Mike Arrington had been having trouble with Comcast, his net provider and was not getting a good response via the call centre. He twittered his frustration, someone at the company picked it up and called him, getting the problem sorted. Apparently this is not the only time they’ve done this, with Consumerist finding more examples. Monitoring what is said about you is an essential part of today’s brand management – the Church of the Customer picks up on how salesforce.com are doing this, with their Yahoo Pipes construct that grabs mentions from many places. …read more

Veritas, a Canadian PR company, are launching a new practice focusing on social media. The official release describes the new group thus:
com.motion is a specialty practice within Veritas Communications that helps brands and organizations to break through online. With tactics including blogger relations, online reputation management, social media marketing campaigns and the proprietary Grassroots Multiplier™, com.motion is at the leading edge of Direct Audience Activation: the next evolution in marketing communications.
That’s a perfect piece of PR speak, but the team lead Keith McArthur as been putting his money where his mouth is and reaching out to bloggers to promote …read more

Something that this blog has turned to a few times is pitching bloggers (Tom being targeted all the time and how not to pitch a blogger). In the past week, PR professionals have come out with guidelines about how to pitch, the best way to get your message heard.
First up, via David Meerman Scott, are tips on how to pitch a blogger from Mark Hinkel. Paraphrased, they are:

Format the news in a way that is easy for the blogger to use – include links
Make the story relevant
Make the information friendly and informative
Be wary of using embargoes
Develop the …read more

Media Fragmentation has put the user in the driver’s seat. Now the user has taken on a new role, that of creative director/producer of advertising. Numerous advertisers have turned to consumers to develop ads for specific campaigns and the surge of mash-ups and viral distribution has exploded. But does this mean user-generated advertising has arrived? Are the risks of conceding partial control of the brand offset by the rewards of awareness and engagement? Our panel will discuss these and other key questions surrounding UGA.
Moderator: Rich LeFurgy, General Partner, Archer Advisors
Cheryl Guerin, VP Promotions & Interactives, MasterCard, International
Tom Lynch, VP Marketing …read more

Earlier I wrote about a paper discussing the Long Tail for marketing from Mohammed Iqbal. He’s recently written a further article about social media and that most important of new skills for brands and their associated agencies – the Art of Listening.
Of course, to do that we advertisers and marketers need to stop loving the sound of our own voice. We need to stop finding gaps in the conversation where we can butt in with our two bits. We need to stop fooling ourselves to believe that the selective listening we practice called research is not enough. We need …read more