Content PR and content marketing are redefining how brands communicate with audiences. Inbound tactics featuring content that answers audience needs attract attention and create gravitational pull for a brand.
“Content We Love” is a weekly feature written by a team of our content
specialists. We’re showcasing some of the great content distributed through our channels, and our content specialists are up for the task: they spend a lot of
time with the press releases and other content our customers create, proof
reading and formatting it, suggesting targeted distribution strategy and
offering SEO advice. In Content We Love, we’re going to shine the spotlight on
the press releases and other messages that stood out to us, and we’ll tell you
why. We hope you find the releases enjoyable and the insights gained from
discussing them enlightening.
A snapshot of the multimedia press release issued by the United States Potato Board. It seamlessly integrates multimedia with their own web site content, creating a widely-distributed portal back to the organization’s web site. Click the image to see the full MNR.
Everyone loves food.
Cookbooks woo us with the colorful images of decadent cuisine. We salivate over each picture and build confidence that it would be easy to re-create the recipe. The moment of truth is finding yourself in the kitchen with smoke billowing from the oven and the realization you’re not Julia Child. Or maybe that is just me.
Visuals engage the reader.
Press releases, at their core, are to provide information. For the United States Potato Board, their Multimedia News Release* is geared towards not only sharing information and recipes, but dynamically engaging the reader with rich multimedia –in short, the visuals.
There are many ways to showcase a message and tell a story with press releases. The captivating Multimedia News Release provides assets (photos, videos, PDFs, etc) to your release and therefore can increase your engagement with the reader.
Instantly the images of delicious meals fill the view but it doesn’t stop there. In tandem with the release are videos of different potato types, recipes, nutritional content, images, a connection to Facebook, and a logo combining the message with the assets, “Goodness Unearthed.”
We know imagery increases visibility, so what about engagement?
When crafting your story, having your audience take the next step and share/interact with your message is engagement.
Engagement is action.
Why is it important for a press release? To act, one must not only remember the content, but be inspired to act upon it. For this release, the information takes a step further into a kitchen by way of recipes. The nutritional information, the pictures, and the videos all tie together with the message to create a truly engaging release.
Multimedia increases engagement. For your releases, remember the goodness of USPB and showcase your message using multimedia and social channels.
A seamless pathway for readers
The glossiest, most engaging multimedia doesn’t mean a thing if there’s no mechanism for capturing the interest your message has created. In this example, the USPB integrated their own web site content into the MNR. This tactic does two important things:
It offers readers seamless experience, creating clear path for them to follow, taking straight to web pages the USPB controls; and
Because the MNR is widely distributed, the USPB has effectively created and broadly circulated a portal leading directly to their web site across the web.
Big thanks to the United States Potato Board for a release full of goodness!
Want to explore new ways to tell your brand’s story? We’d be happy to chat with you about creating a video or a designing multimedia distribution strategy that will increase discovery of your brand’s messages. We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.
The Times created a short animation illustrating how airbags can help a skier in an avalanche. Click the image to see the animation.
A few days ago, I wrote a post about the lessons we can glean from this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Journalism winners. In that post, I noted the winning entry from the New York Times for feature writing, and I’ve decided that I didn’t do this particular winner justice in my original post.
Titled “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” the story weaves a variety of different types of content and treatments into one immersive experience. In my mind, the experiential nature of the story sets it apart from the many different digital articles and other content I’ve consumed over the years.
We all know that traditional media establishments have been struggling with developing digital models and new ways to present content to us. With this piece – which absolutely would not translate fully to print – the Times has created something truly different.
Illustrative elements, such as the blowing snow imagery at the beginning of the piece and richly detailed animations, such as the one illustrating the underlying mechanics of snow accumulation that can lead to avalanche, are blended with start video interviews and fantastic writing to produce what I can only describe as an experience, not a read.
I’m not a skier, and am generally not terribly interested in survival stories. But after writing the blog about the Pulitzer winners, I was drawn back to “Snow Fall.” I read everything, watched everything and clicked on all of the links served up in the piece.
Then I sat back and asked myself, “What just happened here? Why did I just spend almost a half hour on a subject in which I have little interest?”
The answer was the multimedia presentation. The appearance of the piece got my attention, and drew me in. The rich content, buoyed by dynamic storytelling, carried me along and held my attention.
Take risks & experiment with your content
“Snow Fall” represents the application of the Times’ core competency – telling a great story – to digital media. In the process, they are moving away from their traditional format – print.
There is a lesson here for communicators, and it’s this – take risks and start experimenting with new formats. Don’t make the number of times something was “read” your goal. Instead, develop content that immerses, and offers readers a pathway that unfolds before them as they travel through your story. Track the amount of time they spend on the pages of the story, and the number of times they watch the videos you imbed or click on the links you suggest to them.
With a little help from your web analytics team and inventive use of the content your organization is likely to have already produced, you can put together a multimedia experience that will engage your existing audience in an entirely new way, and is likely to generate new interest in your organization’s story, too.
Want to explore new ways to tell your brand’s story? We’d be happy to chat with you about creating a video or a designing multimedia distribution strategy that will increase discovery of your brand’s messages. We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.
A snapshot of the Dove “Real Beauty Sketches” MNR. Click the image to see it live.
The biggest viral story of the week was undoubtedly the latest in the Real Beauty campaign from Dove. Titled “Real Beauty Sketches (#wearebeautiful),” this installment clearly illustrated the issues women have with negative self-perception. And while I could spend a lot of time talking about the genius of this campaign, for this edition of Content We Love, I’m going to focus on how the organizations behind the campaign – Unilever, Ogilvy Advertising and Edelman – chose to promote the campaign.
Days later, the global Tweet stream is still going strong.
It’s not unusual at all for a brand to promote a new advertising campaign with a press release. In most cases, the press release is pretty standard, describing the campaign, the related calls to action and special offers for customers. The press release for the Dove campaign, however, took a different angle.
An exemplary headline:
Instead of focusing on the campaign, the PR team at Edelman focused on some of the stories underlying the campaign, and they did so right out of the gate with a compelling headline:
FBI-TRAINED FORENSIC ARTIST CONDUCTS A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT TO ILLUSTRATE THE ONGOING STRUGGLE WOMEN HAVE WITH RECOGNIZING THEIR OWN BEAUTY
Dove® “Real Beauty Sketches” Campaign Reveals the Dramatic Difference Between Self-Image and What Others See
This is a fantastic headline, for a few reasons:
The headline elegantly captures the two key themes of the press release
Credibility for the story is built immediately noting that an FBI-trained forensic artist is at the center of the social experiment the campaign illustrates.
It doesn’t waste space with the brand name or campaign title. Those are relegated to the subhead, which neatly describes the Real Beauty Sketches campaign itself.
It is almost tweetable, checking in at 136 characters (with spaces) but I’m not going to quibble length, because the descriptive language employed in this example works, and is necessary.
This is the kind of headline treatment I’d like to see on more press releases – one that leads with facts and story elements, rather than a brand announcing something. It reminds me of advice I heard Kevin Helliker of the Wall St. Journal give PR people and years ago: write the headline you want to see in the paper, and use that in your pitch email and press release headline.
Followed by a near-perfect lead:
The writer of this press release set the hook with the lead sentence, and followed immediately with salient facts that ensured the reader didn’t go anywhere but onward:
Theway women depict themselves is dramatically different from how others perceive them.Over half (54%) of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic1, which equates to a staggering 672 million women around the world.2
Once again, we see restraint employed when it comes to brand mentions. The brand and campaign aren’t mentioned until midway through the opening paragraph.
Now, let’s be clear. I’m not anti-brand, not at all. But I think most will agree that the lead sentence from this release is leagues better than the more standard-issue (and let’s face it, boring) lead we see so often. You know the one I’m talking about:
XYZ organization, a leading provider of whatever, is proud to announce today a jargon-laden description of something.
The lead paragraph doesn’t exist for to extol the virtues of the organization issuing the release. It exists to set up the story and develop the reader’s attention. Whether the goal of the press release is gaining media coverage or engaging the audiences or driving social awareness (or any combination thereof,) a well-written lead will go a long way to securing the results you want to see for the campaign.
My advice when it comes to leads is simple:
Don’t confuse the lead with the boilerplate. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to leave company information out of the lead. The exception is material news from a public company, when putting the company name and ticker symbol in the lead is standard practice.
Use the lead to develop the story.
Think back to the inverted pyramid of journalistic writing. Put the key points at the top of the message.
The lead and the headline should work together to describe and then start to develop the story – even in a press release.
“Unselfish” story angles
The body of the release is devoted to developing two stories, offering an up-close look at the forensic artist who did the sketches of the subjects, and at the underlying issue of negative self-perception. I use the term “unselfish” to describe this approach, because it puts the audience first. The focus on the artist’s professional background and his experience with the campaign is meaty stuff. Any reporter covering this story would be interested in these details. And for the more casual reader – the millions of individuals who read, tweet and share press releases each month – the detail on the artist lends powerful credibility and authenticity to the story.
The issue of self-perception, which is at the heart of Dove’s ongoing Real Beauty campaign, is also discussed. Again, the press release writer provided substance – in this case, survey data – that is useful to professional media and credible with other audiences.
Multimedia
If the press release for this highly visual campaign had been text only, the brands behind the message would have left a lot of visibility on the table. Instead of using a plain text format (which by far still the most common press release format used today,) the team wrapped the excellent release in equally good multimedia. Delivered in the form of a multimedia news release (“MNR” in industry parlance,) the message is fully formed, wrapped in three videos that illustrate how the campaign worked and offering interesting insights into the artist and subjects.
There’s no question that the Real Beauty Sketches campaign is a fantastic piece of work. My own Facebook feed has been full of commentary from my own friends for days. And in true Internet style, it’s even spawned a funny parody. I really like this campaign. But I truly love the treatment the team gave the press release. Kudos to all of the people behind one of the most effective press releases I’ve seen.
Update 5/20/13: Less than a month after launch, the Dove Real Beauty Sketchesfilm became the number one viewed online video ad of all time. The film, which explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see, has been viewed more than 114 million times to surpass all previously recorded video ads, according to the Viral Video Chart reported globally by Unruly*. In addition, Dove Real Beauty Sketches has garnered another 15 million views in China where it just launched. Not only has the film been viewed in record numbers around the world, it is also the most shared video ad in over a year and the third most shared of all time, although closing the gap. Dove Real Beauty Sketches was uploaded in 25 languages to 33 Dove YouTube Channels and has been viewed in over 110 countries.
Want to explore new ways to tell your brand’s story? We’d be happy to chat with you about creating a video or a designing multimedia distribution strategy that will increase discovery of your brand’s messages. We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.
The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced this week, and the winning stories represent a variety of different angles, techniques and tools that provide good ideas – and more than a little inspiration – for public relations and marketing communicators.
Breaking news:
The big winner in breaking news was the Denver Post, for their use of “journalistic tools, from Twitter and Facebook to video and written reports, both to capture a breaking story and provide context,” in their reporting of the movie theater shootings in Aurora CO.
FLASH: Aurora PD is investigating reports of a multiple shooting near the Century 16 theater. More details when available.— The Denver Post (@denverpost) July 20, 2012
The lesson:
A review of the Post’s response to the tragic event reveals a comprehensive approach that did a variety of things well – it delivered information quickly, created a hashtag around which people could coalesce, told the across platforms, and did a great job managing the extremely fast-moving story.
So what’s the lesson here for brands? I’m going to step away from the obvious (but relevant) crisis communications parallel, because the real lesson here, in my mind, is how effective communications can be when an organization makes full and specific use of the myriad channels available to us today. The Post blended channel-specific content and interaction with a heavy dose of the human touch.
Investigative & explanatory reporting:
The New York Times garnered awards in the investigative and explanatory reporting for long-form pieces on Wal-Mart’s use of bribes in Mexico and the business practices of Apple and other IT companies in Asia, respectively.
This infographic is a small component of one of the rich elements the Times used to illustrate this story. Click on the picture to access the full presentation of assets.
The lesson:
It’s no secret that we’re living in an age of radical transparency. News travels fast and sways opinion immediately. However, there is still plenty of interest in the deep dive. Even though we may spend a lot of time whipping together blog posts, case studies and social status updates, there is still interest in the nitty-gritty – and from a brand standpoint, those are the details that can influence a potential customer. Brands shouldn’t shy away from developing longer-form, meatier content.
Feature writing:
The New York Times racked up another win in this category, for a reporter John Branch’s “… evocative narrative about skiers killed in an avalanche and the science that explains such disasters, a project enhanced by its deft integration of multimedia elements.”
A snippet from the NYT story “Snow Fall.” Click the image to access the entire experience.
The lesson:
The winning story the Times published looks nothing at all like a traditional newspaper story. “Visually compelling” doesn’t even begin to describe it. The presentation is immersive, and encourages the reader to delve deeper into the story by embedding an array of interesting multimedia components that do more than illustrate the story. The take away for brands is the sheer effectiveness and stickiness a variety of good multimedia elements can create. Utilizing a variety of multimedia elements has another benefit too – in addition to presenting the set of content holistically, chances are good the content elements can stand alone and create their own gravitational pull and traction in and of themselves.
Here’s the complete list of Pulitzer Prize winners. Clicking on each winner’s name will enable you to access the winning story and related materials, where you’ll undoubtedly find even more ideas and inspiration.
Want to explore new ways to tell your brand’s story? We’d be happy to chat with you about creating a video or a designing multimedia distribution strategy that will increase discovery of your brand’s messages. We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.
We’re all creating content today, but how do we do it right? Jon Miller(@jonmiller), co-founder of Marketo, along with Michael Pranikoff, PR Newswire’s director of emerging media, seek to answer that question in this webinar.
Jon began the discussion by talking about how marketing has changed in recent years. Back in the ‘Mad Men’ era of marketing, a buyer would have to talk to a sales person to obtain information on a product, but with the abundance of information available on the internet, the sales person is no longer needed until much further along in the buying cycle. According to Forrester Research, at least in a Business-to-Business setting, a buyer is 65% to 90% finished with their sales cycle before they actually connect with a salesperson. This has profound implications for marketers.
3 Main Benefits of Content Marketing:
1) Increased Brand Awareness – Buyers are online. When someone shares your content on a social network, that action gives you free brand awareness in a more powerful way than purchased advertising.
2) Better Brand Preference – People are more likely to choose the product from a company they feel they have a relationship with.
3) Risk Reduction – In Business-to-Business purchases especially, avoidance risk and fear tend to be the most dominant motions in play. A person may make decisions out of fear of losing their job. To reduce fear for your buyers, your trusted content and thought leadership will help you gain trust from your buyers, which is important.
Creating content for the buying process:
To create an effective campaign, you need to create compelling content for the appropriate stage of the buying process. You don’t want to give late stage content to an early stage customer because it’s not relevant to them at this point.
– Early Stage: By far, the majority of content is early stage – usually educational or entertaining content. It’s all about appealing to the audience before they become a customer.
– Middle Stage: the tools that will help a buyer when they are already thinking about a purchase, such as a buying guide, ROI calculator or analyst data.
– Late Stage: is about the product or service specifically, such as pricing, demos and case-studies.
No matter what stage, the content must always be relevant and helpful to the buyer.
The power of visuals
Press releases that offer readers a variety of multimedia options (e.g. video, images, downloads) generate almost 10 times more views than plain-text messages.
Another trend that Jon talks about is the rise of visual content. Not only does adding multimedia give you more views, there is also better engagement in content with multimedia elements than plain text. Marketers need to create content that people want to share. Michael Pranikoff sited a PR Newswire Web Analytics study that showed syndicated content gets more views as more multimedia elements are added.
Customers want to have fun. With early-stage content, the more you can do to entertain, the better off you will be. Jon talks about the jingle created to promote ‘The Definitive Guide of Marketing Automation’, an e-book available on the Marketo website.
As I was watching this webinar, I pulled up Marketo’s youtube channel & watched the video Jon referred to, as well as some other fun & informative marketing videos, and I can see why these videos would be shared & re-shared. Jon said he believes humor and personality are way underused in b-to-b sales.
Don’t panic – this isn’t as daunting as it may seem
You don’t have to have all your content on Day 1. Just keep creating something new all the time. Think big, start small, move quickly.
Think about how you can take the content you have and cut it in different ways – re-purpose your content.
Promote your content on different channels: including paid, owned (such as your own website or blog) and earned. On social media, don’t promote too much of your own content. Build an audience and a following, which will build your presence and will get more impact for the content that you do share.
Syndicate & Connect – Michael Pranikoff shared a story about a client of PR Newswire’s that issued a short news release to online publications with a link to their blog post. After syndicating the release, they found a 54% increase in blog traffic and higher search result ratings. A little content syndication can go a long way.
Social media can give you a boost on every other type of campaign. You don’t have to run a social campaign, but make every campaign that you do social. Give people a reason to share your content.
We spend a lot of time in the PR space thinking about how to optimize our press releases for maximum search engine visibility, and I’m one of the purveyors of that sort of information. Ask me about press release headline writing best practices, and be prepared to strap in for at least thirty minutes while I babble happily about keyword placement, headline length, reader drop off rates and how these factors can ultimately impact the results your message generates.
But let’s face it: fine-tuning press releases and other content individually, piece by piece, for max visibility is a bit shortsighted, because it ignores some bigger opportunities – specifically, the opportunity to help the brand’s web site (which has a lot more gravitational pull than the odd press release, blog post, backgrounder or tweet) build rank and visibility.
How PR can positively impact SEO
In reality, a good PR campaign that results in media pick up, relevant industry blog posts and social buzz can have a profoundly positive effect on crucial web site rankings. And those web site rankings play an important part in lead generation — and ultimately sales.
“A few years ago, I launched a website called FindHow, and we gave it a full-court press from a PR standpoint. In the first month of FindHow’s existence, it surpassed 15,000 unique visitors and eventually grew to around the 100,000 uniques (editor’s note: unique web site visitors) mark. After about five months, the Public Relations effort had resulted in a total of around 18,000 links to the site, primarily because of prominent media mentions that boosted the site’s credibility and aided word of mouth.” – Ted Ives, “Public Relations for SEO.”
The quote above is an SEO expert’s take on PR results. In my many years of experience with PR Newswire (eighteen, to be exact), I know that plugging PR into the brand’s SEO strategy is something many – heck, most – public relations departments overlook. In most cases I’ve seen thinking about SEO starts and ends with the optimization of a particular message, with the goal of getting the press release itself to rank in search engines. In reality, we should be thinking about how to help our brands’ web sites rank, not individual messages. PR sells itself short when the focus on results is too narrow.
Integrating PR & SEO
To get a good look at how the results a good PR campaign can integrate (and improve) a brand’s SEO program, you can’t do better than to read the first of the series on PR and SEO just published on Search Engine Land. Author Ted Ives (@tedives) (the aforementioned SEO expert) lays out a new view of PR in the series, offering perspective on how brands can more fully capitalize upon media pick up and other public relations outcomes to effect business outcomes.
Results & effectiveness – the benefits of integrating PR & SEO programs
Understanding the follow on benefits of press release distribution and media mentions in the context of a brand’s web site and SEO initiatives can do a couple things for the PR department. First, as you can see from the paragraph above, the SEO guys have measurement down. They know where traffic comes from; they know which keywords have the best conversion rates. If measuring results is a bugaboo for your PR department, cozy up your SEO team. Chances are good they already know a surprising amount about the results your PR campaigns generated.
Secondly, integrating with the brand’s SEO program can lend real power to the messaging the PR department creates. Keyword research is another facet of audience behavior that can (and should) inform the content strategy. In addition to simply using the language of your audience, paying attention to larger keyword trends and usage patterns reveals what your marketplace actually cares about. For a content creator, this information is golden.
The other two parts of the series focus on targeting and pitching journalists, offering good, solid media relations advice, tuned for today’s newsroom realities, and are also worth reading.
So next time you’re drafting a PR campaign, don’t limit your goals to simply generating reads for a press release or media placements. Working with the SEO team can increase the measurable results the PR team generates, and the business impact it delivers.
Image via Velocity Partners. Click to access a great deck about content quality.
Content marketing is the outgrowth of a number of long-terms trends in the communications business. The ability of anyone to be a publisher. The shrinkage of traditional media. The questionable effectiveness of online advertising. The changes in search.
But ultimately it is about producing content that is exactly what your audience wants to read. Exactly what they are looking for. The answer to their search for information.
Commercially produced content has rarely been any of the above. Traditionally it has garnered views by trying to be in the right place at the right time so that the viewer/reader sees it in spite of the fact that he or she is really looking for something else.
Sponsored content, advertorial, paid content, pre-roll, whatever you call the output of marketing and PR it has no doubt been considered B-list, isolated from the somehow purer editorially-produced content or the presumedly more valuable organic search result.
So content marketing is about moving up to the A-list. Not trying to hitch a ride on the coattails of the seemingly more popular. It’s about being the destination, not hanging around in the same neighborhood.
Which brings us face-to-face with the issue of content quality. It is the prerequisite, the precursor, the minimal requirement, the absolute starting point for content marketing. Because, let’s face it, marketing content traditionally just hasn’t been that good, focusing as it has on tweaking the reader’s wallet rather than his or her interest.
I’ll be the first to admit that I think journalist-produced content written for independent publishers is going to be better and more interesting to me than something that comes out of any organization’s marketing or PR department, but there’s also no reason that has to be the case. Good writers aren’t that hard to find, and neither the number of opportunities nor the salaries paid by the media are going to make them inaccessible. Photos, videos, and other types of images are easier to produce than ever.
And when you have good writers, good photographers, good videographers, you have to turn them loose. Carefully-crafted, on-point, closely controlled organizational messaging isn’t going to work in content marketing, just as it doesn’t work in social media. Take advantage of the diversity of voices and styles within your organization, don’t squeeze them.
And finally, produce content for your reader, not for your boardroom or your attorneys or for the search robots. Create stuff you’d want to read, want to see. Or…go back to buying banner ads.
Author Ken Dowell is PR Newswire’s EVP of social media & audience development.
A 2 year old girl is being recorded on video by her father, and just as he’s almost done recording, she grabs for the camera. Dad didn’t have time to stop recording, and a two year olds’ hands grasp the camera, you hear her immediate need for gratification, “I wanna see”.
This was the story being told and shown by Jim Lin, VP of Digital Strategy at Ketchum Public Relations in San Francisco and author of the BusyDadBlog, as he finished his workshop at the Visual Storytelling Workshop that was held last week in San Francisco.
The audience gathered to learn from Lou Hoffman – CEO and Founder of The Hoffman Agency; Jim Lin – VP & Digital Strategist at Ketchum PR; Brian Solis (via Skype) – Author and Principle Analyst at The Altimeter Group; and Lee Sherman – Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer at Visual.ly.
Lou Hoffman started the day talking about the importance of telling a good story and how visuals serve as the shortcut to the emotional touch points of the story. In fact, he spoke about a study that The Hoffman Agency did on articles in the economist and how 17% of the stories over a 3 month period included anecdotes in them, yet less than 5% of press releases do so. A good story has visuals to connect, and as an example, he offered this video from Caterpillar:
Storytelling today has a new process. Online, good stories can take on a life of their own. Lou showed his theory of the new Communicator’s Story Spike:
Jim Lin then spoke up about how visual storytelling can be the cure for the “common meh”. Good visuals can bring the true emotion to the story. Piggybacking on those emotional touch points, Jim spoke about how people don’t always remember the stories (facts and figures), but remember how they felt in that moment….yet too many brands leave passion on the table to settle for just the facts and text. The importance that multimedia can bring to the table…good snackable content…and related the contents of a multimedia story to that of a good lunchable – short text, nice video, good visual all in one box ready to be lunch. This is truly the way to make your story an experience for the consumer of that story. At PR Newswire, we know this is true based on our own studies that have shown that visual stories get more views and generate more engagement.
Brian Solis then joined the crowd gather via Skype to bring his passion on the subject front forward. In just launching his new book, WTF Business – What’s The Future of Business – Brian spoke about creating a business book that was more meant to be a visual experience. (I know it’s the first business book that I’ve seen that is in a coffee table book format. ) His desire to present his content in this way was developed with his passion to try new things and break the rules of common convention.
When it comes to breaking common conventions today, Brian passionately spoke about this being the best time for PR & Marketing professionals to recreate all the rules. The trends of content marketing are about “stitching together moments of truth” for the passionate consumer. Brian explores this “ultimate moments of truth” in his new book, and finds that connecting visuals and stories lead people down the path to purchase because we are now connecting facts & figure to emotional connection.
Finally, Lee Sherman joined us from Visual.ly, one of the most visually exciting companies out there today. Lee is passionate about connecting data to that visual story. People are starting to suffer from I.F. – Infographic Fatigue. So, now we need to be able to tell a better and more cohesive story, and visuals can help do that. Just check out this video created by Visual.ly:
Earlier this month, we announced the winners of our 2nd earned media awards program, The Earnies. The caliber of work was impressive and is testament to the fact that PR professionals and marketers are truly pushing creative boundaries and thinking outside the box to successfully connect with their audiences and drive business results. And with thousands of votes cast by our community, this year’s winners can walk away knowing their work was admired not just by us, but by their peers.
A snapshot of the Multimedia News Release used to promote the FWD>> campaign. Click on the image to see the actual MNR.
In an effort to raise national awareness about the famine, war and drought in the Horn of Africa, The Ad Council joined forces with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and created the FWD (Famine, War, Drought) campaign, encouraging Americans to FWD the facts about the crisis and support relief operations. By leveraging a variety of social media channel and the influence of their partners, allies and agencies to spread the message, the Ad Council achieved astounding results – reaching millions of people, igniting incredible audience interaction and generating an impressive amount of content surrounding the campaign.
Best Use of Video in Social Media: LatentView Analytics
In order to showcase their workplace culture, LatentView Analytics tested their filmmaking skills and also put their own in front of the camera. “Confessions of a Serial Analysts” was filmed in their India office and the result was a fun, short film that resulted in thousands of video views and Facebook likes – and gave viewers insight into the world of LatentView Analytics.
Best Connection to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook Audience: New Media Strategies
Diageo Chateau & Estates needed help establishing a social presence for their Lifestyle Wines and attracting a younger demographic of wine drinkers. After conducting thorough research of the audience, their behaviors, likes and wants, as well as of the competition, New Media Strategies strategically created an editorial calendar which focused on easily digestible and visual content and launched a new Facebook page to reach this audience. The Wine Bar Facebook page quickly became an online wine community that boasts a fan base of 31,000+ with extremely high interaction outpacing the competition
We Can’t Believe That Worked!:New Media Strategies
ACCCE, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, wanted rally online advocates to take offline action, increase the level of activism and increase online visibility in search and social. In order to do so, New Media Strategies, needed to identify a way to do so quickly and easily, and motivate “an army of grassroots supporters into a quantifiable result.” Using a two-fold approach, educate and activate, NMS developed a first-of-its-kind, a click-to-call campaign using Twitter, owned email lists and Facebook to connect local supporters directly to their state senators. With 3,300 calls and 41 hours of constituent-to-congressional-office talk time and promoted tweets, ACCCE saw a ~153 percent increase in followers. Furthermore, Twitter and Google used this campaign to create platform case studies, highlighting the success of this campaign as a first-of-its-kind in the advocacy space.
Best Use of Social Listening for Campaign Planning: General Electric
Campaign: HealthyShare: Surprise & Delight
Looking to strengthen the public’s association of health and health-related subjects with the General Electric brand, GE developed a campaign that would allow them to have meaningful conversations about health, engage audiences that were interested in such subjects and grow brand enthusiasm. By using a refined list of Twitter search terms and carefully listening to conversations taking place on Twitter, GE was able to identify a strong audience base to target, establish trust and share healthy gifts that helped generated earned media and new brand advocates.
Best Visual Campaign through Pinterest or Instagram: Fathom
It’s no surprise that the use of visual content is a necessity for ConsumerCrafts, an online craft store that sells affordable arts & craft supplies for jewelry making, scrapbooking, kid’s crafts and more. So in order to increase Pinterest followers and pins, Fathom and ConsumerCrafts developed a contest that invited users to submit photos of creative kid’s craft projects using back-to-school items. The winning entry was simply determined by the highest number of repins. ConsumerCrafts saw a significant increase of blog and website referral traffic, engagement from bloggers promoting the contest, hundreds of repins and was able to identify new followers, as well.
Armed with the understanding that there are more devices tapping into the Internet than people on Earth to use them, Cisco set out to bring awareness that connections to the Internet go way beyond the obvious – computers, tablets and phones – and explain the impact this has on business. Furthermore, Cisco sought to drive positive conversation around their brand and its role in bringing the network into its current, impressive state. By creating an infographic and thoughtful messaging to support it, and then promoting it through multiple channels, Cisco’s campaign, “The Internet of Things,” was a huge success. In fact, Cisco noticed a 30% increase in quantity of conversation and a 7% increase in sentiment; 100MM+ impressions, impressive media pick up and significant social conversation and tweets by thousands, including industry influencers.
Best Global Communications Campaign: Tourico Holidays, Inc
In an effort to increase revenue during a one-month global promotion and also raise $40,000 for Give Kids the World Village, Tourico Holidays had to get creative. By engaging contracted hotels and creating a system that encourages small donations, a match program, along with promotion of the campaign through email, social media, at events and on their website, Tourico was able to increase the number of bookings by 93% and increase revenue by an impressive $685,000. Before all of the check-ins even occurred, they were able to donate the $40,000 to Give the Kids the World Village and hope to triple that once all hotel check-ins are made.
Best Integrated Campaign on a Shoestring Budget: Gutterglove
Gutterglove wanted to bring awareness to the fact that bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. would improve the American economy and began to create the content to do so. With just $3,000 to spend, Gutterglove was forced to think outside the box. One of their employees, John Quincy Adams IV, was the descendant of our former presidents and leveraged this fact and incorporated it into messaging to spark additional interest in their story. That, along with a website dedicated to promoting the cause, helped Gutterglove see huge earned media success across broadcast, print and social media.
With a new, major Leading Edge Forum (LEF) report, “Connected Consumer and the Future of Financial Services” in hand, CSC wanted to put this piece of content to work to stimulate conversation among the media, analysts and clients, enhance their reputation, promote themselves as thought leaders and generate leads. By executing a thorough, targeted, multi-channel campaign that considered internal and external stakeholders and influencers, CSC’s campaign was able to do so. By implementing a number of tactics – including live-tweeting of a panel discussion, relevant, third-party blog posts, town halls, dedicated sales tools and more, CSC secured coverage in major financial services outlets, received enthusiastic feedback from analysts, garnered more than 40,000 Twitter impressions in just over a week and generated hundreds of leads through downloading of the report.
We were inspired (and a bit awed) by these winning entries, and the runners up. Our congratulations to the winning entrants, and our hearty thanks to our judges:
It seems like everyone has a bracket these days. March Madness is in full-swing, and team loyalty is running rampant. You can’t turn the corner without seeing team colors and heated debates among friends. Even I donned my red and silver University of New Mexico sweatshirt, showing support for my alma mater before a sadly fruitless struggle last night. C’est la vie.
Basketball is on everyone’s mind, and the infectious excitement of the tournament is drawing everyone out for the fun. When I saw Outback Steakhousepresent an opportunity for friends to root for the teams they love, I was entranced. With a new promotion and a new product, Outback introduced their new “TourneyTizers” to bring out the crowds on gameday.
The content showcased a few perfectly balanced aspects which have the power to organically create buzz. The restaurant chain introduced a new tournament among its products, allowing the competition to flow from the games into the kitchen.
If you’re keen on watching games, you can understand the “visual” element. Press releases are no different! Outback Steakhouse’s inclusion of an infographic gave you the home-court advantage by telling the story with a image.
The release taught a very important lesson – new products and promotions do NOT need to be boiled down to the bare facts or chunks of text.
Visual components make a release stand out from the crowd.
The infographic, playful and simple, showed off the exciting new dishes and related the information back to March Madness.
We have a bracket for our teams… why not for our favorite dishes?
If your company is creating a new promotion, remember the power of imagery. Outback’s release showed off a new infographic and played off the madness this month brings. While the NCAA may not have a champion yet, it’s clear that this season Outback is a champion with their TourneyTizers.
Author Robbie Thomsen is a Customer Content Specialist for PR Newswire. Off duty, he often can be found in the kitchen, experimenting with myriad foods and techniques. You can follow his tests and trials in front of the stove at www.acrisisaverted.wordpress.com.
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