The print evolution

Posted At : July 8, 2008 2:51 PM | Posted By : Jeff Aubin
Related Categories: PR,Technology,Social Media,Media Relations,Public Relations,Commentary

Steve Rubel recently posted a blog theorizing there may be a perfect storm shaping up which may eventually take down the print publishing industry as we know it. Three factors, according to Steve, are causing publishers to really get their arms around the print vs. online debate.

1) Increased gas prices are negatively affecting distribution costs for print media

2) Consumers are environmentally aware that print magazines/newspapers are killing trees

3) 3G-enabled smart phones are becoming easier to use and much more affordable

Having seen the high-tech publishing business evolve first-hand over the last 15+ years, I believe Steve is on to something. Today’s “perfect storm” won’t likely kill the print industry overnight, but it will put a dent in it. InfoWorld went online-only in April of 2007, and online sites like TechTarget are thriving. What’s this mean for PR practitioners? The more things change, the more things stay the same, if you ask me.

We have to learn and understand how all types of publics operate, whether they’re online, print, blogs or micro bloggers (e.g. Twitter). Good PR people did the same exact thing 15 years ago, communicating with reporters based on what they were looking for, not on what we wanted to give them. If you give ‘em what they want, they’ll value you as a great resource.

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BMW’s viral ‘Rampenfest’ campaign – thumbs up

Posted At : July 1, 2008 9:04 AM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Social Media

Luck is probably the number one factor that makes a chosen few promotional videos go viral. But even when your video takes off, you’ll be lucky to please everyone.

The video-consuming public maintains high – I guess you’d call them moral – standards for corporate-sponsored viral video. YouTubers clearly like their camp, but they simultaneously demand authenticity. It’s a razor’s edge.

Exhibit one: BMW’s “The Ramp” mockumentary, on the planned literal, physical launch of new Beemer model from a small hamlet in Bavaria to the United States. The town’s sinister, horse toothed event planner had a giant ramp built for the launch event, “Rampenfest.” The physics professor added wings to the car. I found the 30-minute, Spinal Tappy film pretty entertaining. There were also Facebook pages of the characters, T-shirts, and an online Miss Ramp contest.

No one complained about the spoof so much as the fact that BMW didn’t immediately come clean when savvy viewers figured out BMW was behind the campaign (duh). The Wall Street Journal concluded that “by keeping mum, the German automaker was taking a risk.”

Said the Jossip gossip site, “the problem wasn’t that BMW didn’t take credit for its viral marketing campaign; it’s that BMW didn’t acknowledge a viral marketing campaign that was so obviously paid for and produced by the car maker, only somebody missing his right ventromedial prefrontal cortex wouldn’t have figured it out. And the savvy consumer who bothered to follow the stunt and invest so much energy in the project didn’t like being treated that way.”

Said NewTeeVee, “BMW should have acknowledged their involvement with a coy wink by leaving hints that make discovery part of the fun.”

They have a point. Timing is everything in comedy.

Franz Brendl, the 'Rampenfest' planner

Yet despite the handwringing, I Googled and Googled and still couldn’t find all the anti-Beemer flames the writers were alluding to. In any case, BMW’s ad agency for the spot isn’t too worried: “People were saying it was real. People were saying it was a marketing campaign,” art director Scott Brewer told the Journal. “We and the company wanted to stay in character and let them have fun with that discussion.”

Will Video for Food’s defense of the campaign (“brilliant”) was particularly well argued. It’s just fashionable, says Kevin Nalts, to bash big corporate video.

Bottom line: if you’re lucky enough to go viral, ride the wave, don’t sweat the snipes, but don’t run it into the ground.

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Our operation pollutes like crazy!

Posted At : June 26, 2008 12:52 PM | Posted By : Steve Hodgdon
Related Categories: Social Media,Public Relations,Cause branding

polluted skyline At a time when corporate greenwashing is as ubiquitous as mouthwash, international shipper First Global Xpress takes a refreshingly candid, open and authentic approach to greening the company.

The company is asking the world to help keep it honest as it attempts to reduce its carbon footprint by 66% before year's end.

Are you paying attention, FedEx, UPS?

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Technology M&A remains endgame of choice

Posted At : June 24, 2008 1:21 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: PR,Technology,High tech PR,Public Relations,Commentary

Late last year, Wired spoke hopefully about technology stocks going IPO in greater numbers in 2008, “after three dismal years.” Some VCs, like Glen Kacher at Integral Capital Partners, forecast technology companies “coming out of a long dry spell; we’re only in the first year of an active IPO market.”

It ain’t happenin’ folks.

Nearly six months into 2008, tech IPOs are stalled. Some like Glasshouse Technologies, for example, have been on the back burner for seven months. CNN Money.com said the IPO market “has slowed to a crawl” and “can’t seem to get out of first gear.”

And they’re talking about every market, every industry, not just tech. Ouch.

There’s still plenty of action in M&A. Yes, deal activity is down 26% from last year (so far), but global deal volume is up 3% to date in 2008 vs. the same period in 2006 according to The Wall Street Journal. Let’s not forget that 2006 was the biggest year in M&A history until 2007 rewrote the record books.

Updata Advisors says global M&A deal value in Q1 08 rose to $33 billion – an increase of 32% over $25 billion in deal volume in the comparable quarter last year. Although this is a slight decline (8.3%) from Q4 07, it’s still a damn robust market. With a slowing economy, organic growth is tougher to achieve, so companies keep acquiring to maintain growth rates.

Our own lens confirms this reality. More than 35 Beaupre clients have been acquired, most over the past five years.

Last week, Microsoft acquired Beaupre client Navic Networks, a cool company that provides real-time TV audience measurement for interactive media placement. They joined earlier Beaupre clients acquired by Microsoft including Groove Networks and Parlano.

Updata Advisors think a strong M&A market will continue because “strategic buyers” (think tech industry gorillas) represent 90%+ of the deal activity.

It’s all about the endgame folks, and M&A continues to be the endgame of choice.

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The new high-tech startup mecca: Vermont?

Posted At : June 18, 2008 8:03 AM | Posted By : Steve Hodgdon
Related Categories: High tech PR,News

Vermont's Northeast Kingdom Vermont Governor Jim Douglas just signed a new bill allowing the creation of "virtual companies" to be headquartered, figuratively, in the Green Mountain State. No physical headquarters required. No in-person board meetings. Nada. The business can just be an Internet-resident operation. (If it was my startup, I'd pick somewhere in Vermont's Tolkien-esque Northeast Kingdom as my virtual homebase.)

This could be a boon to web-centric startups who don't need the added financial burden of physical property. But could it also become a haven for people like infamous Spam King Sanford Wallace, who the Feds were able to bust in part because at least he had a physical presence for his operation here in next-door New Hampshire?

Here's the story via GigaOm: Vermont OKs the Creation of Virtual Corporations

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Greenwashers versus mob rule

Posted At : June 12, 2008 10:19 AM | Posted By : Steve Hodgdon
Related Categories: Crisis Management,Social Media,Public Relations

An interesting battle is being waged through social media channels between General Motors and electric vehicle (EV)enthusiasts, who believe GM’s recent embrace of hybrid cars is just another disingenuous attempt to greenwash its image. It’s a great example of how social media has not only given the little guy a voice against corporate interests, but how the little guy can now drown out the big guy, sometimes to a tyrannical extent.

The EVs cite as evidence the Sony Pictures documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? It chronicles a sinister collusion between auto makers, Big Oil and Big Brother to terminate the fledgling electric car industry before it could take hold. Beyond its theatrical and DVD release, the movie got even wider distribution as a viral video via YouTube, social networks and blogs. And it didn’t help GM's cause when general manager Bob Lutz was widely quoted throughout the blogosphere saying “Global warming is a total crock of sh*t.”

Conspiracy theories and impassioned rants soon followed on social nets and forums such as the Yahoo!Groups electric vehicle group. EV activists descended on auto shows, policy making events and GM press conferences. An EV movement was born.

GM countered with social sites like gmnext, where people were encouraged to submit media and comments to help GM answer questions like “How can we best address global energy issues we’ll face for the next 100 years?”

Nice try. But the Rainforest Action Network, which called it “one of the biggest and most ambitious online corporate greenwashing campaigns,” quickly rallied its supporters to post photos and comments. GM was forced to kill “the conversation” on the site immediately.

The on-going debate has been fascinating. GM argues they can’t win with the EVs … that they’re investing billons developing the Chevy Volt by 2010. Yet skeptics say it’s red herring vaporware. The activists counter with the fact that GM built a perfectly good electric car a decade ago, so what’s the hold up?

I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I haven’t ~~forgiven~~ trusted GM since I bought my ~~sh*t box~~ Chevy Citation back in the 80s. Nor do I suffer well the tinfoil hat fringe of community activism. That’s what’s great about the web. Activists can help keep The Man honest, conspiracy theories can forment, and everyone has a voice. But is this always a good thing, or sometimes tyranny of the majority?

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That’s, like, a societal thing

Posted At : June 5, 2008 3:50 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary

I was hanging out at our state university with a colleague, capturing Gen Y opinions about mobile phones for some videos we’d be posting.

I got a chuckle out of how many times students said “like.” I stopped counting when I hit 47 – easily – in the span of a half hour of interviews.

The standard question we were asking went like this:

“What does your cell phone mean to you and how would you react if you didn’t have it?”

The answers were very consistent:

They’d be devastated.
They’d be lost (some literally, some figuratively).
They’d have a bad day.

But the glue linking nearly every comment was the word “like.” Here are a few examples:

“Not having my cell phone, would, like, make me feel, like, so disconnected.”

“I can’t imagine, like, getting through a day without it.”

“Looking back on times when this, like, actually happened, it was, like, not cool.”

“My cell phone, is like, a part of me. It’s, like, my social network, know what I mean?”

“Like talk” has been going on awhile. Clueless featured this dialect in 1995 and real-life valley girls predated the movie.

How’d this happen? How did “like” become such a superfluous synonym for “er” and “um?” Why is it so difficult to construct a sentence without it? I'm not being high and mighty about the "like" thing. I probably say it more than I realize.

I guess it’s, like, a lasting societal thing. Linguists will, have to figure out why it, like, isn’t going away, know what I mean?

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A Twitter case study

Posted At : May 28, 2008 12:49 PM | Posted By : Steve Hodgdon
Related Categories: Social Media,PR,High tech PR,Marketing

My cynical view of Twitter is softening based on a recent company launch experience. Here's a case study about it in Twitter's 140-character max format:

We launch ZeeVee. Columnist John Dvorak tweets “What’s this about?” Bang! 900 Twitter followers instantly swarm the site. Client pleased.

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25 reasons to keep innovating

Posted At : May 12, 2008 4:35 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Commentary

We never write about ourselves in the Beaupre/Checkmate blog, but today we make an exception.

Twenty five years ago today, Karen and I hung out our shingle. We started Beaupre in our first house in a former nursery with murals of Mickey Mouse and Raggedy A & A on the wall. Our view was a metal swing set from Sears on a one-third acre lot.

We had zero capital, no line of credit, one cheap pine desk, a rolodex and an IBM Selectric typewriter. We focused on technology from the start. Our first client was Integral Data Systems, a color dot matrix printer company later acquired by Dataproducts.

We’ve seen a bit of change.

On the competitive front, hundreds of competitors have come and gone, including great agencies like Newsome & Company; Miller Communications; Gray Strayton; Agnew, Carter, McCarthy; Drumbeater; Rourke & Co.; Nigberg PR; Copithorne & Bellows; Clarke & Co.; Fitzgerald & Co.; Ingalls, Quinn & Johnson PR; Creamer Dickson Basford PR; and Regis McKenna.

But survival isn’t an endgame. The passion to continually transform fuels ongoing success. I blogged about this when I paired Bruce Springsteen with technology innovation. We try to remember the ‘Bruce model' at Beaupre. You can never rest.

The transformation of PR is a current case in point. A grassroots online community has emerged and prospered, with customers and consumers talking to each other — and with companies — directly. This is redefining traditional models and practices for the better. It’s an energizing time to be in business.

Here are some highlights for the past 25 years:

Our ‘endgame’ focus helped companies get acquired, go public, increase sales and build successful brands. That’s how clients measure our performance and how we like to be measured.
The people who’ve been with us on our journey. They average nine+ years with our firm, and many have been with us a lot longer.
Beaupre was acquired by Brodeur and Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) in 1999, two world class organizations that made us stronger. Nine years later, we’ve kept our brand, working model and culture, while forging lifelong friendships with smart, fun people like John Brodeur and Andy Coville.
Still having a positive reputation means the most.

Many viewpoints have changed, and so have the views. Karen and I now look out on a salt-water panorama in Portsmouth, a terrific home to build a business. It’s a long way from the Sears swing set and Selectric. Thanks to all who make it possible.

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From slick to primitive: video is epic

Posted At : May 9, 2008 4:57 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Social Media,Commentary

Those of us who’ve been around the communications block awhile remember the days when corporate videos were works-of-art. They were thoughtfully (sometimes painfully) conceived and slickly executed. The more time and money invested, the more powerful the impact, the more positive the perception. That was the operating model for decades.

YouTube turned the world of video upside down.

Until recently, B2B companies stayed away. Unlike consumer companies, they couldn’t see a viable business benefit. Then the early adopters stuck their toes in the waters of social media, posting video content with a business connection.

Over time, YouTube – and other viral video social networks like Veoh, Viddler, Vimo – have become an efficient and highly cost effective way for businesses to create grassroots visibility, interaction and community. An increasing number of B2B companies now understand the positive impact on their brand persona.

Now they’re starting to have fun. They understand how video presents one of the sweetest ways to create and maintain a corporate personality. Instead of going slick, they’re going rudimentary, unsophisticated, guerilla.

Who cares if that video taken on the floor of a trade show is low resolution and the camera is moving around? People have not only grown tolerant of low-end video production quality, they accept it, often like it, and watch it like crazy.

YouTube also did one more thing: it reversed the game of authenticity. Old school video used to be highly regarded; the slicker the more viable. But now the reverse is true. The more rudimentary (with a dose of reason of course), the more credibly it’s viewed. I’m not talking fake authenticity (like Lonelygirl), but true genuineness.

This is such an epic transformation. We’re just beginning to see the impact.

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