July 7, 2010

Marketing with Conflict

If you are an intelligent person you hate Associated Press. I’m all for referencing content and paying for fair use but their rules for bloggers are just a little extreme. That’s why I feel in love with Woot all over again when they called out Associated Press for using Woot content and calculated money owing using AP’s own rules. I could rant forever on AP but felt it an opportune time to cover something else.

Marketing with Conflict

A simple concept, the beauty lies in execution. Yet when done right it works perfectly. I doubt anybody honestly thinks Woot is trying to collect their $17.50 yet the media coverage is invaluable. They even got on TechCrunch and I’m certain their daily sales skyrocketed.

Marketing with conflict (I’m sure there is a far more academic name for it) is simply where you not only call out a competitor for inferior service, misleading information, lying or a change of course. For consumer it’s not only great fun to watch giants go at it but a good conflict represents problems customers have likely been dealing with for some time. You are championing your target markets attitudes, feelings & grievances and supporting their ongoing conflict with other foes.

This is not a new concept. Michael O’Leary of RyanAir, one of the largest airlines in the world, is frequently constructing stunts to get his name covered. Air Lufthansa offered Gray Powell free flights to Germany to enjoy that famous German Beer after losing the iPhone 4 prototype in a bar. In the case of Woot, calling AP out made the tech press go gaga.

I only wish more companies would do this. When used properly conflict can mobilize audiences for you, get major press coverage and boost your sales. The risk is you look nasty, petty or unprofessional.

How do you balance this? Some rules:

  1. Decide what you want (press coverage, sales)
  2. Align with their position (i.e. TechCrunch are known to hate Associated Press)
  3. Don’t pick on anybody personally unless they are known to exploit your audience
  4. Tie to current events
  5. Don’t get too consistent or you will appear over-aggressive
  6. Keep it fun (notice how every example I provided was not downright nasty yet still a call out?)

Off topic: If you are interested in more info on the Woot call out, both TechCrunch and Woot received not so nice e-mails from the Director of Media Relations who somehow tied their payment policies to the Gulf Oil spill. Hmph.

April 26, 2010

PR Nightmares: Handle them Quick & Dirty

While this post has been inspired by Blippy most firms, at some point, are going to face a lashing from the media. It’s important to note that the most covered PR Nightmares are not necessarily the worst. Instead, I see the biggest disasters being when the message is in heavy rotation to your target publics; AND stops them from buying. Three local news articles can certainly be far worse and damaging than ten national articles.

So, you are getting slammed? Before you do anything calm yourself down, grab a pen, a piece of paper and jot down the following:

Overview: What has just happened? In the case of Blippy, it was accused that users credit card numbers were publically available on Google. There was a widespread reporting of this on influential technology news websites.

Who are your Target Publics: It is important to define your separate audience. Be sure to define between those who are just reading negative coverage and those who are not buying because of it. Rank them by importance. In the case of Blippy there may be users who had their card exposed, normal users, readers of news site X, readers of news site X who did not join, users who closed their accounts.

What channels are they using? Where is the PR disaster happening? Online? In a newspaper (which ones)? Twitter? It is important to define this for each target public!

Key Message: If you can communicate just one thing to each public, what? In the case of Blippy members it was ensuring that the security holes were being plugged.

Strategies & Tactics: Strategies broadly define how you intend to fix the problem and tactics are how you enact this (hint: use the publics, channels and messages you have already come up with). Try to cover every target public here. For example, Strategy: Ensure consumers that Blippy is tight on security , Tactics: Write a blog easing security concerns, contact effected users, etc.

Hopefully sitting back for five minutes will give you a sense of clarity, calm and a sense of how to move forward. It may sound simple but when we get angry or emotional it’s not uncommon to say silly things that we regret / that hurt you and your business in the long run.