Indeed, it works out at $110 per new ‘like’ – around £70 in UK money. That seems an awful lot to persuade someone to approve of your page – someone who might never engage with your brand on Facebook again. Thankfully, not all friends are so expensive.
Compare that to a recent PR campaign that I ran at my agency for a (to remain nameless) client, a major UK retailer. In only a few days we added around 2,500 new ‘likes’ for no more than £1 per ‘like’. Advertising around this campaign was far more modest than the Ford campaign, and actually more efficient – but still more than double the cost of the PR element.
One of the keys to the success was our grasp of storytelling, and our ability to integrate it with traditional PR, and Twitter. It was this element that ramped up the likes and delivered an audience interested in hearing more from the brand – and crucially, being more open to buying from it.
Warning - Facebook friends might cost more than a celebrity rider
Many people ask me how much they need to spend to reach a certain threshold of ‘likes’. Almost all of them would baulk at Ford’s figures. What do you think? Should Ford get better value for money? Do you think PR is an effective way to drive Facebook ‘likes’? What are the most effective ways of driving thumbs up for brand pages? What’s more important – ‘likes’ or engagement?
Filed under: advertising, campaign, consumer, economics, Facebook, PR, public relations, Social culture | Leave a Comment
Tags: campaign, facebook, likes, PR, public relations, ROI, social media
He’s known for publicly insulting the biggest names in Hollywood, for his record breaking podcasts, and for hit TV series including the Office – Ricky Gervais’ star continues to ascend. Now, amazingly, he’s here to offer his tips on creativity, social media and how to handle interviews with journalists.
In his essay in this month’s Wired, Gervais makes essential reading for PRs and, indeed, anyone involved in media relations, social media, and the wider creative market.
In it, the British funny man does an amazing u-turn on Twitter, describes his aggressive media interview technique, and offers his ideas on how to, uh, get better ideas.
I’ve extracted Gervais’ top tips on creativity for this post because, well, they’re good. Check em.
1. You’ve either got it or you don’t
Sorry folks, but the comedy writer and performer writes that “Scientific studies of creativity have basically concluded that it can’t be taught, as it is a “facility” rather than a learned skill.” Some will say that this makes a good case for separate creative teams in agencies, others will disagree. I’ll leave it to you to decide. However, it kind of follows that, if you believe science, then you believe that there are people in your company who are creative and those who aren’t. Learn who’s who and capitalise on their unique ‘facilities’.
2. Be playful
Ricky writes that “creativity is the ability to play – (and) to be able to turn that facility on and off when necessary.” If you’re not uninhibitedly playful, you’ll struggle to get in touch with your creative side. If you’re in an office environment, learn to understand why you’re creative people might not be poker face serious all the time, and why their playful nature could be one of your company’s biggest assets. Give them room – and appropriate work spaces – to be playful and create.
3. Make mistakes – and learn which ones to keep.
There’s a quote in the essay from Scott Adams, who said said, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Unless you play around, experiment and are ready to embrace failure, you cannot be creative. In prop maker Artem’s workshop, the company’s creative mantra is displayed on a placard: “Be ambitious fools.” Shooting for the stars whilst enjoying falls in the mud along the way is key to unlocking more ideas. Never put a creative on the spot and expect a Eureka moment there and then – appreciate that the good ones will be generative when they need to be, as well as selective. Both parts are equally important.
4. Be childlike
Gervais quotes one of my favourite Pablo Picasso lines: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Being childlike, feeling possessed by your fascination, as children do, embracing new concepts and being open and prepared to learn intensifies your creative expression. So give creative employees rusks and let them wear romper suits. Have Teletubbies on 24/7, yo. Maybe not – but in the grown up world of business, understand those with the ability to access and channel their inner child could make you shed loads of money. Attempting to ossify that quality into hard-nosed business could limit your company’s creative output. Learn how to manage it.
5. Stay true to your character, not your reputation
Never be worried by who other people think you are – as Gervais says, ”Character is who you really are. Only close friends really know you and that’s all that counts in the end.” Ok, if you’re a PR company making branded stories instead of art, you’re possibly highly sensitive to reputation matters. Deal with this by separating your creatives from your brand champions and audience connectors (media relations team, social media community moderators). That way, the creators can create and the connectors can connect for instance.
Cheers Ricky. Sure you didn’t intend this for PRtists but the tips seem applicable to anyone who creates something.
Filed under: celebrity, Creativity, PR | 1 Comment
Tags: agency, Creativity, PR, ricky gervais, social media, Twitter, wired
Why ‘boring’ sells
Being interesting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – boring sells funnier.
If you’re familiar with Kevin Beresford’s crushingly dull yet brilliantly obsessive top-selling books and calendars about British roundabouts, or the AA’s ‘Britain’s Best Car Parks’ (Red, with Kevin Beresford), then you’ll probably already know that boring can sell.
Though watching paint dry hasn’t made the front cover of a national yet (fancy a challenge?), a contest for a ‘Fence of the year’ as scooped a full page in today’s Sun (see attached). And with a quote, key messages and a call to action (email address/web link) included, it’s a PR coup from heaven for the small price of a hellishly cringe-inducing headline.
No of-fence, but this is really boring
It doesn’t look like the PR team pitched the story as ‘boring’ though – the client quote is too sober and suggests the brand hasn’t quite embrace its inner dullard. So it’s probably just a ‘happy’ accident.
Yet, you can often design this stuff – by being knowingly pedantic. Or at least using a little self-deprecating honesty.
Writer Joe Moran has been celebrating the everyday for years – why not check his blog out for inspiration on how to find fascination in the run of the mill.
How you sell boring to a client is another matter entirely. But if you can convince your client to man-hug the mundane, you might well captivate their target audience with a dull topic in a flashy red top just like the Fence Competition brand did.
By Scot Devine
Filed under: marketing, PR, public relations, scot devine, work | Leave a Comment
Tags: boring, PR, PR tropes, public relations, scot devine, tabloid, the sun
8 Heroes of the London Riots
The Blitz had bulldog Winston Churchill, and 7/11 New York had the willful Mayor Giuliani, and London post-riots has…well who does it have?
As I changed my son’s nappy after we woke up this morning, London was bloodied, looted and smouldering. Shockingly, our Prime Minister was yet to make an appearance, our mayor was still on holiday, our police chiefs (COBRA) hadn’t met yet, and the ruined, terrified city looked naked and leaderless. My three month old merely looked naked and innocent, but strangely as likely as anyone to lead the city’s recovery at that point.
Then something wonderful happened. Whilst the politicians wrung their hands in the shadows, no one person emerged to rally us. So we all decided to do it ourselves.
Heroes emerged from the ruins, both individuals and entire communities. And it looks like they, not David Cameron or Boris Johnson, who’ll help fix London.
Here are some of the ones who have inspired me over the last sad, scary and uncertain 24 hours. There are countless more – if you would like to suggest them, I’d love to hear about them. Hell, we could all use a little pepping up with positive stories right now.
8. The people of London. What’s more beautiful than the sight of hundreds of brooms held aloft to clean up riot zones? The fact that it’s ordinary Londoners volunteering to clean up their neigbourhoods. Sometime after midnight (I think…hazy memory), someone suggested on Twitter to clean-up the mess. With the country’s leaders well and truly at sea (or just sunbathing by it), normal people just stepped up to the plate to help straighten London out. It’s awesome and shows that together we can regain control.
And what of tonight? What do we do? How do we stand up to the inevitable onslaught? How do we cope with the aftermath?
Filed under: Around London, Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: heroes, heroism, London, londonriots
What’s your shopping high score?
More and more clients are asking us to advise them on the hot ‘gamification’ trend that’s currently firing the imaginations of business innovators. One of the areas we’re looking at is how to promote social shopping, or the gamification of retail. We’re not the only ones thinking about it of course – as these cool ‘shopped pics show how the regular supermarket sweep could be turned into an addictive game.
By Scot Devine
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Tags: gamification, PR, retail, scot devine, shopping, social media, social shopping
1. Guide the investment conversation
Investors love talking up social gaming, and with the revenues delivered by the likes of Zynga, not to mention the growth in virtual goods (currently worth $1.9bn), it makes for drool-inducing speculation.
With more users than its nearest 9 competitors combined, Zynga is the hot company. However, its dependence on Facebook worries some potential investors. And there are fears over a social gaming bubble to boot. Neither Zynga’s leadership nor the fears of a bubble bursting should inhibit upstarts and challenger brands alike from leading the conversation, however.
Shrewd players will run effective thought leadership campaigns. The multi-platform opportunity (mobile, iPad, iPhone, Android, PC etc) is an interesting topic in particular. Being opinionated & visionary on this subject alone can lead to some great interviews and savvy presentations can make you a hit on the speaker circuit can speaker circuit.
Bold, insightful and well-placed opinion articles can also wield influence, as are bloggable and tweetable insights into the workings of the industry and market trends. Infographic designers eat your hearts out. When there’s an appetite for information in a nascent industry, PRs can help increase your share of voice in the conversation to get you noticed with investors.
2. Leverage the gamification trend with mainstream brands
Bigger trend at play – ‘gamification’ is entering every aspect of our lives (from to do lists to recycling). Brands like Volvo, for instance are tapping into gaming; so PR can help drive leads to developers from brands who are game.
3. Promote your Facebook relationship – or better still, don’t
Let’s face it, Facebook marketing is still a hot media topic – and 50% of its users log in specifically to play games. If you have an amazing presence on Zuckerberg’s site, leverage it. After all, it’s an amazing cross-marketing platform. If you don’t, there’s a massive upside: there’s an entire universe of other platforms and networks out there.
Most games acquire users virally anyway (invite a friend incentives), and success stories like World of Warcraft became its own, hugely successful social network without Facebook. And with news of Zuck’s baby’s growth slowing, not to mention a new generation of gamers growing up in other environments (e.g. Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters), the future of social networking is by no means as predictable as, say, Zynga would like.
So, there’s good reason to talk about your own platform as well as all the others (Chrome, Android, I0S), devices including iPad and iPhone, not to mention the multitude of mobile networks and other global third party social networks (including gaming portals).
by Flickr user Kaeru
4. Forget global networks for a minute – unleash the power of local third party networks
There’s a wealth of local third party networks, e.g. Skyrock in France has over 20m users, Tuenti in Spain has 16m+, whilst StudiVZ in Germany has more than 13m users. Sure, they have lost some ground to Facebook, but they still offer a massive number of consumers to target. This is a business story that is begging to be told – and an alternative consumer audience available to engage with.
5. Clean up reputations soiled by corporate mud-slinging
Simply type ‘social gaming litigation’ into Google and you’ll see the reputation management issues that are helping to define the industry. And you thought the intellectual property scandal at the heart of The Social Network movie was a big deal? Litigation and counter-litigation over code and concept theft is daily bread to journalists covering the social gaming industry. If ever there was a job for a savvy reputation management flack over who invented Farmville et al, it’s in social gaming.
6. Engage brands, retailers and advertisers
20% of social gamers have spent money within a game (reference missing) and, more interestingly, the market (virtual goods and in-game advertising) is expected to be worth $5bn by 2015. Merchants are looking to sell virtual goods, advertisers want to buy space in-game, and brands want to create virtual games – so there’s a massive opportunity to use PR to drive leads. H&M successfully sold virtual clothing, for instance, in game – so using PR to make your particular social game attractive to merchants, brands and advertisers.
7. Bring the virtual world into the real world
Users flock to social gaming thanks to advertising and viral mechanics. Game producers cross-sell their other titles in-game, and persuade players to invite their friends to gain more vital game energy as well as currency. If you have Facebook sewn up, Zynga style, then acquiring more gamers for new titles is easy and cheap. For competitors, particularly start-ups nervously building MAUs and DAUs, however, acquiring new users on Facebook can be difficult and expensive (CPA was $0.10 and is now $1). Marketing on other platforms can be even costlier. A great PR and social media campaign, however, can help.
Particularly with a strong offline execution. Angry Birds has become a pop culture icon to create more touch points (retail) and revenue streams (merchandise, e.g. plushes). Social games aimed at younger audiences (Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters) have also done this successfully. Farmville has gone pop culture but not of its own volition – the National Trust has created a Farmville-inspired real world campaign where 10,000 ‘players’ get to run a real life farm. Farmville could have done this itself to generate amazing consumer PR for the game as well as the parent brand, to drive lapsed and new users – and attract merchants and advertisers at the same time. It’s only a matter of time before other social games want to make the leap into the real world – and PR can definitely help with that.
Filed under: consumer, Facebook, Ideas, internet, PR, public relations, scot devine, viral marketing, work | 2 Comments
Tags: PR, reputation management, social gaming, social media, vc
Must-read stuff – Ofcom’s 2010 communcations market report.
The UK and Spain lead the way on digital TV take-up (91 per cent of homes)The UK had the second highest number of homes with pay TV DVRs (such as Sky+ and V+) at the end of 2009 with 7.8 million devices, up by 40 per cent on 2008.Although the UK leads the world in the take-up of HD ready TV sets (59 per cent of households), take-up of HDTV services is lower than in other countries where more high definition channels are available.Just under a quarter of UK consumers (24 per cent) watch TV on the internet each week more than in any other country surveyed. People in the USA were the second most likely to watch TV on the internet (22 per cent) on a weekly basis.US TV viewers watched more TV than
via Ofcom | The Communications Market Report: International.
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Tags: communciations, digital, PR, scotdevine, tv
