It’s an innovative way to get noticed above the noise — “The Spike Method.” Spikes are an abrupt rise in awareness and attention. You can either turn a spike into a strategic platform, or you can sit back and get skewered. With predictive spike scanning, you start to see a wide variety of patterns that emerge for your clients, including trend spikes, national event spikes, topic relevancy spikes and complaint spikes. Take a look at compelling real-life examples that introduce this approach to help maximize your client's visibility, "virability" and profitability.

1. Predictive Scanning:
Why PR is Poised for
a Comeback

2. St. Louis Bridge Co.

3. Imagine this.
You’re going about your day, scanning through the online news site, your
feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Some things you like, some things you share, you might comment on,
some things you just scroll past…
This is what we call engagement. And this is great for brands, right?

4. Fast forward
Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. An hour.
Maybe you remember one or two bits of content you saw today,
but only because you’re thinking about it.

5. Come dinner time, you’ve completely forgotten
that you really loved the Papa John’s heart-shaped
pizza post on Facebook today, because
you feel like tacos for dinner and barely
remember you even saw it.

6. Do you remember every brand
you engage with?

7. 5,000 messages a day,
according to CMO.com

8. How People Want to Interact
with a Brand has Changed

10. Remove the clutter. Focus on what
really matters and you can stand
out and create real ROI for your
brand.

11. It’s not that content marketing is bad.
Your audience is seeing so much
everyday that it is hard for them to tell
what’s important.

12. If you are thinking, I interact with
people all day regarding customer
service issues, events, inquires, etc.
That’s the nature of BASIC
marketing.

13. How do you break through the noise? How
do you create real perception and behavior
change?
It’s not through engagement – it’s timing
your SPIKE.

14. SPIKE
A sudden, point of interest that kick-starts
exposure good or bad.

15. How?

16. Bad News.

17. Executives are on the
same distraction cycle
and want quick, easy
solutions that don’t
require strategy,
messaging and timing
considerations.

18. They want – FREE SOCIAL
MEDIA!
But, it isn’t free.
In fact, it costs more than staff
resources and time.

19. It is the cost of always
being available for your
audience.

20. A penny for your
thoughts.

22. Details are lost
b/c you see the
penny so often.

23. Does that also
translate to
brands?

24. A Gallup poll finds that 62% of
people say social media has no
influence at all on their
purchasing decisions

25. 91 percent of 32,000
people studied by the Keller Fay Group
over the course of a year shows people
still get brand recommendations directly
from word of mouth.

27. Social Risk
Just 2.7% of people are willing to stick
their neck out on the line to recommend your
brand via social media, because of a factor
known as “social risk,” according to the
Journal of Consumer Psychology.

28. Push
Push
Push
ASK!

29. We recommend
focusing on real-time
initiatives,
campaigns and
ideas…

30. WHEN they are
important to
your audience.

32. Doing this doesn’t have to…
lessen your budgets or
your effectiveness.
It can actually increase ROI,
Results and Respect.

33. Build-up and build down
approach to a SPIKE in
interest.

35. SPIKE Spotting

36. You are the Senior Communications Director for Circus Cruise Line.
One of your top competitors XYZ Cruises is stuck at sea for the past two days and is getting terrible
media coverage because they are not communicating with passengers in a transparent way, they are
avoiding answering questions about when the ship will be back in working order and members of the
media are getting reports from people on the ship related to the deplorable conditions.
Your brand is known for outstanding customer service for the past 20 years, until a recent hiccup last
week where the company’s former Social Media Coordinator posted a personal tweet about how much
the company sucks, which was retweeted thousands of times and reported on Mashable and
accompanied by a trending hashtag #circuscruisefail.
Shortly after that incident, legal got involved and has now put an extra step in the process to social
media posts, slowing down your company’s real-time responses by a few hours. This has also made other
people in the leadership team in the organization gun shy about social strategies. But, your CMO has
requested better metrics and engagement on social media channels and you are trying to find innovative
ways to SPIKE your brand awareness.
• What creative ways can you develop to respond to this in real-time without seeming opportunistic or
does that matter?
• How do you go about convincing leadership, i.e. CEO, CFO, COO that you should respond in real-time?
What role should your CMO play in convincing senior-leadership to act quickly? How do you deal with
the legal team’s apparent bias to social media?
• How will you allocate resources to respond in real time?

37. Some timing considerations…
• What’s trending?
• Social and Traditional Media
• Buying cycle considerations
• Awareness, Engagement, Discovery, Purchase, Retention
• Competitor missteps/wins
• New legislation, advocacy, issues
• Contrarian opinions, i.e. bloggers, pundits, etc.
• Previous industry/company issues
• Potential weak spots
• News cycle trends…

38. ?

41. PBS

42. CVS’ Bold Move

43. Lockheed and Boy Scouts

45. Thank You