stick out from the group communications babble.
Microblogging back channels are thriving – Every panelist faced competition – the Twitterstream. Between 20-40 people (including me) were using HootSuite or another tool to comment on what was being said, ask questions and be snarky. Those panelists that integrated the Twitterstream into their presentations had much more dynamic sessions. A few panelists even had other folks at their company monitoring the stream and providing real time feedback and commentary so they could focus on the talk, but also capitalize on the back channel discussion.
Uniform Optimism – Aside from the ubiquitous “SxSW isn’t what it used to be,” the people I spoke with at SxSW were uniformly optimistic. It didn’t matter if they were engineers, C-level, PR pros or venture capitalists. The attendees are all preparing for a coming innovation explosion. Most see it around mobile and connectivity, and I find it hard to disagree. This is no just limited to B2C, but B2B financial services markets are seeing the mobile possibilities.
This is just the beginning – Underlying the optimism was another undercurrent. Priebatsch from Scvngr talked about a coming layer (the game layer) that will go on top of the current social layer. I do not agree with all of his ideas, but it does show that there is still significant innovation to come. We are just at the infancy of the group communications. With the explosion of smartphones and apps, more sophisticated data modeling and group communications, what we see today will likely bear little resemblance to what we see in five years. And here at Schwartz we find that to be extremely invigorating.
Today begins the much anticipated International CTIA Wireless 2011 show in Orlando, Florida. The buzz of exhibitors and keynote speakers is high, as the show brings together wireless and converged communications, wireless broadband and mobile web.
One hot topic that is undoubtedly keeping the adrenaline pumping is the prestigious CTIA Emerging Technology Awards. For the past five years, the CTIA E-Tech Awards have celebrated and promoted some of the most innovative wireless products and services in the areas of consumer, enterprise and network technology.
For the first time, a Schwartz’s client, WellDoc®, has been selected as a finalist in the “Mobile Applications: Health, Wellness & Fitness” category!
The CTIA E-Tech submissions were judged on innovation, functionality, technological importance or impact, implementation and overall “wow” factor. First, second and third place winners of each of the 14 categories will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 23 during the show.
So why was WellDoc selected as a finalist? What makes them innovative and gives them the “wow” factor?
WellDoc is at the convergence of major trends in the mobile health (mHealth) space. WellDoc’s solution utilizes mobile phones and the Internet to help patients and healthcare providers coordinate diabetes care for adult patients with type 2 diabetes. The flagship product, DiabetesManager System®, is the first mHealth solution cleared by the FDA to offer automated coaching and behavioral algorithms by real-time patient data. Patients can track daily routines, including medications, exercise and nutrition.
WellDoc then recommends real-time lifestyle adjustments to keep patients on track with their care plan. Physicians can access patient data using WellDoc, analyze it, tap into the WellDoc expert system for care guidelines and make adjustments in their patients’ care.
The media has loved WellDoc’s mHealth solution, as it has been featured with top industry influencers such as New York Times, Forbes, The Economist and MobiHealthNews. BusinessWeek featured the DiabetesManager System as one of the mHealth products to watch in 2011; and Forbes featured WellDoc in an article with the headline, “WellDoc Could Become A Much-Needed Tool In The Fight Against Diabetes.” In December 2010, WellDoc’s DiabetesManager was selected by PC World as one of their “15 Mobile Apps That Will Matter in 2011.”
As industry peers are able to vote online and via text during the three-day show, finalists also have a chance to win “Best Online Pick” and “Best in Show,” for the most online and text votes, respectively.
We’re excited to see who wins. Join us on March 23 at 2 p.m. EST, at the Exhibit Innovations Stage booth 4295 at CTIA.
For me, Sunday at SxSW could best have been described as analytics day. They decided to have all the research and measurement die-hards make the trek out to the AT&T Executive Conference center. The surroundings were plusher, the seats much more comfortable and the data was fascinating.
There were two interesting panels on measurement and analytics and the most exciting part is none of the speakers were from vendors. Shawn Brown from MIT’s Sloan Management Review and Chris Traganos at Harvard spoke about how they measured Web success and worked to increase traffic; while Elizabeth Winkler from the University of Texas - Austin, discussed how she and her colleagues developed a model that showed how Twitter chatter accurately predicted movie revenues.
Harvard was doing some very interesting things and relies primarily on five social media tools:
These are tools most of our readers know, but it shows that tools like these, used intelligently and backed by great content can deliver very good results. A few practical tips on how they grew traffic included advice such as:
Lots of tags are your friend: every story they push has 30 tags that are fed into blog aggregators
If you aren’t using Facebook’s OpenGraph and you create content, you need to start doing so. Instead of the share button, use the like button. Despite the power of the tool, you should check URL Linter to see what Facebook is getting and not getting.
Chartbeat is a perfect complement to Google Analytics. I haven’t used it on my sites, but I plan to check it out. It gives you real time analytics in a way Google does not.
Probably the biggest “huh” in the session was the tidbit that the smaller the URL, the less dense the QR code is, so it works faster. Keep using those URL shorteners, and make sure they point to a site that is optimized for mobile.
These are great practical tips for growing and analyzing site traffic.
This was a great primer for the next session that looked at how Twitter chatter could be used to tell how good a movie will do on a weekend. Elizabeth Winker and her team used a set of 20 servers to gather and aggregate tweets on movies and store than in a database for further analysis.
They first eliminated the false positives (which was very tricky for the movie “The Hangover”) and broke the results down by positive, negative and neutral using an automated system they built themselves. By then analyzing how many people said they planned to go to the movies and the reaction and buzz afterwards, they showed how positive Twitter chatter mapped nicely to box office sales for the 60 movies they analyzed.
One area Winker touched on briefly, but I think is worthy of further consideration is the power of Twitter and geolocation. They could map the Tweets on a certain movie to the subset of those that have enabled geolocation on their phones and break out the analysis and prediction on a regional level. This could help allocate ad and marketing spends to the areas where it is most needed. One Winkler didn’t explore that I would love to see is if there is greater correlation based on the chatter that is made immediately after a movie (which a movie company should be able to do by mapping the tweets to theatre locations). This also has implications for CPG and consumer technology companies.
The panels weren’t earth shattering, but they gave good practical advice and a glimpse into the future of quick, high-volume analytics.
SxSW is alternately described as a tech party a la COMDEX in the mid 90s, Spring Break for techies, DEMO for those trying to reach young, hip, consumers and a conference that has jumped the shark. To me it is a great event and a great way to make connections, hear great speakers and have thought provoking conversations.To get myself in the right frame of mind, I listened to Alice's Restaurant on the plane flight to Austin.
For my first session at SxSW I went to hear industry pundit Brian Reich discuss how social media is like an asteroid approaching the earth. Basically his premise was that we need to fundamentally change the way we think about things, and nowhere is this more important than with those issues that transcend business (hunger, oppression, disaster relief). He believes that the way we address serious issues is no longer working.
We are not capitalizing on the power of the connected society. I agree with him in that the "networked" society is still in its infancy, and despite all our activities over the past 15 years, the true impact is still just now being felt.
What really stuck me was that many of the transcendent issues are the issues that businesses have been struggling with since the dawn of social media, and frankly, since communications became a strategic discipline.
How do we impact change?
Are we measuring the right things?
Raising awareness is a great and necessary first step, but it is not enough.
Don't get me wrong, there were great ideas that came out of the session (the crying need for more transparency in how donations are distributed, how giving people choices on how their money will be used will encourage more donations, etc.,)
I disagreed with some of the points being made. People that just gave money were being called lazy. I spoke up at that and pointed out there is a full spectrum of engagement. Business realize not everyone will be an evangelist for their product or spend hours on the messageboards answering questions. You need to treasure those folks, but you need to respect all stakeholders, regardless of their activity level. To do otherwise jeopardizes what you are trying to accomplish.
Another telling point to me is many of the people in the audience were from NGOs and were starting to realize the way they should measure needs to change. (I felt like I was at an IPR meeting). How many people tweeted about your cause is just a measure of activity. It's like the old days of PR measurement when hits were the only thing that mattered.
Even how much money you raise (while still vitally important) is just a measure of activity. The true way to impact change is to have NGOs and charitable organizations report on the tangible results. What did the money do?
In the end, the session was thought provoking and a great start to SxSW. It reminds us as communicators and interested parties that if we keep doing the same thing and just use new channels, we will have same challenges in new channels. We need to think differently and make sure we are solving causes, not just serving them.
Some obvious, and some not so obvious trends that we’ll likely see in Orlando
In less than two weeks, CTIA Wireless 2011 (@CTIAshow; #CTIAW11) will bring together 40,000 members of the North American wireless community, from carriers to device manufacturers to app providers to the technical widget makers that make wireless work.
As a PR industry executive that has followed, pitched, attended, applauded and even cursed CTIA Wireless for the past eight years, I feel partially qualified to make a predictions blog post (from a marketing/news-driven point of view). What better way to write a predictions blog than with a couple top three lists?
Let’s begin with the obvious predictions…
1) Tablet Obsession—Sorry smartphones, but tablets will take the device lead at CTIA. Manufactures like Samsung, RIM and Apple will all be pushing new tablets and their “first, best only” features, wicked fast operating systems and vertical applications, from healthcare to utilities to the boardroom.
2) 4G/LTE—We can’t talk about tablets and smartphones without mentioning the network. 4G and LTE certainly aren’t new topics, but the reality of these high-speed networks finally rolling out is sure to drive a number of discussions from the keynotes to show floor chatter. Look for data package debates to fall under this category. Side note: I frankly can’t hear “4G!” and not think about the Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber Super Bowl commercial.
3) Apps—Like a Chinese menu, there are apps for everyone and nearly every conceivable problem. Tablet applications are becoming more popular and Android and Microsoft apps are available in iPhone like numbers. In fact, MSFT recently announced that it’s adding 100 new mobile phone applications a day. My personal favorite app remains Shazam. I’ll be on the lookout for its replacement at CTIA Wireless 2011.
I conducted a little research before listing my not so obvious predictions. The following word cloud is the result of a Radian6 social media search on “CTIA Wireless” over the past 14 days. While nothing jaw-dropping presented itself, I think we can pull out a few conclusions.
Here’s the not so obvious list…
1) CTIA Goes Global—While the prominence of “international” in the word cloud is likely the direct result of the conference name, what caught my attention was “world” in the lower left portion of the cloud. While Mobile World Congress is still the king of international wireless shows, CTIA is gaining ground.
2) Innovation Driven by Smaller Players—Sure the carriers (see keynote) and the major device manufacturers will garner most of the media fanfare at CTIA, but if you look a little deeper, it is the emerging growth startups and app developers that drive the true innovation. Just check out this year’s Emerging Technology Award nominees…not many household names on the list. We are proud that Schwartz client WellDoc is on the list.
3) Marriage of Wireless and Retail—I’m not talking about retail stores for purchasing new devices, but more along the lines of retail communities adopting wireless as a marketing and selling tool. Expect a significant amount of news around retail-focused apps designed to help companies reach/influence more consumers on a regular basis to sell more stuff.
Marketing and PR people across the country are already attaching their company to larger trends with storylines and product news (both real and manufactured) to get on the crowded radar screens of the hundreds of media and bloggers attending CTIA Wireless 2011. It is a proven technique for getting smaller companies heard above the CTIA noise. So what trend are you riding to CTIA glory?
We are thrilled to be sponsoring Silicon Stilettos on Wednesday. Did you know the typical ratio of men versus women at most tech meet-ups is 80/20? Silicon Stilettos is a free women-only (or almost women-only) meet-up organised by Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson where women in tech can drink cocktails and take part in relaxed, no-pressure networking. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed Zuzanna’s events in the past and jumped at the chance to work with her on her latest meet-up.
If you’re a woman in tech, please join us for complimentary drinks and canapés (and great company!) at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday at:
In this series we're profiling top mobile industry trends in the run-up to Mobile World Congress 2011.
Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker predicted that mobile will overtake fixed line internet access by 2013. This growth is largely due to 3G wireless penetration, estimated at 20 - 25% worldwide, and smartphone adoption, expected to grow from around 16% of all mobile phone this year to 45% by 2014, according to Gartner.
Mobile commerce is booming on both sides of the pond and two recent studies found that consumers are using smartphones for Christmas shopping this year. Tesco Direct found that one in 10 Brits will do some of their online Christmas shopping using their mobile phone and IDC Retail Insights reported that in the US smartphones will account for at least $127 billion, or 28 percent, of the $447 billion the National Retail Federation predicts consumers will spend this holiday season.
According to a new report from ABI Research, mcommerce via the internet will reach $4.1 billion for 2010. Shoppers prefer using mobile browsers over apps, 54% to 41% in a study of US users by Lightspeed Research and 70% to 55% in a study of UK users by Orange. For a great roundup of recent studies see this post on the eConsultancy blog.
Despite the opportunities the mobile internet presents for retailers, many are lagging behind. Mobile Interactive Group recently evaluated the mcommerce capabilities of the UK's top 57 retailers in its inaugural Christmas Sock Report and found that only four retailers had an optimised transactional mobile site.
Executives from Intel, Softbank and Yahoo! will weigh in on the growth of the mobile internet in the keynote session The Evolution of the Mobile Internet, moderated by Wired UK Editor David Rowan at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday at Mobile World Congress.
The first day of the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show is over, and according to the exhibitors with whom I spoke, traffic has increased year-over-year and booth staffs are pleased with the type of attendee on the show floor.
While last year was dominated by the introduction of 3-D TVs, this year there are quite a number of sub-themes.
3-D is still strong, with many companies introducing second generation 3-D sets, and others showing off high quality sets that do not require glasses. But it is not only the TVs that are going 3-D. When I was over at the Venetian, talking to a number of the high-end audio manufacturers, 3-D audio was a common buzzword. This goes beyond the surround sound to which we are all used to by now by adding much more discrete segmenting. The old school PR pro in me wants to dub this Surround Sound 2.0, though.
eReaders are out in force this year, with more companies introducing larger, lighter, or higher resolution eReaders. Schwartz client, Hanvon, also showed of its color E Ink (client) based eReader. The technology I saw was impressive, but what was more impressive was the large number of eReaders I saw in the airports on the way to the show. The pricepoints are becoming more attractive, and the content is amazing, and the discussion around ease-of-use has always revolved around business travelers, not the general consumer. Most consumers don’t have to worry about making two trips to Asia a month…
From a PR and marketers point of view, though, this just reinforces the importance of creating content and eBooks for the eReader. The market is out there and it is a great way to communicate your message to a senior-level business audience.
Overall, though, according to other bloggers, tablets are the theme of the show. Dozens are being introduced and companies are betting big on the technology. I love the iPad I use, but it will be interesting to see how things evolve. When I was watching reporter interviews, if they used a mobile device for reporting, it was most frequently and iPhone or other smartphone. When I looked at folks relaxing and browsing the Web at CES, it was primarily via smartphone.
Tablets are definitely on the rise, but for now it is still a mobile world. With 4G and new innovations (LG introduced a dual core processor-powered mobile phone), I expect it to remain that way for some time to come.
The middle of this week, I zoomed off to attend the Digital PR Next Practices Summit put on by PR News. New York is an easy trip, so maybe I shouldn't have packed my "tell me something I don't already know" attitude, but that's how I approach all conferences. If I have to so much as budge from my desk, it needs to be worth it.
PR News didn't disappoint. As I sat and waited in vain for a wireless signal adequate to let me use my computer (let's not talk about why one would hold a tech conference in a building that has an anemic wireless network ... or maybe it's my computer), I scanned the attendee list. About 275 communicators from a range of big companies, including many huge consumer, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and tech brands. Plus universities, non-profits, government agencies and even religious organizations.
I had to resort to tweeting from my BlackBerry, but at that point didn't care because I was excited to be around so many other PR people. They were friendly and you can imagine just how loud a room of nearly 300 professional communicators can get.
The conference turned out to be excellent and well worth the time and money. I won't recap every session, but here are a few of my top observations.
The first panel, "Creating the Digital PR Dream Team," dug into the topic of getting the people and resources together to engage in and measure social media. The three panelists, who were from GM, the Archer Group and Kaiser Permanente, shared very specific info about who's on their social media teams and how they interact with corporate comm's, marcom, legal and so on. They talked about what they collaborate with agencies to achieve and what they prefer to handle internally.
The director of social media and digital communications from GM, Mary Henige, said they create one or two videos a week to share. This reminded me of a fantastic InsideView infographic on social media stats that I'd seen the night before. It says that Fortune 100 companies create an average of 10 videos each month to share online. I don't always think big companies lead the way in PR, but clearly they've got the budgets required to clean up in video.
Lee Mikles, CEO of the Archer Group, urged attendees to "say no to the Twitern," or cheap labor brought on to handle a company's social media interactions.
This resonated with me because I personally can't stand it when companies assume that social is free. I know they want it to be free in the same way that I'd like someone to trim my hair for free. Because darn if it's not expensive and it seems like it should be cheap. But I don't want someone who doesn't listen to me and know what they're doing to take on the job and the same holds true for companies and digital media. Just because someone "grew up online" and uses Foursquare to let the world know every time they enter a Starbucks does not mean they understand your business, your industry or your customers' preferences and problems.
Holly Potter, VP of PR for Kaiser Permanente, answered a question about hiring social media specialists by saying that she didn't find much value in "siloed expertise." Those who claim to be social media gurus almost invariably are not.
I agree that we're all learning and learning quickly and think good sense dictates that one not pretend to be thoroughly knowledgeable about something that's changing as quickly as social media. For a few years now, I've been a very interested observer as individuals or small agencies have pushed a focus on social and claimed that companies can ignore branded media. It's human to have a strong interest in the new thing, but it's shortsighted and shows a basic lack of understanding, however, when companies opt to focus on social alone.
I think the fascination with the new is giving way now and has shifted over the past year to a more balanced perspective. For some companies, it reflects a newfound understanding that digital isn't free and that social and branded media are so thoroughly intertwined that they can't be pulled apart and managed in isolation.
After panels on new social media tools and measuring ROI, I had to take a break to charge my BlackBerry. So I skipped the talk on how VW successfully launched a mobile gaming application. I kind of regret it in that I want to know as much as possible about this stuff, but I think I was also voting with my feet. I'm informed but not always impressed by successful PR campaigns that were accompanied by big budgets.
A thoughtful keynote at lunch by Sarah Evans of Sevans Strategy preceded a panel on identifying and engaging "the right" influencers. Then, on to the discussion that contained the most new info I absorbed all day--digital tactics and crisis communications.
Dallas Lawrence, managing director at Burson-Marsteller, made numerous good points, but one that really rose to the top of the pile was that it's too late for companies to get into social media when a crisis arises. (He said that crises can be brought about online by groups attacking your company or brand, by individuals who just don't like you or by external events.)
I suppose this is a bit like one of the basics of reputation management--if you work over time to develop a good reputation, you're better able to recover from crises. You may draw down your reservoir of good will, but at least you had something to draw upon and you're likely going to recover faster if people had a perception of you and it was positive. Perhaps they see the bad thing that happened as an aberration.
Mr. Lawrence noted that you can't adequately respond online if you aren't already part of online communities. Those communities may not be linked (e.g., people "following" you on Facebook aren't necessarily with you on Twitter), so it's not as if you can communicate through just one channel when things go wrong. You can't, for example, expect that if your company gets dragged through the mud in a video, you're going to be able to address the problem by communicating via a press release or corporate blog. You need to already be using the channels that your audiences choose to use in order to get through to them.
In all, I'm glad I stood up from my desk and attended the conference. What social media events have you found most informative lately?
The theme for this fall’s CTIA is finding new ways that unwired devices for consumers can squeeze more productivity and efficiency out of enterprise operations.
In particular, the Tablet PC seems to take top billing as the next great hope. RIM will be showing off its Playbook, billed as the first professional tablet, while the majority of closed door sessions are devoted to development on Tablet platforms. There is a seven-hour session scheduled to focus on building enterprise Tablet apps, as well as a number of boot camps for the Android and Nokia’s Symbian platforms. In fact, developers are said to make up the single largest segment of attendees at the event, at 23 percent of all registrants.
Moreover, non-phone devices are being designed left-and-right to fit very specific application needs. Just a few examples include mobile payment terminals, package tracking scanners, advanced field force management tools and wellness monitoring for a myriad of health conditions. The show really drills down into the latest and greatest mobile devices for business users, corporate initiatives and quality of life.
But it is not all about gadgets; a certain “bolstering of the network” must likewise occur. Because, as we all can attest from experience, the niftiest wireless device is only as good as its connection. Apple has been listening. After months of rumours, they chose this week to announce that iPhone will soon be available on the Verizon network.
It is also intriguing to note up-and-comer Lightsquared’s efforts to pre-empt Verizon in the LTE game, even if it's in words only. Lightsquared made it a point Monday to announce a move to get additional spectrum resources and enhance the capacity of its own 4G network. It will be especially interesting to see if Lightsquared succeeds in becoming a household name, or if its best intentions get swallowed up in the maelstrom. I am skeptical. The last time a “new” Tier 1 wireless operator succeeded was when Bell Atlantic Mobile changed its name to Verizon Wireless.
CTIA’s fall show has taken on new relevance with the focus on what wireless can really “do” for business.
Some of the brightest minds in public relations research and measurement today gathered for the first day of the Institute for Public Relations’ North American Summit on Measurement. They are here to share their best practices on research and measurement, and to discuss the future of PR measurement.
It was great to hear so many research professionals recommending the types of benchmarking that the Schwartz Research Group does as a matter of course our clients.
The summit began with @kdpaine and Dr. Don Stacks reviewing a number of core measurement best practices. Some of the things that jumped out at me were that:
• 66% of time if people say will do something, they will • PR campaigns that address and engage values can make a seismic shift when it comes to behavior • Research without proper analysis is just pretty charts • You must benchmark at the beginning of an engagement to identify if you met your campaign goals and objectives
While much of this was common sense, there were also very engaging discussions on the evolution of online surveys and best practices for increasing response rates and avoiding accidental bias; seven steps to measurement perfection; and new ways of measuring social media engagement.
To me, the highlight of the afternoon was the opportunity for us to speak with Dr. James and Larissa Grunig, two of the deans of PR measurement. I remember learning about Grunig’s two way symmetric communications model more than 20 years ago, and it is great to see how social media is causing the death of other models, and driving more companies to engage in true dialog (what Dr James Grunig has advocated for decades).
Grunig rightly pointed out many of the growing pain social media is going through, but is confident of its continued evolution and ability to drive deeper connections. He made a point that I have been evangelizing for a while – the core principles of good public relations have not been changed by social media. It has made symmetry, strategy, and engagement even more crucial.
One of the key themes that came across during the discussion was the role PR needs to play in corporate social responsibility and sustainability. While CSR has been a core element of public relations for quite a while, Grunig is seeing some of the largest companies internationally start to want to measure not just at the program level, but at the societal level.
Grunig opined that companies need to beware the CSR trap. CSR does not equal publicity for charitable giving. True corporate social responsibility projects align with the needs of the organization and will positively benefit all stakeholders. Some companies Grunig spoke with in Brazil are starting to consider both the environment and the next two generations of humans, animals and plants as stakeholders.
Overall, an excellent start to the summit. Tomorrow will look at global digital communications measurement, measuring influence and other topics.
Follow updates throughout the day at @mcclennan or #iprmeasure.
CTIA Enterprise & Applications starts Wednesday so we decided to take a quick, visual look at blogger buzz leading up to the show.
Our word cloud shows lots of blogging about broadband, spectrum and the FCC, as the Net Neutrality debate continued in high gear. Last week, CTIA provided its comments on net neutrality to the FCC, stating that the rules for the wired Internet don’t apply to the wireless ecosystem. No surprises here. Lowell MacAdam, president and CEO of Verizon, is keynoting at CTIA Wednesday morning, so attendees will likely hear more on this topic, in the vein of Verizon’s joint statement with Google in August.
Bloggers picked up on another piece of news that involved the FCC and CTIA. Researchers at the University of North Texas Health Science Center studied traffic data from the Fatality Accident Reporting System and texting data from the FCC and CTIA. They reported that accidents caused by texting while driving ended the lives of 16,141 Americans between 2001 and 2007.
This is a sobering statistic. Massachusetts is among 30 states that have clamped down on texting by teen drivers with a ban that goes into effect this month. Boston.com reported on another study last week, which claims that these laws have not yet lowered the accident rates.
RIM shows up prominently in the word cloud, too. Last week RIM made a big spash with its announcement of the Playbook tablet. With a slew of cutting-edge hardware features for business users, the Playbook also boasts one of the world's most robust and flexible operating systems, from our client QNX. The BlackBerry Tablet OS is built on the QNX® Neutrino® microkernel architecture, one of the most reliable, secure and robust operating system architectures in the world, used to support mission-critical applications in everything from planes, trains and automobiles to medical equipment and the largest core routers that run the Internet.
We'll be blogging about the buzz at CTIA all week, so stay tuned.
On June 17, Xconomy will once again bring out the New England revolutionaries in business, academia and technology for XSITE 2010. XSITE has become one of New England’s most anticipated conferences. This year’s theme is “Building the Next Economy,” reflecting the region’s obsession with inventing products. It will offer the perfect venue to explore the realities of the startup life cycle and the obstacles entrepreneurs must overcome to succeed in frontier fields like wireless health services, smart grid technologies, biotech, and even the design and manufacturing cluster. Schwartz Communications is eXITEd to sponsor this event for the second year. This year’s host is Babson College, with support from the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Wellesley.
The day will begin with opening remarks from Babson College President Len Schlesinger and Olin College President Rick Miller. Keynote appearances will include Rodney Brooks, co-founder, chairman and CTO, Heartland Robotics; Peter Hecht, CEO, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals; Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO, X Prize Foundation; and Richard Pops, chairman and CEO of Alkermes.
Throughout the day, Innovator Profile presentations will highlight the efforts of new and exciting companies in New England. Massachusetts continues to be at forefront of technological advances. According to a recent study from the Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy by Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, on a per capita basis, Massachusetts inventors were granted more patents than any other state or nation.
Plenary sessions will include “Innovation After Acquisition” featuring IBM and Schwartz client E Ink and “Is Venture Dead?”, which brings together leading investors from around the U.S., including Vulcan Capital, Intel Capital, and Boston Millennia Partners. During the afternoon, attendees will participate in breakout sessions on life sciences, energy/cleantech, health IT, and information technology, and hear firsthand how New England’s startups, large companies, and academic leaders are driving dynamic change.
Finally, a dozen of the region’s most promising emerging firms in IT, life sciences, and energy will strut their stuff at XSITE Xpo, a rapid fire session with audience voting on which companies will be the most transformative.
XSITE 2010 will take place on June 17 from 8:15 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., with a networking reception to follow. For information about the agenda and registration, go to http://xsite2010.eventbrite.com/. You can also follow and participate in the Twitter chatter using the hash tag #xsite10.
In the bad days of PR measurement, some PR professionals would try to impress clients (or bosses) with the ‘Thud factor’ how big and heavy a clip book could they drop on a desk. It was all about volume, circulation and hits. But as KD Paine says, HITS stands for “How Idiots Track Success.” This lead some to focus on quantity rather than quality and to some inflated circulation and reach figures that didn't tie back in to core business objectives.
At Schwartz, and at many other firms and organizations, we focus on measuring outcomes and results. Impact and Influence are core. What business impact did our PR programs have?
Yes, we use measures such as share of voice and key message penetration. We look at conversion, change in consumer perception, increase in Web traffic, increase in searches and other metrics. These are elements of good PR measurement that have a tie back to business results. Many of these have a direct correlation.
But now I am seeing the poor measurement of yesterday rearing its ugly head in the social media world of today.
I call it Thud 2.0.
Instead of ‘hits’ the new Thud factor is “How many followers/fans” do you have. The bigger the better. People are flexing their social media muscle and getting out the measuring tape.
Of course, they are measuring the wrong thing.
At the Social Media Club Boston meeting Thursday last night, EMC, Vico Software, IDG and other companies showed us how they are measuring the right thing. Most impressive was Holly Allison. She handles public relations and marketing for Vico Software ( a company that makes software for commercial construction). She was showing how her efforts worked throughout the sales funnel and how they translated directly into sales. Yet she seemed apologetic for having such small followers or visits. She is selling to a much smaller B2B universe. The business results were impressive, so it doesn’t matter how big the bicep is…
The SMC session was an interesting contrast to a talk by Paul Gillin with the Mass Technology Leadership Council the day before. He exposed how many B2B executives with whom he speaks are still just looking at the Thud factor when it comes to social media. (Aside from a few that are showing a direct tie to more effective recruiting).
I plan to be writing much more on measurement in the coming months, but I wanted to start it off with a simple call to action. Resist Thud 2.0.
Make sure your social media efforts are tied to business results. Don’t become obsessed with followers. Look at how engaged they are. Do they click through to your Web site? Respond to tweets? Praise you to others? Purchase products?
The goal of social media for business should not be trying to see if you can be the most popular kid in school.
When I have the opportunity to lead internal training sessions here at Schwartz Communications, every one of them begins with three simple words: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. While it may seem like an obvious message, all too often PR practitioners, marketers and even sales people sometimes lose their way, either forgetting who their audience is or not applying the appropriate thought to go along with what they are presenting and to whom. Ultimately, the end result can lead to not closing the deal...in whatever capacity that means to the person "selling". Even worse, a lasting impression can be made that might prevent you or your organization from having future success with those particular people (and wherever the word of mouth spreads).
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a relatively small IT industry conference -- about 250 attendees. For the most part, attendees of this conference were not your average IT professionals, but rather highly advanced and among the best at what they do. At this event, they gather to hear about what their peers are working on and to share experiences. Now that you have a sense for what the predominant attendee profile is like, I will share one of my experiences from the event that ties back to the importance of knowing your audience.
As with any event or form of communication, you typically need that "eye-catching" component that is going to lure the prospect in and serve as the basis for why they should care about what you are selling. For trade shows or related events, often times the keynote speakers work in this capacity. For this particular event, one of the attention grabbers was a very well known C-level executive from a prominent technology vendor. For an event of this size to land a speaker of this cache' was pretty impressive, or so it would have seemed on the surface.
While it was great for this fledgling event to land a big name for one of the showcased sessions, in my opinion the presentation was not only lackluster in the content itself, but also a complete failure by both the presenter and the show's management in terms of knowing their audience and what value would be derived from the session. The presenter used what appeared to be a "corporate-approved" and tremendously wordy slide deck (aka: "Death by PowerPoint"). What's worse, the presentation consistently came off as an advertisement for the speaker’s employer and how the company is structured. Arguably, *some* of this information was of interest to *some* in attendance, but the overall nature of what was presented was a miss for this particularly adept audience.
Based on the role that this organization plays in the IT space, there certainly could have been a far more appropriate and appealing conversation with this crowd of highly intellectual practitioners. Delivered content aside, it is hard to pin this failure on the speaker alone, as someone of this stature, in an organization of this size, likely had little to do with putting the slide deck together. It is even less likely that the presenter had any sense of the audience that was being presented to.
Despite being a relatively small audience, it is my estimation that the presenters organization failed to capitalize on the unique opportunity that they were given to present at this topically-focused industry conference. By either ignoring or failing to understand the audience, the content shared by the speaker was devoid of any meaningful value and largely amounted in wasted time for not only the attendees looking to be educated, but for the speaker and the speaker’s company itself.
Later in the day, one of the event advisors caught up with me for a chat and asked what I had thought of the aforementioned session. When I began to provide some candid feedback, it quickly became evident that he was not expecting to hear this. When we discussed this further, I got the sense that the audience itself was overlooked and that the event’s management was simply very excited about landing the big name speaker.
I'd be willing to bet that had they started with identifying who the audience was and asking what big name people are out there that could provide value for those paying to be educated, they may have still come up with this particular speaker or an industry executive of similar stature, but would have done so under the condition that the presentation material was designed for those in attendance.
This brings me to another area where I believe the conference organizers failed: they never provided an abstract of what this executive’s discussion would be about in their event session guide handout. I thought this was odd, as all of the other sessions being conducted included an abstract. However, for the headliner speakers, all that was included was a bio, which is arguably the least valuable information that can be provided. After all, the folks that were keynoting were presumably the MOST well known at the event. As an attendee, I would prefer that they give me bios of some of the lesser known folks that conducted some truly amazing sessions, so I can get to know them a bit better. I am sure everyone at the event knew the role that this executive serves in and at which organization. Knowing where the speaker matriculated from is, well, about as valuable as the slide deck that was presented.
While "big" names out there might be considered a drawing card for an event, it is equally important to ensure that the content to be delivered speaks to the audience. My advice to this conferences management for next time is to either better leverage the speakers and have them talk to the audience about issues that matter to them or bring in someone that the actual attendees would consider to be a drawing card. If the event’s audience was different, then perhaps this speaker would have been a draw, but my guess is based on the amount of folks in the room at the time of the presentation (with no other competing sessions going on), it clearly wasn't the case.
Whether you are writing a press release, preparing marketing collateral, participating at an event or putting together any communications vehicle where you are seeking to get a message or point across to someone else to best position your organization's products, people or services, always start by knowing your audience. By beginning with this simple step, you will not only find yourself in a better position to create content that helps address why the audience should care what you have to say, but it will also help you avoid the possibility of doing more harm than good and alienating those that you want to influence in a positive way. In this example, the show organizers and the speaker failed to embrace who the audience was and an opportunity was lost for all parties involved.
Oh the pressure of the big show. CES. RSA. NAB. Interop. These are major venues for many tech vendors, including countless clients. The pressure to announce big news - even if the time isn't right - presents problems for many clients. Some struggle with the ethical and business dilemma of announcing products that are still evolving day-to-day with no foreseeable ship date or corresponding revenue.
It begs the question, is pre-launch the equivalent of vaporware, and how do you make the most of the opportunity a trade show provides?
Vaporware defined Wikipedia describes vaporware as “a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development, if there is significant doubt whether the product will actually be released.” The term dates back to the 1980s and there’s even a running list of known vaporware on Wikipedia.
One long-awaited product that evaded the vaporware watch list was CrunchPad, now called the JooJoo tablet, with recent reports in Engadget, PC Magazine and elsewhere that it is finally shipping—just as the iPad is also coming to market. Both JooJoo and iPad were pre-announced long before development was completed and the products were on the road to eager consumers.
Pre-launch without getting burned When clients ask about how to pre-launch visionary technologies at their most important event, the first question we ask is, What are your goals?
If generating reams of news articles is your top priority, you might want to reset expectations or reconsider. With fewer beat reporters going to trade shows, competition for media exposure is steep. Most hard news reporting from the show floor focuses on major industry developments and commentary from industry luminaries.
Don’t mislead a reporter about a new product and damage an important relationship in the process. It’s okay to discuss future technologies but call it what it is – Alpha or even pre-Alpha, a prototype or skunkworks project if it’s unclear whether it will ever come to market. By respecting reporters and not wasting their time if you don’t have anything concrete or truly time-sensitive to discuss at an event, you’ll win in the long run.
On the other hand, if the main goal is showcasing prototypes of next-gen products to engage customers and prospects, and further define your long-term technology roadmap as well as that of an evolving market category, a trade show could be the ideal venue. Industry events provide a captive audience of target customers and enable companies to get feedback from user communities and industry analysts. Customers drive innovation as much as vendors do. A request for major new features, a redesign or companion technology from a major customer can push vendors into rapid development, often without a clear sense of the final outcome and product delivery dates.
Key considerations
Identify goals—Determine what is most important - press coverage, customer engagement or general buzz at the booth – and if a major venue is the best option.
Be clear—When previewing next-gen technology, call it what it is, a prototype or a skunkworks project that is being tested for viability and for general customer and end- user feedback.
Contextualize it—Explain how it fits within the technology roadmap and existing product ecosystem, and the broader story your company is trying to communicate.
Make it tangible—Show a prototype or visual schematic to illustrate the merits of the product under development and what sets it apart; provide initial test results if available.
Don’t lie—Don’t promise to deliver product by a date that’s virtually impossible to meet.
Keep market updated—After the initial announcement, update relevant constituents about the status of the product.
While it might be harder than ever for small companies and start ups to secure news coverage at big events that feature billion dollar global enterprises, it’s not impossible.
One Schwartz client previewed a prototype of new mobile networking software at Macworld. The company exhibited at the show to network with developers who might want to use its SDK to embed the new software into their products. Our client had spent six months on R&D, had a working prototype, and field test results to share with customers and reporters. From all counts it was a success and the client was pleased with the experience, both as exhibitor and from the resulting news coverage.
Help PR succeed If you’ve decided to pre-launch at an event, below are top ways to help your communications team succeed:
Prepare early—Give PR enough time to get ready by educating them on the new development and the impact it will have on the market.
Pre-brief reporters—Share the news before the chaos of the event to increase the odds of getting your product announcement included in show daily reports.
Share data—Reporters like hard data; when possible, incorporate proprietary industry research, preliminary test results to make the product real.
Enlist customer support—Connect reporters with customers who can address the need for the new product. Customers can convert a background meeting into coverage.
With trade show season is in full swing, stress about the big event is palpable for many tech executives and their PR counterparts. But careful prep work and clarity on goals will ensure everyone gets the most out of the event.
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending the PR News Measurement Summit in Washington D.C. It was a gathering of a few hundred PR professionals interested in advancing PR measurement and sharing best practices for tying public relations to business results. The topics would be of interest to anyone in consumer, technology or cleantech public relations.
There were a half-dozen sessions, but there were a few themes that ran throughout them.
1) The Fallacy of AVE. Last year, the IPR and other professional PR organizations condemned ad value equivalency as a faulty measure of public relations success (and I cheered them on). It was a handy crutch in the past, but not something that measured the right results and did not have a good correlation to an organization's business results. I swear the room was never more energized than when people were criticizing this flawed metric that uses one industry's benchmarks to try to justify something completely different.
One of the presenters at the conference introduced a relatively new metric "Weighted Media Costs" I applaud the work the creators of this metric have done, but I still see it as AVE wearing a tuxedo. I have yet to be convinced otherwise. Anytime you use ad space cost, but remove the dollar signs so as to differentiate yourself from AVE, you are already starting down a very slippery slope.
2) Social media has permeated B2B, B2C and the government. Almost every presentation showcased how companies were engaging and measuring social media. From a personal point of view, it also validated the approach we take at Schwartz. The focus on tying PR to business results was used by all presenters- from the largest agencies to large multinationals. While there was some discussion of tactics and tools (Legistalker, Socialmention and Twiangulate seemed to be the most popular free tools) the focus was on getting meaningful measurement without breaking the bank.
3) Government and public affairs have embraced social media. While many of us know that at some level, and it was definitely proven in the latest Massachusetts Senate race, some of the metrics are telling:
64% of Congressional staff say “blogs are more useful than mainstream media for identifying future national political problems and debates.” (PR Week)
Congress has embraced multiple platforms:
96% have Facebook pages 79% have YouTube channels 41% have Twitter accounts
The key takeaway from the whole conference? One I have been championing for years. For public relations to continue to grow and be an essential element of an organization's business strategy, PR professionals need to relate their activities to business results.
By guest blogger Joe Palladino, Senior Account Executive
With the International CTIA WIRELESS 2010 show in full swing, the floor is buzzing with new uses for wireless technologies and the need for increased bandwidth. Wireless technology has become a component in virtually every industry, and we can clearly see that CTIA is embracing the many verticals finding its new capabilities, efficiencies and revenue streams. Now we just need the bandwidth to handle it all.
The show features panels on everything from wireless health to smart energy and from retail solutions to intelligent transportation. Today, CTIA released semi-annual stats that tell the story of ever-increasing usage, foreshadowing the need for greater bandwidth. For example, wireless data service revenues are up by 25.7 percent, exceeding $22 billion in the last half of 2009.
Cloud computing and mobilizing the enterprise are also hot topics at CTIA, as smartphones often serve as the new laptop computer for traveling professionals. For example, Schwartz client Fiberlink Communications Corporation recently released a technology adoption profile conducted by Forrester that shows 95% of healthcare enterprises rely on smartphones for work.
CTIA Chairman Ralph de la Vega, also the president and CEO of AT&T’s mobile division, addressed mobile broadband, next-generation networks and the need to increase wireless bandwidth. In his keynote speech, de la Vega noted that the FCC is working to increase frequency spectrum, but predicted that we’ll outstrip even the capabilities of the new frequencies in short time. Carriers will need to redouble their efforts to get next-generation networks in place to meet increasing needs as virtually every industry moves toward wireless solutions.
By guest blogger Avi Dines, Director, Accounts & Digital Content
I’m sitting 1,300 miles away from VoiceCon Orlando, but feel as connected as ever. The news deluge from the event, including articles, blogs and tweets, along with live TV feeds from conference keynotes provides a good flavor for the conference activities. Keeping track of Schwartz clients as well as other industry players has never been easier. Here is a sampling.
Schwartz client Digium continues to turn heads and impress with its Voice over IP Unified Communications solution Switchvox. ChannelWeb highlights Switchvox SMB 4.5 here. The company also announced the winner of its Extreme Phone Makeover, awarding a new Switchvox Unified Communications system and Polycom® SoundPoint® IP phones, valued up to $10,000, to Boys and Girls Club of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Empirix OneSight also made ChannelWeb’s Top 25 products to see at VoiceCon. The company set the stage for the conference, kicking off with President, Strategic Networks Group, Lisa Pierce's panel on SIP Trunking, and by all accounts it was a lively session discussing the various bugaboos that arise from trying to recreate the consistency of TDM in SIP trunk environments.
Siemens Enterprise Communications has made two announcements at VoiceCon so far. The first is OpenScape UC Server 2010, unified communications (UC) optimized for the data center and virtualized environments. The company also announced a partnership with VMware for virtualized real-time communications deployment. Siemens Enterprise Communications also made a splash with a keynote from Senior Vice President, Voice & Applications Solutions Mark C. Straton, which can be seen – on demand – through VoiceCon TV. Along with informative content about the company and current state of UC, the presentation dazzled with a customer guest, lasers, a video and 3D presentation for attendees.
Kudos to VoiceCon, attendee bloggers and myriad news sources for keeping us up-to-speed with the action on the ground.
By guest blogger Rob Skinner, Senior Media Strategist
Based on the day one buzz, a primary theme at this year’s CTIA WIRELESS 2010 (running today through Thursday, March 25) centers on putting wireless networks to work for more than just voice. For the carriers, this means pushing into device categories beyond handsets, including e-books, net books and tablets.
What’s more interesting to me, however, is extending this theme beyond the consumer. Accenture, for example, is leading a panel on the smarter use of energy, and this year’s show marks the debut of a Telehealth pavilion, where vendors show how wireless can improve patients’ quality of life—arguably far more meaningful areas of the economy than the latest iPhone app or gaming device.
On a personal level, I often ask myself how “wireless” can become synonymous with “sustainability” when my mobile provider sees fit to charge an extra fee for the millisecond bursts that text messages require, even as my family stays well below the allotted minutes on our voice plan each month. Can’t they just count that text as a minute used against our voice plan? What’s so special about it?
But this is the way carriers are set up, to maximize ARPU by any means available. And who can blame them?
Contrast the consumer’s experience with the aims of Schwartz client KORE Telematics, an MVNO that is entirely dedicated to making wireless data connectivity work for many of the applications noted above. As company President and COO Alex Brisbourne eloquently puts it, “We realized in 2003 that application providers simply cannot operate profitably under traditional plan-based pricing, and introduced the industry’s first ‘pay for what you use’ model at that time.”
KORE is now pushing this concept one level further with a new rate model for wireless data that self-adjusts according to the customer’s usage patterns. They call it IntelliRate, and KORE believes that bringing the price point of wireless data services more closely in step with commercial bottom lines allows wireless innovation to move more doggedly toward fostering sustainable businesses. The strategy is sound, and I look forward to seeing how it takes hold in the market.
There was a lot that went on today at SxSW, but it all seemed to revolve around Twitter. From @Ev’s keynote introducing @anywhere to panels, hallway discussions and hordes of techies tweeting while dancing and singing at TechKaraoke.
Twitter does a good job of explaining the new service, but basically it allows any site to tag content to Twitter that let’ people follow feeds from the site (or people mentioned on the site) without leaving the site. It looks cool, but it did not blow the audience away. I see any savvy consumer technology or B2B public relations professional who is creating content making use of it eventually in the content they create for their brands.
The panel after the keynote was moderated by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) and had a number of opinionated, passionate and interesting social media personalities, including @scobleizer and @pistachio.
They basically highlighted their favorite Twitter tools. I thought some of them might be of interest to our readers, so I wanted to highlight a few.
Oneforty.com – Basically, @pistachio’s Twitter App Store, complete with rankings and reviews. Spend time there if you haven’t already.
Friend or Follow – Lets you see who you are following who isn’t following you (TwitterKarma)
For corporate PR folks working to manager a Twitter stream (and have analytics) there are CoTweet.Hootsuite or Tweetriver
The most interesting panel of the entire show (for me at least) happened at 5:00 p.m. in a remote hotel. During the 90 minutes, Citibank revealed the process and procedures they used to secure approval for social media engagement in a heavily regulated environment. I will write more on it later, for it is worth a blog post on its own.
Today was my last day at SxSW. It lived up to the promise. Great sessions, good people and thought provoking ideas. The dominant themes of the conference were mobility, connectivity and crowdsourcing (with a very focused financial services minor). Over the next few weeks I will share additional insights on this blog. There is a lot that I didn’t cover, but hopefully the snapshots over the past few days will give our readers some useful insight. I will be digesting what I learned at the show in the weeks to come.
The day started off with a great Social Media Breakfast Austin/SxSW where I had a chance to hang out with a few hundred other social media professionals. I saw some old friends and met a few new people with some really interesting companies. I ended up reconnecting with many of them at the Microsoft party later in the evening.
Compared to the first two days of the SxSW, the panels were interesting, but not as strong.
The first panel I attended took a look at the use of applications for extending the brand. The main takeaways were the iPhone is now the dominant brand platform, eclipsing Facebook (for the company has more control). The general consensus from the audience and panel ties into the theme I raised yesterday in my banking recap: The future is mobile. They also emphasized the brand needs to take a backseat in the application or consumers won’t stay engaged.
One if the most interesting points in the session was the debate over the use of apps for engaging consumers. The general consensus is one most consumer technology marketing people have heard for years “The days of brands doing traditional marketing are gone. They need to engage customers in social dialogue and provide utility, or they won’t have lasting relationship.”
A strong counterargument that was advanced speaks for itself “I like toothpaste, but don’t want to have a two way conversation with it.”
That being said, what Charmin has done with mothers rating bathrooms shows the type of discussions one can have for common household items.
The second panel I attended was hosted by Scott Kirsner and dealt with effective ways to build a cult (or Facebook and Twitter followers…your choice). While there was little earth-shattering about the discussion, it reinforced that building a community usually takes time, it requires constantly refreshed new content and it has to *be* a community. Talking to customers does not draw a crowd. Talking *with* customers draws a crowd. The filmmaker he interviewed advocated letting fans be part of the process. Engage them. They them use your content, have fun with it and create new things. They will help promote your movie (or software) much more if they feel a sense of some ownership. The final important point was that if your content isn’t embeddable, it’s like you are leaving on a roadtrip without any gas.
Finally I attended a session with Peter Molyneux, one of the most influential game designers of the past 30 years. I went both because I have worked with many game companies and because the topic intrigued me – How can videogames speak to the heart? I thought there are lessons that could be applied to public relations and marketing. To my surprise, I think I was the only non-filmmaker or game designer in the room.
The first thing Molyneux said tied back to the first panel on mobile apps and the theme that emerged today. Movies can never engage like games. Movies want flaccid robots. Think about that in terms of traditional public relations or marketing, and now how PR has evolved. By making consumers’ voices heard, knowing they have a stake in your brand, companies can create an emotional connection they could never create through shouting.
So the question is, how are we as public relations professionals working to create that connection every day?
Were there other panels I missed? Let me know what you think about SxSW.
SxSW today for me was all about something near and dear to my heart (and many of my clients) banking and payments. I managed to carve out enough time to attend three banking sessions. The sessions ran the gamut from tips for personal finance to the future of banking and the role of geeks in finance.
There a few lessons any financial services technology company should carve in stone, but these rules also apply to consumer technology and other markets.
Consumers are dead. (or at least dying). They are evolving into active participants. They don’t want to pick from a menu, or be given one choice, they want to be empowered. Smart banks and financial technology companies are empowering consumers and giving them actionable advice and data.
Financial services UI (user interfaces) need a revamp. I know Mint.com has done it, as has my client Fiserv. Both are putting great emphasis on this. I see it as another variation on death by PowerPoint. Having tons of data can be great, but you need quick, actionable intelligence to make the right decision.
At first the second session was being bit too anti-bank. Banks serve a role, and all agree banks are essential. The challenge is many FIs are risking being disintermediated by third-party developers that don’t work with the bank. That’s what all the panelists in the second session we championing, so banks should pay attention and work on innovation within their services and offerings.
Mint.com has been very successful to date, and its executives were featured on two panels. There were a few key points I thought were of interest:
Mint.com built its following by hanging out where the consumers are, rather than creating their own community. They find it more effective. I believe both have their place, but it ties back into the fundamental premise of successful social media engagement – strategy before social.
Mint also does not buy PPC, they have found creating short videos and making them widely available to be most effective. Their consumers prefer that type of activity, and it lets them provide a richer (no pun intended), more detailed experience.
The consensus in multiple panels was the future of banking is mobile. But mobile information is just the first step, financial institutions need to focus on transactional capabilities, as well as advice and counsel. Getting tailored advice on your cell phone is much more valuable. That’s a message every good marketer knows – tailored, relevant and useful information engenders more loyalty.
Consumers need to pay attention as well. According to the speaker in the first session, Ramit Sethi, consumers are fundamentally delusional when it comes to money: 20% of people polled think they will get rich via the lottery and 3% though an insurance settlement.
While yesterday was all about the human network, Day 2 of SxSW was about the evolving financial network. There are a lot of interesting things on the horizon. As a final note, if you haven’t checked out CreditKarma yet, you should. A very interesting site that brings a lot of value to helping consumers improve their credit score.
It’s a good thing I am a morning person and registered early, as this line demonstrates. Many of the folks in the line missed the first sessions. (This is the line to get into the exhibit hall to register)
The first session at SxSW dealt with social media marketing, and while it covered many thing I already knew, there were a number of interesting insights to take from it. One of the points the speakers (Chris Winfield and Tony Adam) made is one I have been making for years – Web 1.0 (forums) still matter. The power of niche social media sites and networks can trump the power of Digg, Facebook and others. You eliminate much of the chaff and keep just the wheat.
Two key things I was reminded of in the session that I thought might be of interest to technology public relations pros:
When trying to find the most popular niche boards, http://rankings.big-boards.com/ is a good place to start.
Being engaged (without spamming) on Yahoo! Answers can also advance thought leadership campaigns.
The second session, with Brian Solis talking about the themes in his new book, Engage, was a great session packed with good advice. A lot of it was a positive reaffirmation of what many companies engaging in social media are already doing, but there were some new ways of thinking about things that he drove home. He seems to have taken the Tipping Point categories and expanded on them to identify the types of people that you tend to interact with on social networks, and how you can impact their hearts and minds. This has some intriguing implications and is with thinking about much more than most people do.
He also reinforced a point from the first session. The networks don’t matter, the channels will change, it’s the human network that we are all a part of that is truly driving and advancing the social media change and the impact it is having on business. Companies that enter the network in the right way can have a significant impact. Those that do not, may do OK, but will never excel.
He also drove home a point Schwartz’s president, Bryan Scanlon, has been making quite a bit recently - listening and talking aren’t enough. You need content to drive the discussion. Every company is now its own CNN, and they need to promote what they do, listen, and interact. They can’t rely on the media to give them pre-made programs (articles) anymore. There is much more to the channel than their ever was and technology, consumer, green, and healthcare PR pros need to pay attention.
Some other elements on which I will expound in more detail in later posts include:
Most social networks are matriarchies
The social compass is a good guide to developing a coherent and effective social media strategy
Social media engagement fails if there is not a human in some way associated with the brand
B2B Tech companies were the first to adopt social media with developer forums. There are benefits many B2B tech companies are overlooking.
Banks and other location based venues should look at foursquare. Now 1500 venues are giving rewards to their mayors and driving traffic and deeper relationships.
Check back tomorrow for more highlights from SxSW.
If you are reading this and at the conference, what were some of the best lessons you learned today?
SxSW starts today, and there will be five days full of panels, discussions and debates of interest to technology and consumer technology companies, social media and public relations professionals. I checked in this morning, and found out SxSW is not really a morning crowd...
I will be live tweeting and blogging regularly from some of the most interesting panels and sessions. What struck me as I was perusing the program is the amount of attention being given to online banking and the future of finance. There are about a half dozen programs on the topic.
So check in at the Crossroads throughout the weekend for my updates and thoughts on this dynamic gathering.
Macworld is in full swing and going strong this week in San Francisco (Note: Schwartz does PR for the event, but I am not on the team). It was interesting to see the transformation of Macworld over the years. iPhone apps and mobile technology seemed to be the hottest apps at the show and drew some of the greatest buzz.
In speaking with exhibitors and attendees they report attendance appears to be up this year and the quality was high. About all you can ask for in a trade show.
To me, what really stood out were the range of iPhone apps and the ways in which to improve them. One company I spoke with claimed to have put $500 of IP into a $0.99 iPhone app. This shows that more sophisticated tools are constantly coming to the iPhone. The Hypermac folks were drawing some of the biggest crowds at the show with their batteries that help significantly prolong the life of iPhones, iPods and Macbooks. People were primarily talking about the iPhone. I heard very little about the iPad, but that may well have been the company I kept.
Macworld continues to have a much different vibe than CES. For one thing, you can actually see all the exhibitors. For another, the Macworld exhibitors were quite willing to get into discussions and debates with the Mac faithful. I know I took part in a few debates on topics ranging from PR measurement to open source. It was a vibrant and energized crowd.
The session that intrigued me the most featured Scott Kurtz, the author of one of my favorite Web comics (PVPOnline). He had two of the most telling comments of the show, both of which I paraphrase just a bit below.
1) Keep an open mind for retail channels. By giving away his Webcomics for free, he creates merchandise slaves (my words). It's not always about ad revenue, once you have the eyeballs and engagement, revenue opportunities open up. Just keep looking for them.
2) If newspapers die we are all in trouble - Basically, there will always be a need for hyperlocal coverage and the newspapers for non-urban areas still provide excellent value. He also decried the type of stories the reporters cover today, but that is a different post.
Overall, it was an enjoyable show, with some real diamonds of undiscovered technology. What did you think of the show?
Social media is an integral part of many companies' marketing programs today. Tech companies in particular no longer view social media as optional or an experiment; rather, it's a core element of their outreach to customers, partners, employees and other constituents. Naturally, companies are starting to think about how to measure social media's impact.
On Tuesday, February 2, Katie Delahaye Paine will speak at a Mass Technology Leadership Council breakfast seminar on measuring social media campaigns. The author of All You Need to Know About Measuring Social Media and the Complete How-To Guide to Measuring Social Media, Ms. Paine is widely known for her expertise in measuring PR, social media, media relations, public affairs, internal communications and blogs.
The February 2 event runs from 8:00-10:00 a.m. at the Foley Hoag Emerging Enterprise Center located at 1000 Winter Street in Waltham, Mass. Breakfast starts at 7:30 a.m. You can register here.
Schwartz is a sponsor of Mass TLC's social media group. We look forward to seeing you there.
When it comes to CES in 2010, I am already noticing a dominant theme start to emerge in consumer technology at the show this year. This year isn’t about smaller devices and form factors- it’s all about if you are fat or thin. Size doesn’t seem to matter as much as width.
Fat is beautiful (or in this case metaphorical depth) The hottest tech (by far) the first day of CES was 3D television. Navigating through the Central Hall today was a matter of threading your way through a jam packed crowd hoping to see the TVs in action. A number of consumer technology companies were displaying 3D TVs, but Samsung’s were the most accessible. Seeing sports on them is definitely an interesting (and great) experience. And the glasses look nothing like the ones I wore as a kid…
I was speaking with one of my colleagues (Dara Sklar) about this technology and she believes the true barrier that will potentially slow adoption of the 3D television is going to be the content. The TV manufacturers need to convince the filmmakers and production companies to invest in the new filming and editing equipment. But this is a challenge developers have faced many times before and I am convinced they will address this issue in the coming year.
I definitely see 3D TV as the future, but I am not yet convinced it is as transformative as HDTV was. When you first saw HDTV, the reaction was “Holy Cow!” The crispness was something a consumer had never seen before. Watching a football game in HDTV on a 60” TV makes you cry when you go home to a 32” regular TV. I don’t get that same feeling when I watch 3D TV. People have seen 3D movies before. It is amazing technology, but it is not quite as transformative as HDTV was in my humble opinion. For the end consumer though – it’s all good news.
Thin is in – The other key thing I am seeing is people going for ever thinner TVs, displays, with LG announcing one just 7 mm thick. Other manufacturers are also showcasing their thin formfactor, I love the technology – but as an end consumer, the sharpness, contrast and color depth and the Quad Pixel technology are more compelling features for me.
The other theme I noticed today was the explosion of safe driving technologies. Most focused on hands free technology, but approached the issue from different angles. Some looked at it from a business/fleet owner perspective, while others added parental controls for teenage drivers. All in all, I expect speech technology to become an integral part of car audio systems in the next few years. The most exciting technology I saw was a company that has the technology that enables you to speak and hear text messages (I know that sounds ironic) but I plan to try it out in the next few weeks.
Traffic was down (except in the Central Hall), but many of the exhibitors indicated that quality and the number of meetings they had were up.
What trends did you see? Do you agree with the relative impact of HDTV vs. 3D TV?
Next week the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) takes place in Las Vegas, the venue which vendors debut the latest in the technology gadgets of the future. With so many new products entering the market, inevitably products that utilize older technology slowly reach end-of-life status. Along those lines Smartmoney.com has issued a list of "10 Things Not to Buy" with their predictions for the products where innovation will cease in 2010 and consumers should avoid purchasing in these categories. Next week on the CES show floor I will be very curious to see how vendors with these technologies are positioning (or repositioning) products that fall under these umbrellas.
Given some of Schwartz Communications' work in our growing Green PR practice, a couple of the items from the list that drew my attention include Gas-guzzling cars and Energy inefficient homes. As a consumer PR professional, number 6 on the list, newspaper subscriptions as an obsolete purchase, is disheartening, as I have always felt that sitting down with a cup of coffee and a newspaper is the best way to be thoughtful about the news we read.
Click here to view the full list, see you in Vegas!
While the trade show landscape has changed many times over the decades, with the pendulum swinging from big shows to focused, niche gatherings, there have always been a few shows that remind one of COMDEX in the mid 90s (and have the same unbearably long cab lines).
One of these is CES - the premier consumer technology tradeshow. Schwartz and our clients will be there in force this year. At the end of each day, we plan to highlight some of the most exciting and innovative technologies we encounter on the show floor. If you don't want to wait for the end of the day, we will be tweeting key updates at www.twitter.com/mcclennan.
Xconomy.com, the online publication covering the innovation economy, is hosting a cloud computing forum on Thursday, December 10. Called "Cloud Cubed: Cloud Computing Goes Exponential," the event is at the Microsoft New England R&D Center at 1 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
For full disclosure, Schwartz Communications is an underwriter of the event, and with good reason. Schwartz has helped to raise the profiles of several of the most successful business software and data center software companies.
As a preview to December's event, I made a phone call to Wade Roush, chief correspondent at Xconomy.com. We chatted about the cloud computing "phenomenon" and the strong line up of speakers at the forum. A partial transcript is below, and you can listen to the entire interview by using the audio widget at the very end of this post.
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Ross: Wade, I don’t know, obviously through your history in journalism you’ve seen a lot of phenomena in technology. Have you ever seen a phenomenon like cloud computing that has attracted so much attention over the last several months, you know at the same time it seems like no one really knows exactly what it is?
Wade: It is a lot like these other waves of jargon that periodically crash over the IT world, definitely. I mean I think it’s a legitimate question for people to say “Hey wait a minute, is there anything really new here or is this just sort of the latest version of what people were calling, you know ASP, Application Service Providers, in the past.” There have been other words around this idea of outsourcing your computing power and your computing needs to off premises equipment. You know the idea of having somebody else pay for or buy the actual equipment that you need and the storage that you need, rather than having to invest in those things yourself has been around throughout this whole decade. I think the term cloud computing is one that only kind of came together maybe two years ago, 2 and a half years ago, so I think it’s legitimate to ask how real it is and how much hype there is to it and how much substance there is to it. But when you get a bunch of people together all in the same room talking about it the way we’re going to doing in December and they all agree there’s something to this, that it’s more than just hype, that the term actually has some real meaning to it and cloud computing most importantly is really different in some ways from everything that’s gone before. You know I think that’s a sign that people really do need to pay attention and entrepreneurs need to know what cloud computing is really about in order to stay competitive and take advantage of the great capabilities that it does offer.
Ross: What I really like about cloud computing is it’s really a kind of level-headed or common sense approach to IT. What I mean by that is really it is fundamentally about doing more with what you have, maximizing IT resources. The concept is based, to some extent, on virtualization. Do we see this as an approach that is catching on a lot of extent because people are constantly looking to do more with less? Is that a fair assessment?
Wade: Absolutely, obviously in this economy to use those famous words “in this economy” everyone’s looking for ways to reduce their capital expenditures and get more work done with less and virtualization is wonderful because it lets you make full use of the hardware you did invest in rather than buying one server to run one program all day long. You know you’re actually soaking up the excess processing capacity by loading many different programs that might even be running on different operating systems onto the same server. Or you’re yoking servers together so they can act in concert. You really are using your resources to the fullest extent and cloud computing centers, where the actual processing is happening are definitely heavily virtualized, so that’s where the technology comes together with cloud computing.
But what I think what’s great about the cloud is that its not just making better use of you local resources, it’s really about being able to get jobs done without having any local resources at all. You really can off load, depending on what kind of business you’re running, you can off load practically everything you do, to Google or Amazon Web services or one of these other providers. And there are going to be panelists attending the Cubed event, talking about how they do exactly that. One that comes to mind is Pixily, for example, a local company that is in the business of digitizing people’s paper documents and putting them online so that you can basically get all of your tax records, or all of your receipts or all of your medical records together in one place online and throw away the paper versions so that you don’t have to have files and folders and boxes full of stuff anymore. And the only part they do locally is scanning the documents. Everything else happens on the cloud and as such they were able to scale up without having to buy a single space of big iron, which is just amazing if you think about it.
Ross: Right, let’s talk a little bit more about the actual panel itself because I know you were instrumental just in terms of the areas that you cover for Xconomy for identifying a lot of the panelists that comprise the event itself. It looks like there’s a nice mixture of the venture capital community in terms of folks that are monitoring some of the trends as well as some of the cloud services themselves, and also some other technologies that are important for cloud computing to happen in the right way. Maybe just walk us through some of the headliners that are at the event.
Wade: Sure, absolutely. So one of the cool things about, just to brag a little bit about Xconomy in the way that we do business. We are both a media company and an events company and the two things turned out to be very synergistic. As a personal side, I’m one of these people who loves to just report and write and be just heads down, and when I joined Xconomy I was a little bit skeptical about this hybrid model where we do events and write stories was really going to work, but it turns out that the two things are extremely complementary because the stories I’ve been writing about cloud computing or whatever the subject may be, are the stories that bring me in contact with some of the smartest people around town, and then I’m able to reach out and invite those same people to our events.
Every time we have an event I meet more people who I eventually end up writing about. So it’s a virtuous circle here and we are going to be featuring quite a few people at the Cloud Cubed event who have already turned up in the pages of Xconomy in one way or another, so there are folks from the sort of startup end of things, people who are building companies that either provide some variety of cloud service or cloud add-on or companies that are making use of the Web, sorry you said the cloud, like Pixily for the infrastructure of their business. And we’ve got people who represent the really big enterprise end of things. We’ve got companies like Akamai and Microsoft, and of course, given the strength of the Boston area and venture technology investing, we’ve definitely have some folks from that world as well and other parts of the ecosystem so its going to be a great day; a lot of different types of people on one hand debating what the cloud really is. And most importantly what are sort of the nuts and bolts, what’s the situation right now in this day and age with the options available to entrepreneurs who are thinking about how to get on the cloud, what market niches are open to entrepreneurs who are thinking about new cloud services.
Ross: This certainly should make for a great event. Wade Roush, the chief correspondent at Xconomy.com, thanks so much for joining us today.
Wade: My pleasure Ross, thanks so much.
Ross: And the event is called "Cloud Cubed: Cloud Computing Goes Exponential." It’s being hosted and managed by Xconomy.com and it will be at the Microsoft New England R&D Center, 1 Memorial Drive, in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday, December 10 starting at 8:30 in the morning and running till just after noon, 12:30. Thank you all for joining.
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To listen to the audio interview, use the widget below:
Last week analyst Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research led off a social media roundtable hosted by Schwartz Communications in our Boston office and moderated by agency vice president John Moran. The roundtable also included three marketers from high tech and healthcare companies who shared their real world experiences implementing social media techniques integrated with their PR programs.
Social media is very real and marketers need to pay attention to it. According to Corcoran, four out of five online Americans now participate in social media each month. While marketers are optimistic about social media, Forrester found that it’s still only a fraction of budgets, with three-quarters of marketers budgeting $100,000 or less to social media marketing annually.
Having said all this, Corcoran cautioned against “Shiny Object Syndrome” when thinking about social media. If you’ve told your agency, “We need a social media program,” without knowing exactly how social media will help you meet your marketing goals, you’ve been infected with Shiny Object Syndrome – the pursuit of social media because it’s the latest marketing buzzword.
Corcoran advised that marketers resist Shiny Object Syndrome and instead assess their needs so they can adopt social media approaches that make sense. He recommended an approach he calls POST:
People – Assess your customers’ social activities
Objectives – Decide what you want to accomplish
Strategy – Plan for how relationships with customers will change as you engage in social media
Technology – Decide which social technologies to use
He also advised that marketers start small with social media and get some successes under their belts before expanding into new areas. At the same time, recognize that social media is a long-term strategy, not a campaign that you can turn on and off.
Andrew Levitt, founder and CEO of HealthTalker, recommended that marketers start with a strategy, not a social media strategy. Set specific goals and objectives. If a community exists where you can join the conversation, then join in, but if not, create your own.
Mary Pietrowski, director of consumer & e-marketing for Hologic, another Schwartz client, showed a great example of building community. Hologic created Voices of Mammosite to educate women about the advantages of partial breast irradiation as a treatment for breast cancer. The videos on the site profile women who’ve survived breast cancer, speaking directly to other women about their experiences. It’s a fascinating site and an award-winning social media program.
Matt Hines, marketing communications manager at CoreSecurity, brought a B2B perspective to the round table. Blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn are all key technologies that have helped CoreSecurity engage with customers and prospects. For instance, he noted that blogs are a great medium when you want to comment about major news in your market, like the acquisition of a competitor, without formally issuing a release.
Click here to download a PDF file of the presentations given by our speakers. Browse through the Schwartz blogs for more ideas about how to use social media in your PR program at www.schwartz-pr.com/blogs.
Xconomy is hosting a forum this Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the state of the pharmaceuticals industry. Ahead of the event, I interviewed Luke Timmerman, national biotechnology editor at Xconomy. You can listen to the entire interview by scrolling to the bottom of this post and clicking on the embedded player. A partial transcript is below.
Full disclosure: Since Schwartz Communications has a track record in pharma pr, the Agency is an underwriter for the event. If you are planning to go, we look forward to seeing you there.
The event is scheduled for Wednesday, November 4, 2009 from 2:00 till 6:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Mass.
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Ross: There’s a little bit of a synopsis on the Xconomy.com website about this event next week. What is the current state, in your estimation, of the big pharma industry in the United States?
Luke: Well the big story for big pharma for a number of years has been this patent cliff that their facing over the next few years. The latest estimate that I’ve seen is that something like $137 billion worth of drug revenue is going to be subject to generic competition. So that’s a big segment of the industry that’s going to go away, and so they need to come up with new drugs to fill up their pipeline. And the big companies through various mega mergers have had a hard time doing that and so they’ve been looking to do more partnerships, more venture investing, forming all kinds of relationships with smaller biotech companies that have a lot of innovative things that might be able to light a spark in their pipeline.
Ross: In terms of regions of the country, I know that you’re based on the west coast, but Boston has always been an area that has fostered a lot of innovation within the pharma industry. Is that a fair assessment?
Luke: Oh, absolutely. It’s got the kind of core academic strength with all the great institutions there: Harvard, MIT, MGH, etc. And a lot of the big pharma companies for probably the last 10 years have been setting up research centers in the Boston area to put their own scientists close to a lot of that academic activity, hoping that some of it might rub off, you know when they attend seminars and events. But we’re seeing even more, we’re seeing new trends actually, in terms of increased activity with pharma companies investing in biotech and doing more partnerships with a lot of the biotech companies that are there in Boston as well.
Ross: I know that you’re going to be actually in Cambridge, Massachusetts (right next to Boston) next week for this forum. As an attendee coming to the forum, what would be kind of your expectation of a good question to ask of the panelists? What do you expect to see next week at this forum?
Luke: I think people will want to know about what technologies actually can improve the success rate in drug development. This is one of the big problems, even despite all of the information that we have from the genome and various technologies that you read about. The fact remains that about only one out of every 10 drugs that enters clinical trials ever makes it all the way trough FDA approval. And a lot of effort is going into determining which patients are more likely to respond to certain therapies. So I think that a lot of people want to know what can pharma do to really increase its success rate in development, which in turn ought to bring down the cost of development and make them just a lot more efficient.
Ross: You know one of the things that I love about these events, you know I was at the XSITE event that happened back in June at Boston University, is the fact that there’s so much optimism at these events and certainly while there’s been a lot of talk about big pharma and it's going to lose a lot sales to generic drugs and generic pharmaceuticals. Certainly one of the themes to take away form this event, without question, is optimism in the market and innovation that is still happening.
Luke: Yeah, absolutely. If you just look at the quarterly earnings reports or the venture financing statistics, the overall trends aren’t that great, we are in a recession after all. But it doesn’t really change the fact that a lot of innovative, exciting things are still happening in the labs and coming out of them with commercial potential and we see that all the time. Companies like Aileron, a couple others that are going to present here are AVEO Pharmaceuticals and Enlight Biosciences, Hydra Biosciences. Hydra has a portfolio of drugs for pain that are supposed to have the power of morphine but without the narcotic side effects. So there’s just a lot of exciting ideas like that in the Boston area and we’re excited to be able to showcase them.
Ross: It should turn out to be a pretty good event. Well, Luke Timmerman, national Bio Technology editor at Xconomy thanks so much for joining us today and giving me a review of the industry and what to expect next week.
Luke: Great, Thanks a lot Ross, looking forward to it.
Ross: It’s the Xconomy forum, Pharma’s bet on Boston innovation. It’s scheduled for Wednesday November 4, 2009 from 2:00 till 6:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This week at the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo, analysts offered some hope to high tech marketers whose budgets have been trimmed during the recession. According to Gartner, the IT market hit bottom in 2009 and will start to slowly climb out of the trough in 2010 with a 3.3% increase in IT spending. However, IT spending won't rebound quickly. Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's global head of research, predicts that the market will not recover to 2008 levels until 2012. Technologies at the top of IT's agenda include cloud services, business intelligence, virtualization and social media.
This is good news for tech marketers caught in the budget squeeze mandated by investors and corporate boards when the recession accelerated. The challenge for marketers now is to position their companies to charge out of the recession in a stronger, more competitive position.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the bottom of the market is the right time to rev up your PR and digital marketing. Why? Because your competitors are also constrained by tight marketing budgets. The company that bets on growth and invests in marketing now will get more attention while the competition is quiet.
Right now PR and digital marketing are all about smart, creative approaches. Here are a few tips:
- Tap into relevant communities rather than investing in building your own. Use tools like Technorati and Radian6 to track social media conversations and figure out where you need to participate.
- Think like a reporter, not a sales person, when you create content for your blog. Attract prospects with useful information that draws inbound links and traffic. Use lots of photos and video, even for technical products.
- Expand your social media circles through blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Turn employees into ambassadors for your company by guiding them to reinforce the corporate brand. Microsoft's advice to thousands of employees who blog about the company: Be smart.
- Recognize the value of "conventional" media. According to the First Amendment Center, traditional media is still the primary news source for 72% of Americans. Traditional media coverage gets widely circulated on social media like Twitter, blogs, even email. It has a huge impact and credibility.
For some interesting examples of investing in marketing during a recession, check out this article by Andrew Razeghi at the Kellogg School of Management: http://tinyurl.com/6562pf.
On Thursday, October 8, Mark W. McClennan, APR, a vice president here at Schwartz, will be speaking at the PRSA Northeast District Conference in Rochester, New York. The session looks at "What Social Media Lessons Can You Learn From Fruitcake, Caves, Coupons, Viruses, Death and Pregnancy?"
One of the interesting divides that is occurring in the social media world is between those that can discuss the theory, and those that have actually researched, developed and executed campaigns. This presentation will showcase some of the campaigns that Schwartz has helped develop and successfully execute for our technology and healthcare clients.
It's not too late to register to attend Mark's session (and 19 other great sessions) by going to www.prsarochester.org. If you are interested in learning more, contact us.
Tomorrow night (9/16), Schwartz will be hosting a NETSEA Event, "Social Media for Social Creatures: How Do Successful Salespeople Use Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook And More To Make Their Numbers."
The focus isn't on public relations, but rather on how sales can use social media to get closer to their customers and prospects and establish deeper, two-way relationships. It will also point out the things sales executives should *not* do.
While most of our readers are in public relations or marketing, if you think this event will be of interest, sign up. If you know a sales executive who might be interested, let them know.
Schwartz Communications recently sponsored XSITE 2009, which was held last week at Boston University. As an employee at a Boston PR firm and a BU grad, it was great to see a New England-based event focused so squarely on innovation.
Of interest, the show gave equal time to healthcare, cleantech and tech developments within the region. Presenters came from pharmatech, wind and solar energy companies, cloud computing and other technology start-ups, and from the venture capital community.
From my perspective, it was notable that many of the more promising areas are in markets where the United States government is investing. An IBM executive in attendance noted that he's spent almost all of his time over the past few weeks working on proposals for money from the government's stimulus package. Another cleantech executive proclaimed that unless stimulus-related money was approved, her company might no longer be based in the U.S. Given the realities of the venture capital community, the government's money is vital to the emerging growth economy.
One of the most entertaining parts of the day was a keynote address from the well-known inventor Dean Kamen, president of DEKA Research & Development Corporation. Kamen delivered a strong message about how innovation is not fostered within our young. His project US First strives to cultivate excitement in technology within young individuals.
Kamen is clever in relating his competition to athletics. To quote Coach Winters in the early 90s movie "The Program": "Yeah, but when was the last time 80,000 people showed up to watch a kid do a ... chemistry experiment?" Kamen challenges that notion. And in recent years he's filled the Georgia Dome for his competitions.
Optimism filled the room. It's somewhat of a cliche around Boston that the enthusiasm found in the steady stream of ideas ultimately propels the region in times of economic uncertainty. The cliche was a reality during XSITE 2009. And it was great to experience it.
Fast Company Founding Editor Bill Taylor is among the exceptional list of presenters and moderators at next week's XSITE 2009 event, which is being held June 24, 2009, at Boston University's School of Management. Schwartz Communications is sponsoring the event, which will focus on innovation happening in New England.
As a preview to XSITE 2009, I interviewed Mr. Taylor to get his thoughts on the local economy and the spirit of innovation in the region. He's a great interview subject, which is not surprising given his many years covering growing companies. Mr. Taylor is also the co-author of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win.
A partial transcript of the interview is below. You can listen to the entire conversation by using the widget imbedded after the transcription. And if you really like the interview, you should listen to other Schwartz podcast recordings, and you can subscribe to Schwartz's ongoing podcast series.
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Ross Levanto: Bill, we’ve been talking in the month of June about the concept of innovation, and in some ways we’re calling this an innovation month. I think it’s kind of interesting that we do this in New England, which has been a pretty good setting throughout the years for innovation, and this continues to be so even during the current economic slump, would you agree with that?
Bill Taylor: Oh, absolutely! What is really important now is less macroeconomic indicators and the innovators' mindset, and for me, we heard a lot about it during the campaign, the mantra of the moment right now is this quip by the great Stanford economist Paul Romer, who famously said, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Basically, we’re all struggling right now to make sense of the economic crisis, to learn lessons that will guide us as we go forward. One of my big worries in general, although I think it’s one of the strong suits of the New England economy, is that there are a lot of people out there learning the wrong lessons. They’re becoming more conservative, more risk averse, they’re choosing to resist innovation rather than embrace it; to me that is a huge mistake. It’s a huge opportunity for innovators, because, as the business environment get’s tougher, meaner, more unforgiving, customers are going to become more selective about who they do business with.
So now more than ever, start ups or companies of any size have to offer a positive alternative to a demoralizing status quo. I think in some sense in terms of the natural optimism and raw animal spirits of innovators, as tough as it is in the big picture, if you can project a presence to the world both in terms of the substance of what you’re doing and the spirit of what you’re doing, this can be a good time to start something new or widen the gap between you and the competition.
Ross Levanto: You know, one thing that we hear a lot about, and certainly I’ve heard a lot about, in my years in this business, and I’m sure you hear it much more often than I do, to the point of it being almost cliché, is the concept of the entrepreneur spirit, and you alluded to it in your answer there; the fact that entrepreneurs certainly are very optimistic about the future, no matter the mountains that face them. The questions for you though, in terms of what you see, in terms of the broader New England economy, are there any bright spots that you’re spotting or watching in terms of the broader economy?
Bill Taylor: Well, I’m not sure in terms of technology sectors, I could do a better job than anyone else in terms of saying, “hey, it’s bioinformatics over here, or new materials over there.” What I do think is the virtue of the New England economy, we sometimes think of it as a weakness, but ultimately is a virtue, is that there is a blend here of both timeless tradition and long standing excellence and that’s the legacy of Harvard, MIT, BU, and all these institutions, with also the start-up entrepreneurial spirit. I think we’ve all as entrepreneurs and as a business culture, gotten tired of the boom and bust cycles that seem to have driven the economy over the last 20 years.
You know, when we had the internet crash back in 2000, there was that funny bumper sticker on the cars driving around Silicon Valley, “Please God, just one more bubble.” Well, I think we’re all kind of tired of sitting around waiting for one more bubble and to some degree being able to blend, and I think New England is a little bit unique in this, being able to blend absolute start-up and innovation fervor with being literally the oldest part of America. In the sense of history and the long time frame, as a business culture I think that may in fact serve us well. We sometimes beat ourselves up, why aren’t we as about hip and crazy and wild Silicon Valley? Maybe this new sensibility, blending the best of the long term with the start-up fervor is the right way to go.
I’m hoping the unique New England entrepreneurial culture will serve us well going forward.
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Listen to the entire interview by using this widget:
Last weekend I spent a few days with 140 colleagues and competitors at the PRSA Counselors Academy Spring Conference. From there I went to the Silver Anvil Awards. It was a great time and I learned a number of new things. Most of the topics would bore our loyal readers, but there were a few items that I thought might be of interest.
You can listen to my thoughts on why now is the time to ramp up the PR and marketing investment; how measurement drives results; and learn about a free research and analysis tool by clicking here.
With all the headlines saying negative things about the economy, sometimes we forget that innovation is still happening. Schwartz is sponsoring XSITE 2009, an event planned for late June at Boston University.
I interviewed Bob Buderi, editor and founder of Xconomy.com, an online publication that is organizing XSITE 2009. I have posted excerpts from the interview below, and you can listen to the entire interview by using the embedded audio feed at the end of this post.
Also, the interview is the latest episode of the Schwartz new media podcast series. If you like it, you should subscribe to the podcast series.
Now here's an excerpt from the interview:
Ross Levanto: Bob, you know, a lot of folks who have been in the industry for a while, including myself, we look to some of the local organizations including Xconomy.com as kind of like a bright spot, especially given the economic uncertainty and the economic downturn that we’re all kind of struggling through. What do you see, just explain to me a little bit about, what you see just in terms of the role of this event, is it really to serve as kind of this spot of optimism given the economic uncertainty?
Bob Buderi: Absolutely, I mean a spot of optimism and basically to say, you know, people are already working on issues that will bring us out of this mess we’re in. They’re going to make our health better, our, you know, access to information better, our energy use better, all kinds of aspects of our lives and our businesses are going to be improving based on innovations that we want to bring, so we’ve just lined up an incredible array of speakers and companies who are going to come talk about all these sectors. Some of them hidden, relatively hidden, and unknown here in Massachusetts that are driving growth in the economy or that will drive growth.
Ross Levanto: And also giving a chance for some startups that at this point have been in stealth mode to actually launch themselves.
Bob Buderi: We’re going to have a few stealth companies that unveil themselves, and I think we’re going to have a few other surprises or announcements that are made, companies will take the occasion of the event to make about exciting knew things that they’re doing. And of course, kicking it all off, because this is in partnership with Boston University. BU’s president Bob Brown will be delivering the welcome address too.
Ross Levanto: You know, something interesting that we’re doing with those attendees that are signing up by visiting xsite2009.com, we’re asking them their thoughts about the local economy. There was a study that came out last week from the New England Economic Partnership that talked about the fact that it’s quite possible the recession here in Massachusetts is going to outlast the national recession. It certainly brings up thoughts from a lot of folks. Given your editorial role, Bob, from an Xconomy.com perspective, what are your thoughts in general on the Massachusetts economy and ways that we already are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel?
Bob Buderi: I don’t have a good sense of comparing it to the recession across the United States. I would be surprised if we lagged the United States. I would be unsuprised if we came out in advance of it. We all felt the tremendous depth of this recession and swiftness with which it fell upon us. I think the pace of innovation is faster now than ever, and I think the recovery will also be faster. I don’t think we’re going to go to full blown dot-com bubble kind of mode or anything like that.
Ross Levanto: It’s probably of a good thing.
Bob Buderi: Yeah, but I think we’re going to see certainly in the next nine months to a year the real fruits of what’s going on and what’s been going on for the last several years and what’s going on now at an accelerated pace with all these companies, to help us recover.
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From the embedded application below, you can listen to the entire interview:
It was clear at Digital Hollywood’s “Content Rights and Technology Solutions” and “Monetizing Digital Content” sessions that the DRM debate has shifted from how to control usage to how to engage consumers and embed more value in legitimate content. The panel of tech vendors encouraged content providers to listen to consumer demands for universal access to purchased content. Anti-piracy remained a hot topic, but with the belief that satisfied consumers are less likely to stray and may in fact be willing to pay more for high quality, legitimate content.
Mark Isherwood, director and co-founder of Rightscom Ltd, explains how content access and protection is changing in the following clip.
For the past two weeks, after work, I have been participating in Framingham Town Meeting. Over the course of six nights, we have been privileged to receive no fewer than 35 PowerPoint presentations. Since I also serve on Ways & Means, I have seen a dozen more. Unfortunately, the end is not in sight. It makes me feel like I am on an analyst or VC tour, and I have new sympathy for the VCs who sit though more than I ever will.
Many of these presentations are given by experienced professionals in financial servers and other business services companies. Some have been outstanding. Some have driven me to my BlackBerry and to think about what I like and dislike about the presentations in general. Following are three guidelines that even the most experienced presenter can forget:
Simplify – Most presentations try to do too much. The best thing to do is pick a few points and make them. Adding more detail often creates confusion. Yes the presentation may be your one and only chance to share your views, so the temptation is to throw in the kitchen sink. But an empty kitchen sink works better than one clogged with dishes.
Handouts are a beautiful thing – A presentation should help you tell a story or communicate an idea. Nothing can bring that to a screeching halt like three columns with 20 rows in 12 point font on a single slide. Even if someone is presenting business cases or budget proposals – leave behinds and handouts help communicate the key elements and answer likely questions without detracting from the presentation.
If you read your slides, you have lost already – Your back is to the audience, passion is leeched from your voice and you end not connecting. This also means you don’t need complete sentences on every slide.
These three reminders are common sense. But even the most experienced professionals occasionally stray from the path.
If you are using a PowerPoint to supplement your meting with media and analysts you need to ask yourself three additional questions:
Do I really need a PowerPoint?
Is the PowerPoint a crutch or does the PowerPoint add value?
Am I ready to close the presentation and engage in dynamic discussion and debate? (You better be.)
By asking those three questions and following the three guidelines above, people will be more effective, communicate their ideas more clearly and have more productive meetings. If you would like additional information, consider checking out Presentation Zen and The Back of the Napkin among other books.
While Digital Hollywood attendees were the usual thirty-something mix of suits, anecdotes of mobile addicted tweens and toddlers frequently invited laughter and nodding heads throughout numerous panel discussions. The promise of an insatiable appetite for new applications and content led tech vendors and marketers to describe the desires and habits of the newest generation of consumers.
Move over pacifiers, parents are using mobile devices to distract their children. Katharine Linke, director of multi-platform programming at Disney said the channel was surprised at the popularity of its pre-school programming after parents said that they wouldn’t let toddlers play with their $400 phones. Well, they are! Mickey Mouse ClubHouse was watched as much as Hannah Montana on mobile phones and one panelist confessed to using the SpongeBob Tickler for iPhone application to keep his infant happy in the car.
Mobile has been deemed “the 3rd screen”, but it’s the primary and most-loved screen of adolescents. One panelist said his fifteen year-old daughter sends and receives 1,600-2,000 texts a month. Also, unlike the average mobile viewer who watches 25 minutes a day according to FloTV, pre-teens are watching long form content, like movies, on their phones too.
While adolescents might not think twice about downloading a bootleg song or movie, they are also creating an entire new economy by embracing virtual goods. They see value in buying an icon, like an image of a birthday cake, and are happy to pay $1.99 for applications like putting a friends’ photo in a Jonas Brothers’ music video.
Next-gen consumers are less concerned with “owning” content as much as anytime/anywhere access across their many devices. New business models will focus on usage-based activity with clear implications for cloud computing, access control, usage analytics and targeted marketing opportunities.
Schwartz is a gold sponsor of the Xconomy XSITE 2009 Event, which was announced yesterday and will be held on June 24 at Boston University.
We like what the XSITE Event represents. Despite the current economic situation, the entrepreneurial spirit in New England lives on. The Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship will spotlight positive developments in the local economy, with speakers representing green technology, biopharma and Web 2.0 markets, academia and goverment.
The Summit’s intimate setting will provide a backdrop for high-impact presentations and unique, interactive sessions. In true entrepreneurial form, XSITE will unveil several stealth-mode companies.
In the coming days, Schwartz will be supporting a number of initiatives to raise visibility for the event, including activity on Twitter--you can follow event developments at @XconomyXSITE (hash tag #xsite09)--and Q&A's with event insiders through this blog.
We agree with the tag line for the event, "The Recovery Starts Here." It is true that the entrepreneurs within the "innovation economy" will play a key role stimulating economic growth and driving it well into the future.
On a more personal note, I am enthused by the venue for the event (Boston University's School of Management). There are many Terriers working at Schwartz Communications.
Creating compelling content for smart consumers was top of mind as Digital Hollywood kicked off with packed sessions, prestigious speakers and conversations that often returned to how to best engage online consumer audiences who are spread out across many, many sites. Everyone agreed that the entertainment industry maxim "content is king" is critical to reaching today’s empowered consumers who pick and choose what they read and watch and for the most part bypass advertisements.
As the role of marketing and public relations increasingly becomes that of content creator, buzz builders can learn from the playbooks of Hollywood marketers. Monday’s session "Strategizing the Campaign; Selling Movies, TV and Video on the Web" revealed tips from top brass at Comcast /Fandango, Microsoft, Fox, Paramount who have kept box office ticket thriving this spring through their creativity, tenacity and innovation
Know your target audience so that you can personalize the online experience to their individual tastes. Survey your customers to determine their interests. You may find some surprising results that can become a part of your online brand experience.
Be experimental, but integrate too. Online allows marketers to try something new and get immediate feedback. Develop your digital marketing strategy in tandem with traditional marketing to create a single multi-faceted campaign.
Budget time and money for "clever" content. Don’t let content be an after thought. Consumers expect free, unique compelling content that intelligently starts a conversation that they can participate in.
Provide depth for online audiences to dig deeper into content, get involved and be "in the know." Make your biggest fans feel special with exclusive content (like WATCHMENS’ multiple trailers and WOLVERINE’s contest for the red carpet premiere) or prizes (swag, anyone?)
iPhone apps are hot - but then you knew that. Fandango had a WAP platform for years, but had little traction until it launched an iPhone app 6 weeks ago with basic functionality to buy tickets on-the-go. Half a million downloads later, consumers are now watching mobile trailers too.
Listen to consumers, and respond - Fast! The beauty of instant online feedback is also a responsibility. Consumer’s told Fandago they wanted to be able to log into their accounts on their iPhones rather than enter credit card info to buy tickets. Fandango listened and built in the functionality within 2 weeks.
Enlist Viral Armies - Every marketing campaign should include an "Alpha Fan Strategy" to engage a Digital Street Team to be your online ambassadors. First you need to get to know your #1 fanboys -- the 10-15% of your audience that wants more than to consume or share content. Give them the tools to create a mash-up, design a T-shirt, build an add-on widget to extend your brand experience.
Don’t Stop the Feed - Keep evaluating engagement measurements to determine what’s working, what’s not and what to do next. Most importantly, keep giving fans more of what they loved, but with innovations. You’ve got their attention - now you need to keep it by getting even more creative.
RSA, one of the biggest IT security shows on the planet, takes place this week in San Francisco.
Given the size of Schwartz Communications' security practice, we are involved in several aspects of the show, and you can follow along through the Security PR blog.
-- Schwartz will have a big Twitter presence. Check out all our Tweets on a special page on the Schwartz home page.
-- Mike Farber, Jen Spark and I will be blogging, plus Jen will be recording interviews from the show floor with industry luminaries. So navigate over to the Schwartz podcasting page for more information.
-- Director John Moran will be hard at work behind the scenes, editing podcast content and posting the interviews so they get out to our subscribers.
Given the temperatures in San Francisco right now are unusually warm, I could say something like "RSA is already heating up." Whether you are at the Moscone Center or following along elsewhere, enjoy the show!
Social networking threats are among the security trends we're expecting to hear more about at Infosec. Once the domain of university students and rock bands, social networks are now unquestionably mainstream (my parents recently joined Facebook; I grimaced at the update that they are now "married"). Today, in many industries, we rely on social networks to DO our jobs rather than AVOID our jobs.
A study done by Trend Micro back in July found nearly one in five employees have visited social networking sites on corporate networks (I'd venture to say its actually a lot higher), making companies vulnerable to a wide variety of cybercrimes, from phishing and spam to virus attacks and identity theft. But as social networks become increasingly valuable productivity tools, many companies are hesitant to go so far as to block them.
The answer is not only a robust security solution that arms a company against cyberattacks, but also an alignment between HR and the CIO that supports policies to require employees to get permission before downloading third-party apps and education that warns them to be careful where they click.
Find us on the show floor at Infosec to talk more about social networking threats!
Creating content can be a daunting task. Blogs, contributed articles and commentary, direct marketing communications to prospects and clients – all of these items can be challenging and time-consuming to create.
A growing number of our security PR clients are finding that the fastest path to generating content on pressing topics is to begin with a podcast. A fifteen minute call with a client executive, a customer company, or a partner can quickly yield the necessary content to fuel multiple areas of the security PR mix, with far less effort than was previously necessary.
A good example of this process in action can be seen in eIQnetworks, a Schwartz client with a deep bench of security and compliance experts. eIQnetworks and the Schwartz PR team have worked together to build a process that maximizes the value of the expert interview. These interviews are conducted as discussions of industry trends, emerging regulations like the HITECH Act or commentary on relevant breaking security news, such as the April 1st trigger date for the Conficker worm.
The process is fast – studios and complex editing suites are no longer necessary to produce polished commentary segments. With minimal time investment from company spokespeople, phone interviews are recorded and then edited by Schwartz to create podcasts segments that can be posted in company blog entries and shared through e-mail marketing pieces. These segments are also rich content resource that can be mined to create contributed articles or commentary.
So next time you have a pressing issue that you’re looking to quickly turn into media coverage and marketing activity, let us be your first interviewer – we’ll use it to generate results across multiple high-impact areas of your security PR program. We look forward to discussing this topic more with you at RSA in a few weeks, as well as Infosecurity Europe.
One of the issues we're expecting to hear a lot about at Infosecurity Europe 2009, Europe's largest security industry trade show, is mobile security. Giving employees the option to work from home is becoming increasingly attractive from both a financial and an environmental perspective, and is often seen as a perk at a time when pay rises and bonuses aren't possible. Furthermore, an estimated 4.5 million new requests for flexible working could flood UK firms today, Computing reported, as new legislation goes into effect that extends the right to request flexible working to all parents with children under the age of 16.
Without taking the necessary security precautions, mobile working could open up a can of worms. A complete mobile security strategy must include the same level of protection that exists in the office, with special consideration given to the increased risk of loss or theft. Full-data encryption to guard against data leakage, a VPN for secure connectivity, a proactive patch management solution and a network access control application are all key technologies businesses must have in palce to secure mobile workers.
Workers' attitudes can also expose businesses to security threats. A study released by Vodafone UK recently and reported on in ComputerWeekly found that nearly half of employees regard their work laptops or mobile devices as their own property once away from the office. Half (49.6%) of employees used their own mobile broadband connection and 29.6% used Wi-Fi with their company mobile device when at home, leaving businesses vulnerable.
At Schwartz London, we're looking forward to seeing what new mobile security solutions companies will be talking about at Infosec.
The middle of this week, I zoomed off to attend the Digital PR Next Practices Summit put on by PR News. New York is an easy trip, so maybe I shouldn't have packed my "tell me something I don't already know" attitude, but that's how I approach all conferences. If I have to so much as budge from my desk, it needs to be worth it.
In the bad days of PR measurement, some PR professionals would try to impress clients (or bosses) with the ‘Thud factor’ how big and heavy a clip book could they drop on a desk. It was all about volume, circulation and hits. But as 
the popularity of its pre-school programming after parents said that they wouldn’t let toddlers play with their $400 phones. Well, they are! 
Social networking threats are among the security trends we're expecting to hear more about at 
One of the issues we're expecting to hear a lot about at 
