Think Media

Marketing, Advertising, New Media, Personal Branding, Technology, Film Production

Change What’s Wrong, Not What’s Right!

Feb 19

Posted by alex in Public Relations, miscellaneous | No Comments

In this day and age, the big trend is to experiment in the ways we communicate and market to our consumers. While this change and reinvention is most definitely necessary (due to the changing nature of consumers and the evolving media landscape), many companies don’t seem to understand why they are doing it; and this is a major issue. Companies shouldn’t simply alter the way they do things because it’s the trend. In fact, they need to have a reason to believe that the change will induce positive returns. Changing things (even if they’re small) without properly understanding the context and situation might leave them unpleasantly surprised.

Before altering their practice, companies should ask themselves a few simple questions: What is the problem and is it really a problem?, Where does this problem come from?, how will the envisioned changes help resolve the situation? What is in it for their customers? Doing this could save them from taking decisions they may regret.

Dean Markadakis from Fast Company cleverly exposes a situation where precipitated changes didn’t actually solve a problem, in this video interview produced in association with Google and the Wharton School of Business. Enjoy!

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Kokokaka’s Awesome Work for Wrangler Europe

Feb 17

Posted by alex in miscellaneous | No Comments

KOKOKAKA a talented web production company based in Sweden has just released a stunning new website and campaign for one of their clients: Wrangler Europe. The website in question was built to showcase the new spring/summer 2010 collection of their Blue Bell line. While most clothing companies simply showcase pictures or videos of their collection, Wrangler took an extra step that transforms the whole experience. In fact, their website enables you to interact with the clothing line by incorporating a functionality that lets you drag the models wearing the clothes into specific positions. The result is a truly interactive and memorable experience that gives you a great idea of how the clothes will look and move from all angles. All they are missing is the ability to buy the clothing by clicking on the items! Overall though I applaud KOKOKAKA’s work for Wrangler. Thumbs way up!

Wrangler's new interactive website

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Companies, Public Relations and The New Media Landscape Part.3

Jan 25

Posted by alex in Public Relations | No Comments

Several companies have realized the importance of these new opportunities and have slowly started joining the conversation. Paradoxically though, many forget the most important step: listening. The Oxford English dictionary defines ‘conversation’ as an “informal exchange of ideas spoken by words”. Organizations must ensure that this ‘exchange’ happens and that they aren’t simply spreading their own messages. Remember what Ivy Lee said: PR is a “two way street”. The ability to hear what customers and stakeholders have to say is one of the great benefits of the new ecosystem; companies might as well be taking advantage of it. They should use each bad comment, complaint or protest as an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and improve. By doing so, they will be rewarded. Their consumers will feel valued, appreciated and acknowledged and will trust them increasingly in exchange (and in the current situation they could use some extra trust). Not only will this improve the relationship they share with their community it should also increase their revenues as they will technically have produced a product or service that better suits their stakeholders needs. It becomes a win-win situation.

As Andy Marken states in the Public Relations Quarterly, when facing consumer complaints and questions companies should aim to: “Calm that individual down, help him get the right assistance/answer and the company has not just saved a sale but more frequently has gained another company/product advocate who will speak favorably about the firm and experience with others”. Remember that every consumer they convert will potentially help the PR team do their job by praising the company’s actions. And knowing that consumers place so much trust in what they hear online, companies should capitalize on the situation. There was never any good reason not to listen to customers!

Last but not least, I firmly believe that public relations should increasingly become part of the management strategy. It has too frequently been used to resolve problems instead of preventing them. Having a PR counsel work as a part of the management team would help companies make the appropriate choices and decisions to maintain a proper image and preserve stakeholder trust. Edward Lordan states in one of his Public Relations Quarterly articles: “Public relations should be integrated into the strategic decision-making process in an organization, not exclusively as a reaction to events inside and outside the company.” I must say that I totally agree. Many scandals could have been prevented if their management system had been organized in such a way. In fact, The PR counsels could have helped the companies take appropriate ethical decisions, maintain high levels of transparency and preserve employee and stakeholder relationships.

Blatant misconceptions of the field, plummeting consumer trust and the new media ecosystem should all be reasons for companies to readapt their PR goals and strategies. Although it is already late, it’s better to reform now than never. Moreover costs shouldn’t be an issue because it will cost less to adapt now than to compensate for the failure to do so. As Gerald Kane states in The Harvard Business Review: “companies as diverse as Kaiser Permanente, Comcast Domino’s and Amazon have learned that not having a social media team can cost far more than having one [...] each learned it’s lesson the hard way.” So here is my advice to companies: embrace the new media landscape, listen to your stakeholders, build your corporate practice and guidelines off of their advice & opinions and remain open to suggestions. You will rapidly see the return on investment, as you won’t be on your own anymore. You will be a better company backed by better customers. Do yourself a favor, and take the opportunity while its still here!

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Companies, Public Relations and The New Media Landscape Part.2

Jan 5

Posted by alex in Public Relations | No Comments

The new media landscape has created huge PR opportunities for companies and organizations yet many have failed to recognize these. One of the great advantages is the simple shift from a media landscape based on control to one based on openness. This situation is caused by the unique fact that consumers can now cheaply and effortlessly create content. In the past the high costs of production forced the content to be produced by large and specialized media companies. They subsequently had the final word on what they wanted to distribute. But, in a world where anybody can produce content at minimal cost, the gatekeepers are bypassed and companies can independently decide what they deem to be newsworthy. This valuable opportunity enables them to keep their publics informed day-in day-out and increases their ability to react rapidly in the event of a crisis. More significantly though, this shift has enabled them to be directly connected to their audiences.

Some will argue that this is not beneficial to PR, as skipping the gatekeepers also does away with the opportunity to benefit from “3rd party credibility”. While this might seem like a valid point, I tend to believe that the shift in the landscape hasn’t completely altered the phenomenon of credibility and that the benefits brought on by the changes firmly outweigh the disadvantages. Remember that any new medium also brings new producers, and that it is inevitable that some of these producers will become more trusted than others. Hence, contrary to public belief, organizations can still benefit from 3rd party credibility in new media platforms on the Internet. The credibility just doesn’t belong to the same people they used to deal with. Chris Brogan, a media consultant, author and respected marketing expert calls these new sources of online credibility ‘trust agents’. He defines them as: “people who use the web in a very human way to build influence, reputation, awareness” (Brogan, Smith) While they can take many forms, trust agents are most commonly bloggers that gain high amounts of authority & trust on the Internet and subsequently develop a huge community of readers.

Engaging with and using such new sources of credibility is part of the changes companies must make. As a matter a fact, in some cases it may be more beneficial for organizations to get online ‘trust agents’ to preach their message than to use traditional large-scale media outlets. This is due to the fact that their (trust agents) communities are extremely targeted, specialized and dedicated to the subjects they follow. This relevance is crucial. In other words, speaking to 1 million people is useless if only 50 are interested in your cause. Ultimately, the goal is to get these dedicated followers to preach the organizations messages as well. It becomes a virtuous circle of word of mouth.

While some might want to stick solely to traditional media, I would argue that developing relationships with ‘trust agents’ is a compulsory part of corporate public relations in this new media landscape. Not engaging with these agents and their communities could very well be fatal. Consider the following: “A recent PEW study found that nearly 40% of Americans say they have doubted a medical professional’s opinion or diagnosis because it conflicted with information they’d found online. If users put that much faith in what they learn on the Internet, what will they be willing to believe if members of a social media forum start trashing your organization?” (Kane, Fichman, Gallaugher, Glaser) The reality of the current situation is that people will be talking about brands and companies online whether they like it or not. Chris Anderson, a bestselling author and the chief editor at Wired magazine comically expresses this idea when he states:  “Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is.” (Anderson Chris) Consumers have been voicing their ideas, thoughts, concerns, worships and complaints over these online media channels for years. It is now up to companies to do the same. Doing so will ensure that they remain in control of their image and reputation while portraying engagement. In the end, this will also enable them to develop better relationships with their stakeholders; which was the goal of public relations in the first place.

Brian Solis, author of "Putting the Public Back In Public Relations" presents this brilliant graph that exposes the multitude of new media channels available to PR in this day and age, while giving some quick insight on how to use them. Creative Commons photo courtesy of briansolis.com

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Companies, Public Relations and The New Media Landscape Part.1

Dec 22

Posted by alex in Public Relations | No Comments

This is the first of a series of posts on the changing face of public relations. As I firmly believe that the profession has had a hard time adapting to the ever-changing media landscape, I decided to analyze the ways in which the field could reform. In the following posts I will:

1- analyze the problems that the profession has encountered in the recent past and evaluate the changes in the environment in which it operates

2- Reflect & offer insight on the opportunities provided by the new media landscape

3- Assess how both companies and consumers could benefit from updated public relations


Problems Encountered by PR in the Recent Past

In my opinion PR faces four major problems, the first of which is the lack of trust in the profession. According to a study conducted in Sweden in 2007, PR practitioners where amongst the least trusted professionals in all industries confounded. This has lead the public to describe the practice with terms such as: ’spin’ & ‘manipulation’ consequently inciting them to refer to the practitioners as ’spin doctors’ and ‘flack’s’. When we consider that PR  depends on the trust of others to communicate its messages this seems to be a considerable problem. Remember that PR is “earned media” and thus is about earning sufficient awareness, trust and respect to engender positive press and word of mouth. In other words, a PR practitioner has to maintain trust with the media outlets he uses (so that they talk about him) but also with the public he is trying to reach (so that they listen to him). If the public doesn’t trust him the purpose is defeated.

Secondly, the common misunderstanding of the practice cannot be helpful. In fact, James Grunig co-author of the book ‘The Future of Excellence in Public Relations‘ found that advertising, propaganda and public relations are three distinct fields that are frequently confused. If the public doesn’t understand the true purpose of the profession and assumes that it is about ’spinning’ and ‘manipulating’ it seems normal that they will be criticizing it. So, what is PR really about? Ivy Ledbetter Lee (often considered as the father of PR) defined it as: “a two way street”. In other words, he believe that the profession was about helping companies listen to their publics so that the companies could communicate and act appealingly & effectively with them in return. Thus it can be understood that in its most literal sense, PR is about effectively managing the relationships between an organization (often a company) and its stakeholders (often consumers).

Thridly, the profession has had a hard time adapting to the new media landscape and remains trapped in archaic notions of an outdated media model. In fact, the arrival of the web created a significant shift from a media model based on control to one based on openness. This is fundamentally due to one reason: anybody can now cheaply and effortlessly create content. Hence, the sources of trust and credibility have shifted and PR professionals are finding themselves stranded an reminiscing the ‘good old days’. Not only are their audiences constantly scattering, they now have the ability to talk back. As Clay Shirky (Best-selling author and NYU Graduate Professor) would say: “we are now in a media landscape where the consumers are also the producers.” PR needs to account for this shift.

Finally, we come back to the notion of trust. Remember that it has been shown that PR professionals lack the necessary trust from their publics. Unfortunately though, the problem goes much further than just practitioners; it affects business in general. Edelman, one of the worlds largest PR firms annually analyses the amount of trust displayed towards business across the world (Edelman Trust Barometer). They have found 2009 to be: “a catastrophic year for business” because “trust is down in established economies”. They continue on to explain that we have hit “10 year low’s” in consumer trust. It appears that people don’t trust companies anymore! PR has to compensate and adapt to the fact that public faith in organizations is continuously slipping.

In my mind, these substantial problems are all more than valid reasons for PR’s necessity to reform. Simply denying the new circumstances and refusing to adapt to the changes is not a plausible option for the future. Stay put for the following post, which will analyze the opportunities provided by the new media landscape and will help us understand how PR could potentially take advantage of the new realities.

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Flickr’s Most Interesting

Nov 19

Posted by alex in miscellaneous | No Comments

Flickr is an online photo-sharing website that was created in 2004. It rapidly became one of the most appreciated sites of this genre on the Internet and is currently home to roughly 4 billion user-uploaded photographs. At the time of its release, one of the main differences between Flickr and its competitors was it’s ability to tag pictures. This feature enabled users to “attach” information about the content of the picture to the image itself. Consequently pictures could then be organized, categorized or searched by theme.

While the site’s success is unquestionable, I’d like to concentrate on a feature that I find truly astonishing. Flickr has created a page that tracks the most interesting photos uploaded to its site during the past 7 days. While many sites track popularity I know very little that actually track interestingness. It is exceedingly important to note the difference between these two words. While the first is defined by the oxford dictionary as something that is “supported by many people”, the later is defined as something that has the ability to “excite curiosity and hold attention”.  In this sense, popularity could be attributed to any picture that has a high amount of views, but this certainly won’t guarantee that it will be interesting. Something that is interesting will have the ability to create conversations, to make people think, to spark research and analyses, to bring people back multiple times and plain simply to get people involved around the subject.

To locate interest, Flickr goes through multiple steps which are remarkably well explained by Jeff Jarvis in his book What Would Google Do? He states: “Flickr measures the interactions-commenting, emailing, tagging, linking-that occur around a photo.” He continues to explain that Flickr then performs a “reverse social analysis: If Bob and Sally are emailing and commenting on each other’s photos all the time, the system presumes they are relatives or friends (…) But if out of nowhere, Bob interacts with Jim’s picture, the system then presumes that their relationship is based on the photo, not on life.” The system can therefore distinguish if certain people are more prone to comment on certain photos than others and consequently gives greater value to the anomalies. This truly brilliant process helps them determine what deserves to be seen by the many, consequently letting them share this exciting content with the masses. As Jeff Jarvis so eloquently states: “Flickr is algorithmically aggregating the aesthetic of the crowd.”

Such features help Flickr distinguish itself from its competition and to me put it miles in front of the others. It also demonstrates a smart use of readily available data. They have access to all the information necessary to create such a feature, so they took advantage of it and offered an extra feature to their users and to the masses. I strongly encourage you to visit this section of their site. It has successfully provided me attractive and noteworthy content on multiple occasions in the past.

Link:  Flickr’s Most Interesting Pictures-Past 7 days

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On Building a Better Product

Oct 31

Posted by alex in Advertising | No Comments

I’ve talked about this idea in the previous post but, it’s just so crucial that I decided to write a whole post about it. Many companies seem to use advertising as a way to compensate for a bad or under-par product. The problem with this practice (and what companies are starting to realize) is that it creates absolutely no value for companies. They might argue that increased advertising will lead to increased sales, but I tend to think that they should reconsider. In fact, I believe that over time, this practice might actually lead to a loss of customers and potentially to bankruptcy.

In my opinion, no amount of advertising can compensate for a bad product. At first, the increased amount of advertising might lead to several new purchases, but, once the customers discover that the product is not what they say it is, doesn’t work right or doesn’t compare to the competition, they will not repeat a purchase. Companies will have lost their trust, and once that trust is lost it might never return. Remember that the majority of profits will be generated with repeat purchases. Once the consumer is loyal to a brand, he will generally continue buying the products (therefore increasing revenues), and the company will be  spending far less money on convincing him that the product is good. In other words, reapeat purchases generate revenues long after the initial costs of convincing (converting) the customer  have been amortized. Give a great product to your customers and everybody will be happy. They will continue buying and enjoying your products and your company will stay afloat.

David Ogilvy (founder of the Ogilvy & Mather’s advertising firm and one the most historically renown figures in advertising) truly embodied this idea in his book “confessions Of An Advertising Man”. He states: “Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it. If you tell lies, or weasel, you do your client a disservice, and increase your load of guilt…” All in all, companies should make sure that they have a product that stands by their words. Doing so should presumably increase their reputation and consequently lead to an increase in sales. If they know that their product could be better, they shouldn’t advertise to compensate. Instead, they should be thinking about investing the money in refining and developing it. Everybody will benefit!

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Microsoft: Listening to its customers

Oct 23

Posted by alex in Advertising | No Comments

Microsoft has just released it’s new operating system: Windows 7. It seems to be getting good reviews and many are stating that it is almost as good or as good as Apple’s latest effort: Mac Osx Snow Leopard. While reviewing the operating system could be interesting, I’d like to focus on something that I deem much more important:  Their latest advertising campaign and the fundamental shifts in strategy that they have demonstrated recently.

Microsoft had one big problem: They weren’t listening to their customers. While this model could work in the past (because nobody could really express their anger efficiently), this has changed. In this day and age, it has become more important than ever to listen to your customers. The social networking & publishing tools of the internet let anybody publish their opinion and talk about their brand experiences to the rest of the world. As Jeff Jarvis brilliantly states in his book “What Would Google Do?”: Today, when you lose a customer, you don’t lose just that customer, you risk losing that customer’s friends. And thanks to the internet and blogs and consumer rate-and-review services, your customers have lots of friends all around the world.”

Not listening to their customers meant that they weren’t satisfying their needs, expectations and desires. If your product doesn’t meet the customers needs, they will stop buying your products and eventually all their friends will too. The important thing to remember is that it’s all about the customer: At the end of the day he is the one that will be buying your products, so it seams logical to try and please him. Unfortunately, many companies still haven’t understood this idea. Fortunately, Microsoft finally has.

Their previous product (Windows Vista) was a blatant failure. How did they attempt to make this one better? They listened to their customers and added the features they wanted. Jeff Jarvis states that “Your worst customer is your best friend”. He is quite right. Today’s publishing tools have given your customers the power to tell you what you are doing wrong. All you have to do is listen. Your product will inevitably get better and this will help you in the long run. Remember, that your customers have a lot of friends, and if they like your product, they’ll spread the love. This is a two way model, so embrace it.

More importantly, Microsoft finally understood that in our present market you can’t compensate for a bad product with more advertising. A bad product will inevitably lower you reputation and will definitely have negative impacts on your business. Advertising is of no use until you product meets expectations. If the quality of your product isn’t there, don’t waste your money on advertising, invest it in developing a better product. Once you have a good product, then start promoting it. Furthermore, a good product becomes advertising in itself. People will eventually become so loyal to your company that they will embrace it and spread the love. Don’t believe me? Look at Apple. They understood all this a long time ago.

Microsoft’s latest advertising campaign demonstrates all these ideas brilliantly. I firmly believe that these changes in their brand strategy will pay off. It took them a bit of time to adapt but they are finally moving in the right direction. Now, all they have to do is keep it up.

Check out their latest campaign here:

Windows 7 Collaboration Campaign

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TinEye Image search engine

Oct 2

Posted by alex in cool startups | No Comments

TinEye is a specialized search engine developed by Idee Labs. I say specialized due to the fact that it can only search images. You might be thinking: Well Google already does that! But, no not really; not this way at least.

While the idea behind TinEye remains the same as most search engines across the web (Input a search query; get some results) it’s the way you search that differentiates it from others. Instead of imputing a textual search query (as with most search engines) TinEye lets you upload an image or  link to its page. It will then search for others based on resemblance (by looking at the pixels in the image). This means no keywords, tags or file names are used to complete the search (just similarity). I find this great as it uses the intrinsic features of images to provide its results.

Another cool product of theirs is the multicolor search lab. This will let you search Flickr’s creative commons database by color and not by subject. The result’s are truly astonishing. You will inevitably be impressed by the number of cool looking photos that come up. What a great way of finding copyright free images!  I truly enjoy these kinds of products as they offer alternative ways to search for content, and sometimes, an alternative is exactly what you need! While many may never use these products, I believe their existence is important. They give us choice, and choice is something of tremendous value!

Multicolor search lab: http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/

TinEye image search: http://www.ideeinc.com/products/tineye/

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Clikthrough

Sep 27

Posted by alex in cool startups | No Comments

I found out about this company while reading a post on Techcrunch over the summer. They had just received a big investment to further develop their brilliant idea.

The basis of their idea is to make music video’s interactive. It didn’t seem like much to me at first, but, I checked it out and it blew me away. They have essentially created a fully interactive (and entertaining) marketplace. This place is like Youtube meets Amazon!

Their technology lets them tag anything within a music video (places, people, products) and link content to that tag. You can click on any tag while the video is playing and it will give you product information, let you comment, let you purchase the item, tell you in witch other music videos this product place or person appears, let you share your find with friends and much more! It brakes the boundaries of interactive shopping and totally merges entertainment, with shopping and the power of tribes.

At the click of a mouse, you can now find out what product your favorite artist is wearing (or using) and effortlessly purchase it for yourself. You might have thought that product placement in movies was good, but these guy’s have brought the game to a whole other level. The product that is placed in the music video is not only seen by many, it can be purchased and shared on the spot.

While many might dismiss the idea that such a concept might work, I believe that it truly has a chance. I encourage you to consider the following idea: for centuries, humans have aspired to ideals. They have always looked up to others. At first it was people in their geographic region (family, friends, people in their community) but, at the dawn of the 20th century all this changed. With the arrival of mass media, the 20th century saw the rise of pop culture. A culture that created stars, glamour and a whole lot of fans. People started following others on a global scale. As chris Anderson so brilliantly states in one of his best  selling business books entitled: ‘The Long Tail”: “We are a gregarious species, highly influenced by what others do. And now, with film, there was a medium that could not only show us what other people were doing, but could also endow it with such an intoxicating glamour that it was hard to resist. It was the dawn of the celebrity age.” This idea of stars and fame has been engrained in our society ever since.

Several (including chris Anderson) argue that the star & blockbuster era has reached its peak and started its downfall. Whether you believe this to be true or not, one things remains clear: the mass media that we consume continues to place several individuals (mostly musicians, artists and actors) in a spotlight that the whole world can see and look up to. Music videos are a big part of that world. They define the artists image. The public relates to the image that is portrayed within those videos. What is the best way to try and become that person that you look up to? Follow his lifestyle (portrayed image).  Get where I’m heading now? If you know exactly what you’re favorite artist wears and uses and that you can conveniently buy it, it becomes easy to imitate his lifestyle. All you need is the money to do so!

The guy’s at Clikthrough have established a user friendly way of following your artist’s (presumed) lifestyle and interests. They seem to understand that humans look up to ideals, and that this isn’t going to change. They are giving consumers a way to follow these ideals. Furthermore, they have produced an efficient and brilliant way for fans to connect and discuss the latest on their favorite artist (fully integrating the power of tribes within their product offering). It will be interesting to see what effect services such as this one will have on the value of product placement. If I where a company, I’d be willing to pay a lot more money to sponsor an artist if I knew that people could instantly & conveniently copy his style.

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