Subscribe To Marcom Minute

Your email will not be shared with anyone.

Unsubscribe anytime.

Marx Communications Generates Attention for Award-Winning Honda Ad Campaign from Concept Café

In September and October, 2008, Concept Café, a Hispanic owned and operated advertising agency in Miami, Fla., received a number of media mentions related to its award-winning Honda Accord campaign targeting South Florida’s Hispanic community. This included coverage in Advertising Age, Brandweek, Adpulp.com, HispanicAd.com and CMO Essentials. The Brandweek story highlighted a case study of the campaign that was submitted in support of one of the awards. Brandweek detailed the campaign’s stellar results: the Accord’s brand consideration grew from 73% in October 2007 – when the campaign began – to 96% in June 2008, surpassing the archival Toyota Camry for the first time in two years.

Fox News Airs Interviews with Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and Lazard Capital Markets Executive

On Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, Fox News interviewed former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, who is also the former secretary of Health and Human Services, about the impact of the recent elections on the healthcare industry and trends to watch for in 2009. The interview was conducted at the St. Regis in New York, site of Lazard Capital Markets’ Fifth Annual Healthcare Conference, where Thompson was the keynote speaker. The day before, Fox News interviewed Paul Noglows, managing director and director of research at LCM. Marx Communications booked both interviews. The equity research firm is a client of Marx Communications.

MarxCommunications.com

Fast Company Blog: Wendy Marx

Online Video and Your Brand

By Wendy Marx

Small to mid-sized business (SMB) owners are often in a tough spot. We need to know not only about the daily operation of our business, but also things like marketing, strategic decision-making and public relations! Well, we're here to help -- at least with the public relations aspect of it. One unexplored avenue for SMBs is the effective use of online video. There are so many benefits to this practice that as PR experts, we're surprised more people don't take advantage of it!

A video lets you take the main message(s) of your website or business and turn it/them into a short, enjoyable clip. You can present all the information in a few minutes, and be assured that your audience will watch it. One statistic reports around 60% completion rates for videos vs. around 20% for traditional articles and the like.

The best part about video is that it's portable. Say you upload a video to YouTube. You can take the same clip and integrate it into your website or blog. Not only are you getting the benefits of having home-grown media on your site, you don't have to worry about the cost of hosting all that data or the fees associated with having to stream videos.

Here are some tips about employing online video:

Online video is all about your brand. This is one thing you cannot forget. A video which is purely an advertisement may get some initial views, but it's highly unlikely to become viral. Few people watch online video for the hottest deals. You want to increase awareness of your brand's existence, not force-feed your sales pitch.

Find a message and stick with it. Be it humorous or visionary, a video which has a theme and an impact is likely to spread. Even better, if you can tie in the video with a larger campaign, you are guaranteed a wider dissemination of your message.

Keep track of the video. YouTube has a tool called YouTube Insight. It provides detailed statistics on exactly who is watching your material. Geographic data, views over time, even where the viewer found your video can be seen via this tool. Better yet, it's free. Using the information you find there, you can keep better track of the kind of people you should be selling to, and also discover any demographic groups you targeted but missed entirely.

Before you get started...

Online video is a tactic you use in a broader campaign. Without some underlying connection to the message your brand is broadcasting through other media, even a massively popular video won't bring in the results it's capable of providing.

In the unpredictable world of online video, $200 and a steady hand can have a greater impact than $10,000 and a professional crew. Keep this in mind when creating your video. The style of the video should depend on whatever demographic group you're aiming to capture.

Lastly, make a plan, find where online video fits into that plan, and take advantage of it.

Wendy Marx is president of Marx Communications, a public relations and marketing communications firm that helps companies and individuals build their brands. For more information email wendy@marxcommunications.com or call (203) 445-2850.

Getting Your Message onto the Right Desktop
How to avoid common traps and pitfalls that land your news in the circular file

Michael O'Brien, Senior Account Executive

What if you’ve written what you believe to be a killer press release, but it falls into the proverbial black hole, and the response is deep silence?

Journalists feel besieged by a constant torrent of e-mails and voicemails from companies eager to have their story told in the marketplace. Thus, it’s not surprising that many have set up voicemail greetings that ask callers to refrain from leaving pitches there, under pain of death.

Likewise, many media organizations have set up industrial-strength firewalls and spam filters which effectively block out most messages from senders of unknown origin, or those who have crossed a line of annoyance.

So how do you get around, over, or through the various roadblocks that journalists erect?

Avoid Irrelevance. As a former journalist, I know the single most annoying practice of PR types was calling to tell me about a company, product, executive, you name it, that had absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote about or cared about.

The Solution: Do your homework! Take the time to research the reporter and the publication to get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t, tendencies, interests, preferences. You’ll be amazed how much more effective you’ll be at pitching after being armed with relevant information.

Avoid lack of timeliness. Even the most well-crafted pitch in the world won’t stick to the wall of interest if it doesn’t tie in to an upcoming project a journalist has in his or her sights.

The Solution: Most magazines publish an editorial calendar, plotting out a year’s worth of coverage. Use the calendar to help match the story you’re trying to tell and what a reporter or editor is actually covering. Be creative in selling the link or relationship between your latest gizmo or process and the June roundup of hot business opportunities.

Avoid Going too high up the food chain. Sending your client’s release about the latest breakthrough in motor oil viscosity to the executive editor of a trade journal is generally not going to produce the intended result. These folks are too concerned with filling in the next month’s pages to stop and consider where or to whom to route the e-mail.

The Solution: Reporters and associate editors are your best bets in terms of getting an actual response or hearing for your pitch or story. Again, craft the pitch based on the journalist’s beat area, interests and past/recent coverage. A quick cruise through Factiva or Google News searching under the reporter’s name will help tremendously.

With a little elbow grease, a dose of common sense and a bit of research, you can help keep your name and e-mail address off those nefarious “block sender” lists, and get the attention and buzz your product, service, award or partnership deserves.

Mike O'Brien is a Senior Account Executive with Marx Communications, a public relations and marketing communications firm that helps B2B companies and individuals build their brands. For more information, please contact mike@marxcommunications.com.