I attended the IABC and PRSA joint conference in Salt Lake City Utah yesterday.  I’d probably talk more about trends in social media, crowdsourcing stories with Twitter and Facebook, promoting content with social bookmarking, etc. It was only half a day though.

Here are 3 takeaways from the conference – because Cary Snowden asked me to.

1. Your online newsroom is a dinosaur.

As speaker David Henderson pointed out most online newsrooms are “graveyards for press releases.” He sets up WordPress-powered newsrooms that have rich content that is updated frequently. Not just from the company but stories from industry leaders, customers and employees. It should be multimedia rich with video and images that anyone can use in blog posts or stories. Tie in your social media sites. This one change can have a huge impact on a company – even impacting stock prices. It definitely helps your search engine rankings.

Example: ISCNewsroom.com

2. A successful viral campaign has unintended (positive) consequences.

When the legendary “Will It Blend?” campaign started with $50 and an idea to “sing and dance” the product – they had no idea where it would take them. They simply wanted to show how their $400 blender could blend just about anything. It was 2006 and YouTube was not well-known. My favorite is the Glow Sticks blend. I finally got to see a live blend – of a rake handle.  It was scary but fun.

Here’s what the campaign led to and takeaways:

  • When video blending the iPad didn’t impact sales they connected the video about the iPad to a campaign to their web site where you could go to win a free in tact or blended iPad. That helped. At times it felt like they were advertising Apple more than Blendtec.
  • Their new infomercials and boxes will say “As Seen on YouTube” rather than the way most companies make it say “As Seen on TV.”
  • The campaign spawned additional opportunities such as co-branded blending where they took a new Nike shoe that was a combination between 2 shoes and blended it. They’ve done shows for other brands too.$200K will buy you a custom blend.
  • Sales went from $24 million to 40 million in 5 years and their consumer blender now sells better than their commercial blenders. Even in a recession.  Total blender sales are up 700% from 2006.
  • They sold blended products etc on eBay and a blended iPod fetched $1k (which they gave to charity). One episode showed them trying to return a blended video camera to Best Buy claiming they accidentally dropped it in. The manager didn’t buy the story that a blender could do that. Classic. I’m laughing about it again as I type this!
  • The campaign has been called one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever. It has been covered on The Today Show, the Discovery Channel, QVC, Shopping Network, CNBC, The Tonight Show, and more…
  • Tom, the mad scientist has reached celebrity status just being himself. In our world we crave the real and authentic as much as the glitz and fake perfection. Both extremes seem to sell. They’ll leverage the brand and Tom to do more campaigns.

THEY ANNOUNCED THE IPAD WAS THE LAST “WILL IT BLEND” VIDEO. This kills me. Some have denied this.

3. You too can learn to speak in sound bytes.

When the camera is on it’s natural to be nervous but what the media looks for is sound bytes for stories. This is David Henderson again.Make sure you pause after each question because they will edit out the beginning to get to the main point.

Practice saying these prompts to help you remember to get back on track during an interview:

  • I think that the main point is…[pause]
  • What really excites me about this is…[pause]
  • The first thing that comes to mind about this is…[pause]
  • I think the big issue we need to consider is…[pause]

and a natural way to say what you want to answer any question…is to say something like yes but the bigger issue is….and go on about what you want to say.

I could write more but you only asked for 3!

Related articles by Zemanta
Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks

One Response to “Top 3 Ideas from PRSA/IABC Utah Conference”

  1. Sue Anne Says:
    May 14th, 2010 at 11:33 am

    I never realized that the “Will it Blend” was actually trying to sell a blender. I thought it was just some geeky thing that someone was doing.

Leave a Reply