According to David Meerman Scott, the rules of marketing are changing. Marketers should not only pay attention to their products, but to their atmosphere. He uses the example of Starbucks in chapter ten of his book. This is a great example of how a company has used marketing to sell their atmosphere more than their product. Starbucks has taken its atmosphere from European coffee shops. This means they are more than just a place to get a cup of coffee, but a place to socialize and meet people.
More companies and organizations have seen this and taken the ideas and practices first used by Starbucks and changed them to meet their own needs. Starbucks was one of the first places I heard of that had free wireless internet. Now a lot of places have this luxury, including Krystal’s. This is only the latest in a lot of luxuries of places such as restaurants other places. Books-A-Million has had coffee shops in their stores for as long as I can remember and they have also allowed people to read the books while in the store.
All of this means that companies and new marketers need to take these wants and needs of customers into account when forming a marketing plan. Marketing your environment means you need to get something to draw people to your facility. Then you need to keep them there. Books-A-Million has done a very good job with this because they let the people preview the books before buying them. This will keep people there and cause them to perhaps buy a cup of coffee. Starbucks has done this by making their store accessible to business people need a place to relax while getting a little bit of work done or meeting with a prospective or active client.
To this end marketing your environment has become just as important as marketing your products.
Podcasting is a very misunderstood term. I know when I first learned about it was after I bought an Apple iPod. As most people, I thought that you had to have an iPod or iTunes to make them available. This is not the case. All you need is a computer and internet access. Also, anyone can create a podcast. Podcasting only means that you create an audio file and post it somewhere your audience can find it.
This type of media has changed the music industry in the way that the internet changed shopping with catalogs. This means that people no longer have to leave their house to find music that would not normally be available in their local area. This is the same way specialty stores that were not located where people live became available. This is very good for smaller bands that have fans who cannot get to their shows. When they get put on a niche podcast it makes their music available to fans of all over the world.
I agree with Mr. Scott that podcasting is a very good tool for people other than musicians as well. He brings up the point of retail stores having “how-to” podcasts. This is very helpful to the do-it-yourself audience. Because instead of having to find a manual to read while you are doing a project you can listen to it while you do it. Also, podcasts are usually easier to find than paper manuals and a lot cheaper to produce.
David Scott talks in chapters four and five about blogs and new rules of news releases, respectively. These chapters seem to go together to me because blogs can now be used very effectively in the news releases now. Scott talks about blogging being used by McDonald’s to try to counter some of the bad press they have gotten by writing about their new environmentally friendly programs they have come up with. This sounds like a news release to me because they are going on to the internet, putting their new program ideas into something that will come up on an RSS feed and letting the consumers know about them. These are the what Scott has called the new rules of news releases.
I think that Scott is right to an extent about the way blogging has affected the Marketing and PR profession. One of his reasons to start a blog is to shape conversations about your company by starting your own blog, but I do not agree with this reason. This seems like it would tend to make the conversations not as effective because many times people would seem to agree with your points of view rather than create their own. Starting your own blog for a new product or company is a great idea, however, I think shaping the conversation is not a good idea. I believe you should allow the conversation to shape itself and let your publics know what is going on, not tell them what to think.
This is why I think that blogging is changing the way that news releases are sent and received. I say this because the new rules of PR and Marketing have changed the way news releases are sent and received. This is because before the internet news releases where sent out to a lot of different receivers and where then written. Now with the internet playing such a big role in everyday life people do not send out news releases as much. This is because everyone can write news releases and now the news sources will go use RSS feeds to find them and blogs are one of the easiest ways to get on an RSS feed.
Public relations is having to switch from targeting mass audiences via television and radio because of a shift in the way people use these mediums. Mass media advertising and PR has suffered a major blow because of the invention of TiVo and on demand programing where viewers can choose to skip the commercials.
In David Scott’s book he talks about this in detail saying that, “Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web.” This strategy is a good way to reach most Americans and most around the globe because the Internet has the widest reach, cheapest cost and most up to date medium available to people. There is one drawback, however, to this tactic and that is people look at what they want to look at.
Companies have tried to get around this by using “pop-up” advertisements, but that has gone the way of traditional commercials in the TiVo era. Now every web browser and Internet service provider has some sort of pop-up blocker and e-mail protection for junk e-mails.
One of the best things that the Internet has done for the marketing and PR communities is that it has brought marketing from a one-way form of communication to a two-way type of communication. This means that the instead of the consumer being forced what the ad agency thought was a good campaign they can now give feedback. This also helps the agencies because with the speed at which the Internet is updated they can get feedback and know when a campaign is not effective earlier than if they had to wait for quarterly or annual reports to become available.
David Meerman Scott’s book has convinced me that this new PR is going to replace traditional PR because technology has changed the way we gather news and information just as it has changed how we live our day to day lives.
Sony is using social media to reach its customers that already pay attention to this media. They have launched a blog aimed at the people who already use blogs to keep up with products and updates. Their first post was entitled “Sony No Baloney”.
Sony has decided to go in this direction because social media is coming in to the scene in a very explosive way. The media is becoming so big that it can no longer be ignored by companies, even the ones as large as Sony. Even with the brand recognition Sony has they are still using this sort of medium to advertise and reach their consumers.
They are following Dell in the way that this will work by doing this and letting the consumers give their feedback. This type of marketing is good for everyone because it will help the consumers get what they want in a product and will help Sony save money in research and development.
Michael Vick was in court yesterday and the people that thought the media circus surrounding this case would delay the trial were wrong. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson had Vick and the other three defendants in an out of the court room eight minutes early and in less than 25 minutes total. The two-week jury trial will begin on November 26th.
The delay in starting the trial is not because of the celebrity status of Vick, but because the complexity of the case. The complexity comes from the fact that this is a case involving multiple states as well as a need for forensic testing on some of the dead dogs. Vick’s lawyers were probably trying to get a longer delay but eight-weeks is all they got.
Vick was told by the NFL’s commissioner on Monday to stay away from the Falcon’s training camp. This seems to be just until the league reviews the case against him. While it is the court system’s job to prove guilt and innocence the league needs to make sure that they keep the best face on themselves in the flurry of sports scandal cases going on right now.
As I said in my earlier post, “Beckham coming to the MLS is a publicity stunt.” Well it worked. I recorded the friendly match against Chelsea on my DVR, and I know of at least two more of my friends who did the same. I had another friend tell me that this was the first time he had ever gotten excited about a soccer match, and he was disappointed. He and his friends met up at one of their houses and were all excited to see Beckham play. They were let down because Beckham played for only 13+ minutes in the second half of a 1-0 Chelsea win.
I understand the reason the Galaxy did not want Beckham to play as he took a hard tackle to his lower leg when he was playing. There was a moment of collective apprehension as he lie there clutching his foot and ankle. The game ended with Beckham doing what he does best, taking a corner kick. That was the only moment of the game that I thought Beckham lived up to the media frenzy that he brought with him from England.
The game was a big disappointment for me as well. I have loved the game of soccer since I started playing about three years ago. The Galaxy have started something that I hope they know how to control. Paying someone $250 million to play in a league that does not have a very large fan base and small, at best, media coverage seems like it could be a death sentence. I can see this playing out like the North American Soccer League when they paid money they did not have for big name foreign players like Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and others. Their thinking was the same as the MLS right now, but it eventually led to the NASL folding.
I love the game of soccer, Beckham is one of my favorite players, I am glad the Galaxy have him, but I hope they know what they are doing.
David Beckham is probably going to miss his first start as a member of the L.A. Galaxy. He has been racing against himself to recover from an ankle injury. The Galaxy’s general manager, Alexi Lalas, has insisted that the club will not put Beckham’s well-being in jeopardy for an exhibition game. Beckham said that if his ankle is right he will probably play towards the end of the game.
This move is the right one for the Galaxy because Beckham is going to be the highest profile player that is in the MLS. They need him to be on the team for five years, not just one game on Saturday. They are paying the 32-year-old midfielder a contract that is potentially worth $250 million after endorsements and bonuses. So the Galaxy needs to make sure he is fit to play because if he injures himself even worse they could lose out on alot of money in the deal.
On the other hand, most of the fans are coming to the game to see Beckham’s arrival, so he should play some in the game. If he is fit enough to walk around at the MLS All-Star game in Denver the other night he is fit enough to play a few minutes just to give the fans what they came to see.
This blog is in response to Michael Vick being indicted for his role in a pit bull dog fighting ring. He was indicted along with three of his friends in federal court for orchestrating fights between pit bulls. The loser of the fights, if not killed in the fight, would be electrocuted, drowned or shot.
There is no excuse for this behavior by Vick. He should be banned from football for at least a season. I am frankly surprised by the decision of the NFL to let him continue playing until his court precedings are over. The NFL has taken a stand in recent months over players’ of the field behavior which has resulted in the suspension of several big name players such as Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson among others.
I do not agree with the decision by the league not to suspend him. Vick broke federal laws by killing the dogs, but the league has not taken any action. I guess they are giving him a chance to prove his innocence.
In a baseball Vick would more than likely be banned from the game. I say this because the MLB banned Pete Rose for allegations that he bet on baseball as a manager. I think that all the major sports leagues in the United States should take a page out of the MLB’s regulations about the way players should act off the field. I can’t think of in recent times, other than allegations of steroids, where a baseball player has done anything as bad as many of the stories about players in the NFL.
This blog is about how the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team is gearing up for David Beckham’s first game against Chelsea on Saturday. The move by the Galaxy is going to be great for the team and Major League Soccer. This is going to bring in a very high profile player to the league to gain a larger fan base in the United States.
With Beckham coming to America it could potentially bring a large international fan base to the American league. The MLS has flown under the radar of American sports leagues. This has brought the league into the national spotlight as well as the international spotlight.
This transfer will bring the biggest name player to an American soccer league since Pele came to the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League in 1977. The move in 1977 was in an effort to save the floundering league, but the game of soccer still was not big enough in America even with one of the most well known players in the world. This move is not meant to save the MLS. The reason for this is because the MLS already has a larger fan base than the NASL did. The reason for the move of the MLS is to try to increase the fan base both in America and in England.
