Category: PR Tips

19
Jan

It’s digital signage trade show season: Time for a Message Tune-Up?

Posted by / Company news, PR Tips

This is a press release issued today:

Marketing communications firm pressDOOH has developed a special program intended to help industry firms “tune up” their communications in advance of the many digital signage trade shows and related events scheduled over the next few weeks and months.

The “Message Tune-Up” program is aimed squarely at vendors, service companies and network operators looking to gain some marketing notice before and during such events as ISE, Digital Signage Expo, GlobalShop, NAB, Kioskcom/The Digital Signage Show and ScreenMedia Expo. The program offers quick reviews, recommendations and updates on marketing and press materials for companies heading into the show season, as well as fast turnarounds on newly crafted material.

“I have been going to these events for years, and know at least a couple of things will happen,” said pressDOOH founder Dave Haynes. “Some companies will remember at pretty much the last moment that they need to get out a release or update their hand-outs or mail-outs. So they’ll do it themselves and it will look like it. Others will hire a PR firm and get something cranked out that is polished but utterly pointless, because the PR writer had no idea about the industry or what the audience was actually interested in.”

pressDOOH is temporarily relaxing its minimum engagement policy for clients as a way to help a wider range of clients who don’t need a full communications program for the  shows, but do need two or three hours to get their material reviewed, tweaked and polished up by a fresh, experienced set of eyes. The most effective material for distribution is work that is clear, concise and relevant to the targeted readership.

“I think it would be refreshing change for everybody in the business if the big blitz of press releases and marketing materials that’s about to start was characterized by substance, effective messaging and far less hype,” said Haynes. “This industry is now at a level of maturity that the target audiences are knowledgeable and a little jaded. Their tolerance for BS gets lower every year.”

pressDOOH is a copywriting and marketing strategy firm working specifically in the digital signage and digital out of home sectors. The company was founded in 2009 by industry veteran Dave Haynes, a seasoned print journalist who has spent the past decade doing everything from running pioneering DOOH networks to selling top industry software.  pressDOOH produces press material, white papers, case studies, sales and marketing sheets and Website copy, as well as does overall marketing strategy, for companies in all aspects of the industry, on three continents … and counting.

The company markets itself on the value of having copy developed by a subject matter expert – usually faster and at substantially less cost than mainstream PR firms with high overheads and limited or no in-house expertise in this sector.

The firm was recently cited by heavily-read industry portal DailyDOOH as one of its Best of 2009 companies, products and people.  “ … there is one place that we do throw work and that’s in Burlington, just outside Toronto,” noted DailyDOOH. “That’s the home/work office of David Haynes, who has made writing a press release an art form.  When pressDOOH has written or massaged a press release, the job of journalist is made so much easier. If only more people used his services.”

The Message Tune-Up program – which drops pressDOOH’s normal minimum hours engagement policy – will be available through April, and subject to available time. Company and contact information can be found at www.pressdooh.com

09
Jan

Some kind words for my work …

Posted by / Company news, PR Tips

DailyDOOH is probably the most widely read and influential news portal/blog on the digital signage and digital out of home sectors, run by Adrian Cotterill in England, but including correspondents all over the place. Adrian and his North American Editor Gail Chiasson have kindly reproduced much of the work I have sent along to them from clients who have done this or that.

It was nice to sit down this morning and read my services were cited as one of the Best of 2009 in the industry.

We don’t necessarily ‘grok’ (i.e understand) all the consultancies popping up all over the place or even figure out how they will all stay in business. There’s a lot of unemployed people looking for a new ‘gig’ and perhaps consulting looks like an easy option- we wouldn’t necessarily recommend many of them either but there is one place that we do throw work and that’s in Burlington just outside Toronto. That’s the home / work office of David Haynes who has made writing a press release an art form. When PressDOOH has written or massaged a press release the job of journalist is made so much easier. If only more people used his services.

Thanks very much Adrian and crew for the kind words and recognition. I have only been doing this since the summer 0f 2009 but the response has been very strong. Many companies seem to put little value in effective communications, and those that do reap the benefits of copy that people will actually read and fully understand.

I already have clients as far away as India and do much more than press releases (I am writing a book for one), but always eager to take on new work.

15
Dec

The importance of (good) white papers

Posted by / PR Tips

San Fran-based content strategist Eccolo Media has released a survey of US businesses that suggests white papers are the most important and influential pieces of collateral used in technology buying decisions.

The B2B Technology Collateral Survey of American businesses was done with more than 500 technology-purchasing decision makers and it confirmed, Marketing Charts reports, “that sales materials of any kind – white papers, case studies/sale sheets, podcasts, videos, product brochures and data sheets – are most frequently consumed at the beginning of the sales cycle – before a company ever invites vendors to participate in an RFP.

Collateral subsequently is used less frequently as sales relationships evolve, the survey found.

Additional survey findings:

– 77% of respondents say they’d read at least one white paper in the last six months, with 84% of them rating white papers as moderately to extremely influential when making technology-purchasing decisions.
 – Nearly half (49%) of respondents say they had watched a vendor’s video while considering a technology purchase, up from 20% in 2008.
 – Collateral is more viral than ever: 89% of respondents say they share white papers with others, while 85% share case studies, 81% share brochures or data sheets; 80% share podcasts; and 79% share video.
 – People prefer to consume collateral from their desktop: Only 1 in 4 surveyed even print out an online document.
 – Data sheets and brochures are considered least influential written collateral but were also the most consumed type, indicating they are still valuable “table stakes” in helping solidify a brand’s product messages with potential buyers.
 – Podcasts are, when compared with other types of collateral, among the least influential; Case studies – preferably thoses that are written – are gaining in influence.”

The report also indicated that good writing really matters.

“Some 86% of respondents felt that high-quality writing was at least moderately influential and 51% ranked good writing as either very or extremely influential. By contrast, poor quality writing was the most frequent reason respondents gave for decreasing the influence of a white paper.”

This is, of course, all quite lovely to read, given that I do things like white papers and case studies for clients. BUT, as you might expect, a white paper or case study will not be valued just because it has that label in the heading. It still has to be good, and make sense.

There are many ghastly white papers circulating in this industry that are nothing more than pitch pieces for their clients, the equivalent of recipes that suggest the only way to make desserts is with a certain brand of flour or peanut butter.

Good white papers that people appreciate,save and circulate are ones that really do educate and guide. The writer/vendor gets the benefit of making it clear they know their stuff, and helping prospective clients NOT make some stupid rookie mistakes.

Good white papers also take good writing. It absolutely doesn’t take a degree or career in journalism to qualify as a good writer. I used to be an editor in charge of some “journalists” who, to my mind, were damn near functionally illiterate. On the flip side, I have read stuff by people with no background in the craft who write beautifully.

If you have the skills and the time to write about what you do and what you know, you are the best person to do it. If you know you will never get to it, or your output will be in Martian, get somebody who CAN do the work and who, ideally, understands what on Earth you are up to.

As the research is showing, clients place a lot of value in this material and in relative terms, it is very low-cost, low maintenance marketing.

08
Dec

Are minor hires worth announcing? Probably not.

Posted by / PR Tips

A company in the sector just put out a press release about its hiring of four people.

On one hand I am happy to read people are hiring again, as there is no shortage of people looking for work and that’s not going to change for a while. On the other hand, big whoop.

Press releases by software development companies that are well-established in the space are warranted when a big name is attracted and hired in. Someone who makes readers think, “Oh, well look at that …” It is warranted when a senior or thoroughly strategic position is filled.

It is not, however, warranted when the hires are support staff and back-office folks who do good work, but will provoke no more than a shrug from the industry or clients. Press releases like that, inadvertently, make people wonder if there is much really shaking around the place, if that’s the only thing they’ve got for making some hay.

If it ain’t news, it ain’t news, and some bot news portals picking it up verbatim doesn’t make it anymore so.

04
Dec

Sub-optimized PR: Don’t just tell them, show them

Posted by / PR Tips

I have a self-imposed rule that I don’t include the names of companies on this blog if I am slapping them around for being stupid or mindless in their approach.

Here’s a case of PR that is pretty well executed, albeit in a highly conventional way, but misses the opportunity at hand.

PlayNetwork is a Seattle-area company in the business of blending audio and video to create an overall experience in a retail environment – something that I believe is a huge growth part of this digital signage sector. Many chains have audio entertainment and messaging. Not that many, yet, have video. Very few have the two working seamlessly together. The guys who do that well, and reduce the overall offer down to one vendor, one bill, one throat to choke, are on to something good.

So we have Play announcing this week it’s people have deployed PlayNetwork’s Serenade Service to deliver music and messaging content in all of the Dickey’s Barbecue Pits around the US.

The original Dickey’s opened in Dallas in 1941, with a simple goal – “Serve barbecue so good people will crave it.” By harnessing the power of Serenade’s user-friendly and secure web-based interface, Dickey’s embeds that timeless mission into the music and promotional messages that play in all sites. These promotions, narrated by Roland Dickey himself, bring the heritage of Dickey’s to each individual location. Dickey’s also uses the Serenade tool to control their messaging on-hold content, extending its brand experience beyond the lease line to fans placing phone orders.

The release says the deal enables Dickey’s to serve up a uniquely Texan taste, smell, feel and sound.

To complement the popular Texas barbecue menu, PlayNetwork designed a music concept deeply rooted in Americana, mixed with a hefty dose of classic Southern rock, blues, and boogie-woogie, a Texas-style Western swing. There is no mistaking the Texas roots of Dickey’s Barbecue after listening to this home-grown collection of songs. The sounds reverberating through the restaurants are as distinctive as the taste and smell of Dickey’s Signature Beef Brisket – it’s down-home Texas barbecue.

Great. Sounds very cool.

And as a blogger who might even write about this – one of the objectives of PR – I scroll down the release looking for images, and ideally some video.

Nothing.

There is nothing inherently wrong in this release. The “global leader” thing makes me and other journalists/bloggers immediately yawn, but Play actually IS a global leader in this narrow part of the sector.

However, a company that is expressly in the business of teasing the eyes and ears of consumers really, really should at minimum have PR that offers images, and with the capabilities and cost of teeny camcorders and the ease of YouTube and other video channels, doing a basic video should be fundamental.

You’ve done some good, interesting work. Don’t just tell them, show them.

18
Nov

DS PR 101: No PDFs please

Posted by / PR Tips

I just got a press release as a PDF. For me, that’s OK, because while I write about the industry, I don’t spend a lot of time reporting on it and therefore extracting a lot of quotes from releases.

BUT, if I did, pulling the text out of PDF files is a pain in the butt, and depending on the way the PDF is formatted, possibly a giant pain in the butt. Couple that with images that look very nice in the PDF file, but now have to be grabbed via screen capture and then fiddled with in some image edit software.

By putting something out that looks polished and pretty, you have created a bunch of irritating extra work for editors. On a busy day, they might not bother dealing with your stuff because time is limited.

If you insist on sending a PDF, send it as an attachment and have all the text in simple, unadorned text form in the email message body, and send images and logos as attachments.

Make it easy and you will get better results.

18
Nov

DS PR 101: Contain your ego

Posted by / PR Tips

A press release this morning from a guy who was leaving his gig and going out on his own as … something … (it was far less than clear) … started with the guy proclaiming himself a luminary.

Don’t. Just don’t.

It’s meaningless to most people, but all the wrong people will jump all over it and make all the wrong hay with it.

27
Oct

Advice from editors: scale by association

Posted by / PR Tips

If there are 250 software platforms on the digital signage market, I am guessing at least a third of them have a McDonald’s logo somewhere in their presentation materials.

It is one of the world’s most recognizable icons and companies like to include it when referencing clients. I would imagine this is interesting for the retailers who see maybe a dozen software companies for show and tell sessions, and start wondering how all these guys could ALL be working with McDonald’s.

Well, they are … in a franchised location or group here and there. Whether the main office approved or even knows about the screens is another matter.

This also happens in press and marketing materials, and it is something that makes editors a little crazy. Barnaby Page of UK-based Screens.tv calls it “scale by association.”

“A few people are guilty of sending out releases that imply they are, for example, rolling out to a retailer’s whole estate when in reality it’s only a trial in a few branches. Don’t tell me SupaPharm has 865 stores. Tell me how many the screens are going into,” explained Page.

If it is a pilot, congratulations. It may lead to something. But be honest and indicate it is indeed a pilot. If it is a local franchisee going rogue on head office, and the press and marketing materials imply there is more to the deal than there really is, be prepared to get slapped around.

This happened to a rather larger technology provider this year, when a small job was trumpeted loudly as a rollout.

Lionel Tepper of Digital Signage Universe, in the wake of that one, went so far as to introduce a new editorial policy:

While we expect a certain amount of embellishment in a press release, we also expect that it will be accurate. It seems that some companies have been pushing the envelope on their facts in an effort to gain attention and market share. At a time when we are all looking to raise the profile of the industry, none of us can afford to have our credibility damaged. Credibility matters—yours and ours.

We recently carried a release on our site (which has now been removed) that marked a new low for distortions of fact. We understand that this release had a significant amount of “blow back” for the parties involved, and so Digital Signage Universe will now be vetting releases more carefully from this point forward.

Digital Signage Universe is slowing down the process to make sure that the information we receive is indeed accurate, and that credit is given where credit is due. We ask that other industry news sites to do the same. Posting company news is rarely mission-critical, and accuracy matters more than speed.

There is very little to gain from streeeeetching the truth, other than a brief little round of attention in the online trade sites. There is much more to lose when you start getting probed by customers who are serious about doing business with your company, and start figuring out your sales and marketing people are a little slippery with the facts.

20
Oct

Advice from editors: on carpet-bombing

Posted by / PR Tips

carpetbomb

There are countless blogs now on the digital signage and DOOH sector, but still just a handful of Web-based portals and news sites that cover the industry on a daily basis. The people who runs those commercial services make the calls daily on what either goes from their email Inboxes to their digital pages, or to the Trash folder.

You can work with these folks, or you can irritate the daylights out of them. Guess which approach is more effective in meeting your marketing needs.

I sent around a note today to the editors of these news sites to get their point of view on how things work, and got a lot of great responses. I will do a few posts about what they had to say, with this first one on the issue of what I call carpet-bombing.

This is the practice of sending press release after press release out to the same media outlets, with the notion that this shows the business has incredible momentum in the marketplace. There was a sports-oriented company doing this last year, and the new, undisputed champion is a software company that at least seems to put out a press release a day announcing a deal that sees its product installed in another small venue somewhere.

“We as editors get so many press releases per day as it is, it really doesn’t help to get carpet bombed with insignificant ones,” says Bill Yackey of Digital Signage Today. “If a company sends releases of little value to the industry too frequently, I may begin to ignore them, and that doesn’t help anyone.”

“Press releases are a valuable marketing tool, however, there’s a fine line between being informative and being abusive. We’ve reached a point where we’ve just stopped paying attention to companies that issue press releases too often, or make claims in their releases that are too over-the-top. There are several companies in this industry that have been too aggressive with their PR and we just won’t carry their news anymore,” adds Lionel Tepper, Managing Director, Digital Signage Universe.

On the other hand, several editors said they would rather get the releases than not at all, and indicated doing a mental filter on what matters and what doesn’t, or what is just yet more blabber, is easy enough for them.

Denis Gaumondie, who writes the French (and now English, as well) portal OOH-TV, suggests companies would be wise to show some restraint, and would probably get a better reception from editors like him. “I don’t care to know if a company signs another bar, or bowling alley, or whatever. It’s just irrelevant,” he says. “If I was them, and patient enough, I would aggregate four or five press releases like that and put one release together.”

My take: You can easily wear out your welcome with an editor. Even those editors who indicate they will deal with the carpet-bombing campaign of a company would also, probably, confirm any releases from that company stop getting read beyond the headline.

Editors are interested in news and in educating their industry. If a company is in the business of selling software, it is hopefully NOT news that the company actually did some business and got a small client here and there to sign on. The news is when a software company does a big deal, like an entire chain of stores. Or the company does something that hasn’t been done before, or very much — like converting a whole restaurant from backlits to digital menu boards.

My advice is to be judicious about your PR. Send things out when you really have something worth telling the world.

When a company engages in carpet-bombing, and the daily deals all look tiny and irrelevant, that company can start to look a little desperate for attention.

NEXT: “Scale by association.”

16
Oct

DS PR 101: Don’t go overboard with the information

Posted by / PR Tips

I was reading what I thought was a quite well-executed news release from a company, but started laughing about half-way through when the marketing person who probably put it together appeared to run out of things to write, so started using what the ops guy fed him or her.

These digital signs are designated as ART1, ART2, LUXE and ICON, respectively.  In addition, the four <vendor> units are connected to an AMX distribution system which allows <client> to selectively distribute the artwork to all the televisions in the lounge/bar areas via strategically located touchpanels.

Image display in BMP, JPEG and PNG formats enables the network to handle the variety of formats supplied by contributing artists. <Vendor> models can also play MPEG-2 and -4 High-Definition videos at up to 1080p resolution, via component or HDMI outputs. High-definition still-image modes provide versatility and reliability, making <vendor> the ideal solution to show artists’ works at their best.

It goes on like that for several paragraphs.

It’s OK to just say what you did and include an image or even video link. Going into deep detail about what names were designated for the players and what media formats are supported is way more than you need for PR work. The target readership has no cause to care. The only people who need to know that stuff work in the operations department. Celebrate and highlight the good stuff and the shut the release down.

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