Tag: public relations - Page 2

Being a marketer who has a background in public relations, it’s always been very apparent that marketing and public relations overlap all the time. So much so, it becomes blurry where the two differentiate. This makes me wonder, are public relations and marketing evolving into the same department, or is there reasons the two remain separate entities?

Do you own your own business? Getting a business up and running is a lot of work to do on your own. All entrepreneurs tend to have the same kind of ambitious characteristics. They are driven, goal oriented, self starters and risk takers. But between building your product and getting it out to the public, how do you know when it’s time to begin asking for help?

The world of public relations can be summed up in three words: chaotic, wild, and tedious. Don’t get me wrong, public relations is an exciting facet to the marketing mix, but it isn’t for everyone. After personally delving into the world of PR and having several press releases published, let’s take a look at a few key takeaways from my recent experiences.

I won't lie... I need to have the best team possible. They each need to be high achieving, dynamic, skilled individuals who are actively trying to be the best. What they don't know, they seek to find out. What they are good at, they share. What they can improve in, they ask for mentoring and coaching. Basically, people who are in touch with their own capabilities and are self-starters.

Like many companies, Marketing Eye is about to embark on a PR campaign to communicate to the wider audience our expansion plans for the US market. 

With new recruit, Marketing Manager Chanta Waller, having taken up the post in our Atlanta office, we have spent a few minutes brainstorming our media release.

Is it newsworthy enough? Who should it go to? What variations should we do? What are our expected outcomes?

I'm an Australian who prefers to work with American companies.  Why?  Because I learn the most from the American attitude; especially marketers.  Simply, American marketers do it best.

Working for Marketing Eye, a dual Australian-American company, I am spoiled with the resources that both cultures offer in a creative marketing setting, and I’ve had the privilege to work with some outstanding marketers.

How did a slapstick campaign garner the support of the most feared woman in fashion?

By now, the majority of the Western world has seen that video of Anna Wintour being doused in a bucket of iced water. But this was not the handiwork of an anti-fur campaigner.

Wintour’s water attack is part of the viral campaign that netted a charity over $50 million.

While a sex tape is a good way to get media exposure for some; Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and alike - it's not the right way to get the type of media exposure to escalate your business's chance of being written about.

When I first started doing PR, I used to write a media release and fax it to a media outlet - all with varying results. The headline, like it is today, is worth it's weight in gold, and if you have a strong first paragraph, you may get that call back you have been waiting for.

That was soon followed up with 'pitching' on the telephone and depending on what mood the journalist was in or your ability to 'sell' a story to them, you either walked away with a published article or your press release was thrown in the trash can.

In 1998, the faxing part changed to emailing which was fantastic because it was a much faster and less tedious way of getting a media release out to journalists. It also was a much more environmentally friendly way to operate and allowed for changes to be made to ensure that each email sent out to a journalist was a one-to-one marketing piece rather than an everything to everyone, hit and miss style approach.

Recently, a client shared a sage piece of marketing advice, he said “If you have just $100 left in your advertising budget, your best investment is to use it to travel and share your story with your market face-to-face”. Today Marketing Eye put this advice to the test, with great success for one of our clients – Papa Gusto.

Marketing plans do not have to be intricate to be effective, nor do they to be supported by exorbitant budgets.  We keep it simple and achieve results.  

The Wolf of Wall Street was in many people's opinions a celebration of the bad life - drugs, sex, expensive toys, opulent homes and super expensive suits.

As we watched on as Leonardo DiCaprio spruiked, "The way I look at it, their money was better off in my pocket," many of us couldn't believe that world existed quite like that. But it does. And it's right here on our doorstep too.