It Wasn't Just Broncos vs. Panthers at the Superbowl #MaristSM16

In our class we are broken up into smaller groups, which aids immensely in the whole discussion process.  Imagine having to thoroughly read through over 20 posts and then decide which ones to respond to, and read all the responses.  Sometimes it can get overwhelming.  One of my classmates in another group posted a blog with questions focused around the Superbowl, which makes sense since it just happened on Sunday and the Superbowl is pretty much one of the largest marketing events in a year.  If you're interested, her post is here:

Sandy Wisor's Blog Post

We are not required to respond to other team's blog questions, but can if we choose to.  I will be honest, I did not watch much of the Superbowl at all.  I did, however, watch the movie trailers that aired during the Superbowl because pretty much if there's an ad I want to see during the Superbowl, it's a movie trailer.  (No, I'm not being sarcastic.  I am being very serious.)

So today in my email I received a link to an article on a site called Cinema Blend which was called "The 5 Most Effective Superbowl Movie Ads According to Social Media"

Cinema Blend Article

The top movie ad was for Captain America: Civil War and I am honestly not surprised.  I have Twitter notifications set up for both Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man) and Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America).  As soon as the movie ad aired, Chris Evans  link to the add and an interactive button that said "Tweet #TeamCap."  Robert Downey Jr. attempted to draw people to "#TeamIronMan" by saying they had snacks.

I chose #TeamCap and when I pressed the interactive button, I was able to tweet this:



My own version of the Captain America ad, listing the Avengers who are on Cap's side.  What a great way to incorporate social media!

I know other movies who had Superbowl ads made sure to post links on their own social media feeds, but I think this was a great way to incorporate the fans and have them "pick sides" too.  What made it even better is that two of the movie's stars took to social media and became part of the marketing effort too.

The Superbowl was not just Broncos vs. Panthers.  It was also #TeamCap vs. #TeamIronMan.

Thoughts on Audience Targets and Ill-Advised PR Rules #MaristSM16

Below is my response to blog posts by Jannelle and Steve for Week 4's Discussion - Group 2

 

This week our readings focused, essentially, on knowing your audience.  Knowing one's audience has been something drilled into me, not just for this program but in other things I have done in my life.  While the concept of knowing one's audience was familiar to me, the way to go about doing so, from a social media or public relations perspective, was new to me.

 

Kerpen (2015) had an area in this week's readings that directly focused on how to reach the target audience with a series of statements aimed directly at the reader.  To create my own question in the same vein, and relate it to this week, I would say "just because you are a woman does not mean you do not want to watch the Superbowl."  The point was this,"No, you likely want to hear from companies and organizations based on your specific stated needs and interests" (Kerpen, 2015, p. 33).  He also makes a great point stating,"In the long run, the organizations that will win are the organizations that engage in positive, useful communications with their customers and prospects" (p. 41)

Scott also spent time, in his old rules vs. new rules format, on the same issue regarding an audience.  In the past, marketing and public relations focused on reaching the most amount of people to encourage them to buy a specific product or service.  Scott (2015) said, "Readers of my blog and those who have seen my talks know that I am very critical of the old return on investment (ROI) approach to measuring marketing and public relations success, an approach still popular today" (p. 183).  Though each approached the subject matter in different ways, both Kerpen and Scott know that the old way of marketing and public relations just does not work as it used to.  People expect a more personal approach not just in social media interaction but in marketing and public relations as well.

Question 1: Do you think P&G successfully identified and engaged its target audience with #ThankYouMom?

 

You know, I was just thinking about the #ThankYouMom campaign last week.  I do not remember if it was because of one of the blog posts I read or something in our class Facebook group.  So I am glad that we have the opportunity to revisit this campaign.  Even though I have learned that the commercials still make me cry.  (haha!)

 

I definitely think P&G successfully identified and engaged its target audience.  I remember from discussions last year that there was concern because in some families it was not necessarily the mother who took care of the child or brought the child to skating practice or whatever.  But I think re-watching the ad, though it featured mothers and their children, it made me think of my parents, both my mom and my dad.  Emotionally I was tied to the mother-child relationship and that might have been the original target audience for P&G.  But here is something kind of funny.  That ad was aired during the Olympics in 2014.  I do not remember seeing the ad much after the Olympics were over.  So my thought is, was the target audience actually very specific to parents of athletes or the athletes themselves as opposed to it being a general parent/child relationship?  If that is the case, P&G was very strategic to have such a specific audience in mind, but still be able to relate to non-athletic families, like myself, who thought more about thanking my parents for other things, like supporting me during my graduate school journey.
 

Question 2:  Expanding on Scott's example of leaders still using old rules of PR, write about one rule by leaders in your workplace that you believe is ill-advised in this new world of social media marketing. How would you go about explaining to leaders why a new approach is critical?

As I started my blog post, I used a quote from Scott (2015) speaking about the Return on Investment (ROI) way of marketing.  I think often at the higher education level a lot is placed on the number of students accepted at a school and how many students that school graduates a year.  While those numbers are impressive, I think a focus needs to change in terms of what the education establishment itself does as opposed to statistics on accepted and graduated students.  Being an employee and alumni of Marist College has had great benefits, not just in terms of what is offered (like free education) but also the pride of being a #RedFoxForLife.  Social media allows those who have pride in their place of education and employment to share that pride not just with those in their personal network but around the world, where ever their social ties reach.  Yes, having money come in from new students is a good thing.  But being able to see the reach of Marist outside of the campus environment and through social media is a much larger benefit, I think.  And it is one we should definitely expand upon.



Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable social media. (2nd ed.). United States: McGraw Hill Education.

Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR. (5th ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

SuperBowl Ads - Optional Discussion for #MaristSM16

So in my class this 8-week session we've been talking about social media and how marketers and public relations folks have to change their way of thinking to reach people.  The "old ways" don't work.  But yet, there are still many brands who pay A LOT of money to play 30-second (or more) spots during the SuperBowl.

I got to thinking about this when I saw this on an entertainment feed I follow and read during my lunch break:

http://www.tvinsider.com/article/68490/super-bowl-ads-by-the-numbers/

Is this still using "old ways" to reach people?  Or is it a "new way" because of the innovation and amount of money that go into these ads?

Thoughts?



This post is open for anyone to comment and discuss and should not be considered part of my contribution to the Digital Leadership Experience.  I just wanted a different outlet to post my thoughts, and my blog seemed like the right place.

Adventures in Receiving a New Phone

So on Monday I received a new phone.

In today's day and age there are times when people choose to keep their phone until it croaks and dies.  You can see this with two different types of people.  One is the type like my mom who has the simplest phone.  It isn't a smartphone. It has no bells and whistles.  It makes calls.  Has a speaker phone.  And can save pictures that are sent to her.  For the phone person like my mom, it isn't necessary to get the latest phone because she does nothing with her phone but call people.

The other type of person is the one who has a smartphone, but doesn't want to go through the hassle of having to reinstall and reconnect to all their apps, specific phone settings, etc.  I will admit, sometimes that is me.  I get all my apps in to nice little folders and just the way I want them on the different screens.  I know how to set different ringtones and notification sounds and have themes based on the time of year (Trans-Siberian Orchestra rules my phone between November and early January) or TV/Movie obsession at the time (like when I had Avengers Age of Ultron songs as every notification).

Well, I was starting to become one of those people in the second group - who would hang on to their phone until it wouldn't power up anymore.  But I was soon finding my personal phone to be more of a problem.

I had one of the original Samsung Note Edge phones.  And, at the time, it was a great phone because it was the latest in Samsung's technology.  Until a few months later when they came out with the next version of the Edge and they kind of forgot about the original Edge.

Over the past several months my phone battery has been less and less efficient.  I could barely get through a work day without my phone going down to 30-40%, and that was with me just keeping the phone next to me on my desk.  Forget it if I had to send my sister a text message or call my mom.  When I got home my phone went right on my charger (thank goodness for fast charging!) and by 8:30pm or so, I'd take the phone off...only to have it down to 60-70% at 11pm.

If that wasn't enough, the length of time for me to do anything with the phone was killing me.  When I put my niece to bed at night when both her parents are out or working, she likes to make a video to say "good night" to them.  So I put her in her bed under her covers. Then press my camera button and wait for the camera to open up.  Then I had to press a button to change to video, which would take even more time - up to a minute.  Meanwhile, my niece has started and stopped her "good night" speech about 10 times because it's taking so long.  Finally we get the video recorded and she wants to see it.  Wait for another minute or two because that's how long it took to get to the gallery to play the video.

And forget trying to quickly call someone.  To call home, I would press the phone button and wait a minute.  Then I'd press the quick contacts button and wait another minute.  Finally I'd press the contact button I had set up for home and wait another minute for it to connect and (hopefully) start ringing.  You might say, just dial your home number!!  And I would.  Except I would press where a number was, and it would sometimes record the number and sometimes not.  You should see some of the almost attempts to dial my home number only to have something that is not even close to my home number.  I am glad I didn't have to call 911 or the police or something!

So it was time to get a new phone and deal with the hassle of getting a new phone.

Problem #1 - Not every phone has a micro-SD card slot anymore.  It used to be a small percentage of phones that only had internal storage.  Now it seems the stats are the opposite.  At any rate, I had somewhat recently purchased a 30GB mini-SD card to hold all my pictures and videos from my phone.  I like the option  of a micro-SD card (or something similar) because then you're not saving photos and other things right to the phone's hard drive.  Save the phone's hard drive for apps and stuff.  (haha!) 

So it took a bit of research on Verizon's site but I finally found a phone that would fit my needs, the LG V10.

And my phone arrived Monday.

Problem #2 - It uses a micro-SIM card for the 4G LTE network.  My past personal phones had used a regular-sized SIM card for the same thing.  So in my previous phone upgrades, I just had to move the SIM card from one phone to the other - at least to get phone-based stuff working, like calling someone.

Problem #3 - Verizon sent instructions to start my new phone that basically said to put the battery in, charge the phone, and then power it up and follow the instructions to set up the new phone.  Simple enough.  But the phone had no idea who I was, what my phone number was, or that I was a Verizon customer.  Because the SIM card with all my information from my old phone didn't fit into my new phone.

I wound up setting up WiFi first, which was helpful because as soon as the phone turned on and I connected to the Google account I use for all my phone stuff, it started to download my previously owned apps.  But I then used my iPad to search for a number to activate my phone and finally a half hour after I started, I could make calls with my phone.

The easiest parts were my contacts and the apps.  Because I back my contacts up to Verizon's Cloud, all that stuff got put onto my phone when I reconnected to Verizon Cloud via the WiFi.  And all my apps got installed because I connected with my Google account.

But if I ever have to go through a tough activation process again....

It all would've been easier if the right instructions were put with my new phone.  Then I wouldn't have gotten so frustrated.



Oh, and by the way, I was able to use my phone yesterday pretty regularly and by 11pm was down to 30%.  No recharges at work or home necessary.  And though I thought I would miss seeing notifications on the Edge screen, I don't.  Because to make the edge screen work you still had to press a button on the phone to light the edge up.  The V10 has a second screen that is dimly lit at the top, but it shows if you have any notifications, like a text message or missed call, plus while the phone is locked you can also access a quick memo, flashlight, phone, and camera - without having to unlock the phone.  And fun fact.  The power button and volume keys are on the back of the phone, under the camera lens.  A rather convenient place to have them.  Now if only I would stop pressing the camera lens and getting fingerprints all over it when I am trying to look at my screen.....

Happy New Year!

Well, it's 5 days into the new year and so far every time I've had to write a date, I've remembered that it is 2016 and not 2015.  So that's a good thing......

So I won't say that I'm making a resolution to post more on this blog, because it seems 9 times out of 10 resolutions fail by the end of January.  However I will say that I hope to be able to post more on this blog.

I think part of the problem is that I feel like when I write here, I have to write a lot.  And sometimes I have a lot to say.  But sometimes I want to just say a few things and I keep it inside because I don't think to write it out here and it's too many characters for Twitter.

So I guess you could say my thought is that I will try to share things more often.  And we'll see how that goes.