Drew Crowson

I have recently finished reading David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. I found it to be a compelling argument for how PR will be changing in the next few years. I think he presents several good points that need to be taken into account.

First, blogging is a good thing. Your company can benefit by blogging and by allowing your employees to blog. It is going to be the company that understands and utilizes the blogosphere best that succeeds the most. Blogging presents a great opportunity to got your ideas seen.

Social media is the way of the future. Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace have changes the way business is done. They have shown that people are willing to connect to other people and to put information about themselves online for the world to see.

The internet is at the heart of his message. He shows how companies can use the internet to better themselves and tap into their consumers. The line between marketing and PR is becoming blurred more and more each day. Scott describes how to utilized that blurred line and make your company stronger.

Some people in today’s blog-saturated society view those that write in the blogosphere as “pajama-journalists” or people who are not apt enough to get real journalistic jobs so they just write about whatever they want while wearing their PJ’s and sipping macchiatos.

Actually, many bloggers follow a set of ethical guidelines. In his book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David Meerman Scott offers up his list of ethical guidelines to consider when blogging or letting employees blog.

Transparency, privacy, disclosure, truthfulness and credit are the ideas that he encourages. These are all important ideals, but the most important ones to me are transparency and truthfulness. I feel that it is too easy to hide behind a computer screen and attack people.

We have all been victims of people saying nonsense about us behind the comfort of a screen name or blog. It is garbage. People should tell the truth on the internet if they are trying to act like reliable sources of information. Also, people should have to say who they are so that their credibility can be built by their willingness to stand by what they wrote. If that would happen, the world would be better. Since there are so many good bloggers out there that follow the basic rules of society, I think that blogging has a nice future ahead of it.

In the words of George Costanza “We are living in a society!” There are things that go along with that, including basic ethical concepts like transparency and truthfulness. I think that Scott shows how blogging can be a good thing when those concepts are adhered to.

In David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, he talks about creating buyer personas to help a company understand who they are targeting to. I agree with most of what Scott has to say on this topic, as I have had experience doing this myself. When I worked for a High School Footbal All-Star game in San Antonio, we developed a buyer persona to help us understand who we were trying to get to come see the game.

If you can visualize an individual to market to, it will help you market to an entire demographic. I suggest giving him/her a name and a backstory to flesh-out the character of the individual. How much money does he make? What does he spend it on? These are important questions to answer when a buyer persona is made.

For instance, if you are selling coffee in a college town, who is your buyer persona? Probably college students who will be up late at night drinking their coffee instead of businessmen up early on their way to work. So Sally will want the coffee shop open late and she will want it to be a place she can study and that boys will take her on dates. This buyer persona would help start the process of fleshing out a real persona to aid in marketing.

Social networking sites like myspace.com and facebook.com are growing so fast that it is hard to keep track of how many users there actually are. All of my friends but one are memebers of facebook, and the one that isn’t gets ostracized daily because of it.  Facebook has become an online hangout for college students and grown-ups alike. The trick for marketers and PR professionals is how to market these social networking sites.

David Meerman Scott discusses this in his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. He gives a list of important ideas to get the most out of using social networking sites for marketing. To me, the most important idea that he puts forward is that companies who want to effectively market social networking sites need to participate.

Participation in the social marketplace is wildly more effective than just running banner ads on the sidebars of the website. Having a myspace page for you company or a facebook group can make people see your company in a new, hipper light.

If a company can show that it is a leader in the online marketplace or that it has the guts to be a trailblazer and start something new, the 18-30 year-old demographic will follow. Participation simply lets the other members of the forum know that you are really serious about being a player on the social media scene. Even starting your own social networking-type site for your company, like Nike did with Joga.com, is another way to participate in the social networking world.

“If it ain’t broke…” you know the rest. That is the way that many people think about the old way of doing public relations. However, in today’s changing world, I think that it is time to rethink and redevelop the basic PR plan. David Meerman Scott discusses this very topic in chapter 10 of his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

The first thing he suggests to do is to not focus solely on your product, but to focus on the buyer. Why should the buyer buy your product over some other product? What do you offer him other than just a useful product?

Appeal to the buyer based upon his needs. Why do I need to spend five dollars on Sprinkles Cupcakes when I’m back in Dallas? They really aren’t that much better than any other cupcake, but I still love them. I love them because they are the trendiest baked good around right now. I admit it. I am a sucker for a trend.

What Sprinkles Cupcakes did was to make its product more about fulfilling the need to fit in more than the need to eat sweets. It is genius, and it is just the thing that Scott writes about. Show how your company fits a need that the buyer has, not how you make a good product.

In today’s online world of marketing and public relations, nothing offers instant gratification to a client like going viral. If a PR practitioner can get a client to go viral, it offers endless possibilities for the consumer. The problem with going viral is that it takes a ton of luck.

In David Meerman Scott’s book he gives the example of Mentos and Diet Coke going viral. Someone made a video that showed the chemical reaction that takes place when Mentos are put into two liter bottles of Diet Coke (you can see the video  here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hKoB0MHVBvM). The video took off and within weeks was one of the most viewed videos on the web.

Smartly, Mentos took this video and ran with it. They came up with a website that consumers could upload their own videos onto. It was a huge success for Mentos. The best part: It was basically free. Mentos didn’t even make the original video!

Therein lies the allure of going viral. Getting someone else to do your marketing for you and making it cool. Companies are now trying to copy this effect by doing it themselves. Burger King came out with a website a few years ago that had a chicken on it that you could command to do various things (subservientchicken.com). This was their attempt at going viral by themselves. The difference is that BK spent millions developing that marketing campaign and Mentos spent zilch.

All in all, Burger King and Mentos are great examples of what can happen when you get a  product to go viral. If the website has legs, the possibilities are endless.

Podcasting is literally revolutionizing the way people receive media. I subscribe to 5 podcasts whose subjects range from fashion to sports to spirituality. Many people subscribe to a great many more podcasts than that. According to David Meerman Scott, the influence of podcasting will only increase.

But Drew, How does that change the way PR will look?

Well, it’s a good thing that I asked that, because David Meerman Scott answered it. Since marketing and PR are becoming more and more intertwined, PR practitioners should look at podcasting as a way to build bridges with their clients and their publics. This is especially true for large companies with customer service departments. Now, you can podcast step-by-step directions for how to use your good or service. Also, certain podcasts are gaining more prestige than some terrestrial radio stations. This is important because now PR needs to focus efforts on getting those podcasters to fall in love with the good or service the practitioner is working for.

All in all, podcasting is an infant technology that is growing by leaps and bounds. In the book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, the argument that podcasting is mirroring the development of the internet in its early stages. If that truly is the case, PR practitioners need to hop on this gravy train as fast as they can.

David Meerman Scott discusses the importance that blogging will have on the future of  public relations in his new book The New Rules of PR and Marketing. To him, Blogging will not replace traditional PR efforts, but will supplement them and will change the way they are done.

PR will always be about creating and maintaining relationships with various publics, blogging will not change that one bit. Blogs will simply present a new avenue on which to drive your point to various consumers. Blogs simply allow PR practitioners another way to spread their gospel to the masses.

Blogs also allow practitioners to link to one other sites in order to get noticed. If you link to someone’s blog, the idea is that they will return the favor and maybe mention you on their blog. An example of this is at www.uniwatchblog.com, where Paul Lukas discusses everything concerning sports uniforms and equipment.

That is an example of how blogs allow you to reach the most niche of all markets. No one would have thought of making a magazine that deals with sports uniforms, but in the “blogosphere,” anything is possible. This is just the point that Meerman Scott is trying to make, that there are tons more opportunities out there to reach niche groups for your clients than ever before. Blogging is just adds to the old system. 

For a long time, press releases have been thought of as the last thing in PR that needs to change. However, In the book The New Rules of Pr and Marketing, Author David Meerman Scott outlines just why they do need to change. His ideas are in line with my experiences, so I feel that he has raised some good points.

In my work with the Auburn Athletic department, I have had to write press releases for both men’s and women’s tennis. These releases were then sent out over mass e-mail and then posted on our website, www.auburntigers.com. This seems like a good system because we send the releases to papers and writers that have covered us before, and we post the releases on the website so other people can glean it from there.

Auburn Athletics does not have an online press room, but the website serves as something like that because the information is updated daily and archived so media can see how things have changed. Media can also call the Office of Media Relations and countless pages of information can be sent to them.

One thing that makes sports easy to write press releases for is that the story is always the same: one team wins while another is defeated, some good plays were made, and points were scored. Meerman Scott would probably think that our press release system is adequate since we are making ourselves available to the various publics that we encounter.

Change is an inevitable fact of life. Nowhere is that more true than in the business world, where failing to adapt can cause extinction. Now, more than ever, public relations practitioners need to get ahead instead of playing catchup.

This semester, I will be writing my thoughts on the book The New Rules of PR and Marketing by David Meerman Scott in this blog. This book was written to explain just how marketing and PR are changing and coming together. In it, as one could have guessed, the internet plays a substantial role.

In the books first few chapters, it is easy to see that no longer should marketers be trying to blast consumers with messages, but they should make themselves attractive to consumers to choose them if the consumer sees fit. The marketplace is now driven by people who can choose exactly what information that they want to see when they want to see it.

With Amazon.com and Google setting the standard, new marketers are seeing just how fertile the internet soil is. Now buyer specific marketing is all the rage. Buyers expect emails alerting them to other products that are similar to items that they have bought in the past. This is truly an exciting time to be in PR and I will continue to address issues from the book here in this space.