The Byline: PR and Marketing Insights from Eiler Communications

On June 12, 2009 Main Street played host to the 9th Annual Mayor’s Ann Arbor Green Fair. Underneath the lush green leafy canopy of Ann Arbor’s city center, local eco-friendly vendors and businesses gathered to discuss, exhibit, explain and sell all things Green. Booths lined both sides of downtown Main Street between Huron and William with companies both large and small, profit (Whole Foods) and non-profits (Friends of the Allen Creek Greenway) encouraging visitors to focus on environmental-sustainability for the future. BikeFest, with tutorials and ideas on bicycle transportation was also included in the festivities.

The annual Mayor’s Ann Arbor Green Fair signifies the growth and opportunity the Green Industry represents in our current economic climate. The traditional preservation communities made their appearance at the Fair, but also notably present were industries that do not immediately suggest “environmentalist”. Examples of these include: The Bank of Ann Arbor, Amtrak and Ann Arbor division of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). As a casual onlooker and job seeker, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of activity towards Green initiatives. Also particularly interesting is the governmental support of eco-sustainability. In addition to the Mayor’s continued backing of the Fair (scheduled in the heart of Festival season by the way), Washtenaw County showed off their ecological commitment with exhibitions on weatherization, water resources and environmental health. More on Washtenaw County’ s Green initiatives can be found at their homepage.

“Going Green” is no longer just a fad, but a serious consideration for any business leader or those looking for business or jobs. The sophistication of green-centric organizations was on display at last week’s Fair. A list of companies and businesses that appeared at last week’s Fair can be found here. The city of Ann Arbor listing for the event can be found here. In order to take eco-friendly businesses to the next step in terms of impact and economic stability, I believe it is time for these businesses to enlist traditional marketing and public relations expertise. The audience is ready to listen. Attendance of the Green Fair was bustling and curious. Each booth attracted three to four visitors and musical acts entertained at each corner. The Green Fair even out-paced the turnout of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival’s First Night gathering just 5 blocks north. “Going Green” is no longer simply the way of the future, but as the Green Fair showed, the future.

Case Ernsting

Bing it! Does it have the same ring to it as “Go Google it?” Microsoft’s latest attempt at competing with the popular search engine Google- Bing is now live.

Bing is more than a search engine, it’s a decision engine. The site was created for questions that have more than one answer. Bing helps users overcome a search overload and find the best choice faster. It organizes results into logical categories, not in order of popularity. For example, I searched for “Michigan”. My results were sorted in the following categories- maps, zip codes, newspapers, facts, attractions, and images. This made it much easier to find exactly what I was searching for in less time.

On the left hand side of the Bing homepage there is a guided search for shopping, health, travel and local information. The shopping feature brings price comparisons, images and reviews for what you are looking for to help you quickly find the best product at the lowest price. The health feature brings together results from top medical sites ensuring that you are getting information you can trust. The travel feature allows you to enter dates and locations then finds the best deals. There is even a price predictor that determines when fares may be cheaper. The local feature allows you to search for things like restaurants around your area. You can then refine the results by parking, price, atmosphere or reservations and get one-click directions.

What is the difference between Bing and Google? The biggest difference is how the results are sorted. For example, I searched for “Detroit Redwings” on both search engines. On Bing, the official team website came up as the first result, on Google, news results (Stanley Cup etc) for the team were displayed first. Bing also pulled up a schedule for the team listing upcoming events. Google didn’t.

Another difference is the spell check feature of each site. When I misspelled a word while searching on Google, a notification asking if I meant the correct spelling instead came up. When I misspelled the same word on Bing, it automatically changed the word to the correct spelling and searched for that.

Google pulls up almost double the results that Bing does.

Some say Bing is more interesting to look at with images on its homepage while others prefer Google’s simple and classic background.

I think which search engine is a better depends on your own personal preferences. Personally, I’ve been happy with my results using Google and don’t see the need to switch over to Bing, at least for now. It’s a nice option to learn about though.

Amanda Deluca

Background
Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign was historic not just politically but also because of his use of the Internet to promote awareness and create a loyal following. Obama and his campaign strategists realized that on top of public appearances, rallies and speeches the Internet was another effective medium to connect with the people of the United States. President Obama’s use of social media in his Presidential campaign will be the template to inspire future Presidential campaigns and be a beacon for how businesses can use the multiples of new media to reach customers on the Internet.

Obama was successful in realizing the true potential of the Internet as a way to raise $750 million dollars and support for his Presidential campaign. The youth vote played a major role in his landslide victory. Obama was able to earn the support of many first time voters largely because of his use of social media.

Situation
Obama needed to raise money and bring awareness to the people of the United States that he was running for President. The message to get across was that America needed a change and for this to happen, Americans needed to elect Obama as President.

Strategy
To reach every demographic with the one message, “In order for change, you must elect Barack Obama.” AND if you want him to win-you must join the campaign and donate. The initial strategy was to reach the audience by using technology and reaching the donation goal by the majority of donations being under $200.

Tactics
My.BarackObama.com
The site was created with help of Chris Hughes, one of the three Harvard students who founded Facebook. This site allowed Obama’s team to take the use of the Internet to a whole different level by allowing masses of volunteers to self-organize and communicate through their own social networking site. The site enlisted thousands of supporters for his blog, to get the word out about voting in elections and to get “buzz” going throughout the campaign.

By the time the campaign was over, volunteers had created more than 2 million profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000 groups, posted 400,000 blogs and raised $30 million on 70,000 personal fund-raising pages.

Obama’s Blog
The blog was updated frequently to keep members coming back, interested and engaged. The blog was fun and encouraged feedback.

Obama on Flickr
The campaign constantly took pictures and uploaded them to Flickr. Pictures were from throughout the campaign including the 82 posted that showed Obama and his family awaiting the election result and celebrating the victory. Most of the pictures were not staged and allowed people to feel like Barack was a “real” person- not just a political figure.

Obama’s YouTube Channel
Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. These videos are said to be more effective because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of their TV show being interrupted.

The campaign’s official videos created for the site were watched for 14.5 million hours. To buy that much advertising time on TV would cost $47 million.

The most famous speech was “Yes, we can.” The video was viewed 1.8 million times on YouTube.

Barack Obama on LinkedIn
Obama’s presence on LinkedIn helped him connect to an older, professional and more politically motivated demographic. His homepage featured links to several web-based tools such as his YouTube videos and his Facebook profile.

Obama used the Q&A feature to pose a question to the LinkedIn audience: “How can the next President better help small businesses and entrepreneurs thrive?” The question generated over 1,500 responses from all types of small business owners and entrepreneurs. The Obama campaign then used the responses to formulate policy initiatives.

Twitter & Obama
Obama used Twitter to announce the various campaign stops and rallies throughout his campaign. His posts were encouraging and always contained a clear call to action.

He had his profile set up for whenever a person followed him he automatically followed them back. By Obama following supporters, he was sending the message that he wanted to communicate and he cared about what they had to say. This created a community and wasn’t limited to just getting others to see what he had to say.

Obama & Facebook
Facebook is home to more than 200 million users and is the most crowded place on the Internet today, making it an easy way to convey messages to millions in very little time.

Obama’s Facebook page listed his interests and provided supporters with interaction by giving them the ability to upload pictures & videos and post comments.

The campaign created an Obama application that supporters could add to their personal profiles. The application put a box in their profile and published stories to their news feed. There was also a plug in that asked users to pledge to vote for Obama and invite their friends to do the same.

Results
Barack’s campaign was everywhere in social media networking sites. Everyone was included: faith based, race based, age based and even event based social networks.

Ultimately, Obama won the Presidency and raised $750 million dollars, primarily through the Internet.

Amanda Deluca

If you’re at all into Social Media you know about Twitter; but do you know how you can use Twitter to effectively market your company?

One company using Twitter to their advantage is Kogi BBQ, they are a Korean-Style taco vendor that sells their food out of a lunch truck, and they are using Twitter to their advantage. Kogi “tweets” the location of their two lunch trucks throughout Los Angeles as well as extra items not mentioned on the menu. Kogi has only been around since November but is already one of the most recognizable names in the country. They have close to 24,000 followers.

Another company out in Los Angeles using Twitter is The Westin Bonaventure, a hotel in the heart of LA’s financial district. Recently they gave away rooms to twenty-five followers. This created such a buzz that media outlets such as USA Today and The Los Angeles Times picked up the story. Obviously, all their followers knew about it and around 100 of them retweeted the news as well. In an interview with the PR firm responsible, an estimated twenty million impressions were generated from this campaign. Twenty million impressions resulting from a single tweet, you can’t ask for anything better.

As you can see, Twitter can be very powerful. If used correctly, it’s a great way to reach the masses in expensively. Find a unique way to grab people’s attention, and the rest will follow. Twitter is free and easy to use, so if you and your company aren’t already using Twitter, it’s about time to start. Happy Tweeting.

Christian Bittner

Moviegoers were graced with a glimpse into the world of journalism in April with the premiere of two top-notch press-centric films; State of Play and The Soloist respectively. The investigative reporting and journalistic flair of newspaper writers drive the two films. State of Play and Soloist are just the latest in a long line of movies centered on the cunning investigations pivotal to the newspaper world. Remember All the Kings Men? Citizen Kane? Or The Pelican Brief? While the most recent cinematic journalism adventures are far from the first to feature press writers, might they be two of the last?

As newspapers continue to search for new business models, the “Watchdog” function is changing or disappearing. New forms of social media have accelerated the public’s demand for news. Whereas reporters once had weeks to cover an in-depth story, the editorial calendar has shrunk significantly. Instead of investing in investigations guarding public interests, newspapers are forced by high print and distribution costs to watch over their pocketbooks.

Some of the best movies of this generation are marked by newspapers in some way. If newspapers continue the current downward spiral, it will definitely be reflected at theaters…but how much remains to be seen. Five years from now, Denzel Washington may be on stage accepting an Oscar for portraying a Twitter-er. Or M. Knight Shyamalan might be directing a horror flick about Facebook. Enjoy the likes of The Soloist and State of Play while you can. Journalism has been celebrated in our society for many, many years, but the changes on the printed page are usually reflected on the reel.

Case Ernsting

It’s hip, it’s fun, but most of all it’s entirely original; it’s Skittles new website. If you haven’t gotten the chance to check it out yet, here’s the link www.skittles.com. Skittles created a fresh new site that is nothing but their Social Media pages. Their Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Youtube pages make up the bulk of the website. This is a pretty daring move since they can’t very well control the information being shared. Skittles must have a strong belief in their brand because all it takes is one bad comment to start an avalanche of negativity. Looking at the comments left on their Twitter and Facebook pages this seems to be a success.

Skittles has done a great job appealing to the social media crowd, which, let’s face it, is pretty much everyone now. This website has generated all types of buzz over the website, surprisingly bloggers hate it. This is interesting because everyone posting on the site seems to love the idea.

Here’s a list of a few things I think Skittles could do to better the experience.
1. For it to truly be social media Skittles will need to step in and engage in conversation.
2. For the people who aren’t in to Social Media or just don’t understand it, there needs to be a out-out option that will bring you back to their old website. This way using an analytics site you can track the number of users on the new website versus the old which will tell Skittles when it’s time to switch back to the traditional style website.
3. The widget-like menu needs to be movable.

If they can change those three problems, then all that negative buzz over their website will begin to fade.

An over-whelming majority of blogs out there regarding this subject, seem to think it’s over the top or think that Skittles took the easy way out. Even so, Skittle’s new site has all the information that any other website would have but they did it unlike anyone else.

Kudos to Skittles for being bold and trying something never done before, but as great an idea as this is, I think it won’t last very long. This is a great way to temporarily boost interest in Skittles and learn about their customers; but in the end the hype will wear off and people will want the website back to the traditional style.

Christian Bittner

Newspapers have always been considered the watchdogs of government, the courts, business, financial service. Their reporters use connections and research to ferret out and track down all manner of wrongdoing.

But the evolution of newspapers is changing that watchdog function. To where and to whom?

I suggest that media personalities who are in continuous communication with business, public, government, education, healthcare leaders may have an emerging role as “watchdogs” in the new social media, the growing source of society’s desire for “instant gratification of information.”

The function has to go somewhere. Who better than radio and media personalities who have connections, need content for their work, have access to spread the word via all the new and growing internet social media channels.

Where else can this function of “watchdog” go?

Larry Eiler

I’ve been trying to explain Twitter and Facebook to my parents for some time now, and despite my best efforts, they still find the lack of privacy a little unsettling. “You mean everyone will know when you go to the bathroom?”

Not exactly Mom, you don’t tell people everything you’re doing. But her point is a good one. Social Media (SM) allows individuals to effortlessly communicate and share ideas across broad networks, but some recent news has shown what happens when social media goes wrong.

Twitter’s rapidly growing population consists of celebrities, presidents, companies, neighbors and even pets. Charlie Villanueva, Forward for the Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA, has become an infamous Tweeter after two incidents last month. First, Villanueva or CV31 as he’s known on Twitter, posted a Tweet at halftime of a game against the Boston Celtics. Bucks’ head coach Scott Skiles quickly reprimanded these actions. (The Tweet can be read here.) For an encore, CV31 cited an inside source when he announced that Jim Calhoun, the coach of his Alma mater would coach in the next game of the NCAA Tournament for the University of Connecticut after health complications kept him out of the previous game.

“Juror Jonathon” ran into trouble in March for Tweeting details of a $12.6 million case from his cell phone. These Twitter updates, while not explicitly forbidden by courts, are believed to be grounds for a mistrial.

These two incidents are yet another example of technology moving faster than regulatory rules (or just a lack of common sense). Social media is a great public relations tool, providing ways for businesses and individuals to control their messages. But as more companies and businesses enter the social media circus, they must be wary of information leaking to the public through blogs, podcasts, Facebook pages, MySpace, Twitter, etc. The traditional walls of privacy my parents are familiar with are being torn down in favor of faster communication. Until rules are in place to control the expansive social media capabilities, remember to balance networking with personal responsibility and common sense.

Case Ernsting

The continued boom of various social media sites gives me some reason for concern. As an employer I question if employees become so addicted to using the sites that the main function of their jobs suffers. I’d be interested in others comments. Expectations in our business is that employees are 80-90% billable. How does that happen if a lot of time is spent on Facebook, Twitter etc.

Sandy

“What’s on your mind”? With this simple query that appears on the front page of Facebook profiles, Facebook has thrown down the gauntlet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had Twitter on his mind for a while now, and struck back at the up-and-coming social networking site two weeks ago. The much anticipated and incredibly hyped Facebook profile changes appeared on browsers everywhere on March 13. How BIG were these changes? As you can see here, the evolution of Facebook’s façade earned Zuckerberg an invite to appear on Oprah. Clearly, dorm room tech geeks aren’t the only ones noticing the social media frenzy.

Where’s all this buzz coming from? Well, Zuckerberg’s changes mark the latest chapter in the clash between Facebook and Twitter. Twitter has built its reputation on simplicity since CEO Evan Williams launched the site in 2006. Zuckerberg threw subtleties aside when he joined the 6 million on Twitter with a username of his own (thezuckerberg), apparently researching the micro-blog from the inside. (For those scoring at home, add “Espionage” to the list of professions social media has transformed.) The most obvious examples of Facebook’s robbery: When users sign on to Twitter they are greeted with the eerily coincidental question, “What are you doing?”. Facebook’s revamped look helps companies develop a presence on the site beyond the traditional “Fan Pages”. With Facebook’s improved business-oriented functionality, look for Facebook’s membership to spike in the upcoming months.

In the past six months, Twitter has really found its stride attracting celebrities, musicians, politicians, professional athletes, news agencies, businesses, and even President Barack Obama (username: BarackObama). This diverse, informational, and entertaining Twitter population was growing so much (752% In the last year!!) that Facebook looked to purchase the site last year to the tune of $500million in stock. Twitter and Williams rebuffed the offer, proclaiming that “Twitter is just getting started”. Facebook’s offer and subsequent rejection is even more astounding when you discover that Twitter is not a revenue-generating machine. Perhaps these are the changes Williams’ and his team foresee.

What’s the next step in this titanic clash of social media giants? It’s hard to speculate, but definitely fun to watch. Stay tuned.

Case Ernsting