Smalltalk with James Robertson

David Meerman Scott says this kind of thing a lot:

For years, I've been saying that to create great Web content, you need to always be thinking: Nobody cares about my products and services except me and the others in my organization. What your buyers do care about are themselves and they care a great deal about solving their problems (and are always on the lookout for a company that can help them do so).

The thing is, it's true - but only to an extent. In the process of telling people how you can solve their problems, you have to get into the how - and presumably, that involves.... your product(s). So yes, no one cares about your products - in the abstract. What they might care about is how your products can be used in their domain.

In order to get there, you do actually have to - *gasp* talk about your products. Because cutesy videos might attract a lot of views, but if they don't relate you and your products to a live problem, that's all they do.

Technorati Tags: PR

In Brazil, it might be :)

Reports are that 77% of iPhone 4 sales went to existing customers upgrading (yes, I was one of those). As one analyst put it:

"Apple has in three years built brand loyalty in the phone market that compels users to upgrade to the latest version and wait in line for one to six hours to pick up their iPhone."

This is why I take some of the "brands are dead" talk with a huge grain of salt. Cleary, it's working quite well for Apple. It's a hard thing to pull off, but when it works - wow.

Technorati Tags: apple, iPhone, brands

Did every marketing person in the UK leave the country, or go on strike? Were they forced to hire someone who once saw the Teletubbies through the bottom of a full glass of water?

Technorati Tags: stupidity

Adam Singer notes that some social media marketing is based on utter insanity. Consider this, which he quotes in his post:

Vitrue analyzed Facebook data from its clients — with a combined 41 million fans — and found that most fans yielded an extra impression. That means a marketer posting twice a day can expect about 60 million impressions per month through the news feed.

They use that to value each "fan" at $3.60. You can read Adam's post to get the details - he does a good job of deconstructing the stupid, and there's no real need for me to do more than say "what he said".

Technorati Tags: impressions, social media, social marketing

Spotted in Doc Searls Weblog

Meanwhile, lots of social media types are talking about brands and branding as if these were new and hip things. They're not. They're heavy and old. We need to move on, folks. Think of something human instead.

I'm not sure what else Doc has in mind. A brand is nothing more than a way to remember a product or service; it's shorthand. People like shorthand; it's easier to say "I like Bud" than it is to say "I like that beer you can get at the market on 23rd".

You need more than just branding, and I think that's where Doc is going - but you aren't going to see it disappear.

Technorati Tags: brands, advertising, pr

I'm not sure what to make of this, but the trailers for the new Dr. Who season are quite different for the US and UK - check out SciFi wire, where they have both.

Technorati Tags: dr who, scifi

Apple's ban on "sexy" apps in the app store looks even sillier now that we learn that Sports Illustrated (swimsuit issue) and Playboy are still around. Phil Schiller strove mightily to win the "lamest rationale ever" award:

When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. "The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format," he said.

Umm, right. It's enough to make your head spin. It took four days to come up with that?

Technorati Tags: PR, stupidity

David Meerman Scott makes a great point about content:

Just say NO to squeezing your buyers, I say. When you give away valuable content with no registration, you are adding to your brand bank account, making your brand more valuable.

There are a virtually infinite number of messages coming at all of us, all the time. If someone comes to your site, interested in your product, why do you want to make it harder? Getting people's attention is hard; forcing someone who's been attracted to you to jump through hoops is just a bad idea. Registration forms for things like video, white papers (etc) - those are hoops. Putting them up just means less attention. Is that what you really want?

Technorati Tags: pr, attention

I ran across (via Twitter) this PR response from Southwest to Kevin Smith (of Silent Bob fame). It sounded kind of defensive, but to get "the rest of the story", you need to read back through Kevin Smith's Twitter feed (going back about 15 hours ago from now). To say that his story differs just a bit from Southwest's is an understatement.

Now, many celebrities have something of an entitlement problem, so this would be easy to ignore - but c'mon, he was flying Southwest, not first class on (insert upscale carrier here). It really does sound like Southwest screwed the pooch, and then ran a complete hack out to make a pseudo-apology.

It's like they got the memo about responding quickly, but lost the part about being genuine...

Technorati Tags: pr, stupidity, kevin smith