Cymfony's Influence 2.0

PRSA Boston is "Navigating the Wide World of Blogs"

Sam Whitmore appeared on a panel last night entitled "Navigating the Wide World of Blogs" for PRSA Boston.  Rounding out the panel included Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix, Mike Spataro, Executive Vice President for Interactive Services at Weber Shandwick and Adam Gaffin, editor of NetworkWorld.com.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend but I found out from our friends at Topaz Partners that Amanda Watlington summarizes the event (although with some criticism) on her blog.

Marketing budgets on the rise?

Peter DeLegge from Marketing Today reported that marketing budget projections in the first quarter of 2005 look promising.  DeLegge offers research conducted by Blackfriars that indicates that companies are increasing 2005 budgets an average of 20% compared to 2004. Blackfriars estimates that strong marketing spending will continue into 2005 – double the growth seen in 2004. Blackfriars’ analysis found a number of benefits to marketing departments measuring the effectiveness of their programs.

Departments that measured:

- Spent 90% of their marketing budgets vs. only 67% at non-measuring firms
- Were more likely to experience greater budget increases
- Were significantly more satisfied with their marketing efforts

Do you know your top audience segments?

Today's top article on MarketingSherpa touches on one of my favorite subjects, measurement. The focus is on web analytics with a summary of key action items to improve email open rates, site visits and overall response to your online marketing tactics. Given that Anne Holland, the publisher of MarketingSherpa, mentions that only 28.7% of online marketers actually have web analytics data at their fingertips, and refer to it frequently, this article might be a good read, no make that a critical read for most marketers. Of particular interest to me is the section on segmentation.

Too many online marketers ignore the importance of targeting messages, web pages and promotions to the different audiences they reach out to. One-to-one marketing and personalization have been hot topics for many years but that strategy works best when you already have a relationship with a customer. Amazon has changed the way many marketers approach the customer relationship experience making it easy for potential clients to see products that might be of interest to them based on previous selections. For companies that are selling B-to-B or selling through channels where they might not have a direct customer relationship, analyzing the wants, needs and buying behavior of customer segments is the next best thing. You can structure the information you provide to similar types of buyers without annoying others whether they are thoughtful researchers or impulsive decision makers. Of course, once you start segmenting, you should assess the effectiveness of your programs while they are going on, otherwise you really could risk alienating a key segment. Finding as many ways as possible for customers and prospects to give you feedback is the best way to understand how to communicate to them.

New Measurement Blog

KDPaine & Partners, LLC distributed a news alert last week to announce the launch of new blog entirely devoted to discussions about communications and PR
measurement.   Good luck Katie.

Blogs' Effect on PR

PRNews sent out "The Latest from PRNews" email today featuring a Q&A session with Kryptonite Lock's general manager, Steve Down.  As many of us know by now, Kryptonite was one of the first companies to have blog discussion impact the bottom-line.  Typically I would link to the article but you have to have a subscription to read the piece.  Here is the Q&A section from the promotion email from PRNews

Blogs’ Effect On PR
The name "Kryptonite" could not have been more appropriate for a case that demonstrated how the blogosphere can bring an otherwise strong company to its knees. Late last year, Kryptonite (Canton, Mass.) had to recall nearly 40,000 of its industry-standard U-Lock bike locks after it was posted on the Web -- and quickly spread throughout the blogosphere -- that anyone can easily break the locks with a ballpoint pen (PR News, Feb 23). A subsequent exchange program cost Kryptonite an estimated $10 million (as of late February) but the costs of embarrassment cannot be calculated. PR News recently spoke with Steve Down, Kryptonite's general manager, about the new business realities brought on by bloggers.

Do you think Kryptonite was the unofficial poster child for companies burned by the blogosphere?
We've been one of the first companies hit by [the blogosphere], so yes. When these [stories] break, it's very difficult the first couple of days to judge what the problem of the product is and what should be the adequate response. For us, the overriding principle is to look after our customers, so we tried to protect brand integrity and limit the damage to the company, which are by-products of trying to do the right thing.

How do you think blogs have started to impact the ways in which companies communicate with their various stakeholders?
When you are dealing with traditional media, there are some balances. The difficulty with Weblogs is that anyone can put out information in an anonymous way. [But] for any business, Weblogs are a reality, and companies have to look at what they do and be able to respond adequately to concerns that are raised in such a forum.

If blogs are here to stay, what's the best PR strategy to deal with them?
Awareness that these individuals and groups are discussing your product and/or service is most important. You have to balance it, though, because of all the anonymity among bloggers, and figure out why they are putting a particular spin on things. But you have to be ready to respond if there are specific issues being addressed and [if the arguments] have enough momentum behind them.

Coca-Cola Launches a New Brand

I just read an article on ClickZ about Interactive agency AKQA winning the online advertising and Web development for Coca-Cola Zero, the new male-focused zero-calorie beverage launching in June.   More interesting than AKQA winning the contract is the fact that Coca-Cola is launching this new diet soda geared toward young men.  According to the ClickZ article, Pepsi is competing in the same market and to the same demographic with Pepsi One as a reformulated version.  It got me thinking of an analysis report we prepared for CMO Magazine's first issue last Sept. on the low-carb craze. 

The report was designed to illustrate the comparison between the low-carb diet's total media coverage in relationship to the low-fat diets and low-calorie diets over the last 10 year  (I'd be happy to share the full report). 

The report also included an analysis of the launch of two leading brands in the new low-carb soda space, Pepsi Edge and Coke C2.  And to our surprise, while Pepsi launched it's new product first, Coca-Cola's similar new product soon caught up and overtook its rival in terms of total coverage.  In the end Coke captured the majority of total media share between the new low-carb products for the time tracked.  I wonder if a similar trend is about to happen....

CEOs: Blog or Die

My colleague Adam Zand from Topaz Patners sent me this article from Baseline entitled CEOs: Blog or Die.  In it Tom Steinert-Threlkeld raises the question "Should chief executives be content to only let others speak their minds online."  Within the first couple of paragraphs he comes to the conclusion that only CEOs who are comfortable with (a) technology and (b) speaking out are joining digital conversations with the world at large.  As a PR professional who was introduced to the power of the blogosphere early last year, I tend to agree. 

Many CEO's and companies are hesitant to become engaged with this new forum for online consumer conversation directly (there are exceptions of course).  But even as I write this I do believe that the tide is starting to turn.  CEO's and companies are begining to realize that starting a blog or participating in online discussion is one of the more direct communication channels to use to connect with customers, shareholders, prospects, clients and even the media. 

My only concern with the Baseline article is that dead smack in the middle of the piece there is a highlighted section that reads "Learning to blog may not be enough. Steinert-Threlkeld warns CEOs they may have to be prepared to resign as well." Yikes.  Not to worry, this article doesnt have much to do with CEO's blogging, it's featured to promote another article on why a CEO should know its company's systems.  On a brighter note, it didn't take any persuasion for me to convince Andrew Bernstein, CEO of Cymfony to post directly to the Cymfony group blog.  He plans to be an active participant to this new site.

The Launch

Greeting from Cymfony, a market intelligence and media analysis company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts.  Cymfony's Marketing Insight blog will offer tips, advice, best practices and market prespective from insiders and guests of the company.  Topics covered will include media measurement, blogging analysis, business intelligence, corporate reputation management, natural language processing technology and more.