talkable likeable

Spotted in Soho, promoting the new Star Trek DVD – get yourself a Spock haircut

Launching Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2 in Leicester Square was a terrific PR move. Games are the new movies and this was great example of thinking big

It’s easier than ever to get a PR announcement out there. And easier than ever to cock it up.

A year or two ago, I had a chunky piece of product news to announce, but no budget. No problem I thought, I’ve got all these modern comms assets to play with.

So announce it I did – big bang style – sending the news simultaneously to the website, news wires, the forum, facebook, the press office blog, Twitter etc.

I thought I’d been terribly modern and efficient, but the story got nowhere. It was summed up when the blogger relations guy called me, pretty out of sorts.

I just called up one of our key targets saying ‘I’ve got something for you’ and he told me ‘yeah, I know, I just saw it in my facebook  inbox’. It’s old news isn’t it?’

Big lesson. Just because you have multiple comms routes to market doesn’t mean you should use them all at once.

Sequence matters. Think of PR as a fireworks display. You don’t set them all off at once. The impact is much greater if you build up to a crescendo.

Start with this release order and adapt from there:

1. Inform internal stakeholders
   Key staff and shareholders should know first – especially customer service people
2. Leak to bloggers
   Bloggers won’t write positive stuff if they don’t get to break it, so leak news to them and give them exclusive details/pictures.
3. Tell passionate customers first
   Anyone following your brand on Twitter, contributing to your forum, being a fan on facebook or subscribing to your email should be the first to officially know. These people care about your brand. Critically, you should give them material they can share – eg, embeddable videos, pictures they can link to or exclusive offers.
4. Mass anounce to journalists, visitors and previous customers
   This is when it’s actually public. Such is the pace of the web that this phase can follow just hours later.
5. Post-launch management
   Reputation/news management in the days following the announcement is an intrinsic part of the launch task. Use social tools to monitor the conversation and respond to as many positive/negative comments as you can. In the first 24 hours, the prevailing opinion on your announcement will coalesce and you want it to settle down in your favour.

This is what can happen when companies take the heavy option in dealing with PR situations on the web.

Reputation management in the internet era requires a more subtle approach. As Techcrunch says:

rather than just simply fixing the issue, apologizing, and moving on, Guinness has decided to dig a nice, big hole for itself

You’ve surely seen the story of the musician with a beef against United Airlines for damaging his guitar. Being dissatisfied with their response to the incident, he wrote a song lampooning the airline and it’s become a monster hit on YouTube.

Very funny, but not unique. There are many examples of nimble Davids embarrassing organisational Goliaths by savvy use of the web. And how we all love to see things evened out and the big guy look a bit stoopid.

So, say you’re United – this is not good PR. What do you do? How do you respond when someone launches a satirical strike? My advice would include:

1. Be nice
There is no mileage in getting heavy. Be humble, generous, transparent and responsive. Give the guy a guitar!

2. Play along

There is no advantage in looking po-faced and corporate. The joke is on you and the only way out is to be a good sport. Perhaps in this instance, they could have made their own video response: a shoddy karaoke version of the same song with edited lyrics.

“We’re sorry about the guitar, and we’re even more sorry about our singing“

I’m full of admiration for the Guardian’s smart harnessing of community to wade through the masses of MPs’ expenses documents.

Very talkable and very likeable.

Boing Boing reports that, due to legal issues with his label, Danger Mouse is to release:

a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.

I’m sure this is a genuine case of label/artist differences, but if it were a PR stunt cooked up to raise awareness of the album, it’d be genius.

Imagine: once the hype around Danger Mouse’s audacious blank CD release has peaked, both parties could suddenly come to an agreement to release the album for real and cash in on the publicity.

Want to attract the best talent to your company? Releasing videos like this is far more effective than running ‘inspiring’ posters in airport corridors

The full 18 mins are worth watching, but if you want a flavour, start at 10’14″

So Coke have bought c. 20% of Innocent drinks. There’s a feisty bit of feedback on the Innocent blog with many comments being negative, eg.

This is going to be an ongoing PR management issue for Innocent, but hats off for blogging it in the first place and keeping open the comments thread. This way the debate happens on their site and allows them to put their side of the story.

Indeed, so far the objectors have not gained much traction on other new protest platforms such as Facebook, and my bet is that this will die down. There’ll always be some people who object to corporate buy-ins (eg, McDonald’s and Pret. Btw, now no longer), but most people don’t care that much.

So long as Innocent remain open and engaged, they should be able to contain the dissent and continue with their plans.