Tag: PR

04
Sep

DS PR 101: It's what's new, not just that it's new

A common lead paragraph on press releases I see all the time …

Brand X, leading innovators of IPTV, Digital Signage and VoD Software, will be exhibiting at BIG SHOW in BIG CITY sometime soon. New versions of Brand X’s Digital Signage solution will be unveiled at the show and demonstrated at the booth, located at a number and location no one will remember.

If you are announcing you have a new product and you will be showing off that new product at your booth that you are spending a freaking fortune to put up and staff, give a little thought to telling people in your press release why they may actually care.

The fact that you have something new will not send people your way. You need to tell them what’s new, as in “A sophisticated new user interface and an industry-first ad approvals system are among the enhancements to the latest version of Brand X’s digital signage software, WhizBang, that will be debuted at the upcoming BIG SHOW in …

It’s the difference between an “Uh-huh …” reaction and an “Oh, really?” reaction.

By all means tell people you will be there, and exactly where, but first give them a reason to come by and you may get emails and calls wanting to book times right at the booth, which beats the hit and miss business of strong prospects coming by when you are too busy to talk and moving on, both physically and mentally.

31
Aug

When good lines get overused …

Maybe three years ago, give or take a bit, the company I was with then was wrestling with a good tag line to use for its products and services. Ultimately they went with something that made me cross-eyed and therefore even funnier looking than  normal, and decided against the other option that I liked: “Right message. Right Place. Right time.”

Sound familiar? Sure it does. Because several companies use variations of it as one of their key messaging points. I just saw it used again today by a software company, and this was after seeing it in a couple of new places last week.

This is not a tired or meaningless buzz phrase like all those ones we’re advocating to see banished. I actually think it’s pretty good in explaning what well designed software can do for clients. It’s just that a lot of people now use it.

Is that a bad thing? Not as part of the narrative of marketing materials or press releases, because that simple message beats the hell out of blabbering away about “business rules-based message targeting” and the glories of meta data.

I just wouldn’t lead with it or put it in bold on marketing materials. Intended or not, the Right Message thing is going to read like Borrowed Message.

27
Aug

DS PR 101: Lead with the value and benefit, not the gadgets

I’m looking at a release sent out today that starts off OK and then goes completely off the rails in the space of a few words.

The company’s release starts off detailing what a client needed, and suggests the company was able to deliver, but instead of describing what they did and what it has meant, the leading paragraph goes into a death spiral blabbering on about the specific technical details.

The target audience cares alot more about what the install is doing for the client, and very little about what’s under the hood. That’s particularly true for a solutions provider that’s selling expertise, not gear.

Instead of:

“Our client needed a way to educate and inform visitors so Zippy AV installed 6 RP3017-TCX monitors from Whizbang Industries, controlled by an array of our Super500T media engines!”

How about:

A new digital information and wayfinding screen network in the Big City Events Center, put together by Zippy AV, is already making a marked difference in how visitors are getting around and using the region’s biggest convention facility.

Turned on six weeks ago, the network includes screens …

“We’re over the moon happy,” says the facility manager. “Zippy AV did a tremendous job. We looked at a lot of vendors and settled on these guys, and it was a great choice. Blah blah …”

Zippy AV, a full-servce digital signage solutions provider based in Midsized City, worked with this screen vendor and used its own computers and blah blah blah …

Presumably, the target readership for the PR is not the other suppliers, so who cares if their specific parts numbers are mentioned? The target readers for this should be other public facility operators, and what wets their collective whistles is word that the stuff actually does make an impact and that one of their brethren thinks Zippy did a good job … So maybe when these other facilities think about doing their own thing, they’re already familiar with a solutions company that knows how to do this stuff.

I can guarantee they didn’t scribble down the bits with part numbers, and chances are, they stopped reading before the end of the first paragraph.

Press releases are almost always for your target customers, not for you, or your vendors.

27
Aug

DS PR 101: Get someone you trust for an honest answer to read back your prose. It might have stopped this …

seriously confusedFrom a press release on the wires this morning, as flagged by a fellow industry writer …

(Brand X) announced the growing network of digital signage’s marking developments in the space highlighting 5 key trends evolving in the digital signage space. With the promise of being one of the most exciting platforms, the trends broadly include content emphasis; importance of old media and cross platform integration, interactive screen motivation and affordable technology. Earlier, in July 2009, the company’s digital signage clientele included (an  institution) with the launch of (a third-party’s) digital signage software replacing a standalone solution. This allows multiple users to be able to alter content, drag and drop functionality and an intuitive interface – unique to the digital signage industry.

Oh, where to start …

How about, “What? Huh? Ummm ….”

The first, forehead-slappingly obvious rule in issuing press releases is that they should make sense. I don’t know what this opening paragraph means, other than the guys are using a particular software plattform and they installed at a college. The rest, beats me.

I had an email from a company in Europe this morning looking for help. Bluntly, the contact told me he and his colleagues suck at PR. But they recognized that, and are doing something about it. I suck at plumbing, so I hire guys instead of drowning my family.

At an elemental level, if you have the presence of mind to wonder if what you are writing might not be all that good, ask a friend or colleague who will give you a straight answer to read your PR. Had that happened here, this press release probably doesn’t go out.

25
Aug

Has the term broadcast quality reached its expiry date?

I had a marketing email blast sent to me by one of the industry portals today, the vendor going with the line: “Broadcast-quality digital signage: Why Settle for Less?”

I perceive something tagged as broadcast-quality to be of high quality, and not some shaky, grainy piece of crap video that might come off an old camcorder. The guys issuing the piece definitely have a product that delivers high-quality motion graphics, as it is their whole background. So they are in no way stretching the truth.

But as I was reading  the piece, I was immediately thinking “broadcast-quality” is a fairly empty assertion.

With the exception of some little flash card-driven sneakernet appliances that can only do standard definition video, just about any PC or even media appliance will push out 720P or higher video and motion graphics that are probably better than the supposed HD signals we pay for from our cablecos. I have definitely seen some platforms that push crappy signals, but the vast majority of solutions out there will push out a broadcast-quality signal.

It’s certainly not wrong to celebrate the high quality of your product, but it’s hardly a unique selling point. I’m thinking “broadcast-quality” is one of those heavily traded phrases that has reached or is getting really close to its expiry date.

24
Aug

BuzzPhrase Alert: Cloud computing

I just had my first sighting of what I think will be one of those buzz phrases that will get liberally lobbed into PR and marketing material in the weeks and months to come. It was used this morning in the loopy assertion that a central download portal for public service videos was “essentially delivering ‘cloud computing’ for PSAs.”

Well, no.

Cloud computing is mostly known as managed server farms set up under a business and operating model that allows IT people to  increase capacity or add new capabilities pretty much on the fly, without buying iron (servers) or new software, and without adding bodies. The many companies in the DS space who do Software as a Service kinda, sorta do cloud computing, but only kinda, sorta. The SaaS comapnies tend to more be the customers of heavy-duty IT hosting companies that do the work, like Rackspace and ThinkGrid.

The propeller-heads can argue what the real pure definition of cloud computing is, but it is definitely not about simple tasks such as putting up some files in a central spot so people can download them.

Some gentle advice: don’t just throw buzz phrases in to your pitch because they are popular. They should also be appropriate, and your company will come off better if it appears you might actually know what you are going on about.

20
Aug

DS PR 101: You don't have a premiere digital signage network unless you show first-run movies on it

So really, no big deal. We get the idea that you mean premier. Except premier means first to occur or first in status. Neither premiere, an event that you wear a tux or gown to, or premier applies in the press release that showed up this afternoon.

Premier/premiere is also a variant of one of our buzzwords that must die: leading. Sorry, I meant Leading!!!

Maybe just state what your company does instead?

19
Aug

DS PR 101: It's a visual medium, so why are you just sending out text?

It is remarkable how much press material is sent out without visuals, in a business that blabbers on and on about content being everything.

I was just reading a release about a European software company and its new DOOH client, describing in considerable detail what’s on the screen and how the screens are located in the venues.

But there were no embedded images, and no attached image files, associated with the PR. Worse, in this case, there was  no link even to the client Website where a blogger or trade mag or portal editor might dig up visuals to juice up the story they might do.

It is so easy to shoot photos and even video these days, and post them online, that it is almost baffling that companies looking to generate attention about what they are doing don’t leverage the basic technology that’s easily available to them.  Even marginal quality video, posted to Youtube, is better than nothing.

Most of the bloggers and trade publishers you are targeting for attention with these releases have skeletal resources and crank out a lot of stuff in a day. You have a far better chance of getting attention if you make it easy for them by providing things like photos, logos, Website URLs and links to video they can embed, if they want.

18
Aug

A press release about a story???

I have pretty much resolved that this blog will not engage in calling out companies for the sport of making them look silly. Names will be withheld even though the companies have rarely earned the “protection of the innocent” pass.

Just as I was about to wave bye-bye to my laptop and fix me and the family some vittles, up pops a Google Alert about a company writing a a little primer story a year ago for a trade show website. To paraphrase, “We had the most popular story of the year in the e-newsletter!!!”

This is worth a press release?

These guys have a good product, and respect in the industry. But this sort of thing just looks goofy, and when a company takes to issuing press releases about pretty much anything, it turns into background noise. Editors see the name pop up and think, “Oh, more noise …” and skip right on by.

There’s an argument to be made for doing whatever is required to just keep your name out there, but I’d argue it’s far more compelling to stick to doing PR when a company actually has something to say.

16
Aug

10 digital signage buzzwords and phrases that need to get shelved … now!

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch did a great piece recently about words he would love to see banned from press releases. It is very Silicon Valley-focused, but much of what he had to write could be applied to this sector.

I thought I would use that for inspiration for my own, DS-centric list. The hype in this space is crazy, and there are entire press releases that don’t say much at all, but have lotsa words and phrases we all read way too often, and that need to go away.

We’ve all read this press release:

Dynamic HyperDigital LLC, a leading global provider of best-in-breed, scalable and cost-effective digital signage solutions, announces the release of its next-generation software platform, ScreenMax 5.2, which revolutionizes the way businesses can manage their screen networks.

A pioneer in digital signage solutions since 2007, Dynamic HyperDigital develops leading-edge … blah, blah, blah

Mere mortals have at this point given up, and still have no idea why they should be interested.

With that buzzword blizzard laid out, here’s the must-go list, in no real order:

1 – CONTENT IS KING

“At XYZ Creative Studios we believe content is king …” Click. Gone. Not reading that thing anymore. The phrase is so old and tired it’s slipped into a coma. Stop! Just stop.

This stuff really is all about what’s on that screen, but the people who STILL drag that phrase out instantly kill their credibility. There are many ways to write or state the same thing.

2 – LEADING

I did a very casual survey once and even built a little word cloud to visually represent ALL the leaders – the industy leaders, the leading providers, the global leaders – in the digital signage sector. There was a PILE of them. As TechCrunch notes, just because everyone else writes that, it doesn’t mean you are breaking some rule by skipping it. When everyone says they are the leader or at least a leader, the term becomes meaningless.

Variants: recognized leader; leading global provider; worldwide leader; world-leading

3 – REVOLUTIONARY

That’s one big, loaded term, and it gets used by companies saying their new bits or baubles will revolutionalize digital out of home media. Or whatever. Revolutionary technology comes along only ever so often, and when it does, everyone knows. The iPhone was revolutionary. Same with the Blackberry. Not so much with the Palm Pre. Use the term with care, otherwise you look goofy.

Variants: revolutionized; groundbreaking; game-changer; disruptive

4 – LEADING EDGE

What does that mean anymore??? New???

Variants: Cutting edge; Taking it to the next level (eeesh)

5 – NEXT-GENERATION

Also noted in TechCrunch, a seriously overused nonsense phrase. It gets used to express the notion that the stuff coming down the pipe is new and cool. Does next-gen mean something 20 years ahead of its time? Or does it mean upgrade?

6 – PIONEER

“So and so, a pioneer in the something or other.”

Honestly, there are a few people who have been banging away at this digital signage thing for 15 years or more. Unless you were around before it was even possible to buy a flat panel, or needed $10K to get one, you’re not an industry pioneer. Nor is your company. Exceptions go to companies that are bringing newer technologies into the space, though pioneer is still a pretty tired handle.

Veteran is OK. It expresses you’ve been around the block and made some mistakes, and learned some stuff.

Variant: “the first!”

7 – TURNKEY SOLUTION

The term is now so liberally used it is impossible to sort out what might really be a turnkey solution. A turnkey solution, properly defined, is one in which “a product or service can be implemented or utilized with no additional work required by the buyer.” So, good luck with that! Most of the guys peddling a turnkey solution aren’t even close to being able to say, “Here ya go buddy, network’s done. Here’s your keys!”

The other problem is the risk of typos. Ask BroadSign, which a few months ago saw a plug for a turnkey solution turn up as a turkey solution.

End-to-end is a a variant, and still a bit of a cliche. But at least it conveys more accurately a sense that a company can work with a client from the start of a project through to inception.

8 –  SCALABLE

Now scalable is meant to convey that a particular technology or service can grow with a client, from 10 to 10,000 if need be. Scalability is indeed important. If you do it right and the platform really is built to scale up, then you should be able to operate a very large network with only a relatively small increases in resources needed. Invest in a platform that’s good for 50 sites but can’t handle 500 connections, and you are for in a world of pain. Problem is, everybody now uses that term, and scalability has lost its meaning. Plain language – just flat saying what your doodad can manage – will do just fine.

9 – COST-EFFECTIVE

This is code for affordable, or justifiable. But when just about every solution out there describes itself as cost-effective, it’s no longer a phrase that’s going to resonate. If you’re selling on price, just point out you have a low-cost solution. People get that.

10 – BEST IN CLASS

Says who? There are no real objective, thorough ratings or reviews in this space, certainly not for the software platforms, so how does a company get to be at the top of the heap? By self-declaration, of course.

So the phrase is empty, and prospective buyers know that. What makes a company top of class is how much business it does and how many clients stay with that client year after year, not to mention how the company behaves.

Variant: Best of breed; best in breed; best in show (OK, never seen that in this context, but it will happen)