Old Spice goes beyond hot-man-in-towel commercials

Men really do want to smell like Mr. Old Spice himself. Especially when Old Spice’s ad agency created customized video responses for their clients. Worked on me. http://bit.ly/deZyow

New York gets Wi-Fi in subways

This should make 8 million people happy. Now New Yorkers can soon stay connected 100 stories up or moving 55 mph underground. There goes bonding with your neighbor on the subway! http://bit.ly/9Ud0q5

Good Relationships = Good Health?

And lest we all forget, while we’re moving at warp speed with our social media networking, a research study in the news this week reminds us that honest-to-goodness social relationships – the face-to-face kind – are key to longer lives and good health. “People with greater social relationships are 50 percent more likely to live longer than reclusive peers.” Do you agree? http://bit.ly/dzvSki

Peter takes his job very seriously…

Introducing: PETER BROWN, Public Relations Intern

Want to know what a week in the life of a Richter7 public relations intern is like?

Nonstop.

My week started by working on a giant client project where we’re revamping their entire website. For two other team members and me, this means reviewing every page, paragraph and word of their site to delete filler info, and ensure it’s grammatically correct and carries a consistent tone throughout the massive, 300+ page website. It has taken a great deal of focus, understanding of our client’s vision and attention to detail – all very rewarding because we’re helping craft their online image.

Tuesday morning we staged an event for our Dairy Council of Utah client and spent several hours at the Gallivan Plaza taking pictures of children wearing milk moustache stickers in front of our ‘Got Milk?’ banner. Honestly, I think I corralled something like 30,000 kids at our booth. Yeah, it got a little crazy! I thought they were coming to chill with our smiling team of two women and two guys, but I think they really wanted the free Creamies (smart kids). We directed them to the Dairy’s Facebook page and  encouraged them to become a Facebook fan of the Dairy and download their pictures. You should too.

Back in the office, I’ve been involved in social media projects for different clients – outdoor recreation and food industries – one isn’t even located near Utah. Our efforts are to track any and all types of online postings about our clients, answer customer questions, encourage them to visit our clients and build a strong customer loyalty for our clients.

This morning I was with another PR team that zipped down to Maple Mountain High School with our Highway Safety client and presented motorcycle safety tips to a driver’s ed class. It’s all part of our ‘Drive Aware. Ride Aware’ campaign. Seriously, don’t ride motorcycles in flip-flops (can’t stress that enough).

These and other projects have carried on just after our ‘No Pants’ policy 2010 kick-off. Last Friday, Richter7 mandated a ‘No Pants’ policy from July 16 to Aug. 20, for the third consecutive year. In order to combat the heat, Richter7 has encouraged us to wear only shorts, skirts, kilts, lava lavas, anything but pants, to work. And if the “knickerbocker police” see pants, we’re fined. A quarter! Hey, I’m an intern! Money don’t grow on trees. (‘Course that will be another quarter for bad grammar.) It has really energized my coworkers here; I feel like I’m being rewarded for enjoying summertime! And that’s pretty sweet.

And I’ve had the fun task of tracking and documenting all of the businesses, newspapers and websites, like USA Today, CNBC and Yahoo! Finance, that have published stories about our ‘No Pants’ tradition. 233 articles so far – from New York to Hawaii.

And my week is only half over. All in all, to survive within the Richter7 environment, in MY opinion, you have to be a big time multi-tasker, an effective communicator, in speech and on paper, an ideas person and, of course, have a healthy sense of humor (with or without pants).

The winning ad campaigns consist of print and TV for Utah’s Hogle Zoo, point-of-purchase print ads for Wood Revival Desk Co. and print posters for the Utah Healthy Marriage Initiative.

With over 60,000 entries annually, the ADDY Awards are the world’s largest and arguably most difficult advertising competition. Concurrently across the country, local entrants vie for recognition as the very best in their markets. Local winners compete against other winners in one of 14 district competitions. District winners are then forwarded to the national ADDY Awards competition.

Have you seen any of our winning ads on TV or in print? If so, what are your thoughts?

CREDITS:

Utah’s Hogle Zoo

• Gary Sume, Copywriter/Creative Director
• Ryan Anderson, Art Director/Creative Director
• Dave Newbold, Executive Creative Director
• Tal Harry, Account Supervisor
• Jared Lewis, Account Manager
• Cynthia Griffin, Production Manager
• “Bunny” Poster – Chad Hurst, Photographer
• “Madagascar” TV/Animation – Michael Slack, Illustrator; Kristen Lapour, Animator

Wood Revival Desk Co.

• Gary Sume, Copywriter/Creative Director
• Ryan Anderson, Art Director/Creative Director
• Dave Newbold, Executive Creative Director
• Teri Gibson, Account Manager
• Cynthia Griffin, Production Manager
• Chad Hurst, Photographer

Utah Healthy Marriage Initiative

• Gary Sume, Copywriter/Creative Director
• Ryan Anderson , Art Director/Creative Director
• Dave Newbold, Executive Creative Director
• Tal Harry , Account Supervisor
• Cynthia Griffin, Production Manager
• Marcia Winn, Account Manager

To beat the heat yet again this year, Richter7 decided to continue its now three-year tradition of the No Pants Policy. Not only will violators be fined a quarter for each offense by the “knickerbocker police,” we will also be donating pants to the needy.  “This is a huge morale boost for everybody,” said Tim Brown, Richter7 partner in charge of morale boosting. “Our success in battling the heat seems to spill over into tackling tough client projects. And putting our pants to good use by donating them to our community encourages us to look for creative opportunities and continually make a difference.”

http://www.facebook.com/richter7?v=box_3&ref=ts

Apple offer free cases to iPhone 4 buyers

Apple held a press conference today to announce how to fix the Apple iPhone 4 “death grip” issue. They have decided to offer free cases to each iPhone 4 owner who wants one. What a downer. Also, those who already purchased the $29 case will be eligible for a refund.

http://indyposted.com/33231/apple-press-conference-seriously-apple-a-free-case-but-no-fix/

Facebook will remove profile boxes, permanently

Facebook has plans to permanently remove application-generated profile boxes in the near future. On Monday, July 12, Facebook removed them without warning, and then brought them back the next day. They are doomed to be removed again soon. Many users rely on profile boxes to display games and other activities on their page. Why is Facebook having a hard time getting things right when they normally get so many things right?

http://indyposted.com/32609/farewell-to-facebook-profile-boxes-forever/

While we were all enthralled in the media frenzy, LeBron James made NBA history last night, announcing his decision to play with the Miami Heat. Before the big announcement, “King” James decided to take a stab at Twitter for the special occasion, even creating his own hashtag to answer questions of his 250,000 followers.

So why has the media had such a hay-day with LeBron’s free agency? Some may say it is a relatively slow time in the news for the NBA, while others claim it is the price tag.

Check out this article of our own Tal Harry discussing the controversy with Utah’s ABC4 News and let us know your thoughts on the situation.

http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story/The-kings-image-The-hype-surrounding-LeBron-James/GLGS–NLRkiLAvuubG9DBw.cspx

Closing Shop:

This may come to you as a big surprise, but Facebook announced this week that it will be shutting down its virtual gift store this August. The application has provided gifts to millions of Facebook users over its three-year period. You may be wondering why they would shut down such a successful app. According to Facebook, it is now focusing on “improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, Games, Comments, the ‘Like’ button and the Wall.”

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366260,00.asp

Realizing this, business-to-business (B2B) marketers are optimizing how they market to potential customers on the web. B2B strategies and marketing tools are being used to engage buyers more effectively, increasing the flow of qualified leads through the sales funnel.

A recent CSO Insights study found that 51 percent of marketing organizations are using lead management systems and 60 percent are using some form of lead scoring before passing B2B leads to sales. And considering the current economic climate, more and more marketers are turning to these types of tactics to boost efficiencies.

Many forms of lead generation are not magical. For example, anyone can place ads on Google. However, the key is how these leads are handled through the sales funnel. Marketing automation can be used to collect leads, generate stats on user behavior, and then hand over qualified leads to sales via Salesforce.com integration. Prospects that are not immediately receptive to communications from the sales team are put back into a “nurturing” program to receive additional targeted messages designed to further nurture interest.

The Buying Process

It is critical for B2B marketers to have an understanding on how potential customers flow through the sales funnel.

1. Awareness. Prospects might start out using general search terms in Google. This then might attract them to items such as educational materials and webinars.

2. Research. Digging deeper, prospects will then research a particular solution or brand, and in this phase are often more likely to respond to free trials and demos.

3. Consideration.  During this decision-making phase, buyers typically look at comparisons and reviews, consuming content that pits one vendor against another.

As you can imagine, providing the right offer at the right time is critical. For example, it does not make sense to treat a prospect as a qualified sales lead when all they have done is download a spec sheet in the awareness phase. Not allowing time for prospects to properly flow through the nurturing process will only result in unqualified leads being passed to sales.

When is a lead qualified? When there has been a series of interactions that demonstrates the prospect has moved from early awareness to consideration.

Breaking the Gridlock

Marketers are often judged on lead volume. Sales reps on the other hand are judged on closing deals, meaning they do not want to spend any time on opportunities that are not ready to buy now. As you can imagine, this often means there is a gap between these two groups. Good prospects often fall into this gap, never getting called, or called once and forgotten.

Through a sound strategy, a common ground around lead qualification can be found. Having a systematic way of scoring a lead and determining when they are sales worthy is critical to bridging the gap.

Creating Success

Marketers can break the gridlock by providing tools to directly help sales have insights into their prospects behavior as well as providing ways for reps to interact with their prospects. Imagine empowering reps to deploy things like micro-portals for individual prospects; publishing content, events and messages, and enabling prospects to share information with colleagues involved in the buying decision. The prospect gets a better buying experience, the sales rep improves their effectiveness, and the marketer becomes a key partner in the process.

To create this success, there’s some low-hanging fruit that marketers can immediately focus on for incremental improvements.

• Search. Many organizations are already running paid search campaigns. Focusing on analytics to increase conversion rates will put more leads into the funnel using existing ad spends.
• Cold Leads. Taking the stockpile of dormant contacts and running them through nurturing campaigns can provide an increase of new warm leads. This will provide a lot of extra value from previous marketing expenditures.
• Process Improvements. Instead of just dumping leads into a sales reps lap because they downloaded a white paper, score the leads and then only promote promising leads.
• New Channels. Setup and run campaigns targeted at different verticals. Include tailored landing pages, emails, lead routing and reporting for each of those verticals.
• Research. Invest quality time to understand exactly how the customer buys, both online and offline. Online research, focus groups and usability studies can all play a role. This will all help you refine your buying funnel.
• Define “Qualified.” Marketing and sales leaders should clearly define a “qualified lead.” Find ways to agree to work together toward a set of common goals; have shared revenue objectives and fixed measurements that motivate quality over lead volume.
• Relevant Message. Engage the prospective buyers with the right offer delivered at the right time. Use marketing automation systems to deliver messages that are of “high value and relevancy” to increase engagement vs. stimulating opt-out behavior.

In the end, it is not just about lead generation, it’s about generating qualified opportunities. Marketing needs to better understanding precisely how prospects buy, and work to integrate marketing with sales by deploying the right strategies and technologies to improve the odds of success.

After 25 Years, Larry King Pulls the Plug

Is Larry King’s decision to call it quits with CNN indicative of a changing fashion of news personalities and interviewing techniques among top reporters in the U.S.?

CNN's Larry King Live. Credit: The New York Times

Though audience numbers for “Larry King Live” had been cut in half since the last presidential election (down to about 674,000 viewers, the show’s lowest viewership in at least a decade), King was often criticized for not asking questions tough enough to rile his A-list guests. Falling behind competitors such as Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddowon and Glenn Beck, King’s farewell provides great insight to the challenges facing the competitive world of media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/arts/television/01watch.html?_r=1&ref=television

Hulu Joins the Subscription Bandwagon

TV fanatics have another option for streamlining their favorite shows (maybe even old reruns of “Larry King Live”). If cable, DVR, PS3, Netflix and on-demand channels aren’t enough for you, Hulu is now charging $9.99 for subscriptions to its Hulu Plus service. The new alternative will allow users to unlock full seasons of premium shows on ABC, NBC and FOX across a variety of new platforms for a flat monthly fee.

Introducing Hulu Plus. Credit: hulu.com

Is it possible to have too many options for streamlining content (video, text, photos or other)?

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=144729

1. Like a swarm of killer bees, this South African instrument – previously unknown to many – dominated the news, our ears and was a popular Twitter hashtag. Articles even popped up on how to remove the Vuvuzela sound from your audio by muting certain frequencies on your equalizer – http://bit.ly/bviXut – and Twitter’s fail whale was a semi-constant.

2. Meanwhile, Mr. Jobs’ latest creation is estimated to have sold 1.5 million on its first day, according to Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner. http://bit.ly/crMoFi

3. However, complaints are already starting to pop up – especially regarding yellow distortions on screen and poor reception. From a PR perspective, it seems that Steve Jobs may need a bit of media training after responding to a customer’s email regarding reception issues by saying “Just don’t hold it that way.” Should he have responded the way he did? Apple is seen as a worldwide innovator and yet their solution to the problem is somewhat pathetic…http://bit.ly/91jI22

4. Lastly, (in non-World Cup and iPhone news) a recent marketing research study reveals a few things about online advertisements that might not come as a huge surprise. Content being “targeted” in any intelligent manner gets a much higher response rate. Likewise, obtrusive ads that do crazy things such as make noise, play music, or roll over the page on a  mouse-over are also extremely effective. However, when an ad was both targeted and obtrusive… people get a bit creeped out and the ads effectiveness falls pretty dramatically. Why? Apparently it begins to call too much attention to the fact that big brother is watching. How do you feel about these types of ads? http://bit.ly/czKpsC

Introducing: KELLEN KNOWLES, Public Relations Intern

Life as an intern at Richter7 is nothing like what I had previously imagined.  It’s a fast paced and detail oriented industry.  The transition has been relatively speed bump free and I’m starting to find my niche.  This is largely due to the fantastic PR team at Richter7.  They’ve made me feel like a part of the team since day one.   I’m expected to contribute to projects and they value my input as well.

My days are filled with “real PR work.”  I’ve gained valuable hands-on experience over the past month, reaffirming why I chose PR as a career path.  One instance in particular was the June Dairy Month media tour.  I accompanied Amanda Sanchez and the Utah Dairy Ambassadors to several radio morning shows, followed by an appearance on KSL Studio 5.  Later that day, we made a visit to Shriners Hospital to distribute ice cream to patients and staff.  The hospital visit is by far the highlight of the summer thus far.  It was a great experience to take a few hours and brighten the days of those who are living with unfortunate health restrictions.

One thing I have come to appreciate is the diversity in my daily work.  I’m never doing the same thing two days in a row.  I am able to work out of the office, as with the dairy tour, or combine heads with talented individuals to better serve our clients at Richter7 headquarters.  I look forward to many more opportunities like these before my internship comes to a close.

• A Nielsen report says that 21 percent of wireless users in the US had a smartphone at the beginning of 2010, up from 14 percent at the beginning  of 2009. “Smartphones are expected to overtake feature phones in the US by early 2011.”

• There is now an estimated 45 million total smartphone users active in the US, with an overall mobile phone subscribership of 235 million.

• Browsers were used by 28.6 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers.

• Forrester Research found that 17 percent of US adults used smartphones by the end of 2009, up from 11 percent in 2008 and 7 percent in 2007.

• The average number of applications installed on smartphones is 22, while feature phones have about 10. When broken down by OS, iPhone users had the most apps (37), followed by Android (22). BlackBerry users had an average of 10 apps, tying that OS with your average feature phone user.

• Facebook is the app most popular with American smartphone owners, followed by Google Maps and Weather applications.

• 30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009. Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage. Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112%. It’s important to note that these figures are just from mobile browser statistics — they don’t even take into account the use of mobile applications for Twitter or Facebook.

• 40 percent of smartphone users spend at least one hour a day using apps on their phone. And they don’t seem to mind ads in their apps: 76 percent would rather use a free app with advertising than pay for an ad-free version.

• 53 percent of users are happy to share their current location in exchange for relevant advertising, and 84 percent would be more likely to engage with an ad relevant to their current location.

• Mobile web access increased 36% among US broadband internet users during 2009.