A little over a week ago I attended a marketing and technology conference, hoping to  A) see what the competition is up to and B) maybe learn a few things. As it turns out, I got to do both. We work very hard to stay current on social media marketing, and as a rabid iPhone user I’m already quite familiar with the mobile data hog trend that’s sweeping the tech world (as is my wife, she pays the AT&T bill). What did open my eyes were some numbers presented by Famous Rhodes, Director of eBay Motors.

Some facts Famous bright to light:

• Mobile phone internet commerce is fastest growing commerce sector
  • Smart phones went from 0% to 20% of mobile market in 8 years
  • Over 100 MILLION iPhones have been sold worldwide
  • 160,000 Google phones are activated every DAY
  • By 2013, 40% of internet traffic will be mobile
  • Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 models in the first weekend it went on sale
  • iTunes already has over 225,000 apps
  • Google’s Android has over 70,000 apps in less than one year

Those are BIG numbers. As a communications professional, my goal is to make sure as many qualified eyeballs as possible see my client’s message. The tough part is keeping a finger in a LOT of pies, from Facebook fan pages and YouTube video channels to forums, print PR, TV, newspapers, Twitter and more. The key to conglomerating all this info into a single channel isn’t the computer or TV like everyone predicted 20 years ago – it’s the phone. As it stands I check my email, twitter, facebook and website on my phone constantly. I think most consumers under 40 do the same.

That said, the key moving forward is to obtain an M-Commerce leadership position now, while the field is still young and growing. The video game and fashion industries have already taken a foothold, automotive is lagging behind. We have several new projects in development that will help clients put all data into a single channel available on any phone, and that’s the key to streamlining all the communication strategies into a single stream of information. Of course the info has to be fun and entertaining, otherwise what’s the point?

I’ll have more exciting news regarding these programs soon, in the meantime enjoy Pete, Roger and Keith doing their thing.

The last six months have been really interesting from a crisis PR standpoint. The combination of the public’s insatiable demand for information, the online media world’s never ending quest for clicks, and some unforeseeable circumstances have created some really interesting case studies on how a crisis can unfold and how companies should deal with them in the current new media landscape.

I know this topic has been done to death, but a month later now that the dust has settled, it’s interesting to see how things unfolded. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, the public had been clamoring for more info on the upcoming iPhone 4G, which Apple wouldn’t even acknowledge existed. Then, in late April, the news broke: Gizomodo, a tech blog owned by Gawker Media (which also owns two of our favorite sites, Jalopnik and io9), had possession of a top secret iPhone 4G prototype, dissected it, and they were telling all. Sounds like a hollywood gossip column piece.

As it turns out, an Apple engineer went drinking, forgot the prototype on his stool and an observant (but unscrupulous) passerby picked it up, figured out what it was, called a different tech blog, and when they passed called Gizmodo – who paid for it. They photographed the phone, posted the story, and it got so much buzz is promptly crashed the Gawker comment server. That same night, a lawyer from Apple swung by Giz editor Jason Chen’s house and picked up the phone. Then, the police raided Chen’s home, seized his property, and Apple made rumblings about theft and lawsuits. As it turns out all pretty much settled back down to normal, and Chen ended up scoring huge traffic for his site without anything more than a verbal slap on the wrists. Then the buzz began that Apple leaked the phone on purpose to generate buzz, a silly notion to anyone who has witnessed one of Steve Job’s well-orchestrated summer unveils at Macworld. This is a company that likes to control every minute detail of its message, so leaking a story to a snarky tech blog isn’t its style. Even Gizmodo says so.

At this point, the good news is the world is snapping up iPads like crazy and people are clamoring for the new 4th Gen iPhone. On the other hand, the company’s handling of the situation (denial, then a theft complaint resulting in a raid) makes the normally friendly feeling Apply seem pretty Orwellian. So… less than a week later when Ellen DeGeneres makes a cutesy little farse commercial for her talk show about how hard texting on the iPhone can be (she’s right… especially if you have fat thumbs), you’d think the Cupertino company would just roll with it. Nope… they made a stink with the network and demanded Ellen apologize. You can see the commercial and the apology here:

So… now the company has two killer products, one that’s selling like mad and another coming soon, and Jobs looks like Darth Vader piloting the Death Star. Not good. What could they have done differently? I’m sure the company has a few agencies on 7-figure budgets to tell them, but in my humble opinion they should have done the following:

1. Stick with “no comment” until the phone was confirmed missing

2. Once confirmed, own the mistake, admit it was a prototype phone, thank Gizmodo for finding it and returning it (even before they did so… put the pressure on) then make a statement explaining that every once in a while these things happen, they’re glad reaction has been positive, and thanks to Gizmodo for treating the phone with respect. Other changes are imminent, so this isn’t the final model, but everyone got a sneak peek.

Once the cat is out of the bag, ride the positive PR and buzz and move up the release date. Oh… and don’t put the smack down on the friendly dancing TV host. She makes a living being snarky and poking fun at things… why make the target on your back even bigger?

When the smoke cleared on Sunday, over 60 vehicles had run through the cones and the Hotchkis team gave over 400 rides in three company test vehicles. Formerly conservative, drag-race-only Mopar fans were raving about how much fun they had, and many trekked back to the booth in the Manufacturer’s midway to learn more about suspension systems. We shot about 20 hours of high-def video, so we’ll have several chopped up and posted soon. There was a visible perception shift with the crowd by the end of the weekend. They understood handling for the first time, and they were pumped up about it.

Changing hearts and minds is what PR is all about. I just finished reading What the Dog Saw, by Malcom Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point. The first section of the book focuses on Ron Popeil, the owner of Ronco and the innovator of using late-night infomercials to push products like the Showtime Rotisserie and Food Dehydrator. According to Gladwell’s book, Popeil comes from a long line of pitchmen, who in the ’20s and ’30s would sell their wares on the Jersey Shore boardwalk with live demos. Ron took his live demo to late night TV and made millions.

In the age of social media and short-attention-span theater, human nature remains the same. People want to experience something in order to buy it. Magazine articles are great, but reading a story about something someone else did is a very passive experience. The beauty of events like Mopars at the Strip, any of the GoodGuys Shows with autocross or shootouts like the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge is that they get people to partake in a real-world roller coaster ride. They have a great time, then they tell their friends. The key is tying that experience to a product. Otherwise its just entertainment – which is fine and good, unless you’re trying to make money on the deal. Having a sponsor banner hanging next to the registration booth for an event is good. Giving the participant a ride in a vehicle with your products on it where they can actually feel the difference is great.

Taking a cue from Ron and his rotisserie, we recognize that giving a few hundred people a ride is wonderful, but then sharing that person’s experience with the world is much more powerful. Since TV has become fractionalized by DVR technology and hundreds of channels, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a 2am airtime slot probably isn’t the best choice. Instead, we’re sharing the experience with the world through real-time Facebook and Twitter updates, and video posted to YouTube and the forums. The goal: to help people live in someone’s shoes as they have a thrilling ride for a about two minutes.

With that in mind, one of our other clients – Spectre Performance – is sponsoring a wild event called the Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge. It’s the rebirth of an old Ferrari Club event called the Virginia City Hillclimb. They’re closing a mountain road in southwest Nevada and letting supercars run the road for time. It’s scary, dangerous, and very very cool. So far we’ve signed up several major car builders, supercar owners, a few superstar drivers and most of the major media outlets to cover the event. Only a few dozen will participate, but hopefully thousands can experience it. To illustrate, we put together a little video featuring footage the Spectre crew shot in 2002 when company owner Amir Rosenbaum set the record (which still stands):

Anyway, those are just some random thoughts on why experience is making a comeback. Stay tuned for some vids from Vegas.

-Dan

First and foremost: I know there are companies out there that develop and make money with those cutesy little social networking games like Farmville. Strictly speaking, I’m not a fan. I don’t care how many pigs you bought or chickens you traded, and don’t really want it cluttering up my news feed. However, there are a few companies out there doing an excellent job using Facebook to help further their business. They key here is that they don’t push a specific product or try to tell you anything – they use Facebook the way it was originally intended when it was a social tool developed by a few Harvard students – as a fun, entertaining branding tool. The best corporate Facebook pages I’ve seen weren’t even profiles, they were fan pages.

A company with an active fan page that gets updated regularly, has an energetic fan base that posts and replies to content daily and grows constantly is a powerful thing. Again – not to sell X number of widgets through SALE SALE SALE! type tactics, but by developing a relationship with an audience so they look forward to and enjoy your content – and by extension, your brand. We do that through on-the-scene video clips, guessing games, behind-the-scenes photos and more. Comp Cams does an excellent job with their fan page, and I have to give a big tip o’ the hat to Chris Douglas and his crew for the work they do – if you haven’t seen it, log into Facebook and search Comp Cams, it’s worth it.

Now for my rant – having recently been inundated with a few hundred resumes before hiring a few new staffers, let me float this out into the ether: to all of you under the age of 30 hoping to one day gain work in the real world: over-sharing on the internet is not a good idea. I have friends, family and even some business associates that insist on sharing totally inappropriate stuff on Facebook on a regular basis. No, I don’t care when you’re eating chicken. I don’t want to hear your racist political statements, and I don’t want to see a picture of you hammered in the bathroom. Please keep in mind this content lives forever on the web and can one day bite you in the ass. A status update is not a note passed in homeroom, it can’t be thrown away. Same goes for your business fan page: have fun, make it entertaining, but be weary – it will live forever.

To wrap things up, I’ve got a link to a fantastic story about how to best utilize Facebook for business written by Ayelet Noff at at TheNextWeb.com. From tips on increasing exposure to making the most of your content, her story – 10 Steps to Create The Ultimate Facebook Fan Page for your Brand – is a great read. Enjoy.

Until Next Time,

Dan

I’m not going to spend time in this post talking about “web 2.0″ or the importance of leveraging social media as a means to market your brand. I’ve said it all before, and frankly if you’re a)reading this post, or b)anyone born after 1980 you already know it.

Instead I’m just going to point out a fantastic article Charles Hull from Archrival wrote for MediaPost about developing Facebook apps to promote your brand. He’s right-on, if you can develop a fun, easy-to-use app that promote your brand without bombarding people with constant updates and notifications, it will become viral and produce the desired effect.

I can’t tell you how many brand-promotional apps I’ve tried that ended up making me angry because they either harvested my profile info to push content to my friends that didn’t opt-in, or slammed my inbox with junk. Those have the opposite effect and should be avoided. In any case, a good article so enjoy!

For those of you who didn’t see the cover of January’s Entrepreneur Magazine, they ran a major feature on a NYC startup called Animoto. The company is run by four friends: two software geeks, a music major and a film student.

Together they cooked up a sweet little piece of software that allows users to upload photos, pick from a pretty wide list pre-licensed music (or upload their own) and hit the GO button. Then Animoto takes over, analyzing the images and music and creating a slide show with slick transitions that match the visuals and sound. Then it gives you a code to upload to YouTube. The entire process takes about 30 seconds.

The process is pretty cool, particularly for those who don’t always want to spend time in iMovie cutting videos and would rather post a quick slide show. I did one about a car show a client sponsored just for fun. Check it out:

This was accomplished with the free version of the software. Upgrade to the Pro version (about $250) and you can use higher-resolution photo, make shows as long as you want (the free version is limited to 30 seconds) and it’s fully licensed to use commercially. Imagine the promotional possibilities for real estate agents, restaurants, photographers, even car dealers! Just upload your shots, pick some music and BAM, you’ve got a slick little video to post on your site.

Two less than intelligent Domino’s Pizza employees shot a handful of videos at work, where they did some pretty disgusting stuff including purposefully sneezing on pizzas, shoving ingredients in their nose before placing them on the pizza and even cleaning the pots and pans with a sponge they used to clean their, well, nether regions. Then they put it on YouTube. Brilliant move. Here’s a clip… beware, this is pretty gross:

The video was posted on April 13th. Within 8 hours, it had racked up over 100,000 views, local news stations were running the story and several people reported that franchise to the health department. What did Domino’s corporate communications do? Well… nothing. Not at first.

Their initial reaction was to say the video was a result of a few bad employees at one franchise location, and that an official corporate reaction would “be akin to putting out a candle with a fire hose.” Translation: They didn’t understand how quickly viral video can damage a brand, and sticking to traditional PR tactics they didn’t want to legitimize the scandal by recognizing it.

Within 48 hours the video had hundreds of thousands of hits, the franchise was shut down by the health department, and the video was making national headlines. YouTube pulled the original down and the employees were fired (they also fled the area), but the damage was done. Several people re-posted the vid on YouTube, and as the story picked up steam, the google searches and YouTube views for the videos intensified. These are NOT images Dominos corporate wanted in people’s heads when they contemplated ordering a pizza.

So… two days later the Pizza PR team posted this video, featuring Dominos President Patrick Doyle:

So let’s brake down the video and do a little scoring:

- He’s clearly reading off a cue card. Mr. Doyle appears properly briefed about the YouTube process and how this all went down, but by not looking in the camera he doesn’t necessarily come off as genuine as he could. -1 point

- One of the first things he does is thank the online community for alerting Dominos to the situation. He doesn’t blame bloggers for re-upping the videos, as previous execs have done in times for PR crisis. +2 points

- He explains it was an isolated incident and that the “team members” claim it was a hoax. Doyle goes on to state that they have been dismissed and that the company takes this very seriously. He also claims that there are “felony warrants out for their arrest.” Not sure if that’s true (sneezing on pizza is a felony?), but it stretched credibility. 0 points

- “There is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customer’s trust.” – said with sincerity. +2 points

- Admits that this has caused major damage to the brand, and that 125,000 employees will be impacted by a few individuals. Thanks customers for “hanging in there with us.” +1 points

Conclusion on the video response: They Domino’s PR team could have reacted faster, but all-in-all they got a relatively well-done response piece up on YouTube and began heavily promoting it within days. They also got major news outlets to run a follow-up story on their response, framing the company as the victim and the incident as an isolated one.

Is the damage already done? You bet, but they reacted fairly quickly. So the lesson to be learned:

- If a negative video about your brand makes it’s way onto the internet, react SWIFTLY with a genuine response. TRUST the public enough to know that they’ll understand that some people are idiots.

- Thank the online community for calling attention to the story, DO NOT blame them.

- Have your PR team focus news coverage on the damage done to the good employees, and brand the perpetrators as the bad guys. Single them out so they take the brunt of the bad PR, not the brand.

- After the initial response, weather the storm. Let the story blow over when the next online story hits. Continued responses will perpetuate the story.

- Don’t do what Domino’s Australia did and use the scandal as an excuse to make a rambling video about new products and thicker rubber gloves. It totally kills credibility: