Why Smart Professionals Invest in Marketing

Some businesses fall prey to the great idea of if we build it, they will come. No marketing necessary. Typically this is the plight of organizations run by really smart and highly educated professionals like engineers or attorneys. They know they are really good and what they do. And they have a high expectation that prospects will recognize the value they deliver without any push in the right direction. Unfortunately, sometimes your customers aren’t as smart as you are and…  (Read on)

Mother's Day Publicity Stunt Done Well

In honor of Mother’s day, a local jewelry store held a contest where they invited students from area schools to write a letter explaining what made their mother special. The winners of the content would receive one of several 1/4 carat diamond pendants the store would be giving away. The concept here is pretty basic but what the store did well was to connect with area schools. The contest wasn’t marketed broadly to everyone, just students from certain schools near…  (Read on)

New Coke: Was It Really That Long Ago?

As a marketing pro, I get great pleasure out of hyper-analyzing campaigns good and bad. And as a type-A personality with a steel trap mind, I tend to remember all kinds of useless information. But New Coke falls in that category of a marketing snafu that I thought everyone remembered, especially those of us who live/work/market in Atlanta and drink lots of Coke. Apparently I was wrong. Yesterday at the PRSA-Georgia Annual Conference I enjoyed the “Legends in PR”  panel presentation…  (Read on)

Impact of Failing Newspapers on Advertising and Quality of News

Mitch Leff shared this article this morning, detailing projections of which major US newspapers will fail or move to all digital before we exit the recession: http://247wallst.com/2009/03/09/the-ten-major-newspapers-that-will-fold-or-go-digital-next/. The bigger question here is, what will the migration of former major dailies to the web do for you PR? 1. It will increase the credibility of the so-called citizen journalist. Once thought of as only writers for the web, now they will be joined by former traditionally trained, mainstream print journalist. When…  (Read on)

More On Getting a Job in PR

Over the weekend I was reading Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing. He makes a number of really strong points that I’ll probably address later but the one that struck me as timely for today was the suggestion about how to hire a good marketing assistant. His suggestion was to pick someone who can write. While it seems fairly obvious that people who want to work in communications should be strong and comfortable writers, not all of them are. And once you…  (Read on)