Social PR: It’s Sink or Swim in the Age of Instant News

Scary Fact: Did you know that 56% of top brands did NOT respond to customer comments on their Facebook page in 2011? — A.T. Kearney

PR has awesome power to build, maintain and protect brands, especially now, with the ever-expanding social universe at our fingertips. This has spawned an entirely new, but totally related, subcategory to the practice of public relations that we like to call #SOcialpr, here at Strategic Objectives.

It used to be that PR Pros targeted the mainstream media to make (or stifle) news for our clients. Today, thanks to the rapidly proliferating presence, and usage, of social networks, our sphere of influence must now reach out to widely diversified communities including social influences and bloggers/citizen journalists, employees, customers, shareholders, stakeholders and consumers themselves.

Read more

Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise?

You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words.

You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people.

Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors.

You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself.

Read more

100% immersion. Why CMOs (and other C’s) need to get involved in social.

I had a stint one summer in my early twenties as an Executive Assistant to a CEO. Most of my role involved “managing” the CEO’s inbox. That meant printing out every email.

Twice a day we would have a meeting in his office. The CEO would read through the emails.  He would dictate a reply while I scribbled it down in a notebook.

Later, I would go back to my desk and type out the email, pressing send on his behalf.

Read more

Increasing Marketing Effectiveness in the Midst of Generation C

Generation C via Brian SolisThis past week, I attended the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit, which was held in Madrid, Spain. As part of the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit, I led the Marketing Innovation Summit which brought together marketing professionals to network and discuss best practices. Of the 1,700 conference attendees, more than one thousand came from marketing backgrounds, providing a rich and in-depth conversation surrounding best practices for marketing effectiveness.

During the Marketing Innovation Summit, I focused on the idea of the Generation C (“C” for connected) customer. Today’s customer is digitally connected via an array of devices and channels and with that, consumers are far more in control than ever before. Consumer demands and expectations are great and it’s our job as marketers to evolve to meet those needs.

Read more