3. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATIONS: THE COMEBACK
The effects of the economic downturn that began in autumn 2008 were felt throughout the
technology sector.
Five Key Continuing Trends Affecting
Technology Product Strategy:
*further consolidation,
*the growth of cloud computing,
*the further “consumerization” of technology,
*the acceleration of open innovation,
*the growing power of emerging markets.
--defined by Ramez Shehadi, a partner at Booz & Company.
4. ECONOMIC FACTORS UNDERSCORES PR IMPORTANCE
58% of global online consumers said they are still in a recession – the most in the
past year. More than half believe they will still be in a recession in a year’s time.
31% of U.S. consumers said they have no spare cash for discretionary spending, along
with 25% of Middle East/Africa consumers and 22% of Europeans.
--Nielsen Global Consumer
Confidence Survey Q2 2011
5. COMPANIES THAT LEAD THE REMARKETIFY REVOLUTION
Activision
Adobe
AOL
Best Buy
CafePress
Dell
Microsoft
Salesforce.com
Washington Post
6. 1. SELL A WHOLE SOLUTION
• Dell had a strategy of selling
affordable PCs direct
• Today, Dell’s solution strategy
is about combining
their hardware heritage along
with acquired enterprise
technology
7. 1. SELL A WHOLE SOLUTION
• PC margins are shrinking
• Enterprise hardware and software, packaged under “solutions”
provide higher margins and upsell
• Software solutions providers and partners generate another part of
the lifecycle for added profitability
8. 1. SELL A WHOLE SOLUTION
• As a PR professional:
–Make sure everyone knows corporate strategy; how
their products/solutions fit in
–Cultivate subject matter experts for thought
leadership programs
–Ex.: When HP announces that they are getting out
of the PC business, react quickly with the Dell story
from investor relations to mainstream media
9. 2. BROADEN YOUR REACH
• America Online began as the
world’s largest “walled garden”
online community
• Today, AOL has opened all of
it’s content to the world and
content can be hyper-local
10. 3. PERSONALIZE THE ONLINE EXPERIENCE
Huffington says brands need to develop
a grass roots online strategy
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 | By MaryLou Costa,
PowerMediaMarketing.com
Cannes: Brands should enhance their online strategies to
interact with local communities on a deeper level, Arianna
Huffington and AOL chief executive officer Tim Armstrong
told delegates at the Cannes Lions Festival.
11. PATCH: 827 TOWNS/$50 MILL.
*Every reporter: 8
to 10 stories a day
Hyper Local? Sound familiar? It
should. That was the clarion call
of middle-1990s in the online
world. (Also read about early
days at CitySearch and Microsoft
Sidewalk. However this time
they’re true (really). --Rick
Robinson, StreetFight
12. GROW WITH GO-TO CONTENT: MARKET SHARE
“Local has to be the largest white space on the internet because people haven’t
taken it seriously enough,” said AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong.
The Video link: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfob1z_how-aol-s-
patch-tripled-its-traffic-on-election-night_tech
•Cross Market: Mapquest and Patch
13. PLANNING BASED ON NUMBERS
According to the AOL Way, the company planned to do the following by the end of March
2011:
•increase the number of content pieces produced per month from 31,500 to 40,000;
•increase content using ‘scaled production’ from 2,161 per month to 15,000;
•increase pages containing video from 4 percent of the total to 70 percent of the total.
This is based on the assumption that video will boost eCPMs (i.e. effective CPMs – the
cost per thousand views it can charge advertisers) to $35 or more;
•decrease the average cost per piece of content from $99 to $84;
•increase the media page views per article from 1,512 to 7,000 per article…
---from The Business Insider
14. GROWTH PROGRESSING
•(June 2011) Groupon was in the 29 million unique range, LivingSocial was 14 million,
and Patch.com was 5.5 million. (Compete.com)
•Compete reported that traffic for Cuyahoga Falls Patch is climbing, hitting 8,000
unique visitors in April 2011 up from about 700 uniques in December 2010.
15. WHAT ABOUT HUFFINGTON?
Short-Term PR Strategies:
1. Arianna Huffington claimed the site surpassed the New York Times in traffic
figures in June, publicly invited brands to use the site as a blogging
platform to engage with users.
2. Will be launched in 12 more countries this year.
3. Armstrong said AOL is partnering with “heavy influencers” such as UK
golfer Graeme McDowell.
16. 2 & 3. BROADEN YOUR REACH AND
PERSONALIZE THE EXPERIENCE
• As a PR professional:
–Have experts from corporate to local community
outreach within the PR department
–Make sure everyone knows corporate strategy
–Think grassroots
–Leverage personalities from Arianna Huffington to
sports professionals to expand the online
community and media coverage for AOL.
17. 4. ELIMINATE CUSTOMER PAIN
• “Remarketified” from an audio
dealer to an appliance super
store
• To keep customers from
postponing purchases, they
launched “Buy Back” program
at Super Bowl 2011
18. 4. ELIMINATE CUSTOMER PAIN
• As a PR professional:
– Get internal spokespeople “on message” with exactly what the promo is
about. Review a list of frequently asked questions before an ad runs.
– Have executives stay “on message” with all of the audiences they will be in
front of.
– Keep the message simple. Test it to make sure people are getting it before
launch.
19. 5. HEAD FOR THE CLOUDS
• Established on April 4, 1975
• Rose to dominate home PC
market with MS-DOS operating
systems in the mid-1980s
• Expanded into desktop based
applications, games, etc.
20. 5. HEAD FOR THE CLOUDS
• Microsoft entered into the Cloud computing market with the Azure
Services platform.
• Microsoft Office links to social networking sites
• With Office 365, they are transitioning office software to online-
subscription based model of storing data and launching applications
from Microsoft’s servers
21. 5. HEAD FOR THE CLOUDS
• As a PR professional:
– Know all your audiences who follow your company
– Know your division’s PR messaging, but also know the company’s “big picture”
– Follow blogs, tweets, online articles, cable news, etc. as it relates to your area
and be ready to react when you need to
– Get the partner community all of the information needed to support your
messaging.
22. 6. GO COMPLETELY DIGITAL
Fall 2009. Ann Lewnes, CMO of Adobe.
Entire advertising budget to digital venues with the
launch of Adobe Creative Suite 4 going completely
digital.
http://e-marketingsource.com/2011/07/15/e-marketing-
strategy-adobe-abandons-physical-product-launch-events/
23. THE POWER OF ONLINE VIEWS
200,000 launch views +
200,000 later
How to get Started=3 Million
24. ON GOING DIGITAL ONLY
Most Popular and Most Effective Online Tactics:
• Rich Media/ Merchandising • Social Media
• Mobile • Mobile commerce visualization
• Personalization • Digital Ads
>>> and Analytics!
--Adobe’s Own Research 2011
25. HIGHEST RANKING TACTIC IN DIGITAL
• Mobile advertising, promotions and bar-coded coupons to drive
in-store or web purchases (42 percent)
--Adobe Research 2011
Mobile apps elbowed out personalization by zip code/geo-targeted
sites and personalization engine/behavioral targeting.
26. ADOBE ACQUISITION: SIGN OF THE FUTURE
Acquired e-signature specialist EchoSign and will integrate that
technology into the Acrobat suite, officials said. ----July 2011
27. 6. GO COMPLETELY DIGITAL
• As a PR Professional:
– Remember that the global audience is always nearby
– Mobile strategies work; the untethered worker is here
– Viral messaging tops one-to-many any day
– Make it shareable; make it memorable
– Repeat in Archives, like a songs “Greatest Hits”
28. 7. LEVERAGE KNOWN CUSTOMER DATA
Don’t Let ‘Em Slip Away—Find the Incomplete Transactions
Retail brands and
eCommerce share deep user
data with TellApart
29. LIFT IN SALES FROM WHAT IS
On average, TellApart says, it has been able to offer an average
of three to five percent lift to its client’s overall revenue.
Hit potential Transactional
For every 100 customers with Retargeting
customers that visit personalized ads as
a company’s they navigate their
website, only a few favorite websites
will buy something.
30. INVENT ANOTHER PRODUCT?
“If you have 300 million products, the merchandising becomes the
most important and most difficult,” says Marc Cowlin, CafePress’s
director of brand marketing.
31. 7. LEVERAGE KNOWN CUSTOMER DATA
• As a PR Professional:
– Be understanding on where conversion and convergence enter the picture in
channel development
– Leave no one behind who has clicked
– Reach Out and “Retouch” often
– Study What the Metrics Say and Move Accordingly
– Make Product or Service Selection User Friendly Online—No Esoteric
Language--Simplistic
32. 8. BE AN EVANGELIST
• Salesforce.com was one of the
first software as a service
(SaaS) products
• CEO Marc Benioff became an
evangelist for SaaS first and
Salesforce.com second
33. 8. BE THE EVANGELIST
• After 12 years, Salesforce is already worth more than $18 billion and
is still growing
• First company to exceed $2 billion in revenue in the Cloud space
• Continue to innovate with new products like Chatter
• Acquire firms like Radian6 who have already developed a product that
compliments your product line
34. 8. BE THE EVANGELIST
• As a PR professional:
– Leverage the buzz of new technology to get your company message out
– Educate the market first on technology using your company as the example of
how that technology works
– Have plenty of statistics and factoids on hand to feed press looking for a
story angle
– Use your charismatic CEO as wisely and strategically as possible. Use other
spokespeople to supplement.
35. 9. PROVIDE CHOICE AND ALLOW FOR SHIFTS
• Make the Consumer Your Guide
through Personalization
• Acquisition of Trove to give the
first interactive newspaper
• Trove is a personalized news
engine that lets users
customize the way they view
the Web's most intriguing
stories
36. CUSTOMIZATION WINS THE DAY
• http://www.trove.com/public/introvideo
• Trove learns from you: what you click on, what you share, what topics
you care about, what sources you value. This makes Trove different for
each person — it surfaces what's important to you, now.
• Trove's editors look out for the most interesting stories across our
10,000-plus sources to keep you up to speed on what the world's
talking about.
• Trove hosts conversations about any interest you have, no matter how
general or specific. Use the site to connect with people who share your
interests.
37. 9. PROVIDE CHOICE AND ALLOW FOR SHIFTS
• Ease-of-Use
• Follows What You Care About When You Want It
• The Personalized News Aggregator on Mobile Devices
• Trend: Other media firms looking to stay innovative and useful to
readers:
– Forbes, for example, acquired Clipmarks, which lets users bookmark online
news stories.
38. 9. PROVIDE CHOICE AND ALLOW FOR SHIFTS
• As a PR Professional:
– Look for ways to have users drive what speaks “current”
– Leverage new technologies and showcase innovation
– Build upon consumer interests
– Allow for sharing, and changes in thinking in product development language
39. 10. DON’T STOP-CHANGE THE MUSIC
• Introduction on Playstation 2 in November 2005,
Guitar Hero
• Activision, the company behind the
gamesreported that the franchise had sold 14
million units which equates to about US$1 billion
in sales by 2008.
• Music instrument retailer Guitar Center
partnered with Activision to be the in-game
virtual music store starting with Guitar Hero II.
• On selling real guitars from the marketing:
“The musical instrument retailing industry has seen
record year over year competitive store
increases since the game was first
introduced…”
--
http://nextup.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/guitar-
hero-marketing/
40. REBUILDING THE HERO
• Guitar Hero to be resurrected, retooled, and launch reunion tour
• By Terrence O'Brien posted Jul 23rd 2011 3:29AM
• Stop mourning wannabe rock stars -- Guitar Hero is coming back. We heard
the rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated, but now word has come
straight from Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick that the game is
currently being reinvented for a modern, more demanding audience.
• As he told Forbes, "we're going to take the products out of the market, and
we're not going to tell anybody what we're doing for awhile... we're going
to use new studios and reinvent Guitar Hero.
• And so that's what we're doing with it now." So there you go -- Guitar
Hero's retirement was only temporary. Like any good performer it'll be back
before you've even had a chance to miss it.
41. NO MORE HERO
• Oversaturated at Retail but…?
– No less than 75 music games between 2005 and 2010, with 20 iterations of
Guitar Hero
– RockBand—Harmonix’s digital distribution continues knocking out retail
– over one million people per month still connecting online to download new
music, pushing the profit center
Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/resources/2011/10/10/author-scott-steinberg-offers-seven-lessons-from-the-death-of-
guitar-hero/index1.html#ixzz1ase5ELk9
42. 10. DON’T STOP-CHANGE THE MUSIC
• For the PR Professional:
– Micro-Audiences can be Macro Profitable
– Always a Chance to Do a Makeover
– Build the Excitement and Anticipate New Beginnings
– Connect the Dots—What is Affecting Your Product that May Appear Ancillary
– Look for the Digital Transition
43. EXTRA CREDIT 11. KEEP UP WITH THE TRENDS
– Simple Tools For the PR Professional:
• Google Analytics
• Google Alerts
• Google Insights for Search
• HARO
• ProfNet
• Vocus
• Radian6
• Constant Contact
• PR Web
• YouSendIt
44. KEEP UP WITH THE TRENDS
• US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, http://www.census.gov/acs/www/
• US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, http://www.census.gov/econ/cbp/
• Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Economic Accounts, http://www.bea.gov/regional/
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/
• American City Business Journals, http://www.bizjournals.com/
• Tweetdeck, http://www.tweetdeck.com/desktop/ (acquired by Twitter, personal real-time browser)
• Hootsuite, http://hootsuite.com/ (social media dashboard)
• US Postal Service, Every Door Direct Mail, http://www.uspseverydoor.com/
• Invisible Hand, http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/ (web browser plug-in for shopping lowest price)
• Bing Price Predictor, http://www.bing.com/travel/ (predicts airfare pricing)
• Change.org, (start petitions that make a difference)
45. SO HERE THEY ARE AGAIN…TO REMARKETIFY
• 1. Sell a Whole Solution
• 2. Broaden Your Reach
• 3. Personalize the Online Experience
• 4. Eliminate Customer Pain
• 5. Head for the Clouds
• 6. Go Completely Digital
• 7. Leverage Known Customer Data
• 8. Be An Evangelist
• 9. Provide Choice and Allow for Shifts
• 10. Don’t Stop--Change the Music
• Extra Credit 11. Keep Up With the Trends
46. REMARKETIFYING TIPS
• Stay close to your customers
– Focus groups
– Online research
– On-site visits
• Study the competition
– Where are they having success
– What don’t they do
• Get ideas everywhere
– Press, analysts, people throughout your company
47. KEY INGREDIENTS FOR PR
=Participate in Strategic Visioning
=Be Innovative, “Out-of-the-Box”
=Forget Not Mobile Eyeballs, When Speaking of Internet Tactics
=Measurement or Evaluation Must Be Voiced
=Reaching the Individual Customer
=Competitive Intelligence is Critical: Understand Industry Trends
=Avoid Narrowly Defining Your Role as a PR Professional
