It has long been my belief that positioning a firm’s executives and knowledge workers as experts in the eyes of media and the company’s stakeholders is one of the most effective ways to promote a brand, product, or service.  It has been my experience that too few firms take advantage of this opportunity.   To venture a guess, I will say that the reason for this lack of enthusiasm for expert-based promotion is ignorance of this type of promotion or the insecurity marketers feel about this type of activity.  It is with a fair amount of certainty that I claim the reason for both the former and latter stem from the fact that colleges and universities don’t teach this within their business and marketing curriculum, and that marketing firms and advertising agencies largely ignore this approach to marketing.  Fortunately, there is someone out there with his eye on the ball, Ken Lizotte, author of The Expert’s Edge (McGraw-Hill, 2008).

Lizotte’s book is a well written guide to turning garden variety experts into “thought leaders.”  The foundation of his philosophy is based on his five pillars of thought leadership: publishing (articles & book); public speaking; conducting research (he calls it “fresh thinking”); leveraging the internet; and using the media.  The book’s primary audience consists of consultants, small business owners, and people interested in creating a “personal brand,” and for those of you who fall into one of these categories, this book is a must read.  I also want to suggest that The Expert’s Edge is a great resource for marketers in companies of any size.   Lizotte’s tactics for turning oneself into a thought leader can, with a little ingenuity, be used by marketers for transforming their firm’s executives and knowledge workers into thought leaders.

Oh, and for you college professors teaching marketing or PR, this book makes a great complement to many texts.  I can recommend it specifically to those using Marketing Public Relations as supplemental reading for chapters 11 and 12-especially for graduate level courses.
 
 
Chris Brogan’s blog post, “How to Market an Offline Event Online” got me thinking. Aside from the great tactical insight that Chris gives us on using social media for promoting an online event, the post reminds us that social media is just another set of tools in our PR garage.  Like the printed page, or telephone call, social media will just be something else we use to promote our brand, sell our product, and get our message out.  If you look closely, all folks that are being recognized for their social media acumen are also masters of traditional media PR. Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba, Gary Vaynerchuk and the like are doing live events, appearing on TV shows, being quoted by the traditional press, writing books, and giving lectures that help build their brand as much as the social media work that they do.  All of these elements, be they ancient or recently invented, use the magic of “Out of Control Marketing” where your message is handed over to connectors who, in turn, pass your message along via media mentions or word-of-mouth.  Those who practice this are risk takers because they let their message be reshaped by those who pass it on, but, wow, does it pack credibility.  So, this is your cue to look beyond the hot topic and to dig deeper in to all aspects of marketing public relations.

The answer to the question is yes, of course social media is just a form of PR.  The delivery method is different, but the purpose and the skills need to execute both forms of promotion are the same.

 
 
There are things I wish I had included in the text, but just didn’t have the room for them.  The MPR campaigns executed by Diageo in support of their Captain Morgan brand rum and themed around the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections are an example.   They incorporated social media by having www.captainmorganforpresident.com link to a Facebook fan page, and they used traditional media by distributing some great press releases, albeit tongue-in-cheek to the mainstream press.  In 2008 the release they spelled out the “Captain’s” platform and posted a YouTube video.  In the 2004 release they promoted an event during the Republican convention giving rides to the Hamptons to people who wanted to get away from Manhattan and the bustle of the convention.   Really a great concept with strong execution.

Reflections:

What makes a great press release?  What elements of greatness does the 2004 Diageo release show?

What are the common threads that tie traditional media, social media, and event PR together?
 
 
It is not uncommon for me to be accosted by my colleagues who teach PR from a journalism or communications studies perspective arguing that I don’t take a three hundred and sixty degree view of public relations in my work.  Obviously, I have to agree with this observation, and then I remind them that I call what I do marketing public relations.  It is with great respect that I tip my hat to those who engage in government relations, investor relations, employee relations, community relations and the like.  All of these disciplines use a similar set of tools and tactics to do what they do, but have different purposes within the organizations that they serve.  The above terms are linked to some interesting resources if you’d like to explore them further.  I’ve also posted some more to the Reading box of the blog.

Which one of the above categories is at work when politicians try to sell the voting public on a piece of legislation?  Yep, it’s marketing. (Email me if you’d like to argue this point.) I bring this up because we are seeing some remarkable things happen as the Obama administration and the congressional majority attempt to gain public support for their healthcare legislation.  What I find most fascinating is the fact that politicos have been forgoing press conferences for “town hall meetings.”  They do this, presumably, to make their efforts look more authentic to the public at-large, and to remove themselves from the hard questions and potential bias of the media.  This is a great idea, but we are seeing this strategy start to unravel as the opposition is making a concerted effort to crash the town hall meeting is a very vocal manner.  These “disrupters” are starting to receive more press than the event or legislation itself.  To illustrate, I’ve linked to related articles from CNN and Fox News.  NPR’s On the Media radio show produced a story recently that discusses how right-of-center activists are co-opting tactics historically used by those left-of- center to “influence the political conversation” and get some publicity in doing so.

 

Reflections:

Is there a way that companies can use town hall style meetings to their benefit? How would they differ from a press conference or a focus group? What are the pros and cons of such an approach?

Can companies act as “disrupters” at political or commercial events to the benefit of their brands and sales? What companies might have better luck using this tactic?  What are the potential positives and negatives of such an approach?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR TAKE ON THE REFLECTIONS IN THE COMMENT SECTION
 
 

An article in the June 21, edition of the New York Times Magazine outlines a new promotional plan by Hyatt.  The campaign aims to build loyalty among the hotel chain’s best customers by having hotel staff perform “random acts of generosity.”  The idea, of course, is that those customers on the receiving end of these acts will experience the feeling of gratitude and reciprocate by booking more stays at Hyatt properties.  The article nicely backs up the notion of loyalty building by citing a paper written by University of Washington professor Robert Palmateri entitled, “ The Role of Customer Gratitude in Relationship Marketing,” the will appear in the July 2009 edition of the Journal of Marketing.

In addition to being a loyalty builder, this promotion is also an MPR campaign.  It is particularly interesting because it has potential for great success, while facing some classic MPR challenges.  Hyatt is faced with handling a couple double edged MPR swords.  First is that of media coverage.  Mainstream media outlets like the NY Times and USA Today are covering the story, and the blogosphere is chattering with posts appearing on the Economist’s Gulliver blog, several hotel/travel industry blogs, and even posts on personal blogs and Twitter accounts.  The potential downside, however, is that all of these otherwise excellent media mentions can serve to take the “randomness” out of the campaign, thereby diminishing its authenticity and credibility.

The campaign’s generosity is also targeted all Hyatt customers regardless of how often they use the chain’s services.  This is a good idea because it will not make any particular class of customer feel left out, and will likely help spread word-of-mouth across a broad cross section of Hyatt customer types.  It can be argued, however, that most customers are not the “road warrior” types and, therefore, don’t have a large circle of influence among frequent travelers.  In light of this fact, would it be reasonable to suggest that Hyatt concentrate on the high frequency and high luxury (that is- high profit) customers?  As there is a standard set within the travel industry for treating good customers better than the average ones, this sort of segmentation can increase the effectiveness of the campaign without alienating too many customers.  We’ll be able to judge Hyatt’s success by how long they keep this up, and, perhaps, by the number of imitators this campaign spawns.

If any readers experience this treatment at a Hyatt, please post a comment to this blog entry or shoot me an email.

Reflection:

What MPR opportunities is Hyatt missing?

Is there anything in particular that Hyatt can do to allow them to maximize their use of MPR without diluting the fact that they are truly performing random acts of generosity?

Is a broad segmentation approach best?