Mike Maney

Category: PR

  • How a Hit Broadway Show Became a Branding Case Study

    Hamilton is a popular play on Broadway. It will have a long run and make a lot of money for its investors. If that was all it did, Hamilton would leave a lasting memory as a certified hit and leave a lasting impact on theater and entertainment.

    But someone in the Hamilton machine is thinking beyond the musical’s core product. Someone sees opportunity to use the show’s influence to play a larger role in improving other human’s lives. And they found a way to do it while staying true to the production’s brand.

     

    “The Eliza Project” has been in the works for months. Curious about the lasting impact of the strong, progressive woman she portrayed on stage, Ms. Soo visited the Graham School and spent hours talking with its students. She wanted to offer them the kind of ‘‘teaching artist” program she saw when she studied at the Juilliard School.

    “‘Hamilton’ Cast Helps Children in Need,” by Leslie Brody, Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2015

     

    In a world increasingly enamored with profit, it is heartening to see some companies think beyond the products they sell.

  • An Experiment: Instagram for Pitching

    This was actually a good thing. Martin wanted to test Instagram as a pitch tool and I happened to be online. Haven’t used it since, but it was fun to experiment.

  • On “getting press” and metrics

    Getting “press,” as this job ad I saw on HackerNews claims to want, is more than measurement. It’s about relationships, news, an eye for tying a company’s story into wider trends, and having an experienced gut feel for when a story is worthy of press and when it’s better suited for some other type of marketing channel. It’s a long game made up of moves that often go unseen because they aren’t on a plan or directly and tactically measurable.

    So, please startups, if you are hiring for PR or searching for an agency to help with your marketing efforts, dig deep to understand what exactly you want them to do..and why. Not doing so wastes your time, wastes theirs and, worse, wastes the media’s.

    By all means, measure what you can. But recognize the value of the unseen that makes the measurable possible.

  • On “getting press” and metrics

    Getting “press,” as this job ad I saw on HackerNews claims to want, is more than measurement. It’s about relationships, news, an eye for tying a company’s story into wider trends, and having an experienced gut feel for when a story is worthy of press and when it’s better suited for some other type of marketing channel. It’s a long game made up of moves that often go unseen because they aren’t on a plan or directly and tactically measurable.

    So, please startups, if you are hiring for PR or searching for an agency to help with your marketing efforts, dig deep to understand what exactly you want them to do..and why. Not doing so wastes your time, wastes theirs and, worse, wastes the media’s.

    By all means, measure what you can. But recognize the value of the unseen that makes the measurable possible.

  • Running Scared: Bud, Craft and The Bowl

    When you’re the biggest dog in an industry being eaten away by a band of small rebels, do you:

    (a) Listen to the market and adapt your product?

    (b) Rally your vast resources to build a better product?

    (c) Publicly acknowledge that you are worried while simultaneously offending any potential new customer?

    If you’re Anhauser-Busch, your answer is (c). Last night, the brewing behemoth used the nation’s biggest advertising platform — the Super Bowl — to run an ad not extolling the virtues of its product, but, rather, slamming the buyers of its top competition. No statistic could reinforce more clearly how the craft beer movement has hurt the commodity beer business.

    When you’re the category leader, you don’t acknowledge your competitor. Ever. Unless they are really threatening your business. That’s something Budweiser tacitly admitted to the world last night.

  • The Other Bird Twitter Needs

    I still owe Marshall a post on how I use LittleBird, but an article popped in my newsfeed this morning that seems a bit more urgent.

    Twitter was all over the tech news yesterday with people reporting and analyzing yet another management shakeup. I’ve been in big companies. News? Eh, not so much. Yet, under the cover of the coverage (see what I did there?) was legitimate conjecture on why the company’s leadership has not been able to hit the user growth targets it has set. One of the reasons, as Owen Williams points out is that the onboarding process for new users is, well, not so good a lot.

    It feels like a missed opportunity to showcase other users that are active and having conversations with their followers, rather than famous people. The value in Twitter is not observing and it’s clear that this feature misses the point.

    Bingo. While I follow a few celebrities, the real value of Twitter is engaging with people who know more than me on topics I care about. Which is something Twitter can’t recommend in its current onboarding process. It just doesn’t have that data or ability to know its new users beyond their address books. It’s a missed opportunity because there is a way to make the onboarding process better and much more relevant.

    Imagine if, upon signing up for Twitter, you were asked “What are some topics you’re interested in?” And then, rather than spit back a suggested list of popular people to follow, it instead pre-populated a topical list of the most influential people on that topic? Helpful and relevant, no? That’s what LittleBird does. As Marshall says, it “focuses on relevant connections inside a community, not just the content people post and popularity they can fake.” I use it frequently (maybe too frequently) to discover who I should be listening to.

    If I were running the onboarding process for Twitter (or whoever is running it after this last shakeup), I’d look at finding a way to integrate LittleBird. While it wouldn’t fix all the onboarding problems (number of steps, etc.), it would make Twitter instantly more relevant to every new user.

  • The Do’s and Don’ts of Evangelism

    A good friend of mine who runs enterprise marketing for a top tech company recently asked me for advice to help counsel one of his executives on the differences between marketing and evangelism. The list below includes some of the top-of-mind tips I provided based on my experience:

    DO

    • Be human. Nobody wants to engage with a marketing droid. Be yourself. Don’t worry if a few warts show.
    • Educate and inform. Be a good source for people who may eventually buy or recommend your product to turn to.
    • Have a point of view. Make people pay attention and engage with you.
    • Know your stuff. Your community will smell fluff from a mile away.
    • Pick up the tab if you can. You’ll be surprised how far $200 at the bar or picking up pizzas for a hackathon or meetup goes.

     

    DON’T

    • Sell. Selling is the job of your sales team. Your job is to be an engaging human.
    • Overly worry about being loyal to your brand. Great evangelists help their community first, even if it means saying a nice thing or two about your competition.
    • Engage only when you need something. Influence is a two-way street.
    • Attend conferences only if you’re invited to speak. It’s not only conceited, but you’ll also miss out on great content and relationship building.
    • Expect anything of your community. Earn it.

    This is by no stretch of the imagination a comprehensive list. What do’s and don’ts would you include? Add them to the comments.

    (For more, check out my Influencing the Influencers deck on Slideshare.)

     

  • Starting out and standing out

    I’ve been very, very lucky throughout my career to study under some really smart people. But more than smart, they were generous. They took young flacks like me under their wings and taught us how to do PR right. They are a big part of the reason I try hard to pass down what I’ve learned to those just starting out in this profession.

    I’ve been an annual speaker at Rutgers and Trenton State (the college, not the penitentiary). And at the end of each talk, I make an offer to the students: send me your resume and I’ll comment on it before you send it off into the big, bad hiring world. It’s a way to help those who take advantage of the offer to stand out in a highly competitive and crowded field.

    This past week, Nicholas Intelisano reached out to interview me for a class project. He’s a student at Southern New Hampshire University taking my friend Jon Boroshok’s communications class (a decorated professor at that). The interview touched on what it was like starting out in the industry. Great questions and an engaging conversation. And, like always, I told Nick to send me his resume.

    He did. And it was a good one. Straightforward, clean, relevant background that showed me he wanted into this profession…despite what I told him I went through when I entered it 😉

    Nicholas Intelisano resume

    But there was something in Nick’s resume that made me wonder if it wouldn’t also work in a more creative, personal format. Yes, he’d still need the straight forward resume to submit to the HR and keyword bots, but…what about trying something like this:

    “My name is Nick Intelisano. I’m about to graduate from the prestigious SNHU school of communications this May — on the good side of the Dean’s list (and President’s list), not the Animal House side.

    Come May, I’d like to turn my vast years of experience as a professional PR intern into a full-time, ramen-flush gig. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. What I really want is a foot in the door to start what I hope will be a long and successful career in PR. That’s where you come in.

    Over the past two years, I’ve gotten my feet wet at places like Regan Communications, Millennium Integrated Marketing and The Good Men Project. I’ve had hands on experience pitching stories, building social media calendars, monitoring and fetching multiple gallons of coffee (I waited tables to help pay for college, so that last one wasn’t that foreign). I’ve coached 4-6 year old children in pee wee soccer, so I’m well-prepared for the rigors of client relations. I’ve seen things. Things I won’t soon forget. Things that will come in handy should you give me a shot.

    Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? What self-respecting PR rookie isn’t steeply versed in navigating those communities? How about the requisite Microsoft Office skills and a dollop of Adobe Illusatrator? I’ve got them, too. Nouns and verbs? You can check out how I’ve used them as a staff writer for the Penmen Press student newspaper on my blog. Leadership? Bam! Founding member of the SNHU chapter of the PRSSA (though I’m less of a Bam! and more of hey-we-started-something-cool leader).

    If you’re looking for someone who wants into this business badly, I’m your guy. And I’m reachable at Nicholas.intelisano@snhu.edu.”

    So I ask you, my PR friends, any advice to give Nick as he tries to break into our ranks? Sound off in the comments.

  • Making bounces better

    Many of the companies I work with make things that ordinary people never see. Things like software that makes the cloud better or technology platforms that makes old cars smarter.

    Yesterday, Foundry Group — one of the most progressive and influential venture capital firms in the business — announced it was backing bounce.io as the lead in the startup’s Series A round of funding. Foundry was joined in the round by SK Ventures (Defrag’s Eric Norlin and economic savant/ladder enthusiast Paul Kedrosky).

    Bounce.io is an example of one of those invisible-hand companies. They make bounced email better. And they found a way to not only monetize the long-ignored, 30-year old problem, but also use it as an opportunity to reduce spam and increase digital security.

  • Do what’s right

    This morning, CVS/pharmacy announced it would take a $2b hit as a result of a decision to stop selling tobacco products in its stores. It’s a triumph for consumer health and a huge win for corporate public relations teams across industries.

    “We’ve come to the conclusion that cigarettes have no place in a setting where health care is being delivered,” he said. “Ending the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products at CVS/pharmacy is the right thing for us to do for our customers and our company to help people on their path to better health.”

    Why is it a PR win?

    Not for the obvious goodwill and media coverage (though it didn’t hurt). It’s a win because this is the kind of business strategy that goes against the conventional wisdom of every other division inside a company. It’s a win because it highlights the shift in today’s business environment.

    Companies are beginning to see that their customers expect more from the brands they do business with. They expect them to be and act bigger than the products they sell. Today, CVS/pharmacy did just that. It took a long term stand at the expense of short term profit.

    “Great companies take on the important challenges facing society.” – Richard Edelman

    People have asked me, “What is it, exactly, that PR does?” What I tell them is, despite its general perception, PR advocates for common sense.