Category: Social media

Business Northwest Virtual Summer Conference

I’ll be one of the presenters at the Business Northwest Virtual Summer Conference, happening over three days (July 9-11) later this week.

 The theme of the conference is “Getting Your Business Message Out in Today’s Economy With Today’s Technology.”

 There’s a live event at the Marriott on July 9th at 9:30am featuring a panel with Kent Lewis and Hallie Janssen of Anvil Media, Matt Kish,  Managing Editor of the Business Journal, and Tom Cochrane of TKC Solutions. The rest of the presentations, including mine, will be on the web.

 My presentation, titled “Brand New Technologies, Same Old Errors: The Seven Deadly Online Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them”, is tentatively scheduled to run at 9:30am on Friday, July 10.

 Attendees will be able to see all the presentations, ask questions of more than 20 speakers in special forums, and download written materials. You can have access to the whole thing — you can see it live or watch the archived presentations at your convenience for 30 days — for just $8.50.

 Find out more, and register, at www.businessnorthwest.org/conference.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Religion Tackles Social Media

Sunday’s New York Times covers the rising profile of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, in organized religion. Challenges include setting rules and boundaries

In online debates and private discussions, leaders of all faiths have been weighing pros and cons and diagramming the boundaries of acceptable interactions: Should the congregation have a Facebook page, or should it be the imam’s or priest’s? Should there be limited access? Censoring? Is it appropriate for a clergy member to “friend” a minor?

… to feeling comfortable giving up some control of the message

“If total control is what you want, social media will frustrate you,” [Rev. Bill Reichart] said, reprising his advice to the clergy. “But the trade-off is the ability to hear and learn, reach out in new directions”… “The young don’t do e-mail anymore,” he said. “They do Facebook.”

And like any other institution, there’s a need to balance tradition with staying relevant.

“If someone chooses to interact with us mischievously, that’s fine,” said the Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee, the church vicar. “The opposite of engagement is not mischief, but apathy.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Advertisers Fight the Filters: The Battle Continues

For years, consumers have sought ways to avoid and filter out advertising. And advertisers have fought back with ways over, around and through the filters. Here are two recent developments in the battle:

Product placement: as TIVO has damaged television advertising by allowing viewers to fast-forward past commercials, product placement has become an increasingly important source of revenue for broadcasters. Allesandra Stanley of The New York Times, tongue perhaps slightly in cheek, suggests an Emmy for the Product Placement category, and rates many recent efforts to integrate products into shows.

Twitter Advertising: meanwhile, Tech.blorge points to an AdWeek report that Pay-Per-Tweet is coming to Twitter. According to AdWeek:

Izea, formerly called Pay Per Post, is readying a Twitter ad platform called Sponsored Tweets that will offer Twitter users the option of sending their followers messages about brands and products. Twitterers will get paid based either on the number of clicks they receive or on a flat fee per Tweet.

In a test campaign, Blockbuster tweets carried the hashtag #spon to indicate a sponsored message. Tech.blorge points out that this may give Twitter users a way to filter the messages right back out again:

Twitter users have been notoriously fickle about spam entering the site, but so long as the Tweets carry a hashtag, there will be solutions beyond simply unfollowing the user putting out the messages.  Thanks to third-party services such as TweetDeck, a method for users to read the messages on their desktop, you can set up filters to hide any messages with specified hashtags that you want.  It’s easy to imagine that the #spon posts will quickly get filtered out by the majority of users, which leads one to believe the system will either be a failure, or users will just conveniently forget to include the tag.

Someone, no doubt, is working on a way to beat the filters. And so it goes.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page — and become a Fan – here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

How NOT to Use YouTube: KFC Botches the Apology

It’s hard to imagine a promotion as poorly planned and executed as KFC’s Grilled Chicken fiasco.

sales advice: don't be too chicken to apologize when you screw up
Photo by Tony Campbell

If you’ve been living in a cave for the past week or so, here’s a quick review of the clusterpluck:

To promote their new Kentucky Grilled Chicken, KFC offered a downloadable coupon for a free meal. And had Oprah Winfrey announce it on her show. KFC was completely unprepared for the response — their computer servers couldn’t handle the crush of downloads, and their restaurant servers either couldn’t or wouldn’t honor all the coupons.

A day later, KFC announced that it would no longer honor the coupons. Instead, they instituted a truly cumbersome raincheck procedure. Customers were instructed to bring their coupons to a KFC store, where they would be required to fill out a form requesting a rain check — and wait for KFC to mail them their rain check. At which time they would have to make a second trip to KFC.

It might seem impossible for KFC to make the situation any worse, but they were up to the challenge. Here is KFC President Roger Eaton’s astonishing “apology” video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdFJjeLYVjk]

[UPDATE: alas, after being buried in negative comments, KFC has taken the video down]

KFC was already in a hole before they released the video. From his unfortunate foreign accent to his smirky grin to his bizarre non sequitur (“Everyone wants to get the great taste of our new product, so we can’t redeem your free coupon at this time.”), Eaton just kept digging it deeper.

What has he learned from all this?

“Clearly, America loves the great taste of Kentucky Grilled Chicken!“

The take-away message: it’s not KFC’s fault — it’s America’s fault!

This one will be studied in marketing classes for decades to come.

[reminder]

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

How to Get on Google’s Front Page

If you don’t appear on Google’s first page when people search for your name, it’s not just a blow to the ego — it can also be a business problem. Many searchers never go past Page 1, so a poor rank can cost you traffic, customers, and money.

Up until now, possessing a common name meant you were stuck. Google’s new Profile service gives you a chance to cut in line.

A recent Time Magazine article  explained the problem, and Google’s solution.

“The reason people search for themselves is that they’re curious about what other people see when they search for their name,” says Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management. “One problem is they don’t have any control over the search results. Either they don’t like the search results, or what happens most of the time is, they’re not listed on the first page. If your name is Brian Jones and you’re not the deceased Rolling Stones guitarist, you don’t exist.”

To give people a bit more control over search results, Google introduced a new feature this week it calls a “Google profile” that users can create so that a thumbnail of personal information appears at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. Once users create a Google profile, their name, occupation, location (and photo if they choose), appears in a box on the first page of the search results for their name. Next to the thumbnail info, there’s a link to a full Google profile page that in many ways resembles a Facebook page.

I filled in my Google profile this morning. It’s a simple process, although there was one small shot to my ego — “philbernstein” wasn’t available for my profile URL.

So my profile URL is http://www.google.com/profiles/thegreatphilbernstein.

Create your own Google profile here: http://www.google.com/profiles

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.