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Mr and Mrs Marketeer: how difficult is your job if your brand is…well…not sexy?

Forrester analyst, Josh Bernoff, writing on Groundswell reckons that anyone in marketing responsible for “boring brands” is really earning their keep, as “you are trying to get people interested in something they don’t really care about”.

Having worked in B2B public relations for more than a decade, I can testify to the sector having more than its fair share of companies that the world at large may call “boring”. It’s a totally subjective problem; where cable ties and ball bearings may be as effective as counting sheep to some, they are rock and roll personifed to someone else.

But back to Bernoff and the challenge of making the “boring” interesting…

Believe it or not, he sees social media as a thoroughly relevant way of bringing brands - that you wouldn’t automatically think of as social - to life.  

The point is, talking about your brand or company may be inherently dull to the customer, but talking about their problems isn’t. Bernoff calls this “borrowed relevance” - generating talk about things your audience really cares about. And the examples he cites show how coming at your company’s marketing from a lateral point of view (our sister company, TBWA Manchester, would call it “disruptive”) can achieve something that has significance for the customer and banishes the boring tag.

Especially with B2B organisations - where their overall customer base is unlikely to be on the same scale as consumer brands -creating a buzz about what you do and making it relevant to the people who matter is essential. And social media is another way of finding those people, keeping them interested and relishing just how beautifully boring your business is. 

There is something very fishy about about the news that Sainsbury’s is to rebrand the pollack as ‘colin’ (that’s with a heavily accented French pronunciation by the way).  Apparently their shoppers are fighting shy of asking for a “pair of fresh pollacks” at the fish counter.  

The story has made quite a splash today but much of it doesn’t hold water.  Firstly the French for pollack is lieu jaune and ‘colin’ is a hake.  Secondly we are very close to April Fool’s day (that’s Poisson D’Avril in French).  Is this an April Fool idea that Sainsbury’s thought would grow legs and get more coverage?  If so they weren’t wrong.    

There is also new ‘Colin’ packaging designed by Wayne Hemingway and based on the work of Jackson Pollock (please note not ‘Jackson Colin’).  Furthermore this initiative is also only being taken in 10 stores - so what of the blushes of the myriad of bashful fish fanciers in the other 750+ Sainsbury’s outlets?   Is this an old fashioned bit of PR puffery?  Will we see that after a trial period the ten stores get their pollacks back? 

Has the media fallen for this hook, line and sinker? (OK that’s enough puns….Ed.)

Was having an interesting chat with a couple of friends about the flurry of offers and discounts that have been flaunted by some of the high street’s perceived high end brands. We all couldn’t help wondering that, while there’s no doubt such offers have been helping people to rein in their spending, whether the brands have suffered as a result, or, if people’s perceptions of brands have changed?

There’s no denying that feeling of smug satisfaction when you manage to bag that perfect LBD or whistle n flute from your favourite top end retailer at 50% - sometimes 70% - less than it was originally being sold for, but do you ever think - as my friends and I were doing - about how much we were all being ripped off during the good ole times? Surely if a retailer can afford to drop prices so drastically in search of a sale, does it beg the question ‘how much is this really worth and how much have retailers been marking up in the past’?

Another thought that has entered my head is have people who used to shop freely without a second thought of the price tag, been put off by the barrage of offers out there or, more importantly, have their perceptions of their favourite brands changed? Does it make the affordable, throw away fashion more appealing if the more exclusive shops seem ever less so? Or do you upgrade to true investment pieces that will stand the good times and the bad?

From a PR point of view, I think brands need to remember their roots during the tough times - who are they really appealing to, where are those customers and how do brands reach them? Social media is a great way of speaking to customers directly - particularly when trust in the UK traditional media is at a low - and positive stories that communicate core values are valuable and a breath of fresh air amidst the landscape of bad headlines. Look for services/products that inspire confidence and give reassurance back to the customer and then tell your story. Focus on your original USPs in a fresh, forward-thinking way, know your strengths and trust in the reasons your customers came to you in the first place.

Twitter users are growing by a factor of 10, so says web measurement firm, Hitwise. Not bad going for what was a niche, online tool with no clear use apart from giving other intrepid social media pioneers a running commentary on your day-to-day life - in 140 characters or fewer.

But now the BBC, according to correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones’ “Tweets”, is having meetings about its own reporters’ use of Twitter, surely it’s gone mainstream.

And so, social media is becoming part of the fabric of our lives. When your Mum and Dad are on Facebook - even if they are slightly bewildered by it - you sense a corner has been turned.

In the past 24 hours I have been involved - for the first time - in a new business discussion that began on a social networking site. A few hours later, it went offline and is progressing in a way you’d never expect after meeting someone in today’s equivalent of the infamous “chatroom”.

But it makes absolute sense. If you need a service, and you know that people looking to do business are gathering in particular places online, why not congregate? Not only can you get an insight into the background, knowledge and expertise of prospective business partners or customer (it tends to be spelled out in a clear chronology), you can open a dialogue and get a feel for the person you’re dealing with. Interacting on social media is disarming, so you should get a truer, more unvarnished view, free of marketing gloss.

This model, in my opinion, would serve the procurement of professional services such as PR and marketing very well, as it allows for a more natural evolution of understanding between buyer and seller, rather than the unnatural beauty parades that dominate the sector. Companies can be dazzled by a pitch, but does that translate to a long-term working relationship? Sometimes, but not always.

Social media is out there and - for business - it’s coming of age. Get with it, before your Granny beats you to it.

Update: Here’s what the FT has to say: “Social media…transforms a business if you use it correctly.” (Bob Pearson, Dell)

I’ve been taking a close interest in the extent to which Eastern European leaders, especially Dimitry Medvedev, have been making attempts to position themselves strategically in the UK media - an FT comment piece here, an interview on Today programme there.

Why bother? Well, the likes of Medvedev need to work their international audience in order to get things done globally, so explaining their actions and pitching a more positive narrative that challenges the old KGB villain-type image will help.

They’ve gone a stage further now with a social media strategy, an interactive video blog that enables Medvedev to give something of his personality (we’ll see whether that’s a good thing or not!) and get into a dialogue. Full marks for trying.

Pulling back, its fascinating to see how international figures use foreign media to play back into their homeland. US globetrotting political consultants like Sawyer Miller were masters of this. Check out how the firm used the US media in the Philippines to unseat Ferdinand Marcos.

They figured that the domestic TV channels, being state controlled, were unlikely to play fair so they used the US TV networks and the likes of the New York Times, which were recieved along with so much US culture, out in the Philippines, and to influence the White House, who at the time were protecting Marcos.

Currently there’s a mini-power game taking place amongst Russian political officials and exiled oligarchs. Whether its billionaires ingratiating themselves into Western society or looking to expose dodgy dealings in their home nation.

In this spirit its fascinating to see the bid for the Evening Standard by ex-KGB agent and Russian billionaire, Alexander Lebedev. He’s known to be an opposition figure in Moscow, a critic of the regime.

It was thought that the days of a rich man looking to own a national newspaper, funding large losses, in return for access and prestige was ebbing away as multi-media strips away the power of the old brands. Perhaps there’s now a new generation of rich men seeking that sort of trophy?

Guido makes an amusing comparison with a figure from years gone by.

Israel has embraced new media as a vital tool in the latest Gaza conflict. 

This is part of an active PR strategy it has been formulating since early 2008 according to Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, discussing whether the British media is anti-Israeli on the Media Talk podcast. 

Freedland pinpoints the formation of the National Information Directorate as a key turning point in how this conflict is perceived. The new Directorate was formed after an inquiry into why the media didn’t fully report Israel’s actions in Lebanon in 2006. Israel felt the world perceived it as Goliath against David. 

As Aviv Shir-on, foreign ministry deputy director-general for public affairs is reported as saying: “In the war of the pictures we lose, so you need to correct or balance it in other ways. Support doesn’t mean the world is standing behind us, but it does mean people understanding what we are doing and why.” 

In his interview, Freedland points out that about six months ago the Directorate started to court the publications like the Guardian and the BBC. The reason he believes was not only because of their important role in the UK but their websites, by definition are international publications which are widely read and respected in influential countries such as United States. This is also the case in Israel itself where, as Freedland says, the influential daily newspaper Haaretz  is seen as a foreign publication due to its high readership levels in the United States.  

Israel’s approach appears to have had some success. Justification was given for Israel’s actions in many news reports and particularly on the BBC, where it cited recent Hamas attacks on Israel. This had been absent from the reporting in the Lebanon war in 2006 in which the Israelis felt portrayed as an unprovoked aggressor. Major Avital Leibovich, spokesperson for the Israeli military, has said: “Quiet a few outlets are very favourable to Israel, namely by showing [it] suffering….I am sure it is a result of the co-ordination.” 

It is not just newspaper websites that have been the subject of the Directorate’s attention. In recent months they have been targeting not only Jewish communities and friendship leagues but bloggers and backers using online networks. Since the conflict has started it has even started a YouTube  channel. 

Regardless of the legitimacy of Israel’s military action, it has seen new media as a way of fighting back in the propaganda war.  

Welcome to the world of digital communications.

The battle lines are drawn; the forces of good and evil face one another across the cosmos; the advertising space has been bought. Let the mortal scrap for our souls begin!

The Atheist Bus campaign has taken to the streets of London, propogating the idea that “There’s probably no God…now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The whole idea began as a blog post by writer, Ariane Sherine (ex-Sunday school attendee) which mushroomed into a call for donations to pay for an atheist advertising campaign to rival the Christian public transport campaign that inspired Sherine’s ire.

According to the Guardian’s report today, the campaign has the backing of Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, the British Humanist Association, philospher AC Grayling among others.

Meanwhile, the Church of England is being no slacker in fighting back for the forces of religion, by devising a Prayer on Being Made Redundant plus a Prayer For Those Remaining in the Workplace, which even had a reading on Radio 4’s PM programme last night. Call me cynical (and an atheist if you like), but isn’t that capitalising on the human fall-out from the credit crunch?

PR Media Blog picked up on the Churches Advertising Network nativity campaign back in December, so clearly the strange bedfellows of religion and marketing communications are very much in cahoots.

*Update - A complaint is made to the Advertising Standards Authority by Christian Voice stating that the Atheist Bus Campaign needs to substantiate its “There’s probably no God” slogan. I suspect this one is going to run and run…

**Update 2 - and it has. Radio 4 will run its first atheist Thought for the Afternoon, to balance out the Today programme’s daily faith-based Thought for the Day.

There was a Manchester based sports reporter for The Mirror who wrote Grand Prix reviews when he hadn’t even been at the races.  He watched them on the TV and filed the copy from the comfort of his living room.  Legend has it he was rumbled when after a major crash the editor dispatched him to conduct an interview with the injured driver at his hospital bed some several hundred miles from where, let’s call him Ted, was sitting.

I feel a little bit like that reporter, writing a piece on the Don’t Panic Guide to Social Media seminar in Manchester today when I didn’t go to it and at the time of writing this piece the conference hasn’t even finished.  It’s not live TV material so what’s the sketch?  Well it is a social media event so it is live tweet material.   There are at least six people posting micro blogs right now on Twitter with observations and snippets from the event.  The list includes @robin1966, @michaelcooper, @Sarah_Hartley, @craigmcginty,  @stuartbruce, and @stedavies.   So far there are over over 100 ‘tweets’ all search-able via the hashtag #dontpanic .  That’s a lot of information about Pradvertising, 3DPR, the decline of e-mail and the revelation that the first speaker up Tom Murphy doesn’t like Twitter. 

There is a danger when we tweet (or blog) about twittering that this becomes navel contemplation but it is an interesting phenomenon nevertheless.  There is also the discovery that new communications channels bring new and unexpected challenges.  Two of the Twitter correspondents have had to abandon their live reports because their phone batteries died.  Well at least they were there.

Stay with me on this!

I’ve spent the last two years advising brands, public sector, NGOs and individual politicians about social media strategy, web 2.0, e-pr, whatever you want to call it. Everybody has heard how powerful it is but there’s sometimes confusion about how and why to do it. ROI is an issue. How many people will see it? Should we be sending our press releases to these people?

The only way to make the case is to try a bit and get comfortable or to see case studies that you can relate to. The benefit of the Obama coverage-fest that we’ve had for the last few months, which is still at fever pitch, (PS how many people have the beeb had out there?!) is that there’s such detailed analysis of how he used new media to connect people, talk to them in their language and motivate them. There’s endless media case studies and experts stepping forward on mainstream media to talk about it.

Social media helped win the biggest competition in the World. Social media has grown up.

And the best bit is that this story keeps going. I posted last week about how Obama could take this into a whole new way of running the country. Within hours of his victory he’d launched this site. A clear indicator that social media will play some part in running the most powerful country on the globe.

For anyone growing up in south Manchester who wasn’t a resident of the Garden City of Wythenshawe, the place has always come with some considerable baggage.

The local website for Wythenshawe - a place once dubbed the biggest housing estate in Europe - even devotes a special section to its colourful past. This includes tales of “wanton damage by vandals and hooligans” dating back to the 1930s, a demand from neighbouring residents of “posh” suburb Gatley for a Cold War style “barrier” to keep the hordes out, along with endless reports of arson, vandalism and deprivation; leading a local churchman in the late 80s to call the place “the opposite of a community”.

If there was ever a challenge on this planet, redrawing the image of Wythenshawe is it.

And so a modestly-(by marketing standards) budgeted project called “Real Lives Wythenshawe” has begun to do just that. But, as noted by the typically wry north west media news site, How-Do, you can’t call the initiative a ”re-brand”; it’s an image campaign.

What comes across from the campaign so far is the great pride the area’s people have for the place and the long overdue need for it to be released from its positioning as neighbourhood pariah. For many people who’ve moved to Wythenshawe from elsewhere - without the pre-conceptions shared by nearby communities - the question seems to be “what’s the big deal?”

But not everyone is impressed with “outsiders” getting involved in Wythenshawe’s business. Forum comments on the local Wythit website suggest “shooting all the fancy consultants”, which doesn’t do much for the stereotype the suburb is trying to shift.

Other local commentators seem to welcome the revamp of Wythenshawe’s image as a good thing, though one adds, ironically, “a few extra police might help!”

As a 10-year-old playing on a park near to Wythenshawe, I got duffed up and had my new leather gloves nicked by some local hardnuts. Maybe, as part of the image refresh, I’ll get my gloves back.