Marketing Roadmaps

Marketing

Hurricane Katrina Relief, HP Charity Auction, American Red Cross and DATA

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Warning: Long Post

I was basically in non-blogging mode when Hurricane Katrina hit and the levees broke, and by the time I got back in blog-gear, it didn’t seem like the blogosphere needed yet another post reminding people to donate to the Red Cross or another relief charity. So I haven’t blogged anything about Katrina or hurricane relief. Until now.

Late Friday afternoon, a good friend who does marketing for HP (Hewlett-Packard) called me. Her latest project is a charity auction on ebay featuring photographs of about 40 stars that attended the Toronto Film Festival. Sponsored by HP, the auction benefits the American Red Cross and DATA, the not-for-profit started by U2 singer Bono that strives to eliminate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

She had a problem: the project came together so fast that they really didn’t have time to do “traditional” marketing. But if she didn’t get the word out quickly, people wouldn’t know about the auction, which ends on September 29th. She was looking for some marketing help to quickly spread the word, and called me because she knew I was involved in blogging and Internet marketing,

The project was worthwhile and it was a chance to help a friend, so I decided to devote part of my weekend to pulling together a grassroots plan to reach fan sites and blogs.  I am getting a small fee for my work, but that’s not the reason I agreed to help. I don’t put anything in my blog that I don’t believe in, fee or no fee. And part of what interested me was to see how fast we could spread the word using ONLY viral methods. No press releases. No ad campaigns. Just some blog posts and a bunch of emails to fan sites and other people that might be interested. 

The whole project is also a great example of how a company can responsibly combine philanthropy with their business interests – in this case, promotion of the HP brand and specifically the photo printers. I thought that perhaps some of my marketing colleagues might be interested in it as a case study, especially given some of the silly promotional things that emerged from some companies in the wake of Katrina.

So I divided the project into two sections: outreach to fans, specifically about the pictures, and outreach to fellow marketers, about the auction as both a charity event, and a good case study. This blog entry is of course part of the outreach to fellow marketers. I doubt that I have too many avid Justin Timberlake and Freddy Rodriguez fans in my readership 🙂

Fan Outreach
The outreach to fan sites and blogs was pretty simple, thanks to Google and blog search engines. I spent a rainy Saturday afternoon searching for and visiting fan sites for everyone from Anthony Hopkins, Pierce Brosnan and Kevin Bacon to Eva Longoria, Anne Hathaway and Maggie Gyllenhaal (the complete list of stars in the auction is at the end of this post). To make my short list, a site or blog had to be active within the last few months, and preferably with a post or entry within the past two weeks. No point in sending an email about a time-sensitive event to an inactive site 🙂

The auction itself is divided into two parts: a small auction of 5 photos that runs until September 22nd and the majority of the photos to be auctioned from September 19-29. So Saturday, I emailed news about the auction to five active sites for the first group of stars. The email itself is very simple, personalized to the star and fan site, and simply lays out the facts about the auction, short and sweet.

To my distinct pleasure, I got a note back almost immediately from one of the sites, Anne Hathaway Place, thanking me for the information and letting me know it had been posted.

Tomorrow, I will do the outreach for the auctions that go live on Monday. And I’ll probably dig around a bit more to see if I can find a few other fan-type places that would be interested.

The auction as a marketing case study
Every year for the past few years, at the Toronto Film Festival (and Sundance), HP and WireImage collaborate to produce “The HP Portrait Studio.”  Essentially, all the stars/celebrities who attend the festival, and are of course promoting their films, get their pictures taken by WireImage to extend the reach of the story beyond those media outlets that can afford to send their own photographers. HP participates for corporate branding, and specifically to familiarize the film industry with its products for potential product placements in films. You can see this year’s pictures here.

HP also creates posters of the images and places them around Toronto during the Festival. For example, last year, Starbucks was a Festival sponsor, so HP placed big posters in the Toronto Starbucks windows, making it clear that Starbucks was part of the Festival. My friend told me that people were always asking if the pictures were available for purchase, which planted the seed for the idea of using them for charity.

This year, the time was right.

During the Festival, actress Kate Hudson hosted the onexone gala to benefit DATA and the Lou Adler Foundation, which framed the issue for many of the stars. As a result, about 40 stars agreed to participate in the HP charity event. They autographed pictures taken by photographer Jeff Vespa, who donated his time and the pictures. Each star also autographed a Photosmart 375 Compact printer donated by HP. As discussed above, the autographed photos and printers will be auctioned on ebay, with the proceeds to benefit the American Red Cross and DATA.

Combining charity with product promotion is hard to do well. It often feels forced and artificial. In my opinion, it works here because HP isn’t just linking its brand with the autographed photo, it is actually giving the photo printers away, autographed to boot. The main draw is certainly the photo, but the photo printer actually “goes with” pretty well. I can imagine the winning bidders will be pretty happy to have both items. It would make a pretty cool gift if you had any friends, family, children who were fans of one of the stars.

I also really like the timing of this event. It was planned well before Katrina hit, but it is happening at the point that I would call the first blush of “charitable exhaustion” from the hurricane fallout. You know what I mean – people are very generous in the early days after a tragedy, but as time goes on, those personally unaffected go back to their regular lives. The headlines in the papers start to blur, and the magnitude of the need fades from vision, even though the need has not.

Something like this auction both reminds us, and quite frankly, provides the incentive to keep giving. I’ll use myself as an example. Although we already gave generously to the Red Cross in the days immediately following Katrina, I will donate some of my fee from this project as well. 

In the end, it is a win win win for everybody:

  • HP, the photographer and the stars feel good about their donation of time and goods, and earn brand credit with their customers and fans;
  • The charities get the proceeds of the auction;
  • The winning bidders get a cool picture and a cool printer, and can feel good that their purchase helped a good cause.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

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The stars:

September 12-22
Anne Hathaway
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Elle Macpherson
Zooey Deschanel
Robin Wright Penn

September 19-29
Alan Cumming
Anthony Hopkins
Cameron Crowe
Elijah Wood
Eva Longoria
Forest Whitaker
Freddy Rodriguez
Gabriel Byrne
Greg Kinnear
Gretchen Mol
Isabella Rossellini
Felicity Huffman
Kate Hudson
Kevin Bacon
Kurt Russell
Liev Schreiber
Miranda Richardson
Pierce Brosnan
Ray Liotta
Richard E. Grant
Bono
the Trust the Man cast: Bart Freundlich, David Duchovny, Eva Mendes, James LeGros, Julianne Moore and Maggie Gyllenhaal
the Edison cast: LL Cool J, Piper Perabo, Dylan McDermott, Justin Timberlake and Morgan Freeman

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Footnote: in the fine print of the auction materials on ebay, you’ll see that 85% of the proceeds are guaranteed to go to the charity, with 15% for “posting and processing.” My friend at HP tells me that this is pretty typical – in fact better than typical; the usual range for a charity auction of this nature is between 60-80% to the charity. In the case of the HP auction, HP is paying all the marketing, production and promotional expense; the only things coming out of the proceeds are the logistical costs of the auction itself: the fee for the online auction house, which is capped, and the ebay and PayPal fees. If people pay by check, or the proceeds far exceed the expectations, it is quite possible that the two charities will receive an even greater percentage.

Roadmaps Round-up -Sept. 15

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It’s been a while, so for new readers: a Roadmaps Round-up is a bunch of interesting stuff that I’ve found online that I’m not going to have time to blog about before it gets really old.

Two interesting posts from Shel Holtz. A speech by Mary Hodder on blog search engines and an item about an analysis of online newsrooms done by IBM Spain

From BlogWrite for CEOs: two resource posts, one about corporate blogging and the other blogging 101

From Desirable Roasted Coffee: Is your prose gender confused? Just read it, I can’t begin to do it justice. Allan does a much better job.

From Diva Marketing, news of Chrysler’s "for media only blog" The Firehouse. As I said in my comments to Toby’s post, doesn’t Chrysler PR already know how to engage the media. Why create an exclusive blog, in complete opposition to the spirit of blogs as conversation? Dumb move. As I said in my comment, I can hear the backfire from here.

Update: Both Shel Holtz on the most recent Hobson & Holtz Report and Toby Bloomberg on the Diva Marketing blog explain that media-only websites are common practice in the auto industry, so the Chrysler Firehouse blog is simply an extension of an existing practice. Still — I have to wonder why a blog? It seems unlikely that reporters are going to engage in quasi-public conversation with Chrysler that WILL be overheard by other journalists. They like exclusives too much. As a result, it seems to me that the blog will be more of a one-way communication from Chrysler. In which case — why a blog? Don’t they already have vehicles to reach out uni-directionally to the media? Like their media website… I also agree with Toby (and had posted in the comments of her previous post on the subject) that it is unwise and a bit silly to publicly promote a blog that will have a restricted, private registration. It’s like telling everyone you have a great club that they’ll want to join, and then turning them away at the door because they don’t "fit." Just invite the people who qualify and be done with it. And be clear that the blog is restricted to a certain membership and define it publicly, up front. End update.

From Micropersuasion: interesting post on how to find a blogger’s "beat" using data from Technorati

The power of the customer: Fans & Firefly

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As many of you know, especially if we’ve met, or you regularly read the blog, I am a huge proponent of customer marketing. And not just marketing TO your customers with promotions designed to increase the lifetime value of the customer. By all means, do that, but don’t stop there. Make products that your customers will love and then harness that passion in your marketing efforts. Market WITH your customers, because they love your products, respect your company and want to help you succeed.

There ain’t nothing like a passionate customer. Here’s a little story that proves the point.

Once upon a time there was a little television show called Firefly. Firefly was created by Joss Whedon, the talented writer/director who brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel to the little screen.

Firefly was a bit different though. It didn’t follow the Buffy/Angel formula of supernatural beings and monsters among us in contemporary society. Instead, Firefly was a “space opera,” described by some as a cross between Battlestar Galactica and The Outlaw Josey Wales. The setting was far in the future, 500 years from Earth as we know it, but the people in the Firefly verse were “normal” people. At least to the extent that the context didn’t include magic, vampires and otherwordly beings. Everyone is pretty gorram**   human, with a fair dose of the “cowboy” ethos, and maybe just a little bit Chinese.

Firefly was on the Fox network and Firefly never had a chance. I won’t rehash all the details, but suffice it to say, Fox didn’t get it, and the series was cancelled before all the original 13 episodes were aired.

But Whedon’s fans are a devoted bunch. In the first pass, many came to Firefly from Buffy and Angel, and realized that this new show was even better. When it was cancelled, they started to mobilize – letters, fan sites, conventions, etc. etc.

Some, like me, never got a chance to watch it the first time around because Fox jerked it around so much, but bought the DVD as soon as it was released. Because we just knew it had to be good (perhaps in part because Fox didn’t get it). In fact A LOT of people bought it as a pre-order on Amazon before it was released. A whole lot.

And a funny thing happened. Another studio, Universal, saw all this fan activity, watched the show, and decided that this Firefly thing was pretty good. Good enough for a feature film. And so we have Serenity… a feature film due in US cinemas on September 30th.

Lesson One: the fans were in large part responsible for Firefly’s second chance. Joss Whedon and the rest of the cast have more than once given them the credit. Smart man, that Joss Whedon. He creates brilliant television (and now movies), which creates loyal loyal fans, and he has the grace and smarts to give the fans their share of the credit.

But that’s not the end of the story. The Firefly fans are so devoted that they have mobilized to ensure the film’s success with guerilla marketing efforts in support of the planned campaigns by Universal. I couldn’t even tell you everything the fans have created in support of this movie, but it includes a podcast called the Signal that is in iTunes top 100, artwork, music, video and fan fiction, a campaign to get the DVDs rated highly on NetFlix, fan websites, blogs and forums, not to mention an extraordinarily active fan base on the official website for the movie. 

All this fan activity geared to ensuring a boffo box office for Serenity in its first few weeks. Because that’s what ensures the second film. And these fans want more. Trust me, I know this personally.

And Whedon, his cast and Universal are encouraging and enabling all this fan activity with viral marketing efforts and their active participation in the fan activity – not just the Universal sponsored sites.

Because they get it, and that’s Lesson Two: when you have passionate fans, DO NOT get in their way. They will do as good, or better, job converting new customers than you could ever do. Support them as much as you can, but don’t try to co-opt them. Let your product continue to speak for itself. That’s what Whedon does – he’s said it in interviews: he’s not trying to make shows that people will like, he wants to create stories and characters that people will love.

Now in the spirit of full disclosure, this article is, of course, guerrilla marketing for Serenity as much as it is an analysis of the value of the customer in your marketing efforts. Think of it as a two-fer.

I’ll see you at the movies. On September 30th.

** god-damn for those of you who aren’t … yet … addicted to Firefly.

Links:
Browncoats (official fan site)
Serenity (official movie site)
Session 416 (viral marketing site)
The Signal podcast
Whedonesque 
Firefly DVD at Amazon.com

Blogher takeaway: Blogs need a Code of Ethics

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One of the sessions I attended at Blogher was a birds of a feather discussion of citizen journalism. As I sat there, listening to all the various points of view on whether bloggers are journalists (and full disclosure, I believe the answer is sometimes but not always, some but not all), I had one of those “aha” moments.

One of the things that distinguishes professional journalists from bloggers – “citizen reporters” – is the journalism code of ethics. For an example, check out the LA Times code of ethics (pdf).  Bloggers typically don’t have a published code of ethics on their blogs.

When I started this post, I expected to find that professional journalists and other communications professionals would have something like a code of ethics on their blogs. But for the most part, you won’t find an explicit code of ethics on a typical weblog, no matter who writes it….

Yet, it occurs to me that such a code of ethics on a blog would go a very long way to establishing the sort of credibility that bloggers need and crave.

Now, thinking back to the spring, I recall some discussion that we try to establish a blogging code of ethics. A single code of ethics to which all subscribe. Nice idea, but it isn’t going to fly. We don’t live in a utopia or a single worldwide dictatorship. We won’t ever be able to reach that level of agreement among ALL bloggers. And such centrality is in direct opposition to the spirit of the Internet and blogging —  a decentralized place that smashes barriers to participation.

But an individual code of ethics on a blog… A description of the blogger’s values and the “rules” by which she writes her blog… That would be a VERY good thing for all blogs.

Yet, I really haven’t seen too many codes of ethics published on blogs – even on the blogs of people who are deep into the discussion of citizen journalism.

Here are a few “code of ethics”–like things I’ve found (and this list is by no means exhaustive – please send me any other examples you find!):

In his about page, Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion offers the following disclosure:

Disclosure:
I work for CooperKatz & Company. Everything here, though, is my own personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. Occasionally, since this is a personal blog, my company and its clients will be referenced. However, these postings are in no way any part of any PR program nor an attempt to influence reader opinions. Currently, I am working with the following organizations: The Association of National Advertisers, simplehuman, Vespa, the Kauffman Foundation, NYU and Topix.net.

Jeremy Pepper offers a Comments Policy on his main blog page:

This is not a public forum, this is My Blog.

This is very much my personal place. Please act as if you were a guest in my home, and I will treat you as one.

Opposing views are welcomed.
I will, however, delete your comment if you descend into personal attacks, excessive profanity, mouth-foaming hatred, or other such immature behavior that I deem unacceptable in my home.

Please craft your contribution accordingly.

Jay Rosen, PressThink has a pretty extensive Q&A on his blog which functions to some degree like a code of ethics, but it isn’t labeled as such.

The closest things I’ve found to an explicit code of ethics:

The Citizen Journalist pledge at Bayosphere, the new venture of journalist Dan Gillmor:

Citizen Journalist Pledge
By submitting this form, I agree to be accurate, complete, fair and transparent in my postings on Bayosphere. My work will be my own, created by me and/or in collaboration with others. I will operate with integrity.
I work in the community interest.
As a citizen journalist, I report and produce news explaining the facts as fairly, thoroughly, accurately and openly as I can.
* Fair: I’m always listening to and taking account of other viewpoints;
* Thorough: I learn as much as I can in the time I have, and point to original sources when possible;
* Accurate: I get it right, checking my facts, correcting errors promptly and incorporating new information I learn from the community;
* Open: I explain my biases and conflicts, where appropriate.
I may also provide reviews (such as a critique of a movie or book) and commentary with a point of view based on facts, but I will have no significant financial or otherwise direct connection (membership, affiliation, close relationship, etc.) with an interested party.
If I do have such connections, I’ll disclose them prominently, and my work may be labeled and/or categorized appropriately.
I agree, as an active member of this community, to help uphold the integrity of this pledge by challenging and reporting inappropriate postings or abuse.

And Hill & Knowlton, the PR agency, has an explicit code of practice on its blogging community :

* I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly
* I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes
* I will never delete a post
* I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic
* I will disclose conflicts of interest (including client relationships) where I am able to do so
* I will not publish anything that breaches my existing employment contract
* I will distinguish between factual information/commentary and advertising
* I will never publish information I know to be inaccurate
* I will disagree with other opinions respectfully
* I will link to online references and original source materials directly
* I will strive for high quality with every post – including basic spellchecking
* I will write deliberately and with accuracy
* I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly
* I will restrict my posting to professional topics
* I will write on a regular basis, at least once each week

Well, here’s my code of ethics for Marketing Roadmaps:

Marketing Roadmaps is my opinion, based on my experience.  Your mileage may vary. I will be respectful of my readers’ views, and expect the same courtesy.

  • When I have an opinion, I will be completely clear about it. You won’t have to guess.
  • I won’t delete posts unless the content proves to be completely off base, in which case I will leave a placeholder that explains what happened so search engines won’t perpetuate any mistakes I have made. Typically I will annotate the original post with new material rather than delete the post.
  • I will not blog information learned offline or in private conversations unless I am absolutely certain that it is public information or I have obtained permission from the person who shared the information. When in doubt I will err on the side of caution.
  • I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic. Ditto trackbacks.
  • I will link and trackback to other blogs appropriately, and always endeavor  to add to the conversation.
  • I will say thank you, replying to emails and comments promptly and pleasantly, even when I disagree with you.
  • I will be honest about my clients and relationships so my readers will understand my loyalties.

This code of ethics will be posted on my About page.

Where’s yours?

Blogging workshop & Anonymous Blogging

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Yesterday I did my first "To Blog or Not to Blog" workshop for a PR agency in NYC. It went quite well from all reports (whew!). The workshop is about 3-3.5 hours long, and basically covers Blogging 101 and how blogs and new media fit into the marketing communications plan.

What I’d like to do is convert this into an ongoing product, and the idea I have is a full day workshop, with the first half of the day devoted to Blogging 101, for up to 15 students, and the second part of the day  (one or two) two-hour hands-on workshop(s) for no more than 5-6 students to actually go through the exercise of evaluating a blog as part of the specific MarCom plan for a company, and then developing the mission and plan for the blog. In effect, teaching my students how to fish.

I think this would be very useful for mid-size companies and PR/marketing agencies who want to get into blogging, but just don’t know where to start. I would love your feedback on the idea, and referrals of interested companies would be even better 🙂

Okay. Shameless self promotion period is now over.

My next topic is anonymous blogs. During yesterday’s workshop, one of the students asked about the credibility of anonymous blogs. Basically, she asked, how can an anonymous blog be a credible source of information?

The answer to this truly has multiple layers. It is of course the reader who makes a determination about credibilty, and that’s true whether the blog is anonymous or not.

Am I going to trust the content of the blog?

We make this determination based in part on "how right" the blogger we are reading has been in the past. We also factor in the nature of the information — how critical is it that our information be 100 percent correct. Finally, we look for endorsements — other bloggers we know and trust, trusting this blogger. These things ALL factor into our trust equation whether the blog writer is identified or not.

But is there a difference with anonymous blogs? I think the answer is a resounding YES! If a blog is anonymous, we need additional validation that it is okay to trust this blog. The more critical the issue, the more validation we need. In fact, for some really high stakes issues like our health, there may never be enough validation to trust an anonymous blog. When someone is giving you health advice, you need some solid indices that it is okay to trust them.

Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have been discussing the issue of anonymous blogs on the last few issues of For Immediate Release — their comments are well worth listening to.

My take? The nature of the content really dictates whether you will trust an anonymous blogger. If the issue is fairly trivial, like what shoes should I buy for the fall, the fact that Manolo the Shoe Blogger is both anonymous and a character doesn’t matter. I just like that Zappos usually gives you expedited shipping even when you order ground.

If the issue at hand is critical, and you are looking for validation, assistance, data to inform your decision, I truly do not believe an anonymous blog can generate adequate trust. You need to know WHO, and I’m not sure if even the sponsorship of a valued, trusted organization is enough to extend that trust to an anonymous blogger for a high stakes decision.

By all means, blog anonymously if you want to share your life and experiences. There are many valid and important reasons why people might want to blog anonymously

But, if you want you opinion to really matter — if you believe that your opinion on an issue mght make a difference, you really need to step up to the plate and stand for your opinion.

People will want to know who you are.