Famous Publicity Stunts in Tech PR

Posted on January 28, 2010 by rgeller

Yesterday’s post made me wax nostalgic and think of famous tech PR stunts, especially those which hijacked the big industry events, like CES and the former Comdex show.

Certainly, I have been involved in my share of PR stunts (could we think of another phrase for this? PR spectacle, maybe? “PR stunt” sounds so lurid and decadent).  At Fusion PR, our clients tend to be start ups, and generally are not the big brands with big budgets that have been behind some of the more extravagant and outrageous affairs.

I have been in the IT industry for quite some time, and tried to think back about some of the stunts orchestrated by Oracle and Sun, for example.  We have a number of ex-IBMers on our management team (myself included).  I asked them and they seemed to recall many of these types of things but not any one in particular.

So I did a Web search and same up with some interesting things:

From the Network World archives (via Google Books search) I found an article from 1999:

Who said penguins can’t fly? A trio of skydivers literally dropped in on [Comdex] to promote Linux.  TurboLinux sponsored the jump into the parking lot at the Las Vegas Hilton as a way to highlight its TurboCluster product and introduce CEO Cliff Miller, who then flapped his wings about Linux, open source and the enterprise.

From the Java Lobby blog (and in the same approximate era):

It was funny in 1998 or 1999 when Microsoft paid people to dress up (or maybe that was just SF finery) and write anti java things on the sidewalks around Moscone during JavaOne. The writings were colorful chalk and had a wacky sense of whimsy to them.

I also found this cool post on Taylor Herring’s blog: Publicity stunts Hall of Fame. It lists quite a few (mostly non tech) examples and has funny pictures to go along.

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Ambush Marketing and Tech PR

Posted on January 27, 2010 by rgeller

The WSJ had a Business Insight supplement earlier this week. Published in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School, the section  included a number of very good articles.  A few covered tech-related topics (e.g. stories on IT platforms and process management).

Another article that I found informative and could relate to, was about ambush marketing. Ambush marketing is when companies that are not official event sponsors seek to associate their brands with the events. According to the article, it is a growing trend, and one that is resulting in a sort of war and arms race between event organizers and ambushers.

Event ambushing can take many forms.  Non sponsors can co-opt imagery and words in their advertising to make it seem like they are associated with the event.  The ambush could be an attempt to get a free ride and could also be an intentional attack on another brand.  According to the article:

In one of the best-known examples, American Express
Co. rolled out television ads in 1992 with scenes of Barcelona, Spain,
the host city of the Summer Olympics that year, and a message that said
"You don't need a visa" to visit Spain. Visa Inc., an official sponsor
of the Olympic Games, complained loudly. Amex has said that the
commercials did not refer to the Olympics and were not an attempt to
ambush Visa.

In an indirect ambush, non-sponsors can set up competing events in the same geographical area.

The article made me think of the laundry list of tactics we have used in tech PR to help clients benefit from events in which they were not official sponsors or exhibitors. (Please note we advise that the most direct and productive way to benefit from these events is to exhibit, sponsor, etc.and take care not to not break rules).

  • Setting up media and analyst briefings at trade shows for client executives who are attending but not exhibiting
  • Media and analyst breakfasts, dinners or hospitality suites close by
  • Landing speaking engagements at these events
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Too Light / Too Heavy in PR

Posted on January 25, 2010 by rgeller

One of the things I actually like about Mondays is the NY Times Business section.  The paper makes up for the lack of hard business news from the weekend by running features, with a heavy emphasis on tech and media.  Today's paper has a couple of stories on the front page of the Business section that remind me of the funny Too Light / Too Heavy commercials from Bud Light.

On the "Too Light" side of the balance sheet is an article about Apple's soon-to-be formally announced tablet (see David Carr's Media Equation story: Conjuring Up the Latest Buzz, Without a Word.) It is hard to say that Apple's marketing campaigns are too anything, except successful.  They are "light" because they get all this buzz with nary a traditional PR peep.  As Carr reports:

This Wednesday, Steven P. Jobs
will step to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San
Francisco and unveil a shiny new machine that may or may not change the
world.

In the magician’s world, that’s called “the reveal.”

And the most magical part? Even as the media and technology worlds have
anticipated this announcement for months, Apple has said not word one
about The Device. Reporting on the announcement has become
crowdsourced, with thousands of tech and media journalists scrambling
for the latest wisp and building on the reporting of others.

On the Too Heavy side of the balance sheet is the growing trend for big companies, brands and celebrities to take their fights public, even if it involves applying some tough love to their own customers and corporate sponsors.  In Corporate Antagonism Goes Public, Stephanie Clifford cites examples of cable companies and the Conan/Leno/NBC dispute.  She writes:

What’s happening, according to some observers, is a shift in how
business negotiations are conducted — from closed and discreet to open
and political.

“There’s a code of the past that we keep things
in the boardroom and don’t go public,” said Bobby Calder, chairman of
the marketing department at Northwestern University’s
Kellogg School of Management. “What you’re seeing is, I think, a
realization that you can go outside and gain some negotiating power.”

The
campaigns play to populist sentiment, asking the public to do the right
thing, an approach that also draws from politics. They create a public
spectacle, a narrative that distills dull subjects like contract
negotiations into a good-guy, bad-guy conflict — a Harvard Business
School case study turns into a shootout with Liberty Valance.

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If Vendors Tweaked Product Lineups like Networks Shuffled Late night TV

Posted on January 21, 2010 by rgeller

As a PR guy, I find It nothing short of incredible how the Leno-O’Brien drama has played out on the public stage.NBC confirmed its plans to change the lineup early on.  Since then, there’s been an outcry from O’Brien fans.  Leno and O’Brien have used their pulpits to spin and comment.  Others have piled on, providing running, blow-by-blow commentary as the situation has progressed.

The comedians’ writers are no doubt working overtime to make all this seem funny, yet there is tons of money at stake to say nothing of reputations and brands – providing a serious backdrop to all the posturing and levity.

In essence, the comedians are becoming their own PR pitch men, spinning the events in their favor or at least revealing how little control they actually have over the outcome.  One wonders how their negotiators and PR handlers are dealing with this, and if they have a say in the shtick scripting.

If you are in tech PR, as I am, you also might let your imagine run wild as you consider how different the scenario is from the ones we are more familiar with, and be tempted to ask: what would happen if vendors tweaked product lineups like networks shuffle late night TV?

Here are the top 5 things that would happen (Top 10 would seem to be more appropriate, but I could only think of 5):

  1. Vendors would announce that they are re branding and changing key components of their flagship product, letting loyal customers know that they will in essence be sunsetting the market leader 5 years in advance
  2. Industry pundits would proclaim this to be a bold move that reshapes the playing field
  3. When the channel sees what actually happens they will revolt and cause the vendor to reconsider its plans
  4. The vendor will try to put the ketchup back in the bottle
  5. Product managers, PR people and other execs for the vendor and competitors will tell jokes, talk trash about each other, insult the company and call its executives idiots
Posted in In the News | Comments Off on If Vendors Tweaked Product Lineups like Networks Shuffled Late night TV

Death of the Issues pitch, Revenge of the press release

Posted on January 12, 2010 by rgeller

My colleague Bennie tweeted a story from Ragan’s yesterday – Don’t Trash Press Releases Yet – which reminded me of a post I have been considering.  Since I have been scooped, I might as well go out with my post now, by adding another chapter in my PR Death Watch series.

For all the talk of the death of the press release, it is actually the press release and hard new story that is enduring, and edging out other types of content – and making tactics like soft news story and features pitching increasingly irrelevant in the process.

I refer to my own experience as evidence. Also, I spoke with representatives from the major press release distribution services, and they said that in general they have not seen a letup in the volume of press releases in recent years..

For further validation, one can also take a look at the Techmeme leaderboard, which tracks the sources generating the greatest amount of buzz in tech.  For the most part, these are news organizations and news-driven blogs, not sites that focus on extensive analysis or opinion.

There are several forces at work here.  The first is the enduring power of institutions.  One need look no further than the Jay Leno saga as an example.  What seemed like a bold experiment failed because late night talk occurs at late, night no exceptions.  There’s a whole system at work that reinforces this truism – viewing habits, diminishing draw of network programming in general, what else is on at these hours, etc.

Similarly, the creation, distribution and coverage of news is an ingrained institution. There is an ecosystem that reinforces this, and thus drives demand for press releases.  Put simply, press releases are an accepted way of packaging newsworthy info (or info that aspires to this level of noteworthiness).  Inhabitants of the ecosystem include marketing departments, PR firms, press release distribution services, Websites, SEC, consumers and investors.

Another factor is something I call Info Darwinism (also refer to ideas behind the science of memetics).  The clamor of the Web, and the burgeoning growth of various channels of info forces us to be selective and focus on Info with an Edge, i.e. hard info;  the info that jumps to the top of the Web heap, rises above the din and grabs our attention.  This could be hard news, it could be rumor, gossip, easily digestible but fun and attention grabbing snippets, info that relates to YOU and your concerns.

It is all about survival of the “fittest” info. The crowd applies their wisdom and filter, deciding what info is hot and what is not.  They consume the info and share it, elevating its rank and bringing it to wider recognition in the process.

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NY Times Covers Stories Related to Public Image/PR

Posted on January 8, 2010 by rgeller

I took a flight from NY to Northern California today for client and new business meetings.  After doing some some work, I read the NY Times and noted no less than three stories in the Business section related to PR/public image.

A Public Company Defends Staying Silent About a Legal Snarl

This article explores the case of Fidelity National, a company (the largest title insurer in the U.S.) that chose to remain silent about a series of lawsuits related to a mortgage fraud scheme.  The article explored the nuances related to a company's obligation to disclose material info to investors, and posed the following provocative question:

The question gets especially fuzzy when, as here, disclosures made for
the benefit of shareholders could come back to damage the company in
court, which could hurt those same shareholders

In a Clash over Cable, Consumers Lose

This article covers another installment in the very public battle that has been brewing between cable operators and programmers.  Here, the focus is on the food fight between Scripps Networks (owners of the Food Network and HGTV) and Cablevision. 

Coat Maker Transforms Obama Photo into Ad

President goes to China.  President is photographed in front of Great Wall wearing a certain brand of a coat.  Coat manufacturer smells a PR opportunity, obtains photo rights from AP (but does not get White House permission) and seeks to buy up ads.  NY Times covers the story.

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Attention Disorder – So Just What Were those Pilots Doing/Watching?

Posted on January 6, 2010 by rgeller

It defies reason, that those pilots over shot their mark at Minneapolis because they were engrossed in analyzing and discussing new routes on their laptops (CNN story). Yet in the time since, I have not heard anything to contradict their accounts.

Assuming there's some truth to their stories, it seems to me that we have a lot to learn from the episode.  After all, we are in an attention economy.  It is a marketer's dream to be able to engage a consumer and capture and hold attention for so long, despite reality trying to invade to the extent that it did.

Just what exactly was the nature of the conversation, given that they were so engrossed that they tuned everything else out?  OK, we know they said they were discussing new flight procedures (or routes or whatever) and reviewing these on a laptop PC, but c'mon, 90 minutes of chat about this? 

It is a maddening question that just won't let let go of me.  It has unfortunately sapped my attention and I must now complete this post for catharsis.  What could be so absorbing, dammit?!!!

I'd love to hear what others have to say.  Meanwhile, here are my top guesses at what really held those pilots attentions for so long:

  • The New World of Warcraft
  • Barely Legal #26
  • Ripped pre-release Avatar DVD
  • Chargers game
  • Viral Bud Light video (above, thanks Peter!)
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PR 2009 – The Color of Brand

Posted on December 29, 2009 by rgeller

PRbrand2

If you are involved with PR, the you must be dealing with some kind of problem, right? Or do you have a crisis? Are you caught up in a PR meltdown or an issue?

These are the modifiers often used in conjunction with the phrase “public relations.”  Much less frequently do you hear words like boon, bonanza, dividend or benefit.

That is my perception, anyway, and I think most people would agree with this.  When people think of PR, they most associate negative things like spin and problems.  I understand that in many if not most cases, the words relate to the situation at hand, not the profession or practice; still, there is a certain guilt by association that negatively colors PR as a result.

I am a former (I often say “recovering”) engineer and like to apply the scientific method rather than just rely on theories.  So I thought I’d try the following simple exercise to investigate a potential problem with PR as a brand.  It is designed to answer the question: how is PR “spun” by the media?  What does the editorializing tell us about media biases regarding PR?  See below for the methodology I applied.*

You can see the results in the word cloud illustration above.  A diabolical set of words indeed!

Although the exercise in this post explored PR, you could use the same approach to study media perceptions about your brand or category of tech.

Also, you may recall that I have blogged on similar topics previously.  Please see:

Fighting PR’s Public Relations Problem

PR Wars and other Problems

I find that all too often PR is brought into discussions of metaphorical wars and problems.  Companies are said to fight PR wars and have PR problems.   Rarely do you see discussion of marketing wars, market share wars and stories about companies just having problems.  No, PR has to be brought in as a convenient but lazy device – it makes a nice headline and story but tarnishes an entire industry.

* Methodology: I searched on the phrase “public relations” in Factiva over the past year, and copied the words surrounding it into a Word document.  I plugged the results into the Wordle word cloud generator.  The word cloud shows frequency of these words by modifying the font size accordingly.  I filtered out phrases in which modifiers were neutral- e.g., “director,” “firm,” “agent,” “officer,” etc. and selected words that show sentiment.
I searched back three months, and sorted by relevancy over major publications (this resulted in about 1500 articles overall)  The number reflected are from 500 articles; you could multiply these by four to get the approximate account for one year.

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Best practices in trash talking: Crush the competition and make grown men cry, in 3 easy steps

Posted on December 21, 2009 by rgeller

So, who knew that there's a proven formula for trash talking, and that someone has spent time studyingAli_20the_20Greatest_small and cultivating this fine skill? The NYT sports section had a story yesterday that reported on NY Jets linebacker Bart Scott's trash talking skills and how he hones them.  As the article says:

A Jets
linebacker, Scott views trash talking as an art, or science. He has
developed and refined his method. He has studied loquacious athletes
from years past. And he has practiced, from the first day he tugged on
a uniform all the way to Sunday, when he will unleash another torrent
of mostly unprintable barbs on the Atlanta Falcons.  His mouth
runs 365 days a year....

In PR we are supposed to make nice and play diplomats,  But you never know when you might have to mix it up a bit with friends or colleagues (also we have a foosball table at Fusion PR, and the competitive play sometimes goes into over drive).  The tips could come in handy for our clients, for when they are walking those trade show expo floor "mean streets" or rubbing shoulders with the competition at conference panels.

Over the years Scott has gotten inspiration from professional wrestlers, and by studying trash talking titans of yore like Muhammad Ali.  He boils the formula down to 3 steps:

1 Research – to better understand opponents, especially any Achilles heel they might have

2 Mix Fact with fiction, exaggerate (in a clinch, can always use Yo Mama! jokes)

3 Know your audience, save best stuff for last

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How Good (or Bad) is AT&T’s Network? The Power of Brands and Narrative in Shaping Public Perception

Posted on December 16, 2009 by rgeller

AT&T’s cellular network leaves a lot to be desired, according to many.  However, if you are willing to put up with it, you too can become the proud owner of an iPhone, since AT&T is still the only network that supports the world’s coolest device.

And why, pray tell, is AT&T’s service so bad – and apparently getting worse every day (if you believe news reports and the stories that get told and retold)?

Because of all those iPhone users jumping on board, of course, and their streaming, browsing, uploading, texting and talking.  It makes perfect sense that these data hogs put a hurt on network resources and rob it of precious bandwidth.

All well and good, except network tests show that AT&T has the best network for data, according to a NY Times article by Randall Stross: AT&T Takes the Blame, Even for iPhone’s Faults.

The article cited independent testing by two firms.  Here are the results from the article (the first, based on tests by Global Wireless Solutions, and the second from Root Wireless, a company that ran close to 5 million tests involving smartphones and the major carriers):

The results place AT&T’s data network not just on top, but well
ahead of everyone else. “AT&T’s data throughput is 40 to 50 percent
higher than the competition, including Verizon.”

In every market, AT&T had faster average download speeds and had
signal strength of 75 percent or better more frequently than did
Verizon.

The article suggests that the poor network performance is due to the iPhone design… but people simply do not want to believe that a company as cool and tech savvy as Apple could be at fault, and are more apt to blame AT&T:

Roger Entner, senior vice president for telecommunications research at
Nielsen, said the iPhone’s “air interface,” the electronics in the
phone that connect it to the cell towers, had shortcomings that “affect
both voice and data.” He said that in the eyes of the consumer, “the
iPhone has the nimbus of infallibility, ergo, it’s AT&T’s fault.”

Note: The article asks the question – but does not answer, at least to my satisfaction – why Consumer Reports ranks AT&T lowest in cellphone service if the company truly does have a better network. It seems to imply that the dissatisfaction stems from iPhone users and the iPhone design.  Randall has opened our eyes and cast some doubt on some conventional wisdom, but I am not sure the “myth” has been completely and undeniably busted.

Posted in PR | 6 Comments