Category: advertising

Three forces changing the face of PR — and an action plan for dealing with the changes

A new white paper from Cymphony — called The Changing Face of PR (PDF; free, but registration required) — describes three forces affecting the public relations business:

  1. Increasing overlap in marketing and public relations. PR is expected to do more product focused activities. Advertising embraces publicity-generating “buzz marketing” tactics to reach influencers. The growth of “social media” such as blogs gives PR more direct contact with the end users of their companies’ products.
  2. Improved measurement. The C-suite demands more rigorous performance and efficiency measurement from all functions. PR departments are under greater pressure to shift from measuring “outputs” like clip counts to “outcomes” like revenue and brand equity growth.
  3. Increasing importance of social media. The rapid proliferation of blogs and social media sites has created a new class of media influencers and new tools to deliver a company’s message to the market.

The white paper also offers a four-step action plan. No spoilers here, though. Download the document and read for yourself. It’s worth the time it takes to register.

Hat tip to EducationPR for the link.

A new kind of university stadium

The for-profit University of Phoenix has shelled out $154.5 million to name the Arizona Cardinals’ football stadium (via Arizona Republic). The irony was not lost on the newspaper.

The Cardinals spent the past 17 years trying to rid themselves of the stigma of being the only NFL team to play in a college arena. Their glitzy new $455 million stadium is now named for a university.

Funny how stuff like that happens.

Liveblogging from CASE: primal branding

Toward the end of his presentation this afternoon, Joe Hice referenced the work of Patrick Hanlon, the author of Primal Branding: Creating Zealots for Your Brand. I’d read a column about Hanlon’s work in a recent issue of Marketing News and was intrigued by the seven points of primal marketing, so I was happy to see someone applying these concepts in higher education. (Actually, a lot of us incorporate some of these concepts but probably not as effectively or as systematically as we could.)

According to Hanlon, great organizations have a “primal code” that creates passion in their customers (followers). (Here’s an interesting review that outlines the elements in detail.)The code consists of these seven elements:

  • A creation story. For Harley-Davidson (Hice’s example), the creation story is all about how H-D was born in a woodshed.
  • A creed. “We fulfill dreams” is H-D’s.
  • Icons. The Fatboy.
  • Rituals. The annual pilgrimage to Sturgis, S.D.
  • Pagans/Unbelievers. Those who ride Japanese motorcycles.
  • Sacred words. “HOG.”
  • A leader. Perhaps the CEO, or the company founder. For H-D, it’s Willie G. Davidson. For Apple, it’s Steve Jobs. For Microsoft, Bill Gates.

I’m curious whether anyone else in higher ed marketing is following the primal branding school of thought?

Great thinkers in modern marketing

Dana VanDen Heuvel is looking for some names for his 50 greatest thinkers in modern marketing project. He’s planning to do a post on each of the great thinkers on his blog. Sounds like a fascinating project. He’s already listed the few who came to my mind (Philip Kotler, Seth Godin, Ries and Trout). Any ideas? Post ’em here.

Web 2.0 on the agenda for CASE conference

As co-chair for next month’s CASE Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals, I’m thrilled with the lineup of web 2.0 topics on the agenda.

Those of us who do PR and marketing for colleges and universities need to pay more attention to how web 2.0 is changing the nature of our jobs. So I’m glad to see CASE (that’s the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) taking web 2.0 issues seriously.

My co-chair (Lynette Brown-Sow of the Community College of Philadelphia) and I have worked hard to recruit some of the top experts in online communication and marketing for this conference. The faculty for the three-day session (Sept. 13-15 in Philadelphia) include:

  • Karine Joly of the popular blog on marketing, PR and the web, collegewebeditor.com. Karine is also a web editor for a liberal arts school on the East Coast and writes for University Business magazine. She’s taken time out of her busy schedule to do a couple of sessions during the conference.
  • Joe Hice, associate vice president of marketing and public relations for the University of Florida. Joe and his staff at Florida are doing some creative things with marketing and the web, and he brings a corporate marketing background to the job. He’ll be co-presenting with Karine Joly on some web 2.0 stuff and also sharing some marketing lessons from the corporate world.
  • A couple of real live bloggers from the Philly area: Daniel Rubin, a Philadelphia Inquirer journalist-turned-blogger who writes about pop culture, politics, technology and anything with a Philadelphia connection in his Blinq blog, and Dave Ralis, another refugee from journalism who blogs about sports for Phillyburbs.com, contributes to the community blog PhillyFuture, and occasionally posts at his personal blog. I’ll be joining these two guys for a fun panel discussion about the morphing of blogging and journalism.

Those are just a few of the folks who will be presenting. We’ve also got great speakers on marketing (such as Larry Lauer of Texas Christian University), crisis communications and the Solutions for Our Future initiative to promote the value of higher education.

This promises to be a terrific conference, with lots of time for discussion, interaction and learning from each other as well as from our presenters. If you haven’t already signed up, you should do so now. Or if you have any questions about the conference or any of the sessions, feel free to email me: andrew DOT careaga AT gmail DOT com.