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Liberty Mutual

Brands & companies getting it right at BlogHer ’10: Liberty Mutual, Pepsi, P&G (BlogHer Marketing Lessons part 5)

August 31, 2010 by Susan Getgood

O Pepsi
Image by Lel4nd via Flickr

The comments, both here and on Facebook, on the previous marketing lessons posts have been terrific and chock full of examples, some of which we should strive to emulate, and others that we definitely want to avoid.

In this post I’m going to share my three picks for official sponsor companies that got it right at BlogHer ’10. These are by no means the only ones that did, but I have some specific learning points in each example.

Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project

I’ve been aware of the Responsibility Project since they reached out to me just before last year’s BlogHer. I don’t get many pitches and respond to even fewer but given my interest in ethics, disclosure and responsible blogging, I’m a good fit for their message of  “do the right thing” and have written about the Project a few times over the past year. I was delighted when I received an invitation to its outing to Ellis Island the day before BlogHer. I’ve been to New York many times, and seen most of the main tourist attractions, but never Ellis Island. So I RSVP’d yes, and made my initial travel plans to get to NY that morning in time to join the trip.  (BTW in the end, my plans changed and I went to NY on the Tuesday to film a roundtable discussion on celebrity worship, also for the Responsibility Project.) The Ellis Island trip was terrific as a sightseeing excursion and I highly recommend it. Details for organizing your own visit are on SCR.

Here’s why it worked as a blogger event.

Unique – The Ellis Island venue was a nice change from the usual meet & greet cocktail party/luncheon accompanied by swag bag that we’ve come to expect from blogger events. It also fit well with the theme of responsibility, although I admit that I nearly laughed out loud in the brief luncheon presentation by Peg Zitko, VP of Public Affairs at The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation when she tied the concept of responsibility to President Reagan’s decision that the American people should be responsible for restoring the Statue and Ellis Island through private donation rather than federal subsidy. Nothing against her message about the importance of the public contributions to the restoration — that’s an important story —  but responsible is not exactly how I would describe Reagan’s policies. Oh well, never mind…

The group was small, about 30 women. This made it easy to mingle and chat, and actually get to know each other. Liberty Mutual PR agency Ketchum told me they invited bloggers who they have been working with already, like me, and others who they wanted to get to know better because they thought the Responsibility Project themes would resonate for them.

Here are posts from:

  • As Cape Cod Turns
  • Sugar My Bowl.com
  • DanielleLiss.com
  • Quirky Fusion
  • Photos from 5 Minutes for Mom

The swag bag was appropriate and thoughtful — sunscreen, lipblock, bottled water, some snacks and an autographed copy of the Ellis Island cookbook written by our tour guide Tom Bernardin.

Limited lecturing – Because the trip was sightseeing, it seemed likely that the company presentations would be brief so we could enjoy the venue. They were. Senior Vice President, Communications Paul Alexander greeted us after we boarded the bus at the Hilton, said a few words and showed a brief film of clips from Responsibility Project commercials and media coverage. At lunch, we were treated to the afore mentioned brief talk from Peg Zitko and a screening of Second Line, a short film directed by and starring Danny Glover. That’s about it. Instead of bombarding us with presentations (or crafts) the Liberty Mutual and Ketchum people mingled and enjoyed the trip with us.

Executive commitment –– Major kudos to Paul Alexander who joined us for the whole trip, and managed to still look cool and crisp in his suit and tie at the end of the day, when we all looked a bit frazzled and fried. This is the kind of commitment from company executives that bloggers want to see. Not a few words and a hand wave as he or she is escorted from the room, and on to presumably more important things. I was most impressed by this, although perhaps I should have expected it. It is after all the right thing to do, and I have come to believe that Liberty Mutual walks its talk.

Procter & Gamble

I didn’t spend much time on the Expo floor. In my early career, one of my duties was tradeshow coordinator and I spent my fair share of time setting up, working and dismantling trade show booths of all sizes. As a result, I have a love-hate relationship with trade shows. I love the customer contact and the energy when you have a great conversation with a prospect or a reporter. However, the very venue reminds me of endless hours manning show booths or waiting for freight to be delivered etc etc. As a result, unless there is something I am specifically interested in, I tend to cruise through as fast as possible. In the case of cleaning products and groceries, my family will tell you straight up that I am not the buyer 🙂 so I also don’t want to waste the booth staff’s time chatting with me.

However, I was impressed by the sheer size of the P&G booth, and heard many good things about it from folks who spent some time with the P&G reps. Even if all you did was walk by, you got the idea the P&G had made a serious commitment to BlogHer.

Other things P&G did right:  In addition to the show floor, it had suite space for its new brand Align. The reflexology massage was awesome! More importantly, though, it was paying attention before BlogHer. As I’ve mentioned previously, it offered (and I accepted) free samples of Align for the attendees at the pre BlogHer BBQ. That gives the brand some mindshare even before people get to the conference. Given the noise and competition for attention once BlogHer starts, this is smart marketing.

Pepsi

Pepsi had a lot of things going on during BlogHer but I’m going to single out one, because I think it is very important, not just as a marketing lesson, but as an example for anyone interested in gender equality. Or parity if you prefer.

It is a well known fact that there are not enough women elected officials in this country. Not enough women run, and of those who do, not enough win. The day before the main conference, BlogHer partnered with the White House Project to hold a workshop for women interested in running for office. NY York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also held a brief meeting with political and NY bloggers during the conference to focus attention on women as candidates.

However, I believe our political reality won’t change, or change enough, until the business world changes. Until more women are in positions of business power and choose to use those powers for good. To make change in the world. And to support women candidates.

Pepsi, helmed by a woman, CEO Indra Nui,  seems to be doing just that. The company took the opportunity at BlogHer to showcase some of its senior executive women. It brought a panel of senior executive women to BlogHer for a “Sofa Summit” moderated by Campbell Brown to talk about Pepsi’s forays into social media, being a senior executive, nutrition and yes, even their families. I was privileged to be invited to this breakfast session attended by about 30 women bloggers, many (but not all) of whom write about gender issues.

This is important — to see  women in senior executive positions at top brands.We need more of it.

Now you may have noticed that I didnt include any of the entertainment brands in my picks. Does that mean I don’t think Ubisoft got it right with Let’s Dance 2? Of course not. The dance-offs in the booth were brilliant, and many many bloggers tremendously enjoyed this booth. It’s also a slam dunk. Nothing in marketing is ever easy, but it is a lot easier to come up with fun ways for customers to engage with entertainment brands. Fun is already the point.

It’s a whole lot harder to make insurance, soap and soda sexy. That’s why Liberty Mutual, P&G and Pepsi are my top picks.

Unrelated to BlogHer specifically, but apropos of brands getting social media engagement with their customers “right,” brands that have a track record of positive engagement with customers in other venues tend to hit more than they miss when deploying social media tools. They aren’t perfect — no one is — but they already seem to understand the importance of connecting with customers over shared values, not simply products.

—

On October 14, I will be speaking at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference for Women in Pittsburgh on using social media to build your brand and advance your career. Early registration price is $135 and expires Sept. 1oth. But… courtesy of the conference organizers, I have a pass to give away . Just leave a comment on this post by noon eastern time on September 14th. I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner.

—

Disclosure: Liberty Mutual hosted us for the day, providing transportation to/from Battery Park and the Hilton, the ferry ticket and guided tour of Ellis Island and lunch, plus the afore mentioned swag bag. I also participated in the celebrity worship roundtable; my extra hotel costs for Tuesday and Wednesday nights were covered and the participants received a small honorarium for our participation. I attended Pepsi’s Sofa Summit breakfast on Saturday. P&G sent samples of Align for the attendees of the Boston pre-BlogHer BBQ at my house, and like many attendees, I received a reflexology massage at its BlogHer suite.

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Filed Under: Blogging, BlogHer, Marketing Tagged With: BlogHer, Ellis Island, Liberty Mutual, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Responsibility Project

Marketing Lessons from BlogHer, Part One

August 12, 2010 by Susan Getgood

IMG_9067
Image by sgetgood via Flickr

I will have more personal commentary about BlogHer — including how I see the community evolving —  on Snapshot Chronicles sometime over the weekend. Here on Marketing Roadmaps,  I am going to explore what brands can learn from BlogHer 2010.

In this post and the one that follows, I’ll share my perspective based on what I experienced: the good, the bad and the ugly.  Over the weekend,  I am privileged to have guest posts from Meagan Francis from The Happiest Mom and Elizabeth, the one only and original Busy Mom, with some advice for marketers on how to reach them effectively.

If you have thoughts for marketers/about marketing to bloggers that don’t quite fit your blog, I am more than happy to host you here. Email me at sgetgood (at) getgood (dot) com. My only request is that you provide specifics so that marketers who are interested in getting it right when engaging with customers in social media  can learn from your thoughts and experiences. The marketers who aren’t interested in doing it right don’t read this blog so don’t worry about them. If you’d rather write it on your blog, send me the link and I’ll include it in a round-up.

First, some general observations about the good. As I noted in my pre-BlogHer post, only official BlogHer events and sponsors had space at the Hilton. This worked like a charm on the most important level — people who weren’t attending the  special, invite only events from non-sponsors didn’t have them thrust in their face at every turn. And the official sponsors got their due.

The downside, of course, was that numerous off-site events pulled people away from the Hilton and the conference sessions far more than I would like. I don’t have a problem with extra events scheduled the day before or after the conference, or the evenings. That is typical for any conference, and shows that BlogHer has truly grown up to be a major player in the blogging world.

However, I do not think it’s smart to hold your off-site events  during the conference sessions.  Especially the keynote sessions. In particular, an offsite Scholastic brand event held Saturday morning at the same time as the four international scholarship recipients, some of whom were at personal risk for speaking, shared their stories with the BlogHer audience, did not go over well with many in the community.

This is the ugly, and here are some of the comments from Twitter  about it:

@lauriewrites (Laurie White) tweets:  @Cecilyk @sgetgood I’ll never touch a Scholastic product again, as a teacher or an auntie. Schedule stuff during conference, offsite? Nope.

@zchamu (Shannon McCarney): @sgetgood scholastic woulda scored far more points by sponsoring the int’l scholarship session than by holding a rival party, no question

Shannon also wrote a beautiful post about all that BlogHer 10 meant to her, and while there was far more good than ugly, there were some strong words about holding events that conflict with the conference schedule:

“I’ve come away from BlogHer 2010 with a lot.  I’ve come away angry as hell at a corporation for having such disrespect as to hold gatherings to shill their wares to bloggers while women in another building were literally risking their lives to tell those bloggers how their words were changing the world. “

Go read her post. Read the comments too. I’ll wait.

The lesson for marketers – check the schedule before you schedule your event.

There really wasn’t a lot of bad in terms of marketing this year. The new personal sponsorship guidelines meant you weren’t accosted by someone thrusting a sample in your face at every turn.

However, watching the Twitter stream and reading the post-BlogHer reports I can’t help thinking , it’s too much. There’s just so much going on across a 3-4 day span that I’m afraid it starts to become a blur.

I understand the opportunistic strategy of scheduling events when  your target market is already gathered,  so you don’t have to pay for travel. But how much information can humans really absorb? How much marketing budget was squandered last week throwing big events that are a blur the week (if not the day) after?

I think  a lot. An awful lot.

My advice is to think carefully about what you want to achieve at a conference like BlogHer. Start with the official sponsorship opportunities. If one of those fits your objectives, you are supporting the organization as well as your own objectives, and that’s a dual win.

Then think about what your audience really needs. Is it one more party that they have to squeeze in or is a free limo service to the airport on arrival and departure day more meaningful? Or perhaps a smaller sightseeing event that really gives people an opportunity to speak with each other? How can you broaden your reach — beyond who you already know —  to new influencers that you’ll want to know.

In my next post, I’ll cover two influencer relations campaigns that I think hit the mark: Gap’s #gapmagic outreach to BlogHer speakers and the trip to Ellis Island sponsored by Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project. Full disclosure: I participated in both, and have known the PR people for both Gap and Liberty Mutual for more than a year.

That’s why I opened the emails. But not why I think the programs worked.

Stay tuned. More tomorrow.

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Filed Under: Blogger relations, Blogging, BlogHer Tagged With: BlogHer, Liberty Mutual

Professional Blogging For Dummies (my book), bad pitches and news from Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project

July 15, 2010 by Susan Getgood

Professional Blogging For Dummies will be in your local bookstore by the end of the month! Hard to believe it’s only been a year since I first met Dummies Acquisitions Editor Amy Fandrei at BlogHer.

Speaking of which, I will be signing copies at the BlogHer bookstore in New York next month, but I’m not sure of the day/time yet. I’ll also be speaking at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference for Women (Pittsburgh, 10/14), the Texas Conference for Women (Houston, 11/10) and the Massachusetts Conference for Women (Boston 12/9), and I think they will be organizing a book signing at those venues as well.

Professional Blogging For Dummies was written to help individuals and small business owners develop a blog  to generate revenue directly or support their small business. There’s a whole section just on monetization.  That said, I think anyone with a blog or considering starting one — even if they aren’t focused on revenue generation — would benefit from the chapters on strategy, planning, development and design. Plus, the book is chock full of case studies and interviews with successful bloggers.

It’s the silly season for bad pitches

Last week, I told you about a marketing agency that sent me a press release offering expert commentary on celebrity use of social media. Because that’s what I write about, right? Clearly they aren’t reading my blog, or they would not have sent me this week’s release offering their services as a source on “how social media monitoring tools can be used to track weather patterns.”

I kid you not. Here’s the money quote:

“Everyone is talking about how hot it has been lately, especially on Twitter,” [name redacted], chief optimism officer and founder of [name redacted] said. “By analyzing keywords like ‘hot’ and ‘heat,’ our social media monitoring tools, in addition to our social media team of experts, have found a correlation between what people are saying on social networks, and actual weather patterns.”

Really? It’s actually hot in those places that people are talking about how hot it is? I never would have thought of that without your press release. One more of these silly releases crosses my desk and I will invoke the Bad Pitch Blog‘s “three strikes and you’re out-ed” rule.

Other gems from my inbox this week included a request to post a video link of some chef making ceviche and a press release about a self-published book of nude photographs by (not of) some dude who created a series for Playboy TV.

And then there was the social network that offers to let me share my dreams with the people I care about. I cannot make this stuff up:

Have you ever wondered if anyone had a similar dream to one that you had, or which celebrity is most dreamed about? Did you know that global news events impact dreams in a tangible way, and that millions of people are already sharing their dreams with others? There is a good chance that your readers at Marketing Roadmaps are thinking about it as well.

So readers, tell me. Are you interested in this? I’m thinking not, but… Maybe this social network has mined your dreams and this is what you want from a blog about marketing, social media and best practices. Please advise.

Now I know I’m not the only one getting ridiculous pitches this summer. I’m actually lucky. Mine are funny, not offensive.

Alas, that was not the experience of my friend Allison Blass. Allison has type 1 diabetes and often writes about the disease on her personal blog  Lemonade Life. Professionally, she’s a PR person and regularly reaches out to bloggers on behalf of her clients, so she’s not opposed to getting pitches to her personal blog.  But she wants them to be relevant. If the pitch angle is about diabetes, the product had really better be for diabetics. Not simply a diabetic “gloss” on a consumer product intended to make it seem relevant to her blog. For example, the pitch she recently received for  a water filter.

Allison mentioned the pitch on Facebook and at my request, forwarded it to me. There were two basic problems with the pitch. First, as noted above, the product is a water filter. It isn’t something special for diabetics. Linking it to diabetes was just a hook. Worse, the basis the company used to link the product to diabetes didn’t sit well with Allison, who was diagnosed as a child and is very active in the diabetes community. When Allison called the rep on her facts, the PR rep got defensive and then a bit offensive. And that’s problem number two.

When the blogger or reporter says “this isn’t for me and you have all your facts wrong,” think twice about engaging. Most of the time, it’s better to apologize and move on to someone more receptive. Hard to do, especially if it’s a writer you really want to reach, but probably a better tactic than getting into a pissing contest with the person.

And pay attention to the objections. It doesn’t matter what YOU the company know. Success is in the customer’s perceptions. Reach out to them on their terms, not yours. If they think your pitch is a bit dodgy, it is. Period.

News from Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project

I first learned of Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project last year when its PR Agency reached out to me because of Blog With Integrity. I’ve since written about the project, attended a teleconference interview with Chuck star Zachary Levi about a short film he directed for the Project as part of a partnership with NBC, and will be attending a pretty cool (private) event next month the day before BlogHer. That’s the disclosure.

Here’s the opinion.

I’m not a customer of Liberty Mutual’s insurance products so I can’t offer an opinion about them. However, I am a customer of its message about responsibility, and they have done some admirable work.  The new TV commercial is excellent and makes a strong point about the need to “do the right thing.” A message that has value no matter who you are or how you are insured.

As the parent of a 10-year old, I also appreciate the attention Liberty Mutual is paying to issues like texting, online safety and personal responsibility for teenagers. The latest initiative is “Responsibility Project For The Win,” an essay contest for teens to encourage them to contribute to their communities over the summer. The five winning essays will be featured on the Responsiblity Project website and the company will make $500 donations to non-profits selected by the winners.

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Filed Under: Blog with Integrity, Blogger relations, Blogging, BlogHer, Charity, Professional Blogging For Dummies Tagged With: Bad Pitch Blog, Liberty Mutual, Social media

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