Think back to the TV or movie last character you saw that was in “PR.” They were most likely characters that fit a particular “sleazebag” stereotype – unscrupulous, conniving and motivated by personal self-interest. And “PR” was always used to spin or manipulative perception to benefit a villainous end.

Every time PR is mentioned, I cringe!

But when was the last time you recall seeing public relations presented in positive manner. Not as easy is it? It’s definitely a short list.

The most recent movie that breaks this stereotype is Will Smith’s Hancock.

In this movie, Smith is a superhero who needs an image makeover. Jason Bateman plays a PR pro saved by Hancock who, in exchange, helps him fix his image. More than just putting lipstick on a pig – Bateman not only fixes Smith’s character’s image, he actually gets Hancock to change his behavior ways. In this movie Jason Bateman’s character is the real super hero.

What a novel portrayal. Who would have thought – using PR to change behavior!

But we all know that Hollywood isn’t the real world. Just like no one can go 24 hours without drinking or eating or using the restroom AND survive torture and gun shots like Jack Bauer.

In the real world, PR is used to change behavior. In the July 31, 2008 issue of the Star Tribune there is an article on how seniors in Minnesota will be able to receive their Social Security payments on a prepaid debit cards.

A radical idea that will ultimately change the way future generations will interact with the government. The switch to debit cards is going to change lifestyles. No only will seniors have to wait by the mailbox for their check and then run to the bank. They just take their card to an ATM and make a withdrawal. The positives aren’t just for seniors; the cost savings for the government is tremendous.

But changing behavior isn’t easy. To support this program, the government is undertaking a major public relations campaign aimed at inform recipients of the benefits of direct deposit and help convert more than 2 million users to it the first three years of the campaign. It is estimated that the program will save taxpayers $178 million over the next 10 years.

If the PR program can deliver the “Results that Matter,” PR will once again be a super hero!

So next time you see a PR stereotype on TV or in the movies think of it as entertainment rather than reality.
And remember that while PR can be a super hero, it isn’t faster than a speeding bullett or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

With branded viral videos becoming increasingly difficult to produce and catch on with their targeted audiences, there has got to be a way for marketers to reach consumers with branded content in a non-invasive manner.  Enter Howdini and Howcast.  These two start ups molded their business plans based on the following consumer insights:

• In a typical day, 7 million people search for some form of help online (Pew Internet)
• YouTube is one of the most popular destinations on the web, but thrives with an entertainment slant
• Consumers are now looking for more than just entertainment; they want utility

The two newcomers ask brands what they are experts in, and then leverage that brand by matching their epertise with what consumers are searching for.  The content on the two sites is heavily based on search data, and the content is blatantly branded, but not purely commercial content, which allows the two sites to distribute their content to third parties, including video sites and TV stations.  Instant B roll!

The sites are a lot of fun, and cover everything from ‘how to play a basic guitar chord’ to ‘how to make your boyfriend’s parents like you.’

Follow the story more in depth at Ad Age.

Last week, Google launched knol, a site similar to wikipedia. Initially, knol has the feel of a blog: you write about what you want and what you know, your ‘knol’ post can be commented on and is recommended to be reviewed and commented on, and it’s not required to establish your credentials but is recommended. Also by linking relevant resources into your ‘knol’ post, like in wikipedia, helps establishes a posts validity. Shoemoney.com highlights other positives of Google’s knol.

Not all reviews have been as kind to knol which bring to the light some conflicting interests that have some SEO implications. Aaron Wall, a SEO expert writes about how Google’s knol has a house advantage over well-established authorities on various topics.

A great example in Wall’s article is how he made posts with the exact same content on both knol and business.com. Even though business.com has been around nearly twelve years longer than knol, and is a well established and high authority site, knol ranks number one and two, with business.com ranking third on the SERP. One of the benefits of having a well established, high authority site is that you will, most likely, rank number one, or above newer sites. Sites that are brand new, not established, should not be able to rank number one over a site like business.com. Because the knol post ranks higher than the exact same post on business.com, it appears that Google believes that the knol page is more authoritative; that’s where the in-house advantage comes into play.

The other potentally large problem with knol and Google in this example: the content was duplicated from business.com to knol. Especially if the content that is duplicated is copyrighted, this brings copyright infringement into play. According to Philipp Lenssen of blogoscoped.com, even if the knol poster wants to give you credit for using your material, all outgoing links in your knol post are ”nofollowed”, so no one will know that the content posted on knol is not original.
Some questions to consider:

• Will Google’s knol going to take over wikipedia as the new leader in authoritative articles?
• Is Google going to treat knol posts as any other page in Google, or will an ‘in-house advantage’ exist?
• Are the “nofollows” present to keep spammers out, or to hide the origin of original content?

Among the many folders of bookmarked websites that I’ve assembled during my years as a shameless Internet magpie is one labeled “Art folder.” Although I’m a creative director at Risdall, most of this art has nothing directly to do with advertising. It’s just contemporary work that appeals to this writer’s eye. (This does not include museum websites, a topic for another post and probably another person.)

Eyestorm, based in London, retails contemporary art; the black-and-white photographs drew me here first. So far, I haven’t purchased anything. On the other hand, I own two evocative photographs of Minneapolis scenes by David Korte.

Black and white is my favorite color combination (and, by the way, it’s an option too easily overlooked for printed marketing materials now that color printing is so inexpensive). Al Hirschfeld was a master of pen and ink. One of his drawings of Bette Davis hangs in my house. A drawing of Humphrey Bogart would make my life complete.

The bird paintings of the artist known as Vazalt are realistic, yet they evade categorization as genre wildlife art. The use of indoor rather than outdoor settings adds a touch of surrealism. Print replicas of the oil paintings are affordably priced. Even more accessible from a pricing perspective—and small enough to fit on the narrowest wall—are the works by various artists at Tiny Showcase, which sends part of its proceeds to various charities.

The Internet is as powerful a promotional tool for artists as for anyone else, but major artists, of course, are represented by bricks-and-mortar galleries. Thomas Barry Fine Arts represents, among others, Judy Onofrio, an acclaimed sculptor who creates large-scale, colorful pieces from found objects. Decoding the identities of the small objects she uses to create a large, cohesive whole will force your brain to engage on a higher level.

And isn’t engagement exactly what we want to elicit with our work, too?

Pronounced “cool”, Cuil is a new search engine. My first experience with it was positive: It’s fast, and I think it has an attractive interface. Cuil represents the second search engine created by the company founder. The first was purchased by Google a couple years ago. See the story behind and give it a try.

Very possibly. How much does google dig digg? Possibly to the tune of “around $200 million.”

This isn’t the first time this rumor has surfaced, with the rumors beginning in March. In the past six weeks, negotiations have become much more serious to the point where the two sides have signed a letter of intent. According to Michael Arrington at techcrunch, the deal would bring digg under the Google News property.

What will this merger bring to the interactive industry? Comments?

One of the more tedious tasks of web development is dealing with browser compatibility. While frustrating, I’ve always found it more enjoyable (if enjoyment can be found swimming in a sea of browser and OS combos) than its traditional software development QA counterpart, mostly because the hardware variable has been removed from the equation. Who cares what video card the end user is running as long as it meets the minimum resolution and color depth in the spec?

Not so fast. Newer hardware capable of outputting higher resolutions — 200 DPI vs the traditional 96 DPI — have introduced some of those same variables to the web QA process. If you experience or are receiving reports of fuzzy text, pixelated images, and box model issues (IE only) in Windows pre-Vista you will want to check out the following links.

1. This post from Microsoft explains the pre-Vista high DPI issue and their version of a fix — upgrade to Vista.
2. And for the rest of you who just purchased your new hardware and opted out of the Vista experience and don’t mind making a quick registry mod, have a look at an alternate procedure to solve the scaling issue.

The bigger issue here is that controlling the end user’s system settings is not something a web developer can do with client- or server-side code.  The box model issues can be dealt with using relative units (avoiding pixels) or *loosening* up pixel precise layouts, but each of those introduce their own challenges, not the least of which is what to do about all those sites that passed QA and were deployed.

This is an issue developers will need to be increasingly aware of as hardware is upgraded and XP downgrades continue.

It’s a class I’m currently living.  I’m new to the interactive industry, recently beginning my career in SEO.  In my five weeks in this dynamic industry, I’ve learned so much about various aspects of SEO.  The one thing that has stuck in my head from the beginning: it’s all about the words.

Keywords are the foundation for any SEO campaign.  If you don’t do the right keyword research, you won’t be optimizing for the right keywords; you don’t have the right relevant copy on your site; you may not have the right anchor text; and ultimately, you may not be driving the right traffic or any traffic to your site.  Also, it’s not about what words the clients think they’re being searched for, it’s about the words the searcher uses.

Julie Batten from ClickZ wrote a great two-part article about effective keyword SEO research that I still look at just to remind myself of some hints to consider while I’m doing SEO work for clients.  A quote by Batten in the article sums up my thoughts best: “Get it wrong and you may not even have a chance at the first few SERP’s. Do it right and your potential for top placement soars.”  This article is a great read for anyone thinking about entering the industry, beginning in the inudstry, or even established in the industry.

There are more aspects of SEO that are very blog-worthy.  However, SEO 101 is all about the words.

All of the talk these days about brands having to surrender control due to social networking started me thinking about one of the most durable brands in the world and the colossal mistake they made back in 1985.

The brand was Coca Cola, the largest-selling soft drink in the world. But Coke was being threatened by Pepsi-Cola and their “Pepsi Challlenge” ad campaign. Pepsi was running a series of blind taste test TV ads that showed people preferred the taste of Pepsi to that of Coke.

Coca Cola’s sales were far greater than Pepsi’s but a large part of that was due to the fact that Coke products were sold in McDonald’s and Pepsi’s weren’t. Pepsi was gaining on Coke in grocery sales and Coke did not want to be overtaken in that category. As you can imagine, when you’re selling carbonated WATER with a little sweetener and food coloring in it, the profit margins are enormous and even a 1% gain in market share would mean millions gained for Pepsi and millions lost for Coke. What to do?

After conducting its own research and taste tests, Coca Cola came out with a new formula: New Coke. It was supposed to taste better than the formula that the world had been buying for decades. Now logic would say bring the new product out and see if your loyal customers like it better than the old one. If they start to buy New Coke over “Old Coke’” OK. If they start to but New Coke over Pepsi, even better!

Coca Cola didn’t do that. They pulled regular Coke off the market. And replaced it with New Coke. They took the product THAT WAS STILL SELLING BETTER THAN PEPSI off the shelves. They didn’t give their customers A CHOICE. They shoved New Coke down our throats (No pun intended). Now I’m a Coke drinker (the taste of Pepsi is too sweet for me.) So naturally I thought, “Wow! This new formula must be mighty good if Coke has that much confidence in it.” So I bought a six pack. I drank the first bottle……I think the other five bottles are still in the basement somewhere. The unique taste and kick of the Coke I had grown up with was gone!

My reaction was shared by millions. The uproar was enormous! Bear in mind this was before the internet so people had to write letters. And they did! The distaste (Ha! Ha!) for New Coke was unanimous. New Coke was introduced in April of 1985 and was off the shelves by June.

Coca Cola then brought back the original formula and re-named it Classic Coke. “We did not understand the deep emotions of so many of our customers for Coca-Cola,” said company President Donald R. Keough.

Now the question everyone in advertising asked at the time was “How could Coca Cola have been so stupid?” Why would you remove a product that has enjoyed world-wide market dominance since World War II and replace it with an unproven entity?

The media were full of articles labeling New Coke one of the greatest new product fiascoes of all time.
Or was it?

Months after Classic Coke was selling briskly, rumors began to circulate that the “Classic” formula wasn’t EXACTLY the same. The old Coke was sweetened with SUGAR and Coke Classic was (and still is) sweetened with CORN SYRUP, which is…you guessed it..cheaper than sugar. Imagine the profit margins for Coke if they saved even 1¢ per bottle!

So, the question remains…was New Coke a massive marketing mistake? Or a brilliant way to take Coca Cola off the market just long enough so people wouldn’t notice the slight difference in taste when they made the switch from sugar to corn syrup?

There are many articles about this controversy online. Here are two links:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7209828/

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp

So what do you think? Do a little research. Ask people who remember it..and post a reply!

Len

This morning the Today Show did a segment dedicated to the future of advertising. Did you know the average person is exposed to 600-3,000 advertisements per day, and we are addicted to screens (TV, Blackberries, Screens in the airport, taxies, supermarkets, gas stations, doctor’s offices, at work–they are everywhere.) It went further to talk about where not to put ads (above urinals) and where advertising is headed. It is estimated by many that mobile phones are where advertiser’s attention should be focused. Blyk in Europe has already adopted this trend and have over 100,000 people receiving free minutes by watching ads on the cell phones. US based Virgin Mobile has a similar program and has given away more then 26 million minutes to consumers. 

WOW! What an interesting and insightful segment- I think to myself and make a mental note to blog about this at work. Throughout my morning routine and drive to work, I’m almost haunted by it. I replay the different facts, statistics and opinions in my head and try to come up with an angel or opinion I have- but am overwhelmed with thoughts and have a difficult time sorting through them. 

“What does this mean for me personally? Are TV programs going to exist anymore or will I have to watch them on a phone? (Note: I don’t want to watch my shows on some 2” screen after I’ve watched them on a 52”) Will TV manufacturing go out of business? 

How annoying will it be to listen or watch an ad every time I want to call someone? Although I like the idea of not having to pay $100 for a phone bill? 

What does this mean for my career? How do I prepare myself for this shift? Do I need additional training? As an agency, what should we be doing to stay ahead of technology and our competitors? 

As a “newbie” to the industry I’m a little confused to even know what to think or how to react to these predictions. I don’t have the answers to any of these questions but would appreciate some advice from the more experienced advertising veterans! Any thoughts?