Google Buys Newspaper Ad to Show Why Newspaper Ads Don’t Work

Here’s a nice bit of multi-faceted irony for you: On August 23, Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper ran a print ad for Google’s (directly competitive) search advertising business.

“You know who needs a haircut? People searching for a haircut,” the ad reads. “Maybe that’s why ads on Google work.”

The ad was tweeted by media reporter Steve Ladurantaye with the caption, “An ad for Google ads in today’s Globe demonstrates the value of print ads, yes?”

Google’s ad ran in both the Globe‘s print and digital editions, as well as in the National Post, the Globe‘s main competitor, Ladurantaye tells us.

But hey, at least Google is supporting newspapers, right?

[via Romenesko]

Creativity via ThinkwithGoogle

I discovered Think with Google a month ago and I’m extremely happy reading all the infos they are providing for us. The Creativity issue is brilliant and inspiring. Take a look at some Quantify: Creativity.

Top 10 Most Admired Companies

Fortune publicized top 50 most admired companies based on a study where business people were asked to vote for the companies that they admired most, from any industry. 

Google Plus helps politicians

I really love Google and his ambitious projects. Today, I found out that he even help politicians to communicate with their voters. Please take a look below:

Elect to connect

Share more with your voters and constituents through a Google+ Page

By creating a Google+ Page for your public office or campaign, you and your staff can promote an issue, platform or cause across the web. You can put a +1 button anywhere on the web that you’d like for people to support your content, and you can connect your Google+ Page to your website and Google search results, via Google Direct Connect. Regularly posting interesting content, engaging with your followers by asking questions, and sharing photos and videos are all ways to keep people coming back for more.

Check it out: See how Senator Bernie Sanders polls his constituents for ideas or how the French governing party, UMP, and main opposition party,Parti Socialiste, share their campaign platforms on their Google+ Pages.

Show what you support, and who supports you with +1

To help define your political positions, you can now publicly support political ideas, projects or news articles by clicking the +1 button on other Google+ Pages, posts or articles across the web. And people who share your viewpoint can express themselves by clicking the +1 button on your Google+ Page or on your posts. You can also set up the +1 button on your office website or on your campaign display ads to connect it to your Page.

Check it out: Constituents expressed their viewpoints on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s post about the G20 summit through +1s and comments.

Tailor messages to different audiences with Circles

Google+ allows you to group followers into Circles, so you can tailor messages to different groups of voters or constituents. For instance, you can create a specific circle for those who shared or +1-ed your posts, or for your donors. If you want your message to reach everyone, simply click on Public.

Check it out: See how Michigan Governor Rick Snyder reached out to his Google+ followers to add more people to his circles.

Hang out with your voters or constituents anywhere in the world, right from your office

Host a virtual Town Hall meeting, keep office hours, or meet face-to-face with constituents across the country through Hangouts, an easy-to-use high-quality group video chat for up to 10 people. In the future, you can also live stream your Hangout on YouTube for other interested parties to follow – a handy tool for communicating with voters.

Check it out: Broadcast live by Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, Governor Mitt Romney spoke with voters through Hangouts. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu used Hangouts to connect for the inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace lecture.

Share photos of your campaign and meetings

Google+ lets you easily upload, edit and share photos of your campaign wherever you are. With Instant Upload, photos you take with an Android device can be stored automatically online, so you can access them on Google+ in one click. If you allow geo-tagging to locate your pictures, constituents can also virtually follow you on the road.

Check it out: See how French leading democrat Deputy François Bayrou shared photos from his daily meetings with constituents, or how Senator Mark Warner shared a YouTube video of his trip across Virginia to meet with local communities.

Dear Google, you rock!

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Dear Google, happy b-day!

 

 

 

As I already said in the title, today is Google’s birthday. Happy happy anniversary dear who-knows-everything-everywhere-about anyone online friend!

 

 

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Social media: limit or limitless ?

As company, do you need one Facebook account connected with one Twitter account or you need more? Maybe two, three, four ? How much is too much asks David Rogers in Bnet.

What’s his answer?

By now, most businesses know they should have a presence on Facebook or Twitter. But the more digitally-savvy businesses often ask, How many? Should you have only one Facebook page? Or multiple ones?

While some brands, like JetBlue, are represented by a single corporate Facebook page and a single Twitter account, other brands, like Dell, seem to sprout new Twitter accounts and Facebook pages every day, one for every department or division. Does this make them more efficient? When is it too much–or too little?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple one-size-fits-all answer. The best approach depends on your business, customers, brands and overall media strategy.

When One Voice Is Best

The benefits of a single, unified presence on a given social media platform are clear. A single account makes it easier to build a sizable audience. It may help focus your social media efforts (especially if you are a small or medium-sized business). It will provide a clear presence for your brand, and will avoid confusion among your customers about where to go to find you online.

When You May Want to Manage Multiple Accounts

However, there are many cases why multiple voices may be more effective for achieving a business’ social media goals.

Following are 7 reasons why a business may do better with multiple accounts:

1. Different Business Units. Many larger companies are structured around distinct business units that serve customers with different needs. In these cases, it can be much more valuable to the customer to follow or connect with a social media presence that is specific to their own needs. Dell, for example, has separate Twitter or Facebook accounts for its enterprise (@dellenterprise), education (@dellEDU), and small business (@dellSMBnews) operating units. That way each account can provide content and interaction that is more relevant to the right customers. SimilarlyGE has separate accounts for GE capital, water, aviation, appliances, and lighting. And at Columbia University, where I teach, there are separate accounts for the Schools of Journalism, Law, and Business.

2. Different Geography & Languages. Businesses operating in different countries may find a need for distinct social media accounts, especially to suit different languages of customers there. Dell has separate Facebook pages for India, Thailand, and Malaysia, among others. The Johnnie Walker spirits brand has a single master Facebook page that links to 32 international Facebook pages, allowing for content that is customized and in the local language: Mexico (Spanish), Brasil (Portuguese), Israel (Hebrew), and others.

3. Different Content Topics. Media companies and other idea-focused businesses that are producing a great deal of content for their customers may want to set up different social media accounts around different topics, so that customers can select those which are most relevant to them. The New York Timesruns numerous Twitter and Facebook accounts that spotlight the content of its various sections: Politics, Science, Travel, Food, Music, or even the Crossword Puzzle. Similarly, a university may set up separate accounts focused on atheletics, arts events, career placement, or even specific events or conferences.

4. Different Local Branches. Some businesses that have a brick-and-mortar retail presence may benefit from separate social media accounts for local branches. Whole Foods combines an overall corporate presence in social media with numerous accounts for individual branches (from Detroit and Chicago, to my hometown market in Montclair, NJ). This allows customers to get localized information about events, store news, and special deals happening at their own branch.

5. Different Social Media Strategies. Separate accounts can also be valuable when a business is trying to use the same social media platform for different strategic aims. Comcast uses one Twitter account as a customer service channel, and another one to share information on its community investment program. GE’s @GEreports provides news on technical innovations to its investor community, whereas accounts like @GEresearchjobs focus on hiring. Dell has run a very successful standalone Twitter account focused on sales of discounted inventory, @delloutlet.

6. Unique Voices within the Company. For companies with social media-savvy employees, and a great many customers seeking to interact online, it is sometimes beneficial to add personal corporate accounts in social media. These are accounts that are named by the company, but identified by a particular employee (from Zappos’s CEO Tony Hsieh, to customer service specialist @ComcastBill).

7. Unique Sub-Brands with Strong Personalities. If a company’s product brands, or sub-brands, have a strong enough personality of their own, customers may be more interested in connecting with them in social media, than with the corporate master brand. (Would you sooner “like” the Dove brand, or its parent Unilever corp?) Chevrolet has its own accounts on Twitter and Facebook, but also maintains accounts for Chevy Trucks, Chevy Camaro, Corvette, and the new all-electric Chevy Volt. The typical customer for Chevy Trucks and the Volt are likely quite different.

Making Sense to Your Customer

In essence, the decision of one or many voices within social media comes down to an understanding of your brand architecture (are you seen as one company? Or a collection of exciting brands?), and of your customer base (is it relatively homogeneous? Or do you have distinct networks of customers, which don’t overlap very much?).

If you do have good reason to establish separate social media accounts, and the resources to support them, make sure you keep them clear for your customer. The goal should be to avoid confusion, while allowing for more relevant and meaningful interactions with customers that build long term relationships and add value to your business.

 

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

Crisis management: Toyota case

Today I found an interesting case study about crisis management: Toyota. Mashable is presenting the facts and the story of Toyota via social media:

In January 2010, Toyota faced a nightmare situation for any brand, but particularly for one that staked its reputation on safety and quality: The company had to recall 2.3 million vehicles because of faulty accelerator pedals.

Suddenly, Toyota was trending on Google and Twitter on a daily basis, but for all the wrong reasons. Auto brands had faced similar crises before — Audi in particular grappled with a gas accelerator recall in the 1980s — but none had done so under the 24/7 scrutiny of social media.

But Kimberley Gardiner, Toyota’s national digital marketing and social media manager, saw an opportunity as well.

“Right away, we were seeing a lot of conversation and getting a lot of people who were using social media to reach out to us,” she says. “We didn’t have a lot of answers at the beginning.”

Toyota’s social media team, which was only a few months old at the time, decided to address the situation head on, but in a novel way: via Digg.

Before Digg’s disastrous Version 4 hit in August 2010, the site had a lot more social media influence. Recall that in 2009, Digg’s traffic ranged from 37 million to 44 million unique visitors each month. Plus, the site had outsize influence on Google News searches. At the time, it seemed like the best place for Toyota to get its message across.

On February 8, Toyota served up Jim Lentz, president of Toyota’s North American sales operation, to the masses in the form of a Digg Dialogg. In many ways, the appearance was a stroke of genius. For one thing, Lentz didn’t actually appear on Digg, but on a dedicated video site. The questions, which were voted on by fans (the ones with the most votes rose to the top) also wound up being pretty softball. “They were mostly general questions, like ‘What kind of car does Mr. Lentz drive?’” says Florence Drakton, social media manager. (“That’s a great question,” a clearly relieved Lentz answers.) Lentz’s interview, which ran 28 minutes, is still available on YouTube:

It was hard to beat the reach Toyota got from the appearance. Within a week, the Dialogg had received 1.2 million views. “Probably the biggest indicator of interest was there were 3,200 questions,” says Drakton. “Only celebrities have gotten that much.” In addition to reaching a fairly big audience, the Dialogg gave Toyota theappearance of achieving social media branding nirvana: Transparency. Though there were other factors at play, like news fatigue, researcher YouGov’s BrandIndex, which polls 5,000 Internet users daily, saw a bottoming out around the time of the Dialogg. Note: YouGov’s scores are based on consumers’ perception of the brand. A positive is +100 and negative is -100.

The best news for Toyota, though, is the company’s brand perception among those in the market for a car within the next six months is high. In YouGov’s most recent survey, Toyota was second only to Honda among that audience; the brand had leapfrogged Ford sometime in August.

Looking back, Gardiner says although the Digg Dialoggs (there were two more in July and August of 2010) were successful, if the same thing happened today, she’d probably use a TweetChat on Twitter instead. In fact, the medium is a favorite of Toyota’s, which has held several such chats in the last few months. Facebook, Gardiner says, is a great way to reach out to Toyota owners, but Twitter addresses those consumers who might be skeptical about the brand.

The choice of the exact form of social media may be beside the point, though. Like Dell, which became a social media poster child after its Dell Hell debacle, Toyota’s recall situation forced the company to embrace social media. “Toyota is an organization that is not used to being on camera and in the spotlight,” Gardiner says. “It was new to many people in the organization. It’s not something you plan for. We’re learning as we go.”

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

 

Big city lights

I just discovered Stumble! , a wonderful online bookmarks website.

StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, they deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of over 15 million other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like () automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.

What I found …

Was this amazing motion photographer, Dominic Boudreault. Enjoy his art!

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.

If Google can, you can even better

As part of my career, I am also a website editor on a volunteering blog. Days ago, I wrote my conclusions about a book I have recently read, recommended by Ciprian Gavriliu, so I translated the content here. In Romanian, you can find the article here.

“What would Google do?”, written by Jeff Jarvis, launched in Romania in 2009 is no doubt one of the most motivational books I have read since now.

Jeff Jarvis is not one of the Google creators, nor one of Google employees, he is just one of the best known social media person worldwide. Among other jobs, he also teaches Journalism at Superior School of Journalism from City University, New York, and he is a person who understands, explains and motivates with excellent arguments what a business means today, in web century.

If you ever thought to launch your own business, you have thousand of great ideas and more than that, you would like to become an entrepreneur, this book can make (some) order in your priorities.

Google discovers problems and solves them. To sum up, Google works in personal branding terms and it all reduces at finding your own new vision of world.

The book doesn’t sell anything, doesn’t glorify anyone and definitely doesn’t say a malicious word about the completion. It explains, with extremely simple words, what means internet century and what human resources  it has. The book talks about the people behind www.google.com, those names we have never heart, the mistakes that multinational companies have made and how they figure out that Google is their friend, not their enemy.

“This searching engine will control the planet”, said Paulo Coelho. But Google doesn’t want to control something as boring as a resource or a phone company, or maybe a restaurant (although the chef from Google restaurant has written Food 2.0). Some people would like that Google become the owner of a newspaper – like New York Times- or a company, as Microsoft. But no, Google knows who he is. His great, great ambition is to organize the world, not to take charge of it.

As a reader of this book, I have finally understood that my objectives are only mine, no matter how many things will come across. And that money doesn’t always count and that is why so many Google services are free, with a great venue, where hundreds of people worked millions of hours to make the application perfect.

In such books, what I appreciate most is the quality of the tips given. I love to learn by examples, to understand how the engine is working by testing it before knowing more things about. What is Google doing, in fact ? Basically, he puts you in his front page, on the top of everyone else, if you give him the right things:

• distinctive content
• let yourself searched, in order to be found
• after generating links and public, YOU have to explore the benefits, usually by ads
• you should use links to work efficiently
• find opportunities for creating value.

Google helps. And if he can, you can do it as well, no matter where or when you start, only if you have in mind a great project and you are willing to receive both positive and negative feedback. And if all of the critic you get , you’ll invest in the project, maybe you will find the secret of success.

What would YOU do ?

Better tomorrow,

PR Pret-a-Porter.