Talk when your publics are listening (and listen when your publics are talking)

First-year Creative Communications students are building their first publicity campaigns; in class, we're talking a lot about how to plan publicity activities to have the best shot at earning our publics' attention. We think about our audiences' preferences and habits when we choose tools, when we choose locations, when we choose messages... and when we choose timing.

We know more people tend to read newspapers on the weekend, and more people tend to listen to radio newscasts during commuter drive-times than in the middle of the afternoon. More people tend to be in shopping malls at mid-day than first thing in the morning or last thing at night. More people tend to be shopping for flowers and chocolates today than most other days of the year.

Knowing these things helps us plan how and where to reach the publics we hope to reach -- and if we plan to use them in our communication plans, it's important to realize there are behaviour trends on social media, too.

Last week, Argyle Social tweeted a link to its "Social Timing Insights Infographic," which illustrates the importance of knowing your publics' habits related to social media. (Follow the link to check it out on Argyle's website -- my screenshots below are a bit tough to read.)

Which social media are your publics using? And when are they using them? It matters, if you want to attract their attention.

Argyle Social compares social media activity for businesses reaching out to business customers (B2B) -- for example, providers of business computer systems -- with activity for businesses reaching out to consumer customers (B2C) -- for example, grocery stores.

This is great information to get us thinking... but it isn't definitive (and doesn't claim to be). If you want to reach your publics using social media, you need to research which platforms they're using and when they're using them.

They may align with the overall trends Argyle Social found, but they may not. For example, in the B2C market:

• It's possible parents of newborns are using social media at different times from parents the same age, socio-economic status etc. whose children are older (and sleep through the night). 
• It's possible high school students are using social media at different times than college and university students just a few years their senior. 
• It's possible a shiftworker's "weekend" falls during what the rest of us call the work week. If it's shiftworkers I'm hoping to reach, I should consider that in planning my social media timing.

As in all things PR, the better you tailor your approach to your publics' habits and preferences, the better job you'll do reaching them.

And the better you measure your effectiveness this time, the better-positioned you'll be to improve next time.

Tim's re-names its coffee cup sizes: PR or not PR?

I love Tim Hortons coffee, and since there's a Tim's here at The Roblin Centre, I buy at least 5 cups a week.

Until last week, the cups I bought were usually "large;" now, the very same cup is "medium." To make room for a new 24 oz size (bigger than what was formerly called "extra large"), the company has re-named all its existing coffee cup sizes and added a new "extra small."

Source: www.timhortons.com

A news release on the Tim Hortons website says the company tested the names of its new cup sizes, "and the response has been overwhelmingly positive." It added that "[b]y shifting the sizes, we're able to provide coffee lovers with a full range of five size options: from extra small, all the way up to the new extra large."


Testing, testing


In Creative Communications first-year PR, we look at how organizations use research to help them make business decisions -- and we examine how carefully questions need to be worded to yield an accurate view of public opinion. 


We also look at examples of the different ways one set of research results can be interpreted, depending on how questions are worded.


In this case, I'd love to know whether the "overwhelmingly positive" response in the research was to the idea of actually re-naming all the familiar cup sizes with the names of other equally familiar cup sizes (except one)... or whether it was to the names themselves. 


I would expect overwhelming support for names like extra-small, small, medium, large, extra-large from customers who were already used to ordering small, medium, large and extra large. I might expect the response to be a bit less enthusiastic if the question was about using all those same names to denote new sizes... but I could be wrong. That's why we do research!


Is this a PR issue?


No, it isn't -- it's a marketing issue.


But it could become a PR issue if it caused a customer backlash (of which I haven't seen any evidence, in this case). If you don't think a change in marketing can cause customer backlash, though, go back and check out what happened when The Gap tried to update its logo in 2010. 


Could this be a publicity stunt?


A friend of mine suggested it might be, in the interests of getting everyone blogging and tweeting about the new sizes. (If that's the case, you're welcome, Tim's!)


I'd question whether Tim Hortons would take that risk unnecessarily, since there was the possibility customers would find the whole thing confusing and annoying until they got the hang of it. 


I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I wouldn't have recommended potentially confusing and annoying customers intentionally, in the hopes that their reactions would generate "buzz." That might generate publicity, but I don't think it would help the company's PR. 


The bottom line


Even if people find the re-naming annoying, I can't see it being a reason for anyone to stop buying coffee at Tim Hortons if that's the coffee they like. The company has a great reputation and brand -- this is at most a blip.


And even if Tim's has turned my old large into a medium, it still beats calling it a "venti."

Gaga over Maria

This week, media (mainstream and new, Winnipeg and international) fell in love with 10-year-old Winnipegger Maria Aragon.



This video was first posted to YouTube on February 16th, and as CBC News reports, went from 3,100 hits to over 2 million within 24 hours, after Lady Gaga herself tweeted how much she loved it.

Shortly after the viral video came mainstream media coverage, from the Winnipeg Free Press to The Huffington Post.

Local radio station Hot 103 brought Maria in studio on Thursday, where she chatted with Lady Gaga herself -- and viewership of that video went wild, too.



This is a great social media story. Perez Hilton reportedy sent Lady Gaga the link to Maria's video on YouTube; Lady Gaga liked it, and tweeted it to her 8 million followers, unleashing a wave of attention little Maria likely never expected.


Maria Aragon is a talented (and adorable) little girl -- and would have been without YouTube, Twitter, and the always hungry 24/7 media beast. But with all those things, she's talented, adorable, and a superstar... even if the latter is only for a local news cycle or two.

As for Lady Gaga...

With that little-girl's-dream fulfilling phone call on Thursday (recorded for posterity and shared online for all to enjoy), Lady Gaga won some hearts. With her invitation for Maria to sing with her on stage in Toronto a few months from now, she won a few more (and will win even more, I'm sure, at that show). And while she was at it, she got people (in this town, anyway) to stop talking about how much the new single sounds like Madonna's Express Yourself for a while.

Not bad, for 140 characters' work!

I'm not at all suggesting Lady Gaga's tweet was a publicity stunt; and even if you're suspicious of her motivations in agreeing to the phone call with Maria, I don't think you can deny that she seemed genuine, and that she absolutely thrilled that little girl.

But with that said, Maria's video does give us an excellent (and heartwarming) example of the impact social media can have in terms of publicity, given the right story.

Super Bowl + French Impressionism = publicity

If you're looking to earn publicity, always be on the alert for ways to tie your client to a topic in the news.

That doesn't mean you have to watch for stories that are closely related to your client's business. In fact, the less obvious the tie to your client's usual image, the stronger your story idea may be: if you can provide an unexpected twist on a story everyone's talking about anyway, you're gold.

No sports story is bigger than the Super Bowl

In the U.S. and Canada, the Super Bowl is a ratings bonanza and an advertiser's dream: even people who aren't that big into football pay attention to it (even if just for the nachos and beer). And because the Super Bowl is such a big story, the mainstream media welcome different angles from which to cover it. 

Publicity 101: provide an unexpected angle on a major story

Is it possible to use the Super Bowl to boost attention to and attendance at art museums? You bet.

The directors of the Milwaukee Art Museum (Green Bay doesn't have its own) and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art have reportedly made a friendly wager on the outcome of next weekend's Super Bowl game, which will feature their respective "home" teams. The temporary loan of multi-million dollar French Impressionist paintings (one Renoir, one Caillebotte) is on the line. 

The directors even threw in some good-natured trash talk, to give the story a little more meat:

"Milwaukee Museum of Art director Daniel Keegan said in a statement to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he is already preparing a space for the Renoir.
“I'm confident we will be enjoying the Renoir from the Carnegie Museum of Art very soon,” the Green Bay native told the paper. “I look forward to displaying it where the public can enjoy it and be reminded of the superiority of the Green Bay Packers.”
Lynn Zelevansky, the director at Carnegie, had a retort for her Cheesehead counterpart.
“In Pittsburgh, we believe trash talk is bad form,” Zelevansky said in a statement. “We let the excellence of our football team, and our collection, speak for itself. It will be my great pleasure to see the Caillebotte from the Milwaukee Museum of Art hang in our galleries.” (Source: CNN "This Just In" blog)
When it comes to publicity, quick thinking can trump deep pockets
I heard about this story on CNN's morning news broadcast late last week; if you search Google News, you'll find the story covered by a variety of mainstream media, as well as betting sites, sports sites, art sites, and a range of blogs (including, now, this one!).
While this isn't a completely original idea (a similar wager was reportedly made over last year's Super Bowl game, instigated by an art critic), it still does the trick. Because it's a novel twist on a big story, the media (and their audiences) love it.  
It won't be novel forever, mind you... the more often it's done, the less attention it will naturally get. But for this year, it's bringing great mainstream attention to both art museums -- and, their directors hope, will bring visitors to see the spoils of the victorious team's win in the local art museum.
For we students of PR, this is a great example of how finding ways to connect our stories with current topics in the public eye can lead to great coverage, with very little investment.

Good publicity stunts are good business

When you tell people you work in PR, some people hear C.J. Cregg, the brilliant, principled White House spokeswoman from The West Wing, and others hear Samantha Jones, the flashy and promiscuous publicist from Sex and the City.

The fact is, PR is home to each of those – and more, both between the two and further along the spectrum on each side. There are people calling themselves PR people who do nothing but connect celebrities with nightclubs and restaurants at which to make mutually-beneficial appearances, and there are those who advise CEOs and heads of state.

Bread-and-butter, thy name is publicity.

Many PR pros, whether their clients are wanting customers for products, votes for candidates, donations for charities or support for causes, spend a lot of their time working to generate publicity. As they undertake their major PR campaign of the semester, Red River College’s first-year Creative Communications students are blogging about publicity stunts this week (you can check them out on the CreComm Blog Network under “Class of 2011”).

As you’ll see from the range of stunts or “pseudo-events” they examine, the sky’s the limit if you’re creative and you understand what gets people’s attention. A good publicity stunt gets people talking about your brand, and creates news for your client where none existed before.

Case in point: Richard Branson and Canadian wireless number portability

In 2007, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (“CRTC”) changed the rules for wireless carriers in Canada, making it possible for cell phone customers to take their phone numbers with them when they left one wireless company for another. (Before this decision, if you changed cell phone providers you had to get a new number – a deterrent to switching providers.)

Richard Branson, the founder and chief executive of the Virgin Group (and no stranger to the media spotlight), undertook a publicity stunt in downtown Toronto in which he rappelled to the street from a “jail cell” suspended 80 feet in the air, and “rescued” some Canadian cell phone customers who were “imprisoned” by their current suppliers.

It worked – Branson’s stunt caught media attention (after all, you don’t see many corporate executives doing things like this), and Virgin dominated media stories about the number portability decision.

Would the number portability decision have been news without Branson’s stunt? Of course. But would the media stories about it have singled out Virgin Wireless, among the other cell phone competitors in the market? Maybe, maybe not – but most certainly not to the degree they did.

With this publicity stunt, Virgin Wireless got itself featured in media stories about how Canadian wireless customers were now going to have an easier time switching to different suppliers – like Virgin Wireless.

Smart business – and great PR.

Making news: Archie comics

When you hear about comic books these days, the discussion is usually about plotlines darker and characters more complex than you find in Archie comics.

Archie Andrews and his buddies have been dealing with the same rivalries and petty jealousies for 67 years or so – and while the props in the stories have been updated over time (e.g., they now have cell phones and the Internet, not to mention their own Twitter profile and blogs), the main characters have remained relatively consistent. Archie loves Veronica, Archie loves Betty, Betty and Veronica both love Archie, and Reggie loves all the ladies (almost as much as he loves Reggie); assorted other characters associated with the high school and the Chocklit Shoppe have defined roles to play too.

To some Archie readers, I think this predictability is part of the appeal: I know at least one corporate executive who reads Archies at night, to turn off the brain with the reading equivalent of warm milk before sleep. But if you’re the people behind Archie Comics, how do you drum up interest in an aging brand?

Make news.



Earlier this summer, Archie Comics made an announcement: after 67 years of trying to decide between Betty and Veronica, Archie was going to propose to snooty rich girl Veronica, in an issue to hit newsstands next week.

From a publicity perspective, it was brilliant. Suddenly, people were talking (see the 250+ comments posted to the announcement alone) – and the reactions were, in many cases, emotional. How could Archie forsake Betty after all her years of loyalty? Was Archie just a gold digger? Hadn’t Archie ever noticed that Betty and Veronica looked identical, other than the colour of their hair? People who’d read Archie comics decades ago were weighing in, and getting involved in a conversation about a brand they’d long forgotten they cared about.

Coverage of the development in mainstream media and in the blogosphere was significant – even Macleans got in on the action. The story got an unexpected additional boost when an irate comic book collector (and seller) sold his first-edition Archie comic for almost $40,000 in “protest” of Archie’s decision to propose to Veronica – though he admitted, when asked, that the economic downturn had played a role in his decision to sell.

National Public Radio (NPR) asked syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson, in her “Ask Amy” column, to advise Betty on what to do now (see Betty’s letter to “Ask Amy” and Ms. Dickinson’s advice here). And as the days tick down to The Proposal’s “on the stands” date of September 1st, I’m sure we’ll hear more. As the Republic of Comics blog puts it, “…whatever people say about Archie and his girls, there’s no doubt that the proposal sparked newfound interest in the aging Archie comics series, which was losing its fan base to more sophisticated video games and darker comic books.”

A tip of my hat to Archie Comics for earning media coverage the old-fashioned way: by making news.

Click here for a preview (i.e. the first 5 pages) of the issue.