Great Photos Equal Great PR

Case study:

Amanda is a mompreneur, who couldn’t find a product she was looking for when she had her first baby 8 years ago, so she decided to create it herself. Her unique baby product got her friends asking for one for their babies too and soon she was making the products so often for friends and their friends, that she decided to start her own company and start selling her products for other parents as well. Her revolutionary baby product was hitting the retailers and she also started her own online store in 2004. Her website was getting decent amount of traffic and sales, and all the customers who bought the product absolutely loved it, and Amanda started visioning for more. She wanted to have her baby product featured in magazines, written about in blogs and used by celebrity babies. She pitched her product, and was rejected again and again. All this at the same time while getting a lot of positive feedback on the product itself.

In 2006 another mompreneur Hannah saw Amanda’s product and also loved it, but was hoping for getting it in a different color options that what Amanda was offering. Hannah was trying to find the same product from other companies to get it in a color she liked, but couldn’t find a similar product in the market. Hannah had an idea - she wanted to start a company making the baby product like Amanda’s was, and offer it in new color schemes. In early 2007 Hannah’s website launched with inviting graphics and high quality product photos of the baby product in use. In now time Hannah’s baby product was in the baby magazines, featured on TV shows and blogged in mommy blogs.

Amanda’s original product was actually better made, and their price points were around the same, the products are very much alike, but it was Hannah who was getting all the good PR. There are several reasons of course, but one really big reason is pictures and the visual branding. Better pictures, better PR, and ultimately, more sales.

3 Reasons Why You Need Great Product Photos for Great PR:

1. Everyone wants their website or magazine to look good, if your product makes them look good, they are more likely to feature it.

2. The easier you make it for people, the more willing they are to help you. While most magazines take their own photos, websites and blogs don’t. If you offer them great photos they can use to feature you, they are more likely to feature your product.

3. You want your photos to represent you and your product correctly, and it doesn’t matter how great your product is if your photos say “poor quality” - that will automatically be the first impression of your product as well.

The bottom line is.. Better photos means more PR and ultimately better sales numbers.

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Motrin Heard the News *UPDATED*

It has been interesting to see how this has been unfolding today.

My YouTube video has gotten over 2500 views, my blog posts mentioned at Peter Shankman’s blog, and at Mashable, written by Sarah Evans. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting posted my video, so did 5 Minutes for Mom. And over 60 blogs blogged about it today and linked to Skimbaco Lifestyle.

A lot of upset moms.
Bad PR.
And silence from Motrin - until just an hour ago, when Motrin.com was taken down - for little upkeep called taking the ad down.

I also just received an email from Kathy Widmer, Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

Dear Katja -

I am the Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare. I have responsibility for the Motrin Brand, and am responding to concerns about recent advertising on our website. I am, myself, a mom of 3 daughters.

We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies. We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website. It will take longer, unfortunately, for it to be removed from magazine print as it is currently on newstands and in distribution.

-Kathy

Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

Great - looks like the clean up of the mess has started, and so far done right. Looking forward seeing what happens next.

Motrin’s website was down for good 15 hours, and now this message has replaced the ad:

This is a great start, and hopefully a wake up call, not just for companies involved but for the rest of corporate America. Companies need to be on social media, and communicate with their target market.

Even if people don’t agree that the ad was/wasn’t offensive (which by the way is a personal opinion, and same way that we can’t say someone is wrong because they don’t like tuna fish, you can’t say that moms who found this ad offensive are wrong), the fact reminds that it took 24 hours from Motrin to response anything to those who were offended. Many in social media think 24 hours is a long time to response, we are used to instant gratification, but for a company who isn’t involved in social media, it was some what impressive to get any type of response within 24 hours and on a Sunday evening.

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Motrin Makes Moms Mad

Dear Motrin Marketing Team,

I am hoping you will feel our pain, and you have enough Motrin to survive the Motrin babywearing campaign headache you will be feeling in the next couple of days, maybe even weeks. I am truly sorry if someone looses a job over this, but frankly, this would have been easily avoided - by asking a few babywearing moms, what they thought of your babywearing = pain ad.

Me and several other moms in the online communities were offended by your ad targeting moms, which said:

Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.

I mean in theory it’s a great idea.

…

And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free.

Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience.

They say that babies carried close to the bod tend to cry less than others.

But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t?

I sure do!

These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back?!

I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid.

Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom.

And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.

The advertising video started a discussion on Twitter.com, and in the mommy blogging community. Jessica Gottlieb recommended using a #motrinmoms hashtag for the discussion and “a few hours and two thousand tweets later #MotrinMoms is the #1 search on Twitter, eclipsing SNL for the first time since Obama was elected” .

I asked my followers on Twitter what they thought of the the ad:

And the responses were flooding… I wanted to collect the message for Motrin, but unfortunately YouTube lets you make only a 10 minute video - and I couldn’t fit every comment for the ten minutes!

Here is only a short list of blog posts covering the Motrin ad fiasco:

Motrin’s New Ad Attacking Babywearing
Motrin Ad Bashes Baby Wearing
Motrin the Anti-Mom
Twitter Moms Uproar Over Motrin Video
Twitter Crouwd Isn’t Inviting Motrin Moms to Their Playdate
Motrin Moms React

And since it is 4 o’clock on Sunday morning when I’m writing this (it sucks that bad PR happens when the marketing team has a day off, doesn’t it?) , I’m keeping my marketing advice simple:

1. Always know your target market.
2. If you don’t know your target market - hire someone who does. For example, when marketing to moms - ask moms!
3. Don’t underestimate the power of the synergy of blogging communities like mommy bloggers.
4. You have to be using social media so you can monitor and take control when something like this happens. Monday morning is not fast enough. Everyone will know your story told by someone else but you by noon on Sunday.

The good news is, that any company marketing to moms can achieve amazing results by the help of the moms & the mommy blogging community. The ways companies can do this:

1. Hire a Chief Mom Officer, who knows the target market & marketing. Or hire Mom Experts to answer your questions how you can reach moms. (Motrin: hire a Chief Mom Officer, soon launching MomForce will be a great source)
2. Ask what you can do to moms, not what moms can do for you.
3. Show that you genuinely care, start a conversation and listen the answers your target market is giving you.

Written by Katja Presnal
Mommy Blogger
PR / Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mother of Three

katja dot presnal at skimbaco dot com

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Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.

Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party

One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is

“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”

Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.

TWO WAY COMMUNICATION

The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!

There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.

Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.

While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.

See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.

CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK

I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.

Katja Presnal

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE

Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.

The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.

Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.

CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”

Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.

Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.

Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.

When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.

Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.

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The World’s Worst Press Release

Tip of today: if you don’t know how to write a great press release, don’t do it at all.

PRESS RELEASE TIPS

1. Many PR people advise companies writing one press release a month, if not for anything else, but to post at free press release distribution service sites to get back linking to the company’s website and using relevant key words to get a good Google spot.

2. They also say “don’t do a press release, if you don’t have anything new to say”. This get tricky, huh? You’re suppose to get “news” out, but if you don’t really have news, you still should “get your name out” anyway.

3. Another great tip is to use statistical numbers by some well known source. Or state a problem and offer a solution.

4. Other tip PR folks like to say “use a current angle” in your press release, something to tie in with current news. For example now would be a great time for companies pitch “frugal Holiday gifts” since the economy has made everyone thinking how we can afford Christmas this year.

THE HOME BACK-UP PROTECTION COMPANY FOLLOWED ALL THESE TIPS BUT WROTE THE WORST PRESS RELEASE OF OUR TIMES

Using a good press release distributing site, stating statistical numbers, and showing a need and a solution, using a current angle - sounds like there is a lot the company did right in the press release.

But it is ALL WRONG and caused the company a tremendous amount of Very Bad PR and I among many other PR people vote this the Worst Press Release of Our Times.

The Back-Up company sells bedside shotgun racks (and I want to make sure you understand I hate the product, but it would be a whole another blog post why I think the whole product is all wrong, let’s now just discuss this one particular press release) and yesterday The Back-Up company released a press release that has been raising eyebrows among the PR people world wide.

The press release was written by using all the tips above, and the “current angle” was exploiting the horrible triple murder than happened for Jennifer Hudson’s family. What a distasteful and despicable thing to do - use someone’s tragedy to sell your products!

The original press release is copied here, because it was starting to stir the Bad PR pot for the company, the original press release was changed while I was still writing this blog post.

Too late for Back-Up company though - Chicago Tribune already published the story - and many bloggers, me included had already copied the original press release:

COULD A BEDSIDE SHOTGUN RACK HAVE SAVED JENNIFER HUDSON’S FAMILY FROM TRAGIC DEATH?




Chicago, IL (MMD Newswire) October 28, 2008 — Tragedy strikes in a Chicago home leaving 3 people dead and an Oscar winner forced to identify the bodies of her family.

Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were gunned down in their home Friday. Could an invaluable device have saved their lives?

It’s called The BackUp and it is a bedside shotgun rack.

Everyday, there are over 8,000 home invasions in America, many resulting in assault, rape, and murder. That’s according to a report by the US Department of Justice. 



Whether it is someone known or a stranger entering the home, too many people in this country are paying with their lives during these home invasions. The Hudson family is just one of far too many Americans gunned down in their own home.



What can be done? Law enforcement and the government aren’t solving the problem. So law-abiding citizens are now forced to take their safety, security, and life into their own hands. 



Shotguns are often weapons of choice at home because of their deterrent effect on assailants, their close-range stopping power, their affordability and their reduced risk of injury to innocent others from stray shot. But the problem is storing them in a place where you don’t have to turn your back on your assailant. Propped in the corner or under the bed takes valuable time to get to, and could cost you your life. 



For more information, visit the website at www.the-backup.com 

Available for immediate interview, contact company president John Peters at
(612) 605-3613 or email at press-info@the-backup.com.

Interestingly Chicago Tribune run a follow up story with an interview of the president of the shotgun rack company Home Back-Up Protection, A. John Peters, who said “that he didn’t issue the news release to capitalize on the Chicago family’s pain” and the interview continues “asked if he thought the ad might offend people, Peters said he expected it might. “Just having a gun rack offends a lot of people.””

But changing the press release and trying to say it wasn’t exploiting, which it clearly was, is all too late. Changing the press release just tells that the company knew it was wrong to do it the first place, and is now trying to cover their bases.

The blogs are running wild with this story. The damage for The Back-Up is already done.

“Good news” is that the Home Back-Up Protection company will get the amount of PR they ever imagined - people even say they deserve all the bad PR they can get, and they sure are getting a full load of it.

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Ladybug Landings to you too

In many cultures Ladybugs are believed to bring you luck, money or even your future spouse!

What is Ladybug Landings? And for whom?

 - Ladybug Landings is a PR service for small business owners, helping them to connect with online media and online retailers, as well as teaching them how to use social media as a marketing tool. Even small companies with shoestring budgets can enjoy big successes by using the tools new media offers, working hard, and with a little touch of ladybug luck.

- Ladybug Landings is a PR service for bloggers to find more ways to monetize their blogs and get more traffic.

- Ladybug Landings will bring together manufacturers, retailers, bloggers, website owners and PR professionals.

What will we offer?

- Networking. Tell us what you need and we will try to find a person to help you.

- Tips & advice. We will offer tips from marketing your product to how to make money blogging, and we ain’t inventing the wheel again - we are collecting a resource list for you of the already written articles.

- Results. What ever your short or long term goal is, we will help you to achieve it and support you.

This can’t be free, can it?

- Yes. At the moment the service is free for everyone. At some point we will start collecting a small membership fee and get more organized. But membership will always be free for people who pitch in by promoting us or our members, or writing us blog posts, supporting our bloggers etc etc. You help us - we help you.

- Ladybug Landings is made possible by product sales of our ladybug gear and by everyone working together. We also offer advertising spots for sponsors on our site.

What is it really about?

- With one word: SYNERGY

Synergy refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents.

Basicly synergy is when 1+1=3. When you and I work together towards the same goal, we both gain more than when working alone. Yes, with the same work input. 

We have a lot of amazing women in this network. We all have something to teach and something to learn. Let Ladybug Landings to be the connector between people - you help someone, and someone will help you.

What are people saying?

“Thank you for your help! I tripled my blog traffic.”

“I would have never thought of doing that little change to my website and it making such a big difference. You really know what you are talking about.”

“Thank you for all those connections you got me within a few hours - I made a contact with one of them.”

“I just wanted you to know I just started a new venture. Thanks for inspiring so I had guts to do it.”

Luck lands briefly. Are you ready?

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