Things That Make You Go hmmm…

AHA Creative Strategies is the PR agency of record for Tourism New Zealand (TNZ).  As many of our regular blog readers know, TNZ is one of our favourite clients and not just because they are fun and hilarious people. The North American team at TNZ (based in Los Angeles) works with AHA in a partnership and that approach creates positive results. We have had some of Canada’s best travel writers visit New Zealand as a part of the International Media Program and have worked with them to see coverage generated in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, AOL Canada, Sympatico.ca, MSN.ca, ReadersDigest.ca, Canoe.ca, and the list goes on and on.

Paul and I will be heading to New Zealand on Friday to produce TRENZblog.com. TRENZblog is a social media campaign that is a great example of identifying and targeting a specific audience in a defined time frame.

When we started TRENZblog in 2009, social media was starting to become prevalent. It wasn’t where it is today, however. As an organization, TNZ saw the value in investing in this social media campaign as a pilot project. Since then, the world has become more and more active on social media networking sites and online in general and TRENZblog has benefited from that. TRENZblog was initially created to connect with travel media (both trade and consumer) and travel industry professionals (travel agents, tour operators, wholesalers, etc.) who might not be able to travel to New Zealand for TRENZ, New Zealand’s largest travel trade show. While this is the largest audience for TRENZblog, we have found as we have gone along that quite a few travellers – people that don’t work in the travel industry, but are interested in travelling to New Zealand – began to follow TRENZblog. This secondary audience is also an important group for us – the traveller interested in New Zealand.

AHA - Zorb ImageWe are now entering our 3rd year of TRENZblog. Each year, we have seen strong growth – up to 30% in audience figures. I think for this specific campaign, there were several key factors that provided a foundation for this success. They are:

  • TNZ saw this as a pilot project – they (and we) were open to taking a risk and to experimenting and seeing what worked and what didn’t. It was an opportunity to learn, along with our stakeholder group, as we all moved more deeply into the use of social media and online tools.
  • This campaign had a clearly identified community that it was targeting. Our blog readership and Twitter followers are solid – in context of the target market we want to connect with. We don’t have a million followers – but we have a strong following of travel media and travel professionals along with some non-travel professionals who are interested specifically in New Zealand as a travel destination. This campaign targets an audience that has it’s own audience. For every one person we have that follows us, they may have their community of 100, 500 or 25,000 people. So if we tell them about New Zealand and they tell others, the reach builds.
  • The campaign was given enough time (now three years) to build a community and to create momentum. Social media engagement takes time and effort. It doesn’t happen over night.
  • This campaign was also given a specific life span – we start a week before TRENZ (May 22-25, 2011) and we end about a week after. TRENZblog and @TRENZblog on Twitter, with few exceptions, is quiet for the rest of the year. Our community knows that – it’s a little like we’re a friend that visits via social media once a year. We are always welcomed back – and we’re always sad to say goodbye!

For the week prior to TRENZ, Paul and I will travel on New Zealand’s North Island and experience some of the fabulous tourism products offered – from wine tours on a bike, to cruising Lake Taupo, to golfing, to experiencing authentic Maori culture. Then we head to Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital, where we will ZipTrek, tour Milford Sound, check out more wineries (I know, it’s a tough job!) and even skydive!

Then we report live from TRENZ on all the news from New Zealand’s tourism sector. We’ll interview tourism operators (and are happy to interview specific operators on request!). We’ll be tweeting live, almost live-blogging and providing all kinds of photos and video clips. If you can’t be in New Zealand for TRENZ, this is the next best thing to being there!

Our blogs for the next two weeks will focus on this campaign – we want to showcase a real, live campaign – it’s challenges and successes – so that our blog readers who are interested can get a real sense of what can be done, when you do it right!

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At our Vancouver PR agency, we’re big fans of Ragan.com and we love surveys and reports. That means that today was a great Monday, when I saw the daily Ragan PR news come in and there was a piece entitled 3 Social Media Challenges For Communicators To Face by 2015. And it is backed up by a report.

If you are interested in building an online community or network, this is an important piece to read. It has some solid information on the benefits and challenges, and along with being able to download the entire report, you can also download a tips and hints document.

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Warning: Longer blog post – I’ve had a thought running around my brain all weekend and now it’s time for it to come out!

We have a lot of brainstorming meetings internally at our Vancouver PR agency and with our clients. Creative concepts for campaigns, developing story ideas for pitching journalists, bloggers and other social media communities, events, speeches, content for newsletters. The list goes on and on. As creative as we can be (and we can be quite creative), when we brainstorm there is always a focus on the business objective and on the relevance of the concept we develop.

We have a good reputation with journalists and bloggers for pitching them with newsworthy, relevant ideas. I learned a great deal about writing a solid pitch when I was at Maclean’s – we saw a lot of good, bad and really, really ugly pitches come in and I was fortunate not just to have my take on them, but to hear what my colleagues thought made a pitch relevant enough for them to want to find out more about the idea. We also have a smart crew here at AHA, who put their experience and expertise to the task and who review pitches and put forward additional ideas and concepts because our focus is always on creating something interesting and of value that catches the attention of the journalist or blogger we are pitching.

I had a discussion last week that really got me thinking about the importance of relevance when it comes to pitching. I know that there are sometimes challenges internally at organizations when it comes to defining what makes a good story. When you work for an organization you can lose perspective on the bigger picture. Sometimes, what is huge news for the people of a company or organization isn’t relevant to a journalist or blogger. It doesn’t take away the importance of the initiative, it’s just about who will find the information relevant and interesting.

PR people all have stories of clients who say to them X publication or Y broadcast news outlet should run this story – when, in fact, the story isn’t relevant to the readership or audience of that media outlet. It’s our job to make sure that when a pitch or news release goes out to media, it is of value to the media and bloggers that it goes to. Sometimes that means having a tough conversation with clients and explaining why something isn’t newsworthy outside of their internal newsletter.

I got to thinking about this on the weekend and I think that, with social media, individuals involved in organizations are becoming more and more involved in sharing information. In many ways, that’s a great thing. The challenge is that if people are being tasked with creating content – whether it is a tweet, a blog post, a Facebook update or a pitch, these people need to be given the tools of identifying what is relevant, being able to clearly showcase how this content supports the organization’s business objectives and how it fits in with the overall business strategy and the communications strategy.

I know how easy it can be to watch a morning news show or local talk show and think we should be on there. A good communicator goes through an in-depth process, looking at what the business objective is, to identify the media and/or bloggers that are relevant to the organization (what newspapers, magazines, radio or TV news does your target market consume?) what the story is, how that story can be put forward to specific media in a way to showcase its relevance and value to their audience/readers.

I think one of the challenges that organizations are starting to face is making sure that everyone involved with communication – whether they are in the communication department or not – understands how to effectively communicate. That it isn’t about what you want to tell people, it’s about what they are interested in hearing and how you build information into a compelling story. I do sessions with groups that talk about what needs to be done in order to generate media or blogger coverage or to create positive information sharing on social media networks and I can’t tell you how often someone in the session puts forward the arrogant assumption that because it’s important to them (or the organization), that it SHOULD be important to media or bloggers. That’s when we role-play the pitch to the journalist (me) and I start poking holes in their approach (respectfully, of course).

Collectively, the media experience at AHA is well over 100 years. We take this component of our work very seriously because each time we reach out to a journalist or blogger with a pitch, not only is it the reputation of our client being put forward – it’s ours too. If a journalist or blogger thinks you regularly send them information that isn’t relevant to their readers, listeners or viewers, you lose credibility. We don’t want that for our clients.

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AHA - Boardroom ImageAt AHA, we are communicators. Quite often that means that we work with our clients on projects that they want to share with stakeholders – either internal or external (and often both).

Sometimes, our role with them is to assist in developing communications vehicles – a website, an online newsroom, a Facebook or Twitter page or other social networking presence along with a strategy. Other times, we work with them on a business project and to help develop a communication strategy around it. Quite often, we are brought in at the start of the project and asked to contribute to the project as a whole – rather than being given the directive to “communicate this.” That’s always an exciting time because it shows that the client organization understands that communication deserves a seat at the leadership table. They see that a strategic communicator can provide value in a business strategy session, not just build a communications plan around a strategy.

Often we are asked to participate in product development brainstorming sessions, to contribute to refining a corporate structure, to work with them on plans for growing their business or improving their organization with a focus on becoming more relevant and valuable to stakeholders. As senior communicators, many of our clients find it of value to have us in at the start of the project to provide our input and feedback.

When I came across this article in Forbes online, it reinforced the value of communication throughout an organization and to external stakeholders as an organization focuses on innovation.  It’s worth a read.

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