When Is Advertising & Public Relations Not Advertising & Public Relations?

When it’s brand engagement. And that is what my new agency does and does really well. I’ve just landed, what may very well be the best gig in my career. I am now the VP General Manager of the Columbus, OH office of Northlich. We are not an ad agency. You can view the press release here- http://tinyurl.com/yef9em9

Let me use the words from their site to help set the stage:

What is this Northlich I keep hearing about? First, we’ll tell you what we’re not. Northlich is not an advertising agency, public relations, media buying or interactive agency. Northlich is a brand engagement agency.

That means we consider the entire brand experience, not just advertising, when it comes to creating communications programs for our clients. We specialize in changing perceptions and behavior. Our product is ideas. Good ones. That engage a target audience emotionally, intellectually, behaviorally and gut-ally. We excel at leading brands to a culturally relevant place where they can be personally embraced and where true behavior change can be achieved. And don’t ya just love it when that happens?

This point of view is what makes this agency different and exciting. For me. For the people working at Northlich. For our clients. We know who we are, what we can do for our clients, our employees and our communities. One of the things that attracted me to Northlich was their commitment to Columbus and Central Ohio. Not just because we have some clients here, rather because of the belief that Columbus is a vibrant and creative city with a tremendous wealth of marketing smarts, great organizations and positive, upbeat vibe about it. Maybe having OSU here has a little to do with it as well.

I don’t want this to be an ad for Northlich. Just know this is a special group of people who have found their purpose, values and principles over the last 2 years and is poised for great things. I plan on making the Columbus office a big part of those plans.

If you want to say Hi, toss some “congrats” my way, or just comment on me or Northlich don’t be shy.

Lessons Brands Can Learn From The Prez On Social Media

There is a very good post on Social Media Today http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/129423 on The Obama Administration dropping the ball on Social Media after what was an excellent start during the campaign. The central point being once you start you have to be consistent if you want to retain, engage and grow your audience, fans and advocates. Getting a consumer to trial is expensive, keeping them through a real and continuous dialogue takes effort but is a lot less expensive in the long run than trying to replace those lost to weak engagement.

If you are going to take advantage of the power of social media, understand it requires dedication.

Tweet About My Brand, Please

Does the Twitter phenomenon have any application for brands? Well that depends on the brand in my estimation. There is no doubt that a company can be more personal, more approachable by using Twitter to tweet about what’s going with them. But does it impact sales? And isn’t that the end-game for brands, building sales? Maybe if you have a really deep understanding of your audience and their engagement with Twitter you can create connections that lead to sales. It takes time, you cannot just go out and tweet a desperate plea for people to buy your product. Doing a series of features and benefits tweets probably won’t work either. And if you’ve been sold on doing it just because it’s one of the latest and greatest do yourself a favor and think long and hard about it. If you aren’t responsive, fast to get news out or not stimulating dialogue you won’t get very far. And the last time I looked the most valuable asset most brands have is time and wasting it is never a good investment.

Jeremiah Owyang has a great post on the Evolution of Brands On Twitter http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/08/18/web-strategy-the-evolution-of-brands-on-twitter/

I think most brands are still moving in the slow lane and should probably stay right there. This should not be part of your web strategy. Think about it, a brand creates a presence on Twitter and is fairly prolific, responsive and relevant. Then a consumer goes to their site or calls customer service and gets a totally different experience. Bam! The brand is dead to that consumer and probably 1,000s more that he or she connects with in the various social spaces and places they frequent. Ouch. Most brands should stay on the sidelines if they aren’t going to make the commitment because the ROI is as tough to quantify as any social media or traditional public relations program. Get your house in order first. For these brands, time and money should be spent on first SEO and customer service. Then on SEM where they can really measure their web strategy and efforts all the while creating a dashboard to share results with the guys in the corner office. There is a post from Adverblog that parallels my POV on this subject.  http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003542.htm

If you do decide that Twitter is going to be one of your engagement tools, it can be really powerful for making connections with a community.  You can use it to promote something new, dispel a rumor and create a conversation.  It may just be momentum changing for your brand.  Joe Jaffe had some interesting thoughts on Twitter Chatter as he called it http://www.jaffejuice.com/2007/05/twitter_while_y.html