Altyrian View

The latest trends on podcast listeners, more debate on the Nikon blogger campaign, the NCAA rules on blogging during sporting events, ghost blogging and an interview with C. C. Chapman about Crayon and Coke in Second Life.

As always, we want your feedback. You can send audio comments or email comments to our feedback email.

A little off topic, but I thought you would want to know that Apple has released it’s version of the Web browser for use on Windows. While I haven’t tested it on a Windows machine, early reports say that it’s really fast.

More information is available from the Apple Web site. Be sure to watch the demo.

Sometimes lawyers need to give way to good common sense. I just bought a Nintendo Wii for the kids (forget that I now have more games for me than “kids” games). It’s amazingly fun. As you will recall, there was some bad press a while back from some people who were accidentally letting go of the controller (called a “remote”) during gameplay and throwing it through the TV. There is even a Web site that chronicles the damage.

Now we have yet to cause any damage from tossing our remote, but it’s clear that Nintendo is taking this very seriously. Every singe time you start a game, you have to acknowledge a warning to put on the supplied wrist strap. To me, it’s annoying to have to view this screen every single time that I play. While annoying, I get over it. What takes the cake is that yesterday I get an email from my good buddies at Nintendo. Instead of exciting news about new Wii games, I get a reminder to wear the wrist strap.

Nintendo, we got it. Now let me the kids play.

What do you call advertising that doesn’t work? Award winning.

That’s my beef with most advertising / PR awards. The judges look at the beauty and not the effectiveness. Fortunately, that’s not the case with the Effie Awards. From the release: “The Effie Awards honor the most significant achievement in the business of marketing communications: ideas that work.”

This year Apple won with their “Get a Mac” campaign (”Hi, I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC”). Not only was the concept cool, but it really worked. Again from the release: “Results from the “Get a Mac” campaign included market share growth of 42%, record sales and cultural influence.”

In honor of their victory, I’m going to camp outside of the local AT&T / Cingular store on July 28 to purchase an iPhone.

Zetlady Isbell, the organizer for the SL Business Communicators group, has announced the the next meeting will be on Weather Island and will feature Lawrence Pede, Senior Manager, Corporate Development for The Weather Channel Companies. I really enjoy hearing what companies are hoping to accomplish in Second Life.

If you haven’t been to one of the SL Business Communicators meetings, this would probably be a cool one to check out.

The ghost blogging debate rages on, this time with a blog post from Shel Holtz. I really like Shel and his work (FIR is a great podcast), and he is certainly a leader in social media as it applies to public relations. Although he concedes points from the other side, Shel has decided that ghost blogging is not appropriate.

I, too, see the arguments from both camps, but I think that there is more to the debate. As we always should, let’s look at it from the point of view of the consumer.

Blogging takes time. To blog well, it takes lots of time. Not only are you posting on your blog, but you should be involved in the industry debates that appear on other blogs. So the choice becomes blog using a ghost blogger or don’t blog at all.

As humans, we desire communication. We need to hear from CEOs of the companies that we follow. If the option is a ghost blog that contains that CEO’s thoughts and messages or no blog at all, I want the ghost blog. Unfortunately, the ghost blog debate has assumed that the CEO has a choice in whether to blog or not. In many cases, the blog is desired - or even demanded - by a company’s many constituents. Again, people desire information, and a blog from the CEO gives them that information.

Sure, we could debate that someone else in the company could blog using his / her own name, but as PR people, we know the weight that the CEO title carries. That cannot be duplicated.

Obviously, at the end of the day, we all want our CEOs to blog for themselves. In practice, however, our need for information is more important. Our job as PR people is to provide information for our publics, and if ghost blogging is required to provide that information, it should be done.

Just read an interesting article on Bulldog’s Daily Dog by David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.” David gives us a few pointers in blogger relations:

Invite an influential blogger or two onto your board of advisors.
Provide smart bloggers with trial or pre-release versions of your product or service.
Ask a blogger to provide a quote for your next press release.
Organize a meeting for bloggers in your industry to meet with your CEO or other executives to discuss industry issues.
When a blogger is helpful to you, provide them with the recognition they crave.
Link to influential blogs in your space in your online media room.
Take a blogger to lunch.

Good points, but I really wanted to address a comment posted by a reader:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but substitute the word “journalist” or “editor” for “blogger” in these bullets of advice, and don’t you get (with one notable exception) something that strongly resembles plain ol’ PR?

That is absolutely right, but the tone of those meetings / invitations / lunches is completely different. BLOGGERS ARE NOT JOURNALISTS. Bloggers have a power that GOOD journalists hide: their opinion. This is what makes a blogger different from a journalist. Every blogger wants to be a thought leader, an industry expert, a public figure in their industry. A good journalist reports the news, not his or her opinions. A good journalists remains objective and follows good journalism practices (confirming sources, etc.). We all hope bloggers follow the same integrity standards, but they do not have to.

The best way to reach out to bloggers is to approach them as they desire to be viewed: as thought leaders, industry experts, public figures, etc. Frankly, you aren’t looking for a blog post from a blogger, you are looking for an opinion (usually a favorable one). I’m not advocating doing anything that violates public relations ethics standards, but I am saying that putting bloggers in the “journalism” box is lazy. They have to be approached differently. Put simply, with journalists, you tell your story; with bloggers, you ask what they think about it.

Today, we are going to do an experiment that those of you with a DVR can do at home. This experiment will prove my point. More on that in a minute…

In case you haven’t heard, the ad agency world is all abuzz about the death of television advertising. With the DVR, people can *gasp* fast forward through commercials. Yesterday I had a meeting with a newspaper advertising sales rep who gleefully proclaimed that TV advertising was going downhill because of DVRs (yes, I did note the irony).

Well, folks, you heard it here first: The DVR is the best thing to happen to television advertising. Now for our little experiment. You’ll need a DVR and a friend.

Step 1: Watch “live” TV with your friend. Watch her during commercials. What is she looking at? Where is she going? In my tests, commercial break was for a quick trip to the bathroom, a little channel surfing, a quick look at the digital TV guide to choose the next program and maybe even a little conversation with me. Don’t get me wrong, the commercials were not ignored, they just weren’t the center of attention.

Step 2: Observe the same person watching a recorded program. Watch what happens when they fast forward through the commercials. THEY ARE LOOKING DIRECTLY AT THE TELEVISION! THE COMMERCIAL IS THE CENTER OF ATTENTION! Yes, the ad is the star! Sure, they don’t necessarily hear the ad, but for good television advertising, something can be gained through the visuals alone. Need proof? Ask your friend who is on the Late Show. Ask about the specials that Sprint is running. Yes, advertisers, DVR viewers are getting the message.

Bonus research: When observing your friend watching recorded TV, see what she does when she needs to leave the room for a snack or to go to the bathroom. She does not leave the TV running. She pauses her recorded show. Yup, and when she returns, she fast-forwards through the commercial break. Those lost eyeballs have been found through the beauty of the DVR!

Ok, I admit, not every ad is effective when being viewed at 4x speed. What do we need to do? First, remember the first lesson of advertising school: TV ads have to be effective even with no sound. Try it out. Do your ads get any message to the audience when there is no sound? If not, you don’t have an effective “DVR” ad, and many would argue that you don’t have an effective ad during “normal” viewing – TV is a visual medium, right?

The other important component is repetition. For an ad to be effective, it has to run more than once. That’s true with any television advertising (or just about any media), but it’s even more important in the DVR age. Make sure people see your brand multiple times. That makes any advertising more effective.

Lastly, make your television advertising good. It has become too easy to produce a :30 spot. Too many people are putting out bad advertising. Fortunately, the DVR will put the squeeze on them. By a show of hands, how many of you have actually stopped the fast forward to watch a television commercial that appeals to you? Yup, the “average” person does that too.