‘Feed’ the media

There aren’t many local companies who recognize the value of infiltrating certain pockets of people and communities online. A few years back when you invited ‘media’ to a function either you, or your PR company, looked up the relevant industry contacts from TV, radio and print and invited them.

These days the picture is quite different, I often discuss the concept of ‘who is the media?’. Consider that most bloggers, social networking ‘heavyweights, forum leaders, industry opinion leaders and online loudmouths have an instant, accessible soapbox from which to scorn or praise. Any smart marketer or PR person then realizes that these people sometimes need to be included as part of the ‘media’.

Over the past few weeks the Southern Sun group has been investigating and getting involved with social media and chatting to various people in the space in order to know more. They appreciate the value that online ‘Word of Mouth’ can add to their brand and have been careful to explore the new media space with smarts and strategy.

I recently spent some time chatting to Alison Mills who is Southern Sun Manager: eCommerce and MIS. I tried to give her some insight into what is happening in the social media space and we discussed some thought starters on how the Southern Sun group could start to integrate this ’stuff’ into their existing marketing campaigns.

I guess I must have said something right as a week later I received an invitation to a dinner to celebrate Southern Sun’s 40 years in food and hospitality. So, together with a few other far more important experienced food and travel journalists, I enjoyed an exclusive meal served by the some of the group’s executive chefs at the restaurant at the Sun Square, Montecasino.

Priya Naidoo, General manager Southern Sun communications kicked off the evening by showing a video of the groups major TV commercials from the 70s 80s 90s and 00s – iconic ads that stirred up memories and made me think we really should have more dancing in today’s TV ads Everyone was so happy and choreographed in the 70s and 80s, I miss that…

The obvious focus of the evening was the food. The four course menu celebrated food through the decades. Iconic dishes like prawn and Avo ritz, banana split, beef wellington were remixed and personally introduced by the exec chef responsible. It was exquisite, we enjoyed fantastic, delicious food and the perfectly matched wines; as a bonus the four different decades on a dessert plate was chocolate heaven!

We were treated like media royalty, it was a really special event I’ll always remember and have chatted about a lot since. But naturally I’m not an expert foodie journalist so I’ll leave the real food reviews and wine pairing details to the real journos I met.

Thank you to Southern Sun for having me – I’m definitely watching and listening to your online conversations and lusting after time to take advantage of your killer 40th BDay SunBreak specials.

Follow Southern Sun on twitter here @SouthernSunNews or on Facebook

Media Alerts: relevant content assists journalists and PRs

I’m pretty passionate about making the lives of the media and PR professionals / agencies easier. In SA I think most of us (whether you’re in PR, marketing or sales) make it very difficult for the media (or other interested stakeholders) to have quick access to pre-approved, quality content. All the emails that fly backwards and forwards at the last minute clog up the lines of communication and cause a great deal of confusion and leave too much room for error.

I’ve been working on some solutions to perhaps ease this stress, so when Encyclomedia launched an added-value service called Media Alerts in May I was naturally keen to see what it was all about.

Media Alerts is a free tool to help journalists, producers and bloggers source content for the stories they’re working on. You either sign up as a PR or Journalist. I signed up with a PR account to check out how the service works.

A daily email is delivered to me with very specific requests from Journalists in different sectors / beats. This means that hopefully only the right content is fed through to busy journalists. Obviously when I refer to ‘journalists’ this could also apply to specific industry bloggers also, it’s the whole ‘Who is the media’ debate. I’ve also been able to pass on hot, relevant leads as a favour to the other PR and marketing professionals I know.

The key to Media Alerts’ success is ‘Relevant content only.’ PR subscribers have been given one rule – to only ever send content that is directly relevant to the journalist’s request. Any abuse of this rule will see them being removed from the service. This keeps it professional and effective.

I rate this service highly, it’s simple, uncluttered and accurate – if you’re a journalist, blogger, marketer, small company owner (looking to secure niche publicity opportunities) or PR professional I’d recommend you sign up.

Journalists can submit requests here and PR practitioners can subscribe here. It’s an added-value Encyclomedia service, so there’s no charge for either side.

For more information have a look at www.mediaalerts.co.za.

Show us your Makhulu

If you feel like you have anything that resembles a t-shirt design inside your busy head then you need to get it entered in the Makhulu Polane t-shirt design comp. Pronto!

This annual initiative from Big Blue is targeted at anyone and everyone – graphic designers, fashionistas, daydreamers, students, illustrators and frustrated corporate workers who dream of design fame and winning the Makhulu Polane title.

Big Blue’s annual Makhulu Polane t-shirt design competition is open for entries until 15 Sep 09. This year’s design theme is ‘Love-Africa’ – Big Blue is looking for designs that creatively celebrate Africa as a continent.

The winning designer receives R20 000 (nothing to scoff at) in cash and their t-shirt will be sold in all Big Blue and Kitsch+Kool stores nationwide for two months.

T-shirt designs do not need to be digitally created but they must be submitted via the Big Blue website www.bigblue.co.za, hand drawn illustrations can be scanned and uploaded.

Show us your Makhulu Polane and we’ll make you famous!

Disclaimer: I’ve been involved with this campaign since 2005….but how can I not be – it’s cool

Fab Friday Finds – Cool links

Ok I’ve been slack – I’ve been tweeting a lot – I have no excuses.

Here’s a list of cool stuff I’ve found online recently.

DustyTunes – Very simple and oddly satisfying, you upload the xml file of your iTunes library and then it displays your library as a cataloged list online. Here’s my personal iTunes library.

Songza -  – really simple and basic music search engine. Sources tunes from all over so it spits out a lot of results that you can listen on the spot.

BugMeNot - I just want to read the article, I don’t want to register. Use BugMeNot to bypass those password protected sites that you sometimes encounter when you’re researching.

Zinepal – Free ebook creator that lets you make your own PDF magazines and ebooks using web content (Atom/RSS feeds and websites) of your choice. I reckon with a bit of effort you could produce something impressive.

And just because we all need to a good laugh:

Awkward Family Photos

My Life is Average

Engaging with key online communities

I did a presentation today at the Social Media for Marketing conference run by Classic Events at The Wanderers Club (which is looking superb by the way – very cool venue.)

I chatted about Social Media and focused on some tips that I’ve found to be effective when finding, engaging with and managing online communities around your brand. Here’s the preso – as always, comments and questions are welcome

I think Classic Events are going to be putting up all the presentations here at some stage.

Search for N

The Nokia N97 is probably one of the most anticipated handsets of the year….I know I’ve been drooling over the online demos and pictures for sometime now.

Paul Jacobson, Chris (iMod), Simon Dingle and Nafisa are partners in the ‘Search for N’ competition – clues will be given each day and each of the bloggers has THREE gorgeous Nokia N97’s to give away. The competition kicks off at 1pm today… it’s nice to see Nokia choosing to launch new handsets via a captive online market.

Paul gave me the heads up on this first so check out his first post for more details.

Soles and Stripes

I’m working with some agencies on a project with adidas – to support their adidas Originals campaign; ‘60 years of soles and stripes.’ adidas is obviously an iconic, recognisable brand with a large troop of followers, so the idea is to support the offline adidas Originals 60 years of soles and stripes campaign by adding lifestyle commentary that celebrates history and builds an online community.

As the main dynamic online point of contact we’ve started the ‘Soles and Stripes’ blog. Our 3 stripe slave author adigurl writes about art, culture, fashion and entertainment happenings over the past 60 years – and her witty commentary is proving to be pretty popular.

The brand thinking is to not just provide constant product info but rather to use the blog as a springboard off which to underpin the adidas brand and lifestyle and manage the adidas fanbase. The blog also obviously features the main adidas house party competition and is linked to the main campaign website which is supported by the Facebook and Flickr platforms.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

A few, quick moans….

(This post is not as intriguing as the title may suggest.)

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that people are getting involved in social media marketing.

BUT….make it part of your strategy, have a plan, make it your business to KNOW the channels, KNOW the key customers / opinion leaders.

In my opinion it is not a nice-to-have add-on because the boss thought it would be cool “just do something on Facebook”

- A Facebook page does NOT equal a social media strategy – if you build it they will NOT come.
- Get involved, take the time.
- DO NOT force stuff down people’s throats you end up diluting your brand message…..balance is key.
- Broaden your online footprint using specific pre-defined channels.
- If your content is good and well focused it will travel…..travelling content is the key to a good online / social media strategy.

• exhale* ok that’s it…..

Heavy Chef – Jozi

I chatted to a couple of PR, marketing and online industry people last night at the Heavy Chef session in Johannesburg. Thanks so much to Fred and Louis for the invitation – hopefully I managed to impart some small bits of social media wisdom or at least share my experiences.

Thanks to Lisa Clark from Sentient Communications we were also prompted to have an interesting debate about traditional PR measurement vs the new Social Media ‘measurement’ theories of community building and customer connections. It’s a topic that will be discussed for a long time to come I’m sure.

If you want to be informed about upcoming Heavy Chef events then email heavychef AT worldwidecreative.co.za to get on the mailing list.

The presentation I gave is below.

Can you see the light? Is branding a religion?

The second part of my article on the correlations between religion and branding is up on Bizcommunity.

The articles were as a result of Martin Lindstrom’s Buy-ology seminar I attended in Johannesburg.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.