“Marketing is the price you pay for being unremarkable”

Quote from Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad – via Carsonified.

I’ve read this quote before, but it hit home this morning having just gone through a big PR push for GigPark.

I chose to interpret the quote like this: Rather than spending a lot of money on marketing, it’s always better to spend your time and money building a remarkable product/company that people want to talk about and journalists want to write about.

I still believe that PR/marketing/advertising experts can be an incredible resource to help you spread the word, but they shouldn’t be used to drum up interest in a product or company that isn’t, in some way, remarkable.

Advice form Richard Edelman

Stuart MacDonald‘s final question to Richard Edelman during this morning’s Mesh keynote was: What three pieces of advice would you like everyone here to walk away with?

His answer:

1. Make your stories visual. PR people are great with words and not so great with visuals.
2. Don’t be defeated by setbacks. You have to fall a couple of times to ski fast (skiing was his analogy of choice).
3. Don’t let clients say ‘here is your little box’. There is this tremendous grey area. Be bold and assert yourself.

Avoiding the hype cycle

Startups and hype seem to go together like women in Vancouver and yoga pants – they’re inseparable.

Women might need pants, but my question is do startups really need tech hype? Do they always benefit from it?

Valleywag re-posted their hype cycle chart today…

This kind of technology hype is obviously important for companies targeting the web2.0 crowd. It will make or break brands like twitter, Joost and Justin.tv. But for companies with a different target why not stick to the tried and tested model: identify your audience and approach them with a compelling proposition and a solid product.

Sometimes I think startups are too quick to target the tech media, hoping for coverage and, well, hype. Maybe they think this is the only way? The classic marketer in me would ask: If your target audience isn’t reading TechCrunch then why do you need a story from them so badly? Do you really need all of the visitors that will come from an appearance on the front page of Digg if they’re not the type of customer that will stick around and make your business a success?

Of course all businesses have several target audiences, and one that IS reading the tech media are investors. So maybe my point is that there is a time for tech hype – and that some startups can get ahead of themselves. Let’s see if I still agree with that in 9 months when I have been through a bit of a hype cycle myself ;).

Reuters (talks about) embracing citizen journalism

After working in the publishing business for 2 year I have a real interest in seeing how that industry deals with the shift toward social media and citizen journalism. So, it has been great reading some of the stories that have come out of the WeMedia conference in Miami.

One of the biggest hurdles for citizen journalism is the rift it has created between the people in charge of traditional media companies and the journalists that work for them. I found that it wasn’t uncommon for writers to feel that the only reason their organisations were interested in citizen journalism is because they could save money on reporting and lay off ‘proper journalists’. Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters, thinks it’s a confidence issue: “as soon as we get over this crisis of confidence we will realise that this is a golden age of journalism.”

In fact Chris had quite a few interesting things to say – there is a post about his speech on the Gaurdian’s OrganGrinder blog.

I think Reuters will play a particularly interesting role in the shift toward social media. The fact of the matter is that most media companies, particularly newspapers, are cash strapped. They are doing less reporting themselves and are relying more heavily on picking up syndicated stories from organisations like Reuters. If Reuters starts sending out citizen journalism over the wires it becomes easy for editors to simply start running it. This is in comparison to getting your own citizen journalism system off the ground – a massive undertaking for most news organisations.

I don’t think this is ideal – but it could be a good start. I’m a believer in news communities. I think citizen journalism works best when someone in a community writes for that community (either virtual or geographical). So with Reuters sending out citizen journalism ‘feeds’ they will likely be detaching the journalist from the community – which in my opinion makes it less powerful.

Still, if editors become comfortable running these stories I think it is a much smaller leap to start asking their own readers to contribute to their newspapers and TV shows in more meaningful ways. I’m optimistic.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned the other big piece of citizen journalism news announced at WeMedia: The partnership between NowPublic and Asociated Press.

From the press release: “Contributions to the AP news report from NowPublic’s network of participants could take many forms over time, said AP Deputy Managing Editor for Multimedia Lou Ferrara. “They could range from simple eyewitness accounts to originally produced content.”

Of course NowPublic is another Canadian startup – based in Vancouver. Great to see them doing so well.

If you’ve ever wondered, this is what a public relations disaster looks like…

Check out this train wreck of a video.

It was taken at the PowerSet party on Saturday night. The comments on the TechCrunch story are a good read too. My favorite: “I am a VC who has invested $100,000 in PowerSet and am desperately worried.”

Does consumer PR sell products or stock?

I had a beer a couple of weeks ago with Ian Barr from Hill and Knowlton, a large PR firm here in Toronto. We were chatting about how PR is used in modern business. One question I had was how many clients were coming to him to promote a new product versus coming to him explicitly wanting to impact their share price? Now, I’m not talking about investor relation or corporate PR – that’s always been focused on share price. I’m talking about consumer facing communications.

Ian said effecting the share price was not the main reason clients gave for planning a consumer campaign but that the conversation was coming up a lot more in meetings.

I guess the point behind my question was this: In a world where citizens create the media (blogs, etc), and the investment community monitor that media, the line between investor relations and consumer PR is blurring. If you want to effect share price in this scenario you put an ad on TV (or on YouTube) – not just in the business pages. Or to stick with the PR story – you message the masses, not just the business journalists.

I wonder how long it will be until the scales tip and marketing managers talk about share price first and product launches second? Maybe soon if the Bombardier commercials that played during the Superbowl are anything to go by.