Archive for December, 2009
Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 18th, 2009
The NY Department of Health and Hygiene’s video campaign to wean the people of the big apple off soda has certainly generated a great deal of discussion in both traditional media and online.
When you think about the number of people that this video has reached, it is quite impressive. It had national coverage in both the U.S. and Canada (and I would imagine around the world). If the objective of this video is to change behaviour, I think it works. I will think twice about having another drink of pop, that’s for certain.
Shock value works in…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 17th, 2009
The Honeytech blog has a great post on Twitter tracking and analytics tools. If you are interested in using or already using Twitter and want to better understand its value, this post is worth a read.
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 16th, 2009
Who could resist that headline? I just read an interesting blog post on Mashable by Patrick Moran entitled: 5 Tips To Grow Your Business in 2010. Although Moran approaches it from a marketing perspective, this piece has great value for communicators as well.
The popularity of video is growing rapidly. In the past in Canada, video new releases (VNR) haven’t been widely used. That’s changing, I believe. In the United States, VNRs are used extensively. CNN even has a distribution service (CNN Newsource) where an organization pays to have its VNR distributed.
I was having a conversation with…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 15th, 2009
The Bad Pitch Blog has an excellent post on holiday tie-ins and what does and doesn’t work. In this post, they showcase examples of the good, the bad and the ugly. One that stands out as great is PNC, a financial services group. For the past 26 years they provided the PNC Christmas Price Index. Using the classic song The 12 Days of Christmas, in a fun and lively way, they showcase the how prices have increased or fallen over the past year.
They “own” this area of Christmas and this year’s website is great. It…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 14th, 2009
Mark Naples has an excellent piece on iMedia Connection: 6 Ways To Sabotage Your PR Efforts. Anyone working with an agency, a contractor, a freelancer, or even with in-house PR should read this and take an honest look at how you work with these people; people like us at AHA!
In the piece, Naples focuses on interactive companies and/or start-ups, but what he writes applies to many organizations and industries. The first point that he makes touches on unrealistic expectations. I think that’s an important topic. I happen to be a strong believer that you need to reach…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 11th, 2009
There is an interesting piece by Jeremy Porter at Journalistics.com listing the 10 reasons why media relations will get easier in 2010.
Porter hits the nail on the head when he outlines the challenges that any of us who work in media relations face—one is that journalists are busy. Getting their attention isn’t easy, even when you have a good story. The profession of journalism has changed drastically because of social media. Journalists now have more work than ever (technology makes the world a much more connected place), there are less of them to do the work, and…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 10th, 2009
Susan Young has an amusing and somewhat realistic blog post on the 10 things that clients say that scare PR professionals. It’s worth a read. For those of us in PR, it will make you nod your head and chuckle. For clients, have a read with your sense of humour turned on, you may find yourself nodding and laughing too.
The post raises a good point and one that we, at AHA, discuss quite often. We have a range of clients from senior communicators in large corporations to CEOs and business owners to start up entrepreneurs. And believe…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 09th, 2009
I spend a great deal of time online – reading, reviewing, and checking things out. I often come across great resources and thought we would start a new feature for our blog called AHA Resource Alert. When I find something of value that might be of benefit to you, I will post it here. Below is our first resource alert.
Gaspedal offers exceptional resources – many of them free, others at a reasonable cost for the value. It is definitely worth checking out the audio recordings, white papers and other resources about word of mouth marketing here.
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 07th, 2009
Different from establishing the personality of your online brand (although it is relevant) and different from defining the personality traits of your “community” (target market), understanding what your social media personality is important.
IMedia has a great piece on this by Tom Edwards. It is important to understand your social media personality and the risks and opportunities that come with it. Edwards does a great job of outlining each. Definitely worth a discussion within your organization.
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