Sharing Happiness: Coca-Cola

By now, you may have heard about the viral video, Coca-Cola "Happiness Machine," on YouTube that generated 1.5 million views in about a month. Some pros keep asking me how they hit 1.5 million views, but they're asking the wrong question. Even reading the write up by Christine Kent doesn't tell the full story. Atlanta-based interactive agency Definition 6 shares its tactical and technical goals, and reveals that neither...

Revealing Research: The Future of the Internet IV

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released its fourth Internet expert study on Friday. The Future of the Internet IV compiles survey responses from almost 900 prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers, and technology developers around five key Internet related topics.The five topics included (paraphrased): the value of online content, the impact on the written language, the extent to which...

Changing Constants: Fresh Content

Communication is in a constant state of change. The tools are different. The news is different. How we find out about something is different. Even approaching blog content is different than it was a few years ago, given the impact of social networks. But with all that is different, some things are even more different than we imagine and other things are surprisingly the same. The challenge for communicators is to give...

Writing For Public Relations: What Makes News

I never learned how to pitch a story like a public relations professional. I learned the hard way, sending query letters to editors in the hope of an assignment. Sometimes the letter was more important than a contract. Without one, it was harder to secure interviews. And even with one, you knew the story had to be good. Stories written on speculation were only bought if they were really good or great. If they weren't...

Organizing Lists: Retention Psychology & Branding

Almost everyone involved with online content creation knows it. Lists can be powerful tools for traffic attraction. Search for "3 tips" on Google and it will return 80 million results. Type in "5 tips" for 74 million. Ten tips returns 84 million. So on and so forth. Okay, people like lists. So what?Lists can be excellent resources, which is why we like them. But lists can also interfere with retention. In fact, most...

Marketing To Genders: Lost In Time

"The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife." — David Ogilvy.The classic quote from David Ogilvy couldn't be more true today. One study, from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), concluded that women drive $12 trillion in global spending today, which is more than 70 percent of consumer dollars worldwide. The study also estimates that women will contribute an incremental $5 trillion in earnings over the next five years.Household...

Integrating Communication: Communication-Driven Social Media

Something happens when you integrate strategic communication into organizational communication. Public relations is set free to do what it does best. Advertising is set free to do what it does best. And communication becomes more fluid between the various departments. That is not to say that a communication-driven social media program is the end all to integrating social communication. Like the public relations-driven...

Kneading Accuracy: When You Slip, Eat It

I'm writing today's post poolside in Las Vegas. And Las Vegas, in case you don't know, is only a few miles from the West Virginia border. The weather here is a balmy 100 degrees and the water is a cool 72, just cold enough to preserve the crispness of my locally brewed Fosters Lager. You know, it's the kind of day that makes you wonder why Susan Boyle would have ever left her Las Vegas hometown to become a famous singer...

Selling Cars: Transparency Helps, Except Toyota

"Stores that fully merchandise their inventory stand out from their competitors, connect with shoppers, and position themselves to win more than their fair share of the deals." — Michael Page, vice president of advertising products, Cars.comThe assessment by Page comes out of an in-depth analysis of Internet merchandising on online shopping behavior presented by Cars.com at the National Automobile Dealers Association...

Presenting Content: Fresh Content

If there is a common theme for fresh picks in the first week of February, the theme seemed to be content. Specifically, content needs an assist to find its audience as much communicators need to maintain great content to keep a community.Given most social media budgets will be increasing this year, it stands to reason the volume of content will grow along with it. What is less understood is whether more communication...

Writing For Public Relations: On Writing And Editing

For all the advantages of the Internet, the acceleration of communication, quantity of communication, and format of communication tends to have consequences. The quality of the communication is often diminished. While the challenge to be a better writer is not new, there does seem to be a growing sense of justification to burp out passionless news releases, let errors stand in social media, and defend made-up details...

Crafting Reality: Proficiency or Deficiency?

Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute, cited an interesting study that came out of the University of Toronto and the University of California, San Diego, late last year. The study found that while parents say that honesty is the best policy, they lie to their children in order to influence behavior and emotions.The researchers said they were surprised by how often what they call "parenting by lying"...

Passing For Creative: Butterfinger

There are three ways to look at a brand new Butterfinger television commercial, which will begin to air nationally on Feb. 15 and continue through the third quarter: the celebration of consumer generated creative; the hyperbole of hype and hopeful publicity; or the gradual decline of advertising as we know it. The celebration of consumer generated creative. For the cost of $28, David Markus, a graduate of the University...

Managing Crisis: Silence vs. Social

"We are not eliminating any medical benefits," Rob Stillwell, spokesman for NV Energy, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "That's all I can say on the record."There is a reason NV Energy cannot discuss its decision to place a cap on contributions to employees' retiree medical plans: textbook public relations. Regulated companies are almost always silent in the midst of union contract negotiations. Unions are not. Some...

Moving Sideways: Toyota

"You're always hearing these very silly PR people when a crisis hits dive in front of the camera and dish out this ridiculous cliche that if you just fessed up, the problem would go away." — Eric Dezenhall, CEO of Dezenhall Resources.Two days after investing $3 million on a Super Bowl recall advertisement that flatlined with viewers who were using an online dial testing system to determine their level of interest,...

Winning Ads: Why Some Super Bowl Ads Work

HCD Research released the results of a national study designed to determine which Super Bowl commercials had the highest sustained levels of interest. The survey included 110 commercials, which were also tested for breakthrough creative, emotion, memorability, and involvement.You can find the advertisements on a dedicated Super Bowl Ad Test. Most of the commercials include direct responses about the advertisements. (Even...

Experimenting With Social: Fresh Content Project

Toward the end of last year, I became increasingly interested in the affect of popularity on the content people choose to read. Specifically, I began to wonder what would happen if popularity was removed from the equation.Would it change our perspective?So, I set up an experiment of sorts. I began building a capped Twitter list of 300 communication-related professionals (currently at 230) and then worked with our communication...

Writing For Public Relations: Introduction

As hard as it is for me to imagine, I've been teaching "Writing for Public Relations" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), for ten years. And while I rarely teach the same class twice, this year's program has been significantly altered to keep pace with the increasing demands on public relations professionals to understand social media and social networks.The presentation below is one of the changes. Along...

Depressing Readers: Accuracy Matters

Dr. John Grohol, CEO of Psych Central, wrote a noteworthy post for communicators and journalists — accuracy can mean the difference between the Internet causing depression or the Internet attracting depressed people. After Leeds University released a study that found people who spend a lot of time browsing the net are more likely to show depressive symptoms, Grohol wrote that mainstream media did surprisingly well in...