Wow, it's been quite a while since I've had a blog entry. Hopefully I'll have some time to start regularly putting in some entries now though.

I stumbled on this facebook site from the Ad Council .. it's interesting to see a site where they are putting a variety of PSA's all in one spot.

You can check it out here

Given I recently bought some RIM stock, it got me thinking about RIM's future, which gave me an interesting thought in the RIM vs. Apple debate.

I've always had a RIM for my job. I love RIM and the blackberry. Yet, I probably wouldn't buy one for my own personal use. Yet I would probably buy an Apple. So why would I not buy a product that I think is great?

It struck me that the reason is pretty simple. When I have a RIM in my hand my mind instantly turns to work. After 10 years of using RIMs - way back when all they did was email - my mind now associates a blackberry with work.

Now, when I'm not working I don't want to think about work. I want to relax and enjoy myself. So having a personal blackberry would totally impinge on that non-work mindset I like to occupy outside of work.

An apple iPhone however, I associate with 'fun' - with mp3s, surfing the internet, watching videos, etc.

All this got me to thinking how a company's brand strength in one area can actually hurt it in another, for reasons totally unrelated to the strength of the product.

The folks at RIM are smart and I'm sure they will catch on to all this and eventually end up with two product lines - one for consumers and one for the business world.  Because the model of trying to extend business tools into the consumer space is flawed for the reason I mention above - people don't want to bring work home.

Apple on the other hand has an opportunity. If people associate the iPhone with fun (not work)... then it's very possible that they will want to bring that 'fun' to work!

It's long been debated as to when personal and work devices will merge. It will happen and will probably do so at the application layer - for instance, smartphones with dual application and billing profiles - one device but two different profiles - one for work and one for personal use.

It will be interesting to see how RIM's marketing and R&D strategy works to extend their devices into the consumer space. Likewise, it will be interesting to see if Apple even attempts a strategy to bring the iPhone to the corporate setting... or if they just hope that consumers make that change happen on its own by demanding IT departments support the iPhone.  

Read the story here

A recent survey found that reporters are using social media as part of their research efforts when writing a story. Not really surprising to be honest with you.

People keep thinking of traditional and social media - but it's all just information.

I've always been a HUGE fan of having a good Web site. The amount of interviews I've done where a reporter references something they've read on the Web site is staggering. It's the first place they go to in terms of background research.

The fact that they are now checking out YouTube videos and twitters is not surprising - in fact it's to be expected.

Tactically all this means is that if you want to implement a social media strategy, reporters will pay attention to it. Which is good knowledge to have, because five years ago social media was less about communicating things to the media and more of a way to more closely connect with the customer themselves - to actually circumvent the media in many ways.

What we are moving towards is more of a multifaceted approach to communications. One in which it will be expected that information will be disseminated in a variety of formats - news releases, RSS feeds, tweets, videos, blogs, etc.

The challenge will be establishing processes that allow folks to expand their communication vehicles without adding 3 hours to their work day! The solution I believe, will rest in a new working relationship between PR, IT, and Marketing. Right now people are tackling this issue through outsourcing... having agencies handle their social media strategy. Not because SocMed is hard to do (in my opinion) but because the in-house staff simply don't have the cycles to tackle more 'duties' to their existing workload.

We often think that all it takes to do something new is to simply do it. But for many companies, who have cut back on staff, they are already struggling to keep up with existing workloads. Slapping on an extra 20% just isn't feasible for most.

It will be interesting to see where socmed goes once we come out of this recession and companies start adding more marketing folks (which were the first to go as companies cut to survive the past couple years).

So Yahoo is launching its "single largest global integrated marketing campaign" ever. You can read their EVP of Marketing's letter to ... ummmm, You.  Yep, their new campaign is that Yahoo is under new management.... You.

view the letter here

I'm going to go in to a rant here. This is a dumb campaign. Why? Because Yahoo is not about ME. It's not about me, you, we or us. I use Yahoo finance. When I go to their homepage they have a stupid banner that pops up and shifts the screen down. What this does is that when I click on the Yahoo finance tab there is two second delay, the screen shifts down, and the stupid facebook link gets clicked. Not only that, but when I type in yahoo.com it actually sends me to yahoo.ca (the Canadian site, instead of the US site - which is annoying because I'm not looking for Canadian info, so I've got to switch to the US site).

Yahoo actively makes it hard for me to use their service. Why? Because THEY want to control what information I access and how and make it a pain in the butt to get what I want.

So this marketing campaign is idiotic because it does not reflect how their business does business.

If I were the PR guy at Yahoo I'd be in the VP of Marketing's office with a perplexed look on my face asking: "Really? This is what we are going to try and jam down people's throats? You're serious?"

The whole 'YOU' marketing angle is an uncreative and tired tactic that is over used. Any product that people are using can be positioned as about 'them'. When companies pull out the 'YOU' campaign what it tells me is that they have no strategic direction, no salient value proposition, and so fall back on basically trying to flatter the customer in hopes that appealing to some 'pet their ego' paradigm will actually lead to brand loyalty.

Some products are actually unique enough that they could be positioned using the 'YOU" strategy and work. Teeth whitening comes to mind for instance - that's definitely a YOU type of service - there's basically no reason to get it other than your own desire to have white teeth.

What really makes me laugh is that a company like Google - who probably actually thinks about YOU more than any other company - never actually markets itself with the whole 'YOU' angle. When you think Google you don't think 'ME' (or YOU if you will), you think innovation. If you're a tech company and your marketing angle isn't all about innovation, then you are basically barking up the wrong tree.

And just to clarify... I have no problem with marketing one's value to the user. It's with using the word 'YOU' specifically. It implies a personalization and a benefit specific to you - whereas most products are the same whether it's you buying them or someone else. They aren't tailored to YOU -  YOU must tailor your behaviors around THEM.

Anyway, I feel bad for Yahoo's PR folks, who will have to go out and communicate this ridiculous marketing campaign to reporters.

Ok, going to combine various thoughts in one post here. I've sold Nokia and bought some RIM on its recent 17% crash (I don't think Nok will break its resistance point at $16 any time soon, so I bailed while being up a measly 5%). That said, I'm seriously beginning to wonder if Apple might take over the world. The amount of applications being built for the Apple iPhone is mind boggling. We think of Apps like software applications, but really, they are services. They are just the interface, the entry point, to service offerings.

Take Intelius. Now this is pretty freaky. Intelius has an iPhone app that lets you look up all kinds of info on anyone - how much they make, whether they have a criminal record, etc. - it's only available in the US though.

While I'm a big fan of honesty... and so part of me wants to say an app like this is great... I'm also a fan of privacy (I wouldn't go rummaging around in someone's garbage, so why would I do so electronically?)
I almost never form opinions on gossip and rarely view people's past decisions as defining who they are today. I like to judge situations based on what's in front of me. But I have to admit, with an app like this, the simplicity of background checking people out of curiosity would be tempting.

It really seems like we are heading toward a big brother type of world - but the irony is that it may be each of us who act as big brother.

Anyway, while this app is currently being pushed as a 'dating' utility, let's be real, its applications are multifaceted. I can already see PR folks using this kind of app to look up info on reporters.. find out their personal history to tailor conversations around things they know will resonate with the reporter.

Which would be really unfortunate if this kind of 'background' checking became a part of the PR world - because it could undo so much of the hard work PR has done to become a respected reliable function of an organization and lead many PR people down the path to 'spin'.

Now that I think about it, this app might have some serious PR challenges to it. While you can use someone's number to find out everything about them to protect yourself, it could also be used the other way. Predators could use this app to find out everything about people they were targeting.

Anyway, freaky stuff. All this to say, even though I think Apple is ridiculously overpriced (so for now I'm not touching it), it's stuff like this that makes me think in five years every person in the world might have an iphone in their pocket (in which case, Apple would be ridiculously underpriced).

To check out Intelius visit:

www.intelius.com

Update: Well I'm stumped. Nokia jumped 3 per cent today, despite negative press beginning to mount. That said, there have been shake-ups in management lately, especially with Nokia-Seimens, so perhaps that's behind part of the market rally. I haven't sold yet, but will probably pull the trigger in the near future. A stock swimming against negative press usually sets the stage for a sell off. We'll see if my media relations theory mentioned below holds water in this case.

Well, Skype is back to being a private company. You can read about it here.

People keep pushing the hype around 2.0 apps - skype, facebook, etc.

Yes, they have tremendous value. But the flip side of the coin is the existing infrastructure and business landscape that currently exists. Skype and the like are what I'd equate to solar or wind energy. Great ideas that will one day change the way we do things, but until that day comes they will continue to under deliver.

They are what I'd call hot potato companies. You know they will be tremendously valuable one day, so people keep buying them hoping that 'one day' will be sooner rather than later. Then when they don't see returns, they bail and someone else takes their turn holding the hot potato.

Skype suffers from the same issues as any 'start-up' - fantastic innovation but poor business strategy.  Maturation into a sustainable market offering - one that is embraced by all corners of the market - requires integration with existing business models.

This is how the iPhone has been so successful, it brings something to the carrier. Trust me, if Apple could turn itself into a carrier it would - there's a reason carriers still run the world. While the pipes may be dumb, if you own them you own the customer.

Skype, unfortunately, will never get carrier business because they obviously are all about turning the carriers into big phat pipes and reducing the commercial value of voice to zero.

What Skype needs, in my opinion, is another anti-carrier partner. Hmmm, who could that be? Ta-Da... Vonage.

Just because I like brainstorming, if I were Skype, a few weeks prior to my IPO (not sure when Skype is going IPO, but it will)... I'd do some kind of deal with Vonage. Or I'd hold an 'anti-carrier' event / press conference. In essence, getting folks thinking about how two rogue companies are both offering an alternative to your traditional POTS line.

Whether or not anything were to ever materialize, communicating the potential synergies that could unfold would sure get the market excited. The Skype and Vonage PR folks should do lunch.

A million bucks a year to raise awareness of the harms of tobacco. Great to see PR being used to further the social good.

You can read the story here.

Well, I think I'm going to dump my Nokia soon. Before you think this post has nothing to do with Public Relations, I assure you it will have a connection.

I jumped in to Nokia at 14.50 (and it popped at as high as 15.68 shortly after) and it has gone as low 12.25 since then. It's currently up at 14.30.

Here's what's fascinating. The things that drove the stock down (that Nokia was behind the curve and that Apple and RIM would eat its lunch in the long run) haven't changed. Yet, the stock has rallied over 15 per cent off its recent lows. 

The critics are still bashing Nokia's new products and strategies, calling them desperate attempts to stay relevant in a new 'smart' era of phones. So you'd think the stock would keep sinking beyond 12.25, why the rally?

Jim Cramer of Mad Money (who I take with a grain of salt) has explained how the market interacts with tech company product cycles many times, and I think he's right. 

Nokia recently introduced a few new phones as well as a notebook offering. The company also just held its Nokia World. What this basically has amounted to is a string of news releases and a lot of folks talking about Nokia - basically anyone who wants to buy Nokia would have the most 'emotional' reason to do so during this 'hype' cycle.  The PR buzz in conjunction with a NPI (new product introduction) cycle has given the stock some life.

It's unfortunate they didn't start this cycle when the stock was at 14.50.

In my opinion, both the stock's fall of some 20 per cent and its rise of some 15 per cent, have been intimately tied to the media relations activities (and / or the lack thereof at times).

So why am I thinking of dumping Nokia? I think after the hype surrounding all these product announcements dies down and Nokia goes quiet in the market again, that there simply won't be an influx of new investors looking to buy in to Nokia at the 14-dollar range.

In essence, I'm selling not because of Nokia, but rather because of the media relations cycle - I think the company is going to be quiet for a while until its next quarterly earnings (and I think the downside / upside risks aren't worth taking at this point).

It's amazing how much communications, public relations and media relations (which can all mean the same thing in certain circumstances) can shape our view of the world. Put differently, market 'sentiment' beyond the fundamentals can really take on a life of its own - which speaks to the value in communications. I genuinely believe that had Nokia not gone through its recent string of announcements it's very likely the stock would be down towards 11 bucks.

It will be interesting to see how far the recent uptick takes Nokia. I may wait another week before pulling the trigger just to see if Nokia has any juice left in its news cycle or if the well has gone dry.

You know it's going to be a good day when you wake up and look out your window and see a giant bee smiling at you and hot air balloons passing by.