On Customization

In the world of consumer products and services, new trends are emerging all the time – almost every second it seems. And after 15 seconds, it’s already old.

On Monday, everything is “better, more enhanced,” and by Friday, consumers are gravitating (back) towards something smaller, sleeker and shinier.

Of course, it’s a given that anything high-tech or “smart” like cars and phones is where we are headed, but what are other emerging trends? A recent article in the Wall Street Journal says that now, it’s all about customization.

According to Sarah Needleman @ WSJ, business experts are claiming that more consumers are buying more custom-made products. One 27-year-old New Yorker paid $1,250 for a custom mattress that he designed and purchased on Create-a-mattress.com.

And it doesn’t stop there. Customizable products are popping up all over the place. Check out a company called Rickshaw Bagworks – I just customized a cover for my iPad (and no, I did not get paid to write that!)

If you can buy it, it seems you can customize it.

But let’s think about it…. Customizable products are more laborious and expensive to build, right? So, how does this model work given today’s economic climate? “Experts” believe that it is the economy that is the contributing factor to the growth of this trend. That and companies like TreeHouse Logic who are developing the back-end technology so that you and I can beddazle our toasters. And while customized products may seem a little more expensive than off-the-shelf, they still don’t compare with spending big bucks on luxury items (jewelry, cars, and lavish vacations). We still gotta have a little luxury in our lives, and customization is filling that spot.

What about the business model, is it sustainable, profitable? Startup costs are reduced as most of these businesses operate solely online, with limited inventory and a JIT mindset. Quoting from the WSJ, Dace Venture Finances stated that the number of custom businesses they finance has gone from just one or two to thousands in a very short time. Customizable.com also stated they currently have 1,000 listings, up from just 300 in 2009.

Maybe I’m on to something.

21st Century Hotel Public Relations: 10 Approaches Your Granddad Never Thought Of

I wanted to share a great article written by TravelInkd’s Jennifer Rodrigues for Hotel Business Review on the future M.O.'s of hospitality PR. The content is relevant, though, to any industry working its way into the new millennium.

The practice of public relations for hotels, like the practice of public relations for all industries, has steadily evolved over the years. In the last decade, however, change has come much more rapidly. The channels of communication have opened wide, and what was once a single three-branched media river has multiplied (or divided?) into thousands of individual streams. Through these streams flows a volume of information no one thirty years ago could have even begun to fathom, let alone process.

This means there is a wealth of public relations strategies available that leverage the nature of this information delivery delta. For lodging, an industry that sometimes seems hopelessly tethered to past practices, these strategies and tactics can appear daunting, foreign, or even irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hotels are entirely capable- one might even say well-poised - to execute 21st century public relations strategies. Because the core product hotels are delivering is an inherently personal one (the guest experience), it lends itself to well-targeted, personalized communications- which, of course, are the hallmark of 21st century public relations.

So without further ado, here is our list of ten next generation public relations approaches hotels can and ought to be exploring right away. Some may not be revelations in the truest sense of the word (anyone not running a hotel from a cave in Antarctica knows about Twitter and Facebook), but all of these are strategies that hotels in general have not engaged to their fullest potential.

Tweet!

Twitter is the ultimate mash-up of personal and broadcast communication. As such, it is the penultimate 21st century PR tool. Tweeting relevant, gripping information is an excellent way to build awareness and engagement among your followers (hopefully loyal, previous and potential guests). It’s also a way to develop an identity through content, or a way to reinforce an existing brand. Where most hotels get tripped up in Twitter is by being inconsistent tweeters, or slow responders. Create a Twitter strategy, and make someone in the marketing and PR department accountable for monitoring your feed and executing the strategy on an ongoing basis.

Facebook (ings)

In terms of identity and brand image control, nothing comes close to Facebook and its siblings (LinkedIn, etc.). It is a platform to put forth the best aspects of a hotel, and a sounding board for new initiatives and consumer interaction. The same pitfalls that affect hotels’ usage of Twitter apply to Facebook: a lack of appropriate commitment, a lack of relevance, and a failure to foster real interaction. As such, the same remedies apply: install a social media point person, have them feed relevant information into the profile, and require accountability for responding to ‘friends’. Again, this isn’t something that you can do just once or twice a week. Social media is a full-time job and a communication tool that needs to be taken seriously or else you risk wasting time and resources, as well as alienating your friends and followers.

Tell Your Own Story

What the social media tools (and the other tools mentioned here) afford hotels is the ability to tell their story on their own terms. This, however, is not limited to social media communications; indeed, the practice of telling your own story is applicable across mediums. This is certainly not a new idea, but it is a concept that has become much easier to put into practice in the last few years. Hotels must become more willing to craft a story around notable aspects of their operations, and effectively transmit that story through multiple information outlets. Now, a hotel can post any story they wish to their Facebook page or blog, but when it comes to convincing a traditional broadcast media outlet to pick it up, relevance, interest and craftsmanship become important. This is where the distinction between a story and an announcement becomes acute, and where hotels need to become aware that telling their own story in the right way to the right person is the only way to get noticed.

You can read the rest of Jennifer's article on the iThinkInk blog here

All Thumbs (and No Brains)

I read a great article in AdAge this week entitled RIP, the Press Release (1906-2010) -- and Long Live the Tweet that beautifully (and comically/tragically) demonstrated how corporations and celebrities are increasingly leaving important (and not so important, but somewhat curious) newsflashes to their twitter accounts instead of their press-release wielding PR professionals.

“The long-suffering, much-maligned press release, I'd argue, finally died this summer, thanks particularly to JetBlue and BP, with a little moral support from Kanye West and just about every other celebrity with thumbs,” rants Simon Dumeno.

I’m partially in agreement.

The deafening death rattle of the old press release is, indeed, winding down, and there’s no stopping technology, or fool-hearty and self-absorbed celebrities, but surely no one could hardly argue that tweeting your own 140 character press releases is the way to go?

The press release had a hard enough time being heard before Twitter and other mediums, and the PR industry is, in part responsible for this. It probably lost a goodly portion of its audience to a lack of discretion in determining what was actually newsworthy – or not. Add to that the advent of the internet, and the industry has had to swim even harder upstream as every fool with a keyboard clamors for their 15 minutes.

But from a PR perspective, in the longer term these wanton tweets are most likely going to generate massive amounts of damage control revenue for my industry, after all, someone has to restore their decorum?

Don’t get me wrong, I know that tweeting has its place in our digital society, but with every “advancement,” we are witnessing a decline in the quality of our communications, the beauty of prose and of rhetorical speech.

Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote an article for MediaPost’s Marketing Daily "You Think You Know PR?": my message is just as, if not more so, relevant today.

Good storytelling is an art and the public’s reality is only, for most intents and purposes, as real as how it is perceived. And WE, PR professionals, still mould that perspective more skillfully than anyone, (whether for positive or negative results).

Good storytelling can incite emotions, can make us buy triple-stack hamburgers when we're not hungry or cause our minds to create fantastic what-if scenarios. Good stories can make us cry, laugh or feel sick. Even better, good stories can make journalists pick up the phone or hit the reply button to our emails, saying, "Tell me more, I want to know." They are the reactions that good storytelling can invoke, and I don't think that's something we can do with a micro-tweet or pushing a one-size-fits-all template that's been approved by corporate because it's safe and sounds good to the CEO.

Stories and storytellers have been around for thousands of years, influencing people and their decisions. Media needs good story tellers desperately, and I believe it always will.

The press release is not dead, as reported by AdAge, but it is being "re-tooled." It’s an evolutionary phase and the fittest will survive. A ground-swelling demand for quality content will occur and we’ll be here providing it long after celebs and corporate drones devolve into 10 thumbed quacks.

You’ve Been Self-Served!

There’s nothing like hard-hitting “studies” to put the fear of God in folks. Who, after all, wants to read that their marriage is potentially doomed, or that their partner might collapse and die of a heart attack, or that their sex life is rather pathetic?

Well that almost sums up a new “study” from the very caring people at Westin Hotels & Resorts. Their “Wellness in Travel” survey tells us that we’ll feel soooooo much better and productive after a vacation. I could have told the marketing people at Westin these obvious facts without their commissioning a costly “survey.”

Oh wait, wait, I already wrote about the need for vacations back in July 2010 (All Work and No Play), but minus the survey.

Of course, Westin’s survey is nothing more than a very common marketing tactic used to publicize an issue or societal concern, in this case the productivity and wellbeing of American workers.

The silly thing about this survey – which is incredibly self-serving -- is that it highlights why Americans aren’t going on vacation – they are fearful about losing their jobs, and that they either don’t have the cash or want to hang on to what little they have left. Staycations are our new vacations!

I don’t know about you dear reader, but if I am already stressed about work and my financial state of affairs, taking off on a vacation is the absolute last thing I would be doing. It’s almost impossible to “check your stress” at the airport with worries like that, don't you think?

And as for experiencing more ‘wedded bliss’ on vacation... you simply save up the arguments over money for when you get back home.

How do you feel about taking time off? Do you feel stressed just by the thought of going away and leaving work behind?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

VH

You Give PR A Bad Name

Another column, another ethics dilemma.

It seems the issue of ethical behavior can't stay out of the limelight right now. While the Democrats are grappling with the newly created Office of Congressional Ethics and two of their own representatives under investigation for, ahem, questionable behavior, the Federal Trade Commission is coming down on PR companies that are misleading the public by posting fake reviews on behalf of their clients.

My thanks to the FTC for giving this rather silent, but ugly, issue the attention it deserves.

A few weeks ago, a PR company was fined by the FTC in what I believe to be a first for the PR world (correct me if I am wrong.) The agency, which shall remain nameless in this column, represented a number of games developers, including the creator of Rock Band. Thinking itself very clever, the agency assigned staffers the roles of guest bloggers and reviewers, who got to work on creating fake consumer profiles and posting glowing but fake reviews.

For about six months, the PR agency owner and her crew duped consumers on iTunes into believing the reviews were posted by gamers for fellow gamers -- people they thought they could trust for an authentic, first-hand take on the game.

Dirty tactics

While the goal of generating positive reviews is clearly a huge focus for agencies involved not only in product-centric PR, but who also earn revenues from product sales (the agency in question earned commission from game sales, so positive reviews + sales = more money in its bank), misleading consumers like this is both unethical and dirty. Actually, let me rephrase: misleading consumers is unethical and dirty, period.

At what point in planning out a client's launch or PR strategy is fraud considered as an active component instead of creative or even traditional approaches? Was it desperation, client pressure or, perhaps, greed that drove this agency to lower its standards -- if it had any to begin with?

Instead of spending six months creating fake consumer profiles and reviews, the agency should have spent its time on:

Creating awareness about the games through clever or even outrageous PR and social media outreach tactics
Encouraging users to post reviews -- positive or not -- via community building, and engaging consumers transparently through social media channels.
Clearly, the agency chose the easy-and-sleazy option instead of relying on talent and good old-fashioned hard work.

The sad part about this type of dirty tactic is that it is so simple to do, and the FTC is going to have a hell of a time policing it. With social media, anyone can create a profile and post countless reviews, potentially influencing consumers.

And that's precisely the point: if any review that a consumer reads is in fact a manipulated, marketing ploy designed to influence a purchasing decision -- by a marketer and not a consumer -- then full disclosure must be given. Always.

Truth in advertising

The FTC makes it very clear that companies engaged in online marketing -- and yes, this does include PR firms -- need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising.

"Advertisers should not pass themselves off as ordinary consumers touting a product, and endorsers should make it clear when they have financial connections to sellers."

A PR agency should never be held responsible for the content of consumer reviews, especially in our increasingly social media-ruled world, and our clients must be educated about the actions that agencies can and cannot take, no matter how big the payout or stakes.

Laws have been created to protect consumers from misleading practices. Manipulating and faking reviews is tantamount to fraud and premeditated deception. If agencies and online marketers continue duping consumers in this way, they are cutting off the hand that feeds them. And if consumers can no longer trust review sites or even social media recommendations, then what do we all do?

It’s actions like these that give PR a bad name.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=135621&nid=118525

What I Had For Breakfast: In Pursuit of Less Pay and More Hours - Welcome to The Way We Now Work

Three articles caught my attention in as many days; Harvard Business Review's article Labor Day: Beyond The Barbecue, Labor Day Lament in TIME and Majority of Workers Don't Feel Underpaid in Adweek.

The common theme here is obviously work. How we feel about the way we work, and the fact that most of us work longer hours than ever to adapt to, compete with, and keep up with the technology that chains us to keyboards, phones and laptops. And not necessarily for more money.

Now think about the progress we have made…

Labor Day was originally intended to celebrate the “working class" laborers who built the country (manual workers), but I’d actually consider much of the American workforce as "working class" today. Knowledge workers, officers workers and the rest of us who are always "on" - just because we don't do manual labor, doesn't mean we don't work hard or contribute significantly to the growth of our employers and the economy - especially with so many manual jobs vanishing abroad.

Let’s take a look at a Times freelancer who was quoted in TIME’s post and typically works 65-70 hrs per week. "Your work day is done when your work is done. And the work is never really done. You can’t leave it until tomorrow because you’ll have too much to do tomorrow."

How many of you can relate to that? No sooner have you replied to a few emails and completed a number of tasks than another dozen emails come in - all urgent, all demanding the same, immediate attention. It is a real challenge not to become "inbox-driven."

We can thank technology for this.

Technology has not necessarily freed us to be more creative or to work more efficiently. Technology and work processes continue to demand more of our time and attention, divvying up our focus into so many places all at once. Technology has created a work culture that frowns upon those not connected.

In my world, I have the following going on at any one time: blackberry messages, text messages, various IMs programs running, a mobile phone ringing in between my two office extensions, my personal email as well as my work emails, dozens of news feeds, Facebook, Twitter et al. I’m not on Foursquare yet, but it’s only a matter of time… And this is before I get to my real work. How do I work smarter, not harder, in this environment? Someone pass me the Advil please!

So it's hardly surprising that the average work day has shot up to 12 hrs, or more. How can we possibly accomplish what we need to on any given day with so much noise and so many distractions? Is this what the new normal means?

Did we create it, or did it create us?

What I Had For Breakfast: The Dumbest Marketing Idea Ever

Only a nonparent could design a website for children that "allows them to plan what's for dinner."

The premise of this dumbest marketing idea ever - ZisBoomBah (even the name sounds utterly stupid)
- is that kids get to learn about nutrition as they custom design what they want for dinner.

What a brilliant idea!?1#&#! Kids designing their own meal plan... I can't believe that no one has thought of this before.

Not only does Mom, or Dad, have to contend with holding down a job or two, and cooking after a nice long, stressful day's work, but now little Sally's custom menu selection will miraculously appear in Mom's inbox together with a recipe and shopping list.

"Go on Mom, Dad, what are you standing around for? Go buy these ingredients for my dinner - and make it!"

While I know that feeding children healthfully is a challenge for many parents (I am a parent of two) and that some guidance can be very helpful in making healthier selections, the thought that a young child will be making dinner and shopping choices for their parents is one of the most daft ideas I've ever come across.

Oh, and the website is "sponsored" by food companies and brands, so you know what the real impetus is here: "educate" children about our healthy food products so that Mom will buy them.

Helping kids make smart food choices?

It's nearly enough to put to you off your food!