PR Newswire in the Greek Market

PR Newswire entered the Greek market about ten months ago. It is known for its activities in reporting and broadcasting corporate news in a global scale and is now training the Greek companies and giving them insights of communication skills and potentialities through the use of PR Newswire, which includes international sponsors and international media. Companies will communicate their messages and news and will instantly reach the global market. Among others, this initiative of entering the PR Newswire world, is a great way of expansion of the Greek companies’ names (brand maintenance) and endorsement of a good status in the market by being known globally. Eurobank, the National Bank of Greece and Marfin are the first companies that have joined the Wire.

Google TV Ads are finally here!

It’s been more than two years since this started but…Google’s expecting services of providing space to the advertising companies and to the sponsors themselves in order to present their advertising efforts on the screen, are finally here!

According to Google, the companies can finally use Google TV Ads to launch their commercials on TV. The interest is focused on the future of this utility, which is interactive campaigns, but what’s more important is that the fundamental step has happened since Google can now ‘drain’ advertisements in many TV channels in a nationwide level.

The expenses will be deriving from specific situations in which a campaign will be launched and there will be a report illustrating all the networks in which it appeared.

The next video is only indicative; an introduction to Google’s TV Ads.

Rumours!!!Can we prevent their damage?

I watched a movie last night, which was based on the gossip’s and rumour’s effects on people and their environment. It wasn’t a great movie but anyway, it made me think about all the damaging effects hese two elements can cause to an organization.

Rumours are usually a ‘thorn in the flesh’ of public relations and communications officers. They are not always harmful but recent research has illustrated that during restructuring and layoffs it might have effects such as decrease of productivity, lower employee morale, corrupt reputations and interfere with formal organizational communication, thus rumour control seems to be a necessity. So can a rumour=unverified information cause such disasters? Can something ‘you heard’ be of such an importance to certain groups and make such a great deal of it? Of course they can if it’s about changes of personnel, job satisfaction and anything that might threaten their current status in the workplace and make them feel insecure of the future.

I believe the best thing for an organization to do is be proactive about it. Include a chapter of rumour control in issues management or even in the crisis communication manual. Rumours can bring ‘python’ crisis to a company and it’s a shame because there are things that PR communicators can do about it. Being prepared to respond to those rumours, be alert to any negative effects they might have, be transparent to your staff, let them know of any changes and how they will affect them…it’s about having effective internal communication within the company that prevent at some level all the behind-the-back gossiping.

 

Velti in the Chinese Market

Velti is about to enter the market of China by buying out 33% of Casee, the greatest corporation in the exchange of mobile advertising in China. Casee was established in 2006 and contains advanced technology tools and services, which create an advertising market via the use of mobile phones, among companies active in the area of Mobile Internet and advertising. Through Casee, Velti will be given the opportunity to offer advanced services in the category of mobile marketing in China, completing its existing opportunities in Europe, North America and other countries in Asia.

Velti will offer Casee its experience in the mobile marketing and advertising sector, as well as its relationships with other multi-national advertising corporations and mobile telephony providers. This is great for Velti as it will have the chance to develop access in the Casee’s technology of mobile advertising exchange and then launch it in other countries.

Greenpeace in war with Unilever

I’ve been coming across articles on Unilever using palm oil from Indonesian rainforests for a while now. Greenpeace started a war against that act as the biota of the ecological system is threatened. Along with the climate changes, what we don’t need is less green and extinction of animal species. Three companies are on Greenpeace’s side; Lexisw PR, JCPR and Ogilvy that will hopefully push Unilever to stop using palm oil. There is evidence indicating that the brand Dove of Unilever make extent use of it for its products causing damages to the rainforests of Indonesia. Lets hope Greenpeace meets its cause and Unilever is finally stopped.

 

Interamerican’s new online campaign

OgilvyOne keeps expanding by being assigned to very important and creative moves. This time, it designed two lines of interactive video banners for the communication and promotion of Interamerican’s programmes on retirement pension and residence. I would be more than happy to show you the video banners I found, but unfortunately they are only available in greek, so there’s no point. The key message of the campaign is ‘when you have Interamerican looking after your pension and housing facilities, then you have less important things to worry about yourself’. The campaign is accompanied by an online competition and there will be a draw in which the winners will be offered 10 GPS Navigators Mio C 230. The online media planning and buying, as well as the promotion of this campaign in Search engines has been organised by OgilvyOne. I am not quite sure for this campaign’s success yet, time will tell…

Who’s interested? NIKE’s European Competition

Nike gives the opportunity to European artists to create a piece that will ‘decorate’ its special footwear edition ‘Nike Dunks’. Emerging artists, photographers and directors are all invited to upload their piece to a digital gallery and then they will be judged by experts. The winner will have the chance to exhibit at the Basel Art Fair and will actually design the limited edition of Nike Dunks. It’s a great opportunity for those who are interested as it’s easy to participate at the official site of 1/1, which is the name of the competition.

The new world of Social Media Release

We’ve been working in a group as a part of a module’s assessment (PR & New Media) on a presentation about Social Media News Releases and I thought I’d use that as an opportunity to share a few things we came across. But lets start from the beginning…what is SMNR and what’s its future?

That is a definition we found and I believe it’s best to use it as it is: ‘A new kind of press release aimed at both journalists and bloggers. It does not include the ’spin’ of the traditional press release, but provides multimedia content in an accessible format that can easily be repurposed and shared on blogs, websites and social networks’.

SMNRs were first launched by Todd Deffren, who also sent one to PR Newswire in order to launch it. That met great success as within a week more than 2500 templates have been downloaded.

The following video shows how Webitpr people see SMNRs, what they make of it, their expectations, and so on. Of course i need to mention to this point, like we did in the presentation, that this is not necessarily the global way to utilize SMNRs, but one single company’s opinion.

But why do we need SMNRs? Why is it advised for companies to adopt it? First of all, they work absolutely great in accordance to traditional press releases, without being binned by journalists. They are sent via email and even if you don’t use it, you can always get back to it anytime you want. Plus you have the choice to read or not to read the whole of it, to open more links that appear in the release if you are very interested in the story covered, and so on. It’s really useful as important news are spread around the world very fast, and also shared with people, whether journalists, bloggers or customers. Since it works as a catalyst for the socialization of news, conversations should be continuous and have updates to keep the people engaged. 

We also came up with some negatives, for instance how SMNRs can be ignored by search engines, such as Google, if they are not published through a social platform (e.g. WordPress, Blogger, etc.), or the fact that since it’s still a new tool, greater effort should be made in order to write interesting and newsworthy stories, so that their importance will be recognised and will finally be adopted by more companies. We shouldn’t forget that SMNRs are only 2 years old and lots of companies aren’t savvy enough to use them. It is estimated that in its 5th birthday it will be more widely used. 

An issue of great controversy appears to be the fact that sometimes news reach the journalists before becoming official. That’s considered as a positive feature of SMNR as who wouldn’t love to have the release beforehand? Still, we should consider the case in which the news never becomes official, something that could possibly cause problems and builds bad reputation because of the unreliability of the source.

An example of a successful social media news release follows in the link below in order to illustrate what it looks like and what it contains.

Event Marketing, Arts & Blogs

I recently read an article on event marketing and I found really interesting the way it was connected to the arts. It is true that the world of events has many similarities to the world of arts and there are plenty of times it borrows elements in order to be successful. At the same time, Arts seem to borrow tools commonly used by events communication, for instance professionalism in organization, which has increased their sensation. Video art, multimedia installations, happenings and performances include similar elements in both worlds that are exchanged without any discernible limits. In my opinion, this exchange and experimentation are in favour of both sides. Blog generation is a reflective and challenging generation.  It easily distinguishes the setup from the impulsive, the affected from the authentic, and so on. That differentiation, that choice or rejection include for the new generation a type of ‘political piece’. So, event marketing’s professionals would better take into consideration that new cuture. 

Global digital strategy by Cadbury

In an effort to achieve personal relations with its customers, Cadbury adopted a global strategy in order to promote its brands. In agreement with MassMedia Studios it got access to a multi-channel digital platform combining e-mail, online communications, mobile phone and TV.

A smart move from Cadbury as that will most possibly allow the company to combine and analyze the performance of its brands in all digital channels both nationally and internationally. The inner goal ofcourse, is to communicate better with its publics and in a rather personal level by improving a digital approach for that purpose. Time will tell whether Cadbury meets its target…