Yes you heard me right. Even advertising.

Now, some of you no doubt subscribe to the view that mass media is a dying breed. Social media and all the new shiny toys like Facebook and Twitter are going to rule the future.

Others believe that advertising will stage a dramatic comeback and destroy these upstarts.

Still others believe that it’s about an all or nothing battle either on the side of digital marketing and campaigns; or in favour of traditional advertising and marketing efforts.

Seriously - why does it have to be quite so cut and dried? Isn’t it really about balance?

Think about it - sometimes you actually need an advertisement. Other times, a great word of mouth campaign will rock it. Still other occasions demand a good ol’ fashioned meet-the-public effort that allows you to look your customers in the eye and say “I’m here. Talk to Me.”

I would however add that as you set out to develop your next campaign - or even when looking at what you have out there already - you need to ask yourself a couple of questions.

These include:

- what am I getting for my dollar?

- are there tangible results or am I paying for something as vague as ‘branding’ and ‘presence’ without a way to tie it back to sales or some other more tangible measurement?

- if I am advertising, is my choice of media being guided by blind faith in an agency and th circulation numbers they offer? would I be better served by perhaps niche slicing my campaign and actually following my customers rather than trying to get them to follow me?

- do I really have to advertise at all? can I transfer some of that expensive campaign spend into more cost effective public relations, digital and search engine campaigns?

The list can go on and on. But you get the picture.

Ask a couple of questions. Look for a little more balance and your marketing campaigns will feel much healthier for it!

So, what campaigns or companies have you seen that seem to have their act all balanced out?

If you’re reading this elsewhere, check out Journeys Through The Line (http://www.arciscommunications.com/blog) for more thoughts and ramblings from Stephen P Francis of Arcis Communications.

In Malaysia, the real estate industry is fairly effective in marketing and branding itself. Consider this - we for the most part practice a ‘sell and build‘ concept as opposed to some of our European or US based examples where you commonly build a property and then  sell it.

So local real estate developers consistently convince consumers (and banks) that they’re good for the money - agree to pay us hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars and we’ll build you a house/ building sometime in the future.

This speaks to creating tremendous amounts of both trust and reliability - two aspects of branding and public relations that we’d be well placed to remember in other industries.

The challenges these marketing experts face however is one that should be more familiar - the pressure to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Given the weakening economies of the region; the continuing development of tremendous swaths of land for commercial and residential use; and the on-going credit crunch; businesses in the real estate business must differentiate or fade away. Just like businesses in just about any industry when you stop and consider it.

An example that was quoted during the session included a developer that had taken the simple step of turning the areas behind the houses they built into themed landscapes. Japanese, Balinese and Roman gardens were placed in areas that would normally be nothing more than empty gravel or back lane roads.

A simple change. Not exactly rocket science. But it allowed them to differentiate themselves from the other developments in the area AND charge a premium to potential home owners.

There’s always going to be that group of brands that lead the way. They differentiate at an extreme level and they are rewarded with the price premiums and the most awe.

Then you have the middle of the road offerings that attempt to copy but not to innovate. They will for the most part compete on price and become commodities.

Let’s not even go near the rest of that list as these are brands that come and go on a regular basis. So where are you going to be?

So, here’s a thought - what’s different about you?

What’s different about the brands that you choose to support?

Seen a PR campaign that was different recently?

They all have one thing in common - the importance of first impressions.

An example.

I recently met a new luxury products retailer in the high-end automotive marque business in Malaysia. They were building a fantastic showroom. In the meantime, they’d spent a considerable amount of money and time on a temporary oasis for their expensive and very exclusive automobiles.

Now, we’re talking about cars that went for millions of ringgit each (that’s about USD1 = RM3.2 for you number types). These cars epitomize the luxury and speed that high end automobiles stand for.

Racing, fine food, the best people and the most amazing lifestyles were hallmarks of the brand. Unfortunately, cleanliness didn’t seem to be one of their preferred traits if the showroom was anything to go by!

So imagine you’re walking into the showroom where these million ringgit cars are parked…on display in all their shine and glory. You’re ready to buy one. And then, you catch a scent on the air. Cigarettes. Stale cigarettes in an ashtray. An ashtray in a display space for millions of ringgit of cars that hadn’t been cleaned.

Seeing that you start to notice other things … like the loose carpeting. The corners of the car that have fingerprints on it. A less than million ringgit shine on that wonderful example of automotive excellence.

What kind of impression is that going to leave you?

Would you still be quite so ready to make that big purchase there - or are you going to look for an alternative?

After all, if they can’t keep the small things going in their showroom, how will they look after your car and you down the line?

Sometimes we forget that the big things - important as they are - don’t quite make or break a deal as much as the small.

The loose tiles. The misspelled proposal. The less than polished shoes.

Businesses - especially smaller ones - need to pay attention to the details. They need to clean that ashtray.

What experiences have you had where the small things made or broke a deal or meeting?

The general consensus it seems is that newspapers seems to be struggling to find their footing in the digital world if a recent report from Nielsen is anything to go by.

In Malaysia, while mainstream media outlets continue to dominate the news provision scene, online media is making a quick hop up the ladder. According to a report quoted by Marketing-Interactive, the the Nielsen Media Index shows double digit growth in Internet penetration rates for the country versus the penetration rate from five years ago.

The tracking figures, showing the national reach touching two out of every ten people today - is also reinforcing the expectation that online media and the Internet in general will continue to reinforce its position as a key part of the mass media reach in the country. This reflects trends in other parts of the world as well including the United States.

Citing news websites as an example, Nielsen Media Research Malaysia found that Malaysians were opting for online news where they wanted faster and more constant updates. This has translated into a 35 percent growth in online newspaper readership over the past twelve months - and a readership of over one million readers!

(Given that Malaysia has a population of approximately 26 million that’s a substantial amount in such a short time.)

In the United States, the numbers are even more revealing as shown on Thursday last when the Newspaper Association of America issued a press release surrounding a custom analysis developed in conjunction with Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.

Titled, Newspaper Web Site Audience Increases Sixteen Percent In Third Quarter to 68.3 Million Visitors, Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation dug a little deeper and found that the title wasn’t quite as startling as its content.

According to the report, newspaper websites in the United States each month attracted, on average, more than 68.3 million unique visitors (41.4% of all internet users), during the third quarter of 2008 - a record number, and a 15.8% increase over the year-earlier quarter. Moreover, newspaper website visitors generated an average of 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter - an increase of 25.2% over the 2.8 billion page views a year earlier - and the highest level for any quarter since NAA began tracking the data in 2004.

Given the lackluster performance and continuing challenges in the newspaper industry in the US however, it seems that reaching consumers and translating that into revenue are two separate things entirely - and the traditional media just haven’t figured it out yet.

As the NAA’s senior vice president of Audience and New Business Development Randy Bennett notes,“Newspapers are (already) continuing to enhance their Web sites with dynamic features, video and other interactive tools that deliver high levels of user engagement.The dramatic increase in page views suggests users are visiting newspaper Web sites frequently throughout the day.”

Looking at the size of audience US based newspapers have online, thinking about their revenue streams and listening to the woes of this industry over the past few year over there, it’s hard to understand how things are going to significantly change with new media if they’re already having difficulty figuring out how to make money from almost half of all Internet users.

Back home in Malaysia …

However, in Malaysia things aren’t quite as advanced yet.

News hounds here still go to print as a primary news source at some point or another with Nielsen finding that nine out of 10 readers still consume hard-copy news. The index also indicated a 21% increase in Internet users nationwide with almost four out of 10 users spending one to two hours on the worldwide web daily.

So what are they doing? Well, more popular activities include TV/music/games (47%), followed by message/chat/blogging (45%) and reading newspapers or magazines (35%).

TV viewing was also a strong player in media consumption as the study found 94 percent of respondents were loyal consumers of it.

The index, which sampled 10,000 individuals in Peninsular Malaysia aged 15 and above, attributed 73 percent of this tremendous outreach to Media Prima Bhd’s TV3 free-to-air channel. Government linked Radio Televisyen Malaysia took the rest.

In the pay-TV segment Astro’s Family Package is most popular with seven out of 10 subscribers tuning in to channels in the package. Consumers also subscribed to almost double the number of satellite channels as they did five years ago.

Interestingly, the survey found that the main growth in the traditional newspaper business wasn’t in the English language segments - it was in the Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) segment.

Growth was found across the board however with most major dailies continuing to make inroads with young consumers.

The latest Nielsen Radio Audience Measurement also found that radio was still the most popular form of message disseminator with its listener-ship reaching out to 92% of the population.

So what does this mean for the growth of online media in Malaysia and around the world? Will we see different countries taking markedly different paths towards a common platform where new media and on demand news rules the roost - or can we expect to see different countries having totally divergent news and media outlooks in the next 3 to 5 years?

Consider for a moment the huge amounts of money we’re pouring into handling consumer’s complaints. Malaysia as a country is particularly well placed in the area of unhappy-customer-management.

Malaysia was ranked the 3rd most attractive investment destination by AT Kearney and McKinsey in 2005, and five Malaysian outsourcing companies made it onto the Global Services 100 list, a capabilities-driven assessment of IT and IT enabled service providers globally. The global worldwide SSO market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15 per cent over the next few years, reaching USD 1.43 trillion by 2009 as compared to USD 930 billion in 2006. ICT services such as SSO contributed RM2.8 billion to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product of RM495.6 billion. That’s a lot of money that’s really being spent to answer questions and handle complaints.

What this means is that we’re a great place to place a call center. And yes, there are numerous other support functions performed by these excellent world class firms - but there is a fair amount of their work that goes towards taking, recording and responding to complaints as well. But are there hotlines to record how great the service was for a company?

That’s the bit we’re interested in.

The reason I was thinking about this was that over the past fortnight I’ve had the pleasure of being looked after by some amazing people.

Now, I normally have at least one halfway decent encounter with service staff every week or so - and by this I mean that they make a dreary day better, or make a rough day feel a little lighter through their smiles or just being plain friendly. But once in a while, you come across some amazing service levels - and this has been happening fairly frequently recently. First at the hotel where we were working on a project, and then in the carpark after the project, local vendors and over the past couple of weeks at some of the local eateries that we were trying.

Challenge is - how do I make sure that the people actually responsible for that great experience receive my thanks?

For instance - when you tell your waiter that you thought the food was excellent, how do you know if they did or did not tell the cooks? Or you’re organising a hugely sensitive event and the hotel’s staff go above and beyond both their job scope as well as their duties to make sure you have absolutely everything you could possibly need?

Sure, I could write a letter to the hotel and thank them for the great service - which I did. I could name the people in question … chances are the hotel’s PR person may get back with a response - but did the people who did the work really know how appreciated they were? And what about the times when you can’t thank the people directly?

Reading Fast Company recently, I was inspired by an article there to think about this again and what do you know - it IS hard to say thank you!

And it’s just sad. People crave appreciation. Look around you and you’ll be amazed just how obvious it is when you’re looking for it.

People will come for the money, but they stay for the recognition and relationship

Consider the joy on someone’s face when you simply thank them for doing something well. Or how you feel when your boss or colleagues acknowledge the work and the time you’re putting into your job. How you have that extra special spring in your step when someone compliments you on a doing something well or looking especially good.

They’re all part and parcel of the same human desire for appreciation, recognition and affection in some cases. Globally, the direct selling or multi level marketing industry, is a booming one. Amway. Mary Kay. Shaklee. GoldQuest. I bet you could name a hundred if not a thousand more like them. Different products. Different audiences. Different geographies.

But they all thrive on a business model built around rewarding an individual for work put in through (i) money and (ii) praise/ recognition. And based on years of looking at the direct selling industry from both sides of the fence, I have to say that the praise and recognition is often what people stay for - not just the money.

Imagine if you will what would happen if you made amazing products, or delivered great services that were recognised for being great -  now what if you could make sure the people who were responsible for that great product or service were able to hear that point of view from real customers?

Wouldn’t it be easier to attract and retain the best talent there was? And wouldn’t this inspire an ever greater level of customer service and satisfaction?

I know for a fact that whenever we get a thank you from our clients it helps raise the team’s spirit by just that much more. Now imagine if you could help happy customers easily tell you they were happy.

So what is your company doing to help customers say thank you to your people? Surveys, hotlines and email sent to a marketing or complaints department doesn’t count by the way.

Think about the possibilities - sure you’ll still hear complaints.

But instead of being constant streams of negativity, these support centres, help lines, emails and survey points might actually (i) let you know what you’re doing right; (ii) help your employees know that they matter and; (iii) help customers feel better about themselves for having done something nice for someone else.

Do you have an example of companies who make it easy for you to give them great feedback - as easily as they make it for you to complain?

Because they were in town, we literally spent days on end planning, delivering on and keeping on track a host of activities in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Now if you have been in Malaysia recently you’d know that we’re seeing torrential downpours hitting the city almost every evening. A nightmare for traffic and timing.

An even greater problem when it comes to keeping a car shiny and clean. My car went through a couple of days like that and ended up looking like something that had been off road - covered in mud and grime - rather then just through the city. Pulling into the basement car park of the J.W Marriott Hotel in the heart of the city I faced and enjoyed a great day. The next day wasn’t looking too hot though as I had an early morning meeting, it was 3 a.m. and there was no way I was going to get the car cleaned in time.

Walking towards the car I had to stop and double check that it was mine though as the car had been cleaned. No mud. No grime. It was sitting there all clean and shiny just waiting for me - at 3 a.m.

On the windshield I found a little printed card from the housekeeping department that informed me that the hotel had noticed that my car had been in the hotel all day and that it needed a clean. As I had been there late they had taken the liberty of cleaning it for me.

Now this is public relations at its best. I left with a tremendously improved impression of the hotel - one that had already been strengthened over the previous couple of days. And as you can guess - this story is going to be repeated to a whole bunch of people.

All for the price of a little cue card and a car wash.

Do you have examples of other brands/ organisations that have surprised you with these kinds of little deeds that were as thoughtful, appropriate or just plain psychic inreading and delivering on your needs?

Some years ago, I was privileged enough to spend some time around a group of businessmen who took it on themselves to mentor a group of young entreprenuers.

The lessons were many. Parables and stories were the weapons of choice when it came to peeling away the layers of misconception and we-know-what’s-right that we all bore.

But one of the most common topics that were reinforced to us over and over again was the need to read.

Leaders Read & Readers Lead

Constantly. Everything. About everything. From everyone.

To just keep on reading till there wasn’t anything let to read …and then to start all over again.

There was one story in particular that one of them told us that stuck with me.

In Malaysia, books aren’t as cheap as you would expect. While a book in the United States by thinkers like Seth Godin or Tom Peters could be in the USD20 or so range, books here (especially business related ones) tend to start at Ringgit Malaysia or RM50 onwards. Big difference when you do a dollar for dollar comparison.

Now what this does is make it even more challenging to decide on what to get and then commit to getting it.

However, the reasoning given by this *now* retired mentor of mine was this: I’d be paying a mere RM50 (that’s about USD20 to USD30) for a book. That much was true. But I wasn’t paying for just a bunch of pages with words on it. I was paying for the privilege to acquire and learn from a man/woman’s experience.

Effectively I was buying someone’s lifetime of knowledge and very quickly learning from them!

Now when you think about it in those terms, isn’t it much more relevant?

It helps if you love to read. But even if you don’t it is something that any professional - and more so a public relations or branding professional - must do. We have to stay on the cutting edge of everything - business, politics, technology, society, luxury goods and fashion … the list is endless.

How else can we truly have an informed opinion and a seat at the table when it comes time to explore, advance, enhance and extend the messages and the knowledge of our clients and our own firms?

Check out the list of 100 books that every PR person should read on this blog. It’s a work in progress and it’s a start. But then again - you’ve already taken the first step by reading this blog.

So what do you think? How important is reading more then just blogs, magazines or newspapers? Are books still relevant?

Part of the job or a pr/ branding practitioner these days includes being up to date on everything from politics to what’s hot on television. To that end, the daily dose of newspapers - both digital and physical - and magazines have become a must for me. However, aside from scanning (or trawling) through the sites and pages quickly, there are some online and offline publications that I take the time to look at closely. To really read the articles. To comment. To link to.

However, I’ve often wondered just how good the mainstream news sites were at linking to sites outside of their own.

My own experience in the early days of helping the leading national English language daily in Malaysia build its online presence  and their subsequent growth over the years didn’t exactly inspire much confidence in the idea of newspapers that linked willingly.

While sites like Digg made linking to other sites a core part of its business model, a little digging online - no pun intended - revealed that more and more news organisations were getting comfortable with the idea as well. But did this strategy work - or did it draw attention away from a reader?

Well, according to this story, linking does indeed work online.

The UK based search engine optimisation firm behind the look at how news organisation’s link, found that the higher link in’s to a news site were directly proportionate to the amount of links that it had going out from its site.

	Links out			Links
Newspaper	Main stories	Blog posts	Domain Strength	Incoming	Outgoing
			99%	29,629,082	1,730,000
			99%	18,415,777	970,000
			88%	25,667,372	1,940,000
			97%	15,114,877	1,600,000
			87%	14,421,388	722,000
			98%	11,986,781	729,000
			99%	11,867,676	1,080,000
			97%	9,968,336	1,360,000
			92%	7,862,887	254,000
			97%	7,038,634	474,000
			92%	5,980,262	275,000
			83%	5,434,310	357,000
			88%	4,121,583	144,000
			93%	3,995,969	330,000
			97%	3,709,030	1,460,000
			96%	3,667,889	169,000
			83%	3,233,951	12,600
			92%	3,087,518	226,000
			90%	2,452,153	211,000
			88%	1,001,791	16,800
			78%	552,930	196,000
			74%	408,462	60,700
			60%	183,570	14,500
			60%	164,586	3,960
			58%	94,804	878
			48%	31,356	33

(source: The SEO Company)

True, in speaking to journalists at various publications the findings of the survey - which mirrored a quick straw poll locally - were that there were indeed policies in place that encouraged linking out. Challenges were inherent of course in implementing these policies and also in deciding the difference between ’sources’ and ‘links.’

I also found that magazine sites were more inclined to link to blogs or other news sites as they were more interested in keeping their news fresh online - not always easy with a fortnightly or monthly publication.

My two cents - Now while I understand that a news site needs to make money and keeping a visitor on your site helps you do that, I personally find myself spending more time returning to sites that offer me more value. This does not mean I don’t stop and look at the others - it’s just that I would not spend too much effort talking about them, thinking about them or recommending them.

And is this not the reason you’re online in the first place - to start a conversation and keep it going?

This can be in the form of:

• cutting edge news analysis which goes beyond the wire stories
• reviews that are as relevant as they are fair (even if you are being paid to blog)
• access to experts in the field as well as the man/woman in the street
• thought leaders
• trend setters
• links to other information that is relevant

This last is especially useful as it helps me place the information in context.

It helps round out my thoughts. It inspires me. And most importantly - there is never a single correct answer - just opinions that are closer to or further away from my own. And that last point I think is where links become even more important as they allow a writer to share their opinion and still back it up with facts and figures from other sources.

Should we offer links to opposing points of view? That’s a whole different kettle of fish.

What are your thoughts on this? And if you have any kind of quantitative views on how Asian or Malaysian sites are doing on this please do share them.

Coming from Malaysia, we’re the home base for Asia’s fastest growing low cost carrier. This gives us a front row seat on their extensive marketing campaigns and the on-going battle with the established national carrier and other airlines in the region. Their perceptual issues, my personal views on them or their successes/failures aside, they (the Malaysian low cost carrier I’m referring to) have been very effective at generating full loads, great publicity and a frenzy of sorts through a series of ticket give-aways. These involve millions of tickets at a time and have happened a couple of times over the last few years.

Thing is however - they use paid advertising to get the message across. While they - like JetBlue - get their surcharges and taxes paid for, the tickets themselves are essentially free. JetBlue on the other hand aren’t (to my knowledge) paying for advertising for this specific campaign, relying instead on word of mouth marketing to do the trick for them. Also, they’re apparently recouping almost the entire cost of the tickets/ packages and still benefitting from the a greater awareness of their brand, products/ services and prices.

It’s clearly a case of PR doing some good things for them while generating the potential for additional sales - without extensive advertising!

So how does this work? Well, JetBlue is essentially auctioning off more then 300 round trip flights and six vacation packages on eBay with opening bids set between 5 and 10 cents. Now this alone will - as Harlan Platt, a finance professor at Northeastern University who follows the airline industry noted - provide some valuable word of mouth advertising for the carrier.

Think about it for a minute.

• It’s subtle
• It’s a lot of bang for very little effort or investment on the part of the carrier
• It adds value to your consumers
• You just know that people who know about it are going to tell their friends about it too
• It gives customers something without really costing the carrier all that much
• It’s likely to have a direct and positive impact on sales in the short term

What other examples do you know of that offer consumers great benefits, have cost the company’s very little, uses little if any advertising and is a ‘generally good/ great/ innovative campaign’ in your eyes?

]]> http://arciscommunications.com/blog/2008/09/jetblue-auctions-full-planes-free-public-relations-value-for-consumers/feed/ http://arciscommunications.com/blog/2008/09/public-relations-is/ http://arciscommunications.com/blog/2008/09/public-relations-is/#comments Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:44:01 +0000 Stephen P Francis http://arciscommunications.com/blog/?p=5 Warning : Long post ahead

One of the most common - and controversial - topics that come up when I’m discussing a company’s branding or public relations campaigns is  - what IS public relations or branding.

Just recently I was sitting with a member of my team that has joined us fresh out of school. We were having a rather spirited discussion of what it took to be a public relations / branding / marketing professional today and the assumptions she had were surprising to say the least.

It was a long conversation and not one to recount briefly - but let’s talk a bit about the public relations component of things.

According to Wikipedia, public relations is defined as:

Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics.^[1] Public relations - often referred to as PR - gains an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment.^[2] Because public relations places exposure in credible third-party outlets, it offers a third-party legitimacy that advertising does not have.^[3] Common activities include speaking at conferences, winning industry awards, working with the press, and employee communication.

PR can be used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general public.^[4]Investor RelationsLabor Relations. Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena employs some level of public relations.

This is just one of the many definitions available out there. You’ll find any number of them that talk about how it works, what it’s supposed to be and so on and so forth.

The problem is however that you don’t see as many of these definitions that focus on the core essence of the game - the relationship between a brand (personal, corporate, product, idea, etc) and the various publics (people who use it, consumers, other companies, etc) that come into contact with it.

More often then not these days, the discussions I have seem more intent on a sub set of the whole - Media Relations.

This essentially equates Public Relations with “how many media clippings we have.” And it’s a misconception that a number of corporations have adapted and adopted as well.

It seems that over the years, many of us have forgotten the “Public” in Public Relations and have focused on a sub-set of the art. A disservice and a dangerous one at that!

After all, we’ve all had situations where public relations was as much about not being in the media as it was in talking directly to the consumer. And public relations in its absolute form can be valuable marketing and sales tool as well - yet another aspect of the art that is sorely under utilised by myopic “media clipping” focused thinking.

This is especially relevant when you consider the current economic conditions globally. Small and medium sized businesses in particular (SME/ SMB) would benefit tremendously from a properly conceptualised and executed public relations plan that would not only draw media attention to them but also help them sell their products/ services.

That’s right - you heard me. Sell products and services. With Public Relations.

Thankfully some great brands out there have been working just as hard on the actual practice of relating to their various publics.

An example is the National Geographic Channel. A combination of online, offline and everything in between  - and yes, Media Relations is there as well - the channel has gone out of its way to make sure that its viewers have access to it regardless where they are!

From its website, its relationship with bloggers, regular updates to the mass media (including newspapers, television stations, online publications and a host of other so called traditional media outlets), ground events, newsletters, fan clubs and … well it’s a long list.

Essentially they’ve made it very clear that any aspect of their brand - every contact with them - is part of their public face.

Now, isn’t that what public relations is all about?

I would go far as to say that agencies, consultants and companies that fail to recognise this simple fact will I believe be forced to either accept a smaller share of their market(s) or become extinct altogether.

So, do you have examples of other great brands that are doing some fantastic things when it comes to “communicating” with - and not at - their various “publics” ? Or do you have entertaining examples of brands who aren’t quite getting it?

Also, let’s hear about the innovative examples of businesses that have used PR to generate and grow their businesses beyond just an exercise in media exposure.

Let me know … it’s always great to have a list of great brands who get it right.