Revolver

A viral victory?

That’s the idea anyway. Coca-Cola is set to launch the UK version of its successful Happiness Machine viral, hoping to replicate their success in the US.

The gist of it is a vending machine giving out an assortment of items to surprised students in a university campus. Along the same lines, the UK version will see the addition of UK-specific items such as strawberries and cream or the board game Monopoly.

Quite a big deal really as the US version is now Coca-Cola’s most successful viral campaign and achieved over 2.5m views on YouTube.

From this, the drinks giant is obviously hopeful of repeating the same level of attention in the UK but it still remains to be seen of the actual added value of using virals in the first place. Can you really link it back to sales or should it be viewed as more an investment in building positive feelings towards the brand and spreading the message? In Coca-Cola’s case “happiness to all.” Cough.

For them, they can toss up the value of this investment in comparison to say, TV ads, and consider how many people viewed it to give them a cost per minute of engagement, which can then compare to other activities.

In this way, virals can be of use to companies and can be further supported by blogger outreach and traditional PR, not just digital PR, whilst viewers can be encouraged to add comments on the video and share through social media channels.

Social media doing its bit.

Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites offer online health support and awareness.

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and as well as social networking activity on other sites now provide online health support and industry – alongside grass-roots – access to information on health care. So it appears social junkies are in the know.

As reported, the most recent social media  experiment involving health care and social media took place on Facebook in an innovative and interesting way. It centred on the ‘Bra colour status’ campaign that worked to highlight breat cancer awareness, which involved posting a cryptic one word status update that indicated the colour of their bras. Causing a bit of a confusion amongst the male social networkers, it clearly got the message across (using two factors that motivate people, curiosity and sex) surrounding breast cancer awareness, especially when the news media tried to ferret out what was behind those odd, yet titillating postings. There is then the possibility that people will be educated on breast cancer risks, self exams, early detection and more. So the potency of digital PR from this example is palpable.

In fact, some argue that it would be rather simplistic to merely explain away the Facebook bra colour event as a social networking stunt or virtual flash mob. Instead, they argue that health care and social media are more closely intertwined than onlookers realise. A June 2009 report by Pew Research Centre reveals that 61% of Americans rely on online health support for disease and wellness information.

It is also interesting to note that 41% of patients seeking online health support also visit news groups and personal blogs. A smaller group – 24% – visit rankings sites to gain inside information on doctors and also medical clinics and hospitals.

Additionally, when it comes to Twitter, about 12% share updates on medical issues. Investigating the downside, however, it is noteworthy that 3% do report that social networking or other online health support has harmed them or someone else.  

In any case, I struggle to see how the emergence of speaking freely about common health risks and preventative methods in open platforms can be anything but a positive move. Gone are the days to shy away from such subjects of conversation, which can only help to raise much needed awareness of critical illnesses.

Brands are now more than ever at the hands of the consumer in that they are now looking to online communities for innovation as well as for gaining consumer insight.

“Even if a brand doesn’t want to engage with consumers on that level, it will be forced to,” says David Cousino, conusmer marketing insights global category director at Unilever.

If you seriously consider what’s happening online, not just on the social networks, the consumer has a voice as never before and brands need to sit up and listen.  Indeed there are two distinct ways of doing so.  One, you could wait for something to go wrong and then use the community to fix it. Or two, why not leverage the creative ability in the community that’s already out there through forms of digitally enalbled public relations?  More than ever beofre brands need to incorporate consumers in the marketing planning.

However, there is much to be said about handpicking your audience, regarding a velvet rope approach being adopted by an increasing number of brands online.  This has been applied most successfully by the giant that is Unilever.  Forget about simply listening to its customers’ conversations on social networks, they’ve gone that nifty step forward creating bespoke invite-only communities around its brand to tap into customers’ excitement for product development.

This supports what was touched upon on the latest blog referring to the luxury brands adoption of ecommerce.  The answer for these brands is a form of rigorous digital PR, restricting access to their sites to pre-vetted customers.  To understand this, Fabergé will go as far as to phone prospective customers to ascertain their suitability for the site – similar to having to ring the bell to enter a physical store – which enables them to be taken personally through the site.  Not so straightforward, but neverthless they too cannot escape the lure of success through online adoptions.

Increasing emphasis on the digital and social side of communications has caused some in the PR industry to say that in the context of digital PR, social media and search engine optimisation can work together to compound results.  As some contend, as PR efforts continue to emphasise content publishing, digital and social communications, the opportunity to keyword optimise content for search is “low hanging fruit,” says Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing.

What forward thinking companies must apparently do well is assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources.  Important when considering that social media marketing efforts that factor in keyword optimization of content can directly influence the discovery of communities and social content via search engines.  Additionally, social content is known to boost links to your website, improving search traffic and Pull PR results. In other words, if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it?  Implementing social media and SEO as silos misses a significant opportunity, which is why it can factor highly in adoptions by digitally enabled public relations consultants.

Meanwhile, industry insiders also nod to search optimized and social media friendly blog content which can extend the reach of company news to search engines as well as social media news and bookmarking sites.  With this in mind, public relations consultants have turned their affections in recent years to the power of search engine optimization for growing the impact of pull based PR efforts.

Search engine marketing is constantly evolving and it is said many companies simply do not have the time or resources to keep current with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and tactics, which is why the search engine marketing business is rapidly growing as an integral part of today’s online PR activities.

A recent survey by industry analysts suggests that online is the biggest consumer influence compared to more traditional channels.  A reported figure of 30% of consumers engage with brands via social media, demonstrating the impressive platform available to businesses.

Whilst social networking sites were designed initially for peer-to-peer interaction, and will most likely continue to be the primary objective of users on Facebook and MySpace, this does not remove the possible opportunities for brands in the form of digitally enabled public relations.

Through an astute approach, understanding consumer behaviour and acting upon it, brands have free reign to become part of the digital consumer conversation within social networks.  As I see it, a 30% share of 300 million-plus users is a healthy enough audience, wouldn’t you say?

Following the recent undertakings by Coca-Cola and Unilever, who dropped their traditional digital campaign sites to focus all efforts towards community platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, social media appears set to dictate a number of major marketing activities in 2010.

Year on year business giants are moving away from sites created on a campaign-by-campaign basis in favour of investment in existing communities.  Yet is this the right move?  As the digital marketers Econsultancy highlight, your social media weapons should be selected by your strategy, objectives, and overall business structure.  And not use something just to look cool.  Doesn’t that sound familiar?  We all remember when Skittles, jumping on the social media bandwagon, replaced their official website with a Twitter search page showing, in real time, every Tweet mentioning Skittles.  Ok this seems like a pretty cool idea until you consider the deadly combination of cheap internet, short attention spans, and that thirst for internet fame.  It didn’t take long before the page devolved into profanities, racial slurs, and suggestions for crude new slogans. Needless to say Skittles soon resumed regular service.

It goes without saying that it is extremely beneficial to hone your social media skills by continuously educating yourself and by reviewing your existing strategies, not to mention having an exceptionally experienced public relations team behind you.

There’s a lot of confusion in the PR world about how to use press releases online. It’s fast becoming one of those things everybody knows they should be doing, but aren’t at all sure exactly what they’re supposed to be doing with it.

To maximise the effectiveness of any online campaign, there’s a few golden rules that any digitally-enabled PR consultancy needs to remember:

1) Digital press releases should do much more for your clients than traditional releases. It’s a simple matter to embed video, audio, images and links, and you should include such materials wherever possible.

2) Think laterally. Given the vast array of materials that can be included within a release, you need to expand your distribution beyond the standard slew of news platforms & press-related sites. A promotional video that’s being syndicated by the aggregators or embedded by bloggers stands a far greater chance of reaching its target audience.

3) Be nice to the SEO geeks and make them part of the process.  At the very least your digital press releases should be helping boost customers’ search engine rankings, so work hand-in-hand with your clients’ search marketing teams to make sure they do.

You can make things as complicated as you like, but that’s digital PR in a nutshell: Taking the basic techniques of public relations consultancy and using a combination of the available online tools to ensure your message reaches the greatest potential audience.

Well it’s game on for Apple and Google with the impending launch of Google’s Nexus One, considered by many to be the best retort to the iPhone.  This is countered by a prepackaged announcement by Apple’s CEO Steve Job, stating that the number of iPhone applications downloaded had passed the 3 billion mark and thus “see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

It’s quite evident that this press release was the latest in a series of quick-fire news leaks and releases out of Apple headquarters.  However, if there’s nothing to fear why deliver such self-serving swanking? Attention from the tech press is no doubt at stake with Google’s smartphone soon to be out of the bag.

As a cutting edge agency offering public relations consultancy, we are conscious of the need to have all our tools close at hand, thus the Google Android is the perfect offering for the digital PR crowd at Revolver.   

Nonetheless, the fact that Google and Apple are jousting with words and press releases makes the road ahead far more exciting to travel.  This is evident in the ChangeWave Research survey of 4,068 consumers in December 2009, revealing that an impressive 21% of people were looking to buy a Google Android, whilst Apple’s iPhone was only mildly ahead with 28%. 

So not such a clear win for the Apple giant just yet.

2010 is set to be a more prosperous year for online pr due to an improved performance of the global economy, reports Yahoo.

With the mobile phone suggested as the “vehicle” of choice for media experts, especially internet marketing professionals, in the developing world, this will make online communication much more accessible.

Not to mention the growing expansion of video advertising in 2010 by means of the web, as predicted by eMarketer’s David Hallerman.  This potential growth is supported by the fact that the internet is currently used by a quarter of the world’s population.

With this in mind, 2010 will surely be a busy year!

Thebluedoor pr has highlighted the latest offering from top online players Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia, ”Social Media and Online PR: Econsultancy’s 2009 Report.”  Not only is this the largest one of its kind, with a four-fold increase from the 2008 survey, but it magnifies some of the unknown or debated benefits of Online Marketing and PR.  With this in mind, watch out for bigmouthmedia’s “The really useful guide to social media” coming soon!

This is further supported by Clickthrough, where link building is shown to be an important tool for online PR, strengthening the SEO of their site.  Easy as!