In the old days, marketing was simple: a one-size-fits-all message through the usual media channels (TV, radio, print and the occasional web resource) to a relatively homogeneous mass audience. Over the past 20 years and especially in the past 2 or 5 years, though, we as audience members and marketing recipients have evolved. Our modes of communication are varied: we are You Tube watchers and personal bloggers and mobile shoppers. In many ways, we’ve fell through the cracks of traditional marketing, changing not only our own media outlets but the way in which marketers access those outlets. While frustrated marketers may never completely have us pegged, we picked out a couple sites that are iconic of the “new consumer” from Generation X to Y and beyond:

1)Twitter. For the younger crowd, this site is like Facebook status on steroids. Its mission: be a “service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Available through the web or mobile phone, Twitter’s users of various ages and social strata update the world on their every move, including college students griping about being in class, professionals striking up business deals and moms awaiting their children’s return from school. The site’s “find and follow” feature may be a little creepy to some, but it allows users to find friends (or make new ones) and receive a continual newsfeed on the person’s status. Marketing moguls find this place a gold mine for consumer research and social marketing, as the consumers themselves become marketers when they “tweet” about their favorite products. Also check out twittervision, which displays users “tweets” on an ever-shifting Google map of the world.
2)Breathingearth. This site uses an interactive map to do a real time simulation of each country’s individual births, deaths and CO2 emissions topping 1000 tons based on statistical evidence. It’s more than just watching your Grandma in Indiana wave to you on Google Earth. Breathingearth is indicative of our current consumer economy–people interested in and fascinated by true-to-life depictions of real world problems.

So what does this mean for marketers and business owners? Get interactive! We are morphing into a society that feeds on one-to-one web-based communication, interactive site features and outlets that let us express ourselves, our opinions and even our whereabouts. National brands have already seized on the interactive trend: Coca Cola’s website offers Coke Tag, an outlet for Coke drinkers to shamelessly plug their own blogs or bands or anything they want. Local businesses can easily join in–your interactive marketing may be as simple as an e-mail newsletter or site with opinion polls and discussion boards or as complex as launching an online business community for all people involved in your local industry. Whether on a large or small scale, interactive marketing is becoming more and more important as consumers sail away from traditional media. Our only advice: don’t miss the boat!

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Flip through your latest Vogue (or GQ) and look closely at the photo spread dictating this season’s “must-haves,” straight from the runways of Milan and the mouths of industry fashionistas (supposedly). As you might do anyway, skim past all those thousand-dollar clothes and accessories and center in on the plain Jane white t-shirt from the Gap that only costs $18.99. Hold your breath for what follows—a full-page ad from the very same company, showing off even more affordable alternatives. You’re thinking “Wow, Gap must be a really good brand if they’re advertising AND getting featured in magazine articles!”

Oh, you weren’t thinking that? Neither were we. We were thinking like many magazines nowadays, advertising weighs heavily on editorial decisions at Vogue, right down to the cheap t-shirt ploys. Our office copy of Ad Age revealed this shocking tidbit: “The sixth-annual MS&L Marketing Management Survey, done in conjunction with PRWeek, found that 19 percent of the 252 chief marketing officers and marketing directors surveyed said their organizations had bought advertising in return for a news story. That represents one in five senior marketers, up 17 percent from last year.” Even the L.A. Times, a respected publication with over a dozen Pulitzers since 2000, entrusted their newly launched magazines’ editorial content to none other than the advertising/publishing staff.

So what does this mean for readers? Well, this sort of swindling not only insults our intelligence and awareness as consumers, but ruins both the magazine’s and the advertising brand’s credibility. How are we supposed to believe the “Editor’s Picks” for makeup or electronics or carburetors aren’t footing the bill? We only hope this treacherous trend isn’t spreading too far into localized publications and the businesses advertising with them. In this economy, small businesses’ best bet is setting themselves apart as the believable expert rather than the company with deep pockets and deceitful tactics. Our work with community event Artista Vista proves credibility can go long a way — of the attendees we surveyed, the majority had heard about the event from the local and state newspapers. By providing compelling background stories on participating artists and the Vista’s rich history, Artista Vista rang true with readers as more than just another downtown event.

All this just goes to show that except in a few circumstances of mega brands, consumers can usually tell at some point when a brand relies on gimmicks. And that creates trust issues. Instead businesses should focus on the quality of their products and getting their company’s story out there. Once consumers identify with a product, it’s more noticed. Moral of the story: you can’t fake credibility no matter how much you pay!

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We PR professionals love to see our principles put into action, especially when they draw attention from nearly every nation in the world. We love real-life examples of Herculean events applying PR to their strategic arsenal, the examples that will go down in the history books (or at least public relations textbooks).

As Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) proudly states in an August 11 article, “For the first time ever, the U.S. Olympic Committee is requiring all of its 596 Olympians to attend a two-day course on the host country’s culture before they leave for the Games.” In other words, for the first time ever, the U.S. is consciously adding tact, diplomacy and respect to Olympians’ training schedule. Warning about everything from the Chinese’s no-hug rule to how to use chopsticks, the two-day seminar equips athletes with a cultural awareness unseen in past events.

Pictures from the 2006 Winner Games in Torino, Italy revealed American skier (and PR nightmare) Bode Miller getting sloshed the night before games and making rude gestures at photographers (let’s just say he offered a peace sign sans index finger). With U.S. diplomacy plummeting as the Iraq war simmers and Georgia conflict boil over, the U.S. Olympic Committee recognized our country couldn’t afford a similar mishap this year.

Bravo! We applaud the Committee for trying to make this year’s games what they should be: world-class athletes participating in a riveting competition, one unclouded by international tensions and current conflicts. And we commend the committee for employing PR at its best, using it as a preventative measure rather than a reflex to bad behavior.

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“Headache from a hard day at work. Backache from carrying the baby. I’m all Advil—because Advil works on all my pains.” That’s the kind of marketing you’d expect from an average pain reliever, right? Not since Tylenol launched their new consumer-conscious ad campaign that borders on public service announcements rather than actual commercials. Instead of encouraging you to pop a pill (their pill) for all your aches and pains, Tylenol suggests drinking a glass of water to prevent headache-causing dehydration or meditating before work to prevent tension headaches.

If Advil is the “Every Pain Reliever,” Tylenol is now the “Nothing Pain Reliever”—drink a glass of water instead. By making the use of their product almost obsolete if users follow their tips instead, Tylenol sends a befuddling message. Are they going into the advice business? Or are they simply building trust in their brand by offering themselves as a resource (and a last resort) for consumers?

From a PR standpoint, the second strategy is not half bad. Small businesses use that tactic every day by providing the media with expert commentary on pressing issues and industry news without “selling” themselves. Public relations strategy comes into question when it’s on such a large scale, though. Viewers are less likely to trust the motives of an advertiser paying millions of dollars to give them advice about pain relief.

Regardless of their reasoning, though, Tylenol has taken a bold step in the right direction for their brand. Advertising Age asked recently retired VP-advertising at Johnson & Johnson Andrea Alstrup about the advertising industry and Tylenol’s take on it. Alstrup said: “The world has changed so drastically…but yet we still want to go back to some of those core values and some of the core important things that advertising can bring.” If that means the unorthodox use of public relations strategy, then Tylenol is taking on that challenge.

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Sure, advertising is effective for some goods and services. It permeates everything we read in the news, watch on television or even glance toward driving down the highway. It bonks us over the head with messages about products, services and company images until we submit to buying or simply recognize the brand, so advertising proponents say. But to small businesses owners, advertising often becomes the enemy, a foe that pulls you in with its track record but slaps you on the wrist with its price tag.

Stop, step back and breathe. We have a solution. Free advertising? Not exactly but pretty much. There’s no getting around this one either—public relations is a slippery subject. On the one hand, Andrew Cohen and Scott McClellan may sum up PR as chop full of flacks, but as with every profession, undue criticism creeps up every now and then. On most days and in most firms, though, we are a class of credibility-boosters, sales-increasers, newsmakers and certainly budget-cutters. How? We do something advertising could never do and for half the cost: establish your business as an industry expert in respected publications. “Free advertising” aside, you get an added bonus: third-party credibility. Anyone can run an ad. Only key players get published. Here are the requirements:
1) Actual industry expertise. This one’s not a toughie—everyone is an expert at something. That’s why you’re in business, right?
2) A public relations firm that fits. Shop around until you find someone who meets your needs. We specialize in tailor-fit PR for growing businesses, and know the local and regional media like the back of our hands. But if you’re looking to hit a small market really hard, like let’s say, Kalamazoo, Michigan, a local PR firm might be the best route.
3) Unflinching commitment. To get that full-page spread or glowing blurb about your company, advertising isn’t the only fool-proof method.
4) Leftover ad dollars. All right, so everyone knows that nothing is 100% free. While the cost of the average PR push is 1/58 of an advertising campaign (according to The Fall of Advertising by Alan & Laura Ries), most practitioners charge an hourly fee. Calm down—think about it like this. Paying an experienced professional for a few hours to write, distribute and publish a press release pales in comparison to funding a full-page ad, not to mention design and printing costs.

So, here’s the bottom line for your bottom line: PR pays. Your customers (current and future) read an article about you and think “Wow, they really know their stuff.” It may seem like “free advertising” to you, but to the naked eye, it’s credibility, respectability and industry expertise—isn’t that what you ultimately want to convey? We dare you to try it!

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Imagine seeing a Columbia bus station ad touting London’s welcoming culture for southern Christian conservatives. Sound unlikely? How about a London subway ad reading “South Carolina is So Gay”? That one’s real—the recent campaign, which promotes South Carolina’s gay beaches (there aren’t any) ran in conjunction with London’s gay pride parade a few weeks ago. Quicker than you could quote the Bible, activists whipped up a mighty protest against the ad, which had been approved by SC Parks, Reaction and Tourism and promptly de-funded by Governor Sanford.

From a marketing standpoint, this ad ignores a boatload of basic principles. Number one: know your audience. That doesn’t just mean the target audience you’re selling to, but also your periphery audiences who will hear about your ad and be affected by it, either personally or as a whole. In this case, Australian gay tourism marketers OutNow Consulting crafted the ad looking into only one kind of climate (sunny blue skies rather social norms), leaving South Carolinian government, gays and the general public in a tough spot. What is everyone left to make of this? Government says the “use of public advertising money to promote a social agenda was inappropriate.” SC Pride says “We wanted to clear the air and do the right thing and pay off the debt [the $5,000 ad expense].” And the jury is still out on the majority of SC.

While it’s honorable that SC Pride is stepping up to ease the conflict, the real culprit is sitting pretty in the outback. OutNow Consulting’s second marketing faux pas? False advertising. South Carolina aims to project unbiased Southern hospitality—pinning that down as targeted toward any certain group would be inaccurate. Furthermore, marketing the state as anything other than a beautiful place that welcomes everyone would be a sizeable embellishment, one that would probably decrease South Carolina’s $10 billion tourism industry, which is bolstered yearly by gay travel.

To see S.C. native Stephen Colbert’s take on the ad, click here.

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You’ve seen it more and more recently—your wine bottles offering discounts on gourmet cheese, your cheese suggesting what brand of bread to use, your bread including a coupon for a complimentary jelly. Cross-promotional marketing isn’t just grocery store pair-ups though; it’s a partnership between any two companies who find a common bond in services, products or causes. By partnering up either for product promotion, cause-related marketing or both, well-established brands are bolstering their sales by presenting themselves as complements rather than competitors. Look at Wal-Mart and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture: they recently announced their joint venture to promote local produce, seizing on current consumer trends (environment & buying locally) and refuting rumors that Wal-Mart goes for price over quality.

Cross-promotional marketing goes way beyond the big leagues, though—it’s a daunting but doable option for small businesses. In the big fish tank of your local business community, partnering with similarly sized and funded businesses may seem like trying to hug your neighbor the piranha. Once you find your fish in the sea for cross-promotion, though, there are ways to work together without things getting spiky:

1) Start small. Kare Anderson, author of Walk Your Talk: Successful Cross-Promotion, suggests baby steps like printing promo messages about your partner on your receipts or hanging their posters on the walls in your business (and vice versa).
2) Share the wealth. Cross-promotion has one huge benefit—cost-splitting! Go half and half on ads, mailers and more.
3) Save on events. This is your chance to demonstrate your products & services, support your favorite cause or just get your name out for half the cost. For example, your legal services combined with your partner’s financial expertise might bode well at a business convention or senior citizens fair.

Here’s one thing to keep in mind, however. Cross-promotional marketing goes beyond superficial shout-outs to your partner business. It shows your customers and your community that your business recognizes it’s not the only one in town—instead, it’s a niche in a unique network of products and services that we consume as a whole. Reflecting that sentiment in your marketing is a win-win, for truly understanding your customer base and for significantly upping the bottom line.

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Last Saturday I witnessed Trustus Theater delivering another raucous performance with Reefer Madness, a musical modeled after a 1936 movie warning parents about the ills of marijuana in the hands of their teenagers. The State’s James Harley explains the plot in his review: “Jimmy Harper…unwittingly is drawn into a ‘reefer den’ by villain Jack Stone, where he inhales and is sent into a downward spiral of depravity and murder.”

The laughs ensue from there as the play engulfs the audience in a parody-filled haze but a semi-serious lesson remains: the play is actually a public service announcement, an educational tool for parents trying to understand the side effects of drug use. Sure, America was still riding on the wings of late 1800s sensationalism in newspapers, advertising and everywhere else, but Reefer Madness demonstrates just how outlandish we became by the 1930s.

Even scarier—big bad government wasn’t heading this one up; a church group, full of honest, God-fearing individuals crafted this outrageous film. I can just see the old ladies directing it now, their large hats teetering with emphasis as they demonstrated to the actors how to simulate lighting a joint. They undoubtedly meant well and scare tactics certainly would’ve been effective at a time when parents’ worst fear was their children reverting to the irreverence of the Roaring ‘20s and government propaganda gearing up to send their sons off for World War II, but you have to question the creators’ respect for the audience. A film meant to “help” the public probably only incited increased paranoia (an actual side effect of marijuana) among parents led to believe the drug directly resulted in sex and murder (fabricated side effects of marijuana). To think this film was probably broadcast in schools, churches and bingo halls across the country is frightening. We’ve advanced somewhat since then, though—one has to admit the infamous “This is Your Brain on Drugs” PSA doesn’t specify marijuana as the sole catalyst for frying our brains like cracked eggs, so we have to assume only the “hard stuff” can accomplish that. Reefer Madness just goes to show, though—when your PSA is still being satirized 72 years later, who are you really helping?

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First there was the Asus Eee, a space-saving 2-pound laptop touted through grass roots marketing, most notably the rave reviews from techies around the globe (and everyone right here at Riley Communications!). Then, like the last third grader to get a cell phone, Dell released the E, a self-declared generic substitute for Asus’s innovation from its lowered price to its second-string marketing.

Dell’s most obvious blunder, not bothering to think of a different product name than its direct competitor, might actually be a marketing ploy in disguise. By indirectly admitting the E’s creation was a response rather than an idea, Dell’s uninspired name choice screams “we have no qualms about being the knock-off brand.” Not to mention the product originated from the top of the corporate ladder instead of from the ground up (a no-no for the technology enthusiasts this product targets). On the plus side, their MacBook Air imitation E Slim was given a more unique moniker (although it sounds more like a bad rap artist than an electronic innovation). Hey, a name like “Air” is hard to match…or respell.

These cheeky tricks are all right for bargain shoppers, but for the true technology connoisseurs this brand of marketing (or flagrant disregard of marketing) is a little insulting. Dell replaces the computer industry’s standard of one-upping the competition with downgrading its own brand. Even though the E offers some features the Eee lacks, like extended-memory models for video, Dell sells itself short by putting their product out there as the same old thing at a cheaper price rather than an innovation independent of similar, but not equal, competitor products.

Dell unfortunately serves as a cautionary tale for missing marketing’s fundamental rule: separating your product from the competitors’, not piggybacking off it. Let’s just hope the bargain hunters write glowing blogs and online reviews about the E, so Dell can mimic Asus’s grass roots approach, too.

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I’m a little disappointed that a company known for its wholesome advertising that cements its brand worldwide has stooped to a slimy low. No, it’s not sleazy or sexy—it’s spitty. A new television ad series for Coke Zero features some wayward tongues (which speak in brutish British accents) and a lone eyeball that apparently hails from France. As the two tongues tag team a sloshing bottle of Coke Zero to lap up its calorie-reduced contents, the eyeball leaves his post on a computer monitor and pushes his spindly, bird-like, eyelash-fiber legs over to the pair. Berating them for believing the drink is regular Coke (since the tongues lack his ocular omniscience), the eye inadvertently attests to Coke Zero’s amazing ability to taste like the good stuff. The oral duo ceases their Coke enjoyment and each tongue begins bashing poor little eyeball for having no sense of taste (or the accompanying appendages to achieve it), with Coke particles sliding off their slippery silhouettes and their teeth-hooved gum-legs firmly planted.

Though many elements of this commercial don’t jive, there is one that begs the question: why? Why, of all advertising ploys, would unappetizing, slightly swollen tongues and a garish little eyeball want me want to try Coke Zero? All I can think of now when I see one is saliva and conjunctivitis. Also, how do the foreign accents contribute to the overall brand appeal? By establishing that body parts who aren’t even of the same nationality, much less the same body, can enjoy Coke Zero? That’s a quite a warped interpretation of Coca Cola’s previous advertising premise: multicultural, worldwide enjoyment of a well-established brand.

I guess Coca-Cola is trying to cash in on the craze of off-kilter, have-to-youtube-it advertising. We’ll see what this ad boosts more: web views or actual sales.

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