Laura Giardina
There’s nothing better than getting our client PediaCare an editorial placement in Woman’s World magazine, reaching 8.8 million readers! For a chance to win the PediaCare “Kids’ Cold Comfort” giveaway, readers are encouraged to visit www.pediacare.com/win. Did you enter?
By Brittany Oat
Around the world, people have been glued to their TV stations as all of the Chilean miners emerged safely. While most were focused on this amazing story of survival and heroism, some savvy brands were focusing on some free PR.
Did you see those cool glasses shielding tear-filled eyes of rescued miners? Oakley donated 35 pairs of their special Radar glasses with Black Iridium lenses. The sunglasses retail for about $450 a pair, while the free TV advertising time is worth about $41 million!
NASA also got some much needed good PR. They devised and helped build the rescue capsule dubbed “Phoenix”.
And, let’s not forget brand Chile. President Sebastián Piñera personally greeted each miner coming out of the rescue capsule and is now planning a global tour where, according to the Financial Times, he will sell Chile’s image as Latin America’s best-managed economy. And all this will get another boost when the movie comes out. There’s no question this miracle will be an asset to Chilean business and tourism.
By Brittany Oat
It’s great to see brands lending a hand in the fight against breast cancer this month!
Our client Conair took the effort to a whole new level, launching a line of pink products. What’s more, Conair is going to donate a minimum of $100,000 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation based on the sale of products from the Power of Pink Collection!! They’ve donated more than a half a million dollars since 2003 to the cause!
Imagine what a difference we would make if every brand took a stand like this?
By Nicole Egan
Recently, I’ve been working with vloggers (video bloggers) for product placement and reviews. These 2 to 10 minute videos are like mini movies that demonstrate what the products look like and how they work (ie. the various Softlips PURE 100% Natural lip glosses and lip tints). I especially like the creativity that goes into making these vlogs with the music, transitions, graphics and demonstrations that take on the personality of the vloggers, who tend to get very into what they are doing, putting a face and a voice to product reviews.
Despite some recent negative news reports about “haul” videos (videos that showcase the vloggers purchases after they’ve gone shopping), most of the vloggers that I’ve been in contact with including faniechanel and handbagbuyer82 are simply young women who are extremely passionate about all things beauty. They’re eager to try new products and give their honest opinion to inform their viewers about what to buy and not buy. Most vloggers are trying to show their followers how to shop like a pro and not waste money on products that aren’t worth it.
Personally, it’s been a great experience working with these beauty vloggers, and we’re always welcoming new vloggers to work with.
Relationship Broadens RL&A’s Offerings in the Digital and Social Media Marketing Arena
MT. KISCO, NY, Sept. 24, 2010 – OTC health and beauty PR and social media experts Robin Leedy & Associates (RL&A) (www.robinleedyassociates.com) is announcing a strategic partnership with Thinklabs Interactive of NYC that will expand its digital offerings to clients. The new alliance with Thinklabs will add to the 26-year-old agency’s already strong social media expertise with customized mobile applications and enhanced Facebook application building, among other digital tools.
Thinklabs is the latest endeavor for Christian Brucculeri, formerly director of client strategy at enter: new media, where he led development of digital strategy for a variety of brands. Previously, Brucculeri held the director of social media position at Robin Leedy & Associates and was a director of strategy for YouCast Corp.
In addition to pre-built and custom solutions for brands in digital and social media, Thinklabs also provides clients with a proprietary social insights dashboard, Medialab, which is used for measuring campaign results across blogs, sites, advertising networks, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms.
RL&A has maintained its reputation as the PR/social media agency of choice for drugstore “self-medicating” brands in categories ranging from beauty, nutritional supplements to OTC and personal care/HBA brands. With more than two decades of experience, including beauty brands PR, nutritional products PR, women’s healthcare PR, lifestyle PR, event planning, social media marketing, Facebook development and management, influencer outreach (consumers and healthcare professionals) and word of mouth marketing, the agency, including its social media division – ChatteRL&A – is creating customized communications programs that deliver targeted brand messaging, whether via editorial placements in magazines or on TV, through key bloggers and other category influencers, or on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
“Our new partnership with Thinklabs takes our agency’s extensive social media and digital capabilities – and our client messaging – from the desktop or laptop to the mobile device,” says Robin Russo, president of Robin Leedy & Associates. “Just like social media allows us to message consumers where they are looking and engaging with topics and content, we are now expanding our digital and programming resources in order to better serve up messages on the technology they are using in the palm of their hand.”
“We are excited to be working so closely with the Robin Leedy & Associates team to build a full suite of digital marketing solutions for brands in the beauty, health and nutritional categories. Combining RL&A’s communication and messaging expertise with Thinklabs’ ability to produce interactive content and support it with media and measurement, we’ve created an all-in solution for brands looking to get their message out and measure the results of their efforts,” adds Brucculeri.
For more information on Robin Leedy & Associates and Thinklabs, contact Robin Russo at (914) 241-0086, ext. 16 (rrusso@robinleedyassociates.com ) or Christian Brucculeri at (917) 865-0891 (christian@thinklabsinteractive.com), or visit www.robinleedyassociates.com.
By Anne Carlantone
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the new Facebook Places location-based check-in service that was announced this week. Now, we get to discover what we can do with it!
Before this, sites like Foursquare and Gowalla were the sites you joined if you chose to get in on the location-based world, which meant getting to know a new network, building a new profile, etc. But now because practically everyone is on Facebook, essentially practically everyone could now also be in this location-based arena…right now!
For brands utilizing Facebook, this can provide some great new opportunities to promote your business, as outlined in today’s PC World article. These include new ways to promote special offers, share experiences with a brand and reward loyal customers. As administrators of several Facebook pages with great sets of brand-loyal friends, we’re excited about where this can go!
As individuals, you may still be deciding how you feel about this. If you’re a Facebook user who doesn’t like the location-based idea, there is a way to not participate. You can choose not to check in. If you’re still uncomfortable, you can do the following: Go into your privacy settings, click on “Custom” and “Customize Settings.” You can choose to make the “Places I Check In” option visible only to yourself. Then you can go down to the “Friends Can Check Me Into Places” option and disable that, as well.
Feel free to “check in” with us to discuss how RL&A can utilize Facebook Places for your brands!
By Alyson O’Mahoney, Executive VP/Partner
If you’re launching a new brand or product, the natural inclination may be to announce and support it via Facebook, matching the newness of the brand with the coolness of this technology to market products, and that’s almost expected. However, I believe that older, heritage brands – perhaps those with brand managers who may not feel their brand is new or cool enough to go social – have an even bigger opportunity for resurgence in this space for the sole reason Facebook exploded to begin with. Think about it….tens of millions of people go on Facebook each day to connect – with old friends from their high school football team, grammar school crushes, sorority sisters, past work colleagues, you name it. That’s the primary role of Facebook, ultimately, and it allows us to connect with what is ultimately the history of our relationships. In this space, we are more apt to friend/trust someone we haven’t spoken to in 30 years (like a heritage brand that, say, grandma always had in her house or mom used when you were a kid – something you connect with from the past that you trust) than we would an actual stranger (say, like a new brand that we need to trust first).
Facebook may be a new channel of communication, but it really taps into and reconnects us with our trusted histories (let’s face it, we avoid friending the crazy old boyfriend!). Products from our past – say that remind you of childhood or something special about how your mom – are trusted.
So, if heritage brands, even with small budgets, began positioning themselves as old friends, while at the same time delivering new content to freshen up their perspective to new, younger consumers, old friends could surely become new again.
By Nicole Egan
In my daily outreach for clients to bloggers who effectively spread product information to their constituents who they influence daily, I was recently pondering on the effectiveness of word of mouth when I realized how powerful a force it is on my own decisions, purchases, etc.…with the best recent example being my family vacation.
I come from a family that loves to travel and explore different places. I know that many states, companies, etc. spend a lot of money on advertising to attract tourists, and are quite successful with these efforts. However, my family has always relied on word of mouth from friends and family to help us decide – whether about which city to visit, hotel to stay in, or even airport parking lot to leave the car!
Whenever we decide on a place to go, we often first ask around to see if anyone else has ever been there before, what they did, where they stayed and ate at. We value their opinions more than any guidebooks, particularly if they’ve had a bad experience, which we ALWAYS take that into consideration before we book our trip.
Once we get there, my dad has also perfected his technique when it comes to on-the-spot word of mouth. Whenever we’re in an unfamiliar place, he always asks the people that live in the city where they eat….the locals always recommend the best places!
Then, we continue the word of mouth process…when we come back from a vacation, we either rave or rant about the places we visited to our friends and family – on the phone, on Facebook, etc.,, undoubtedly influencing these people for their future vacations..and so on.
Word of mouth is an extremely effective tool that allows everyone to be an influencer to others about anything and everything they’re in contact with. This is an invaluable tool that can be both positive and negative for companies, brands, services, etc., because people tend to trust and value the opinions of others within their own circles over what companies advertise to them.
By John Whitcomb, Social Media Manager
Unless you’ve been living under first base, it has been hard to ignore the hype surrounding NBA free agent Lebron James, which will culminate when he announces his decision during a prime time, much-anticipated, various-cities-on-the-edge-of-their-seats press conference on ESPN.
As a PR professional and a rabid student of social media, I have followed this story with interest because of the rumors of Lebron possibly announcing his decision solely via Twitter. Yesterday this seemed even more likely when a new handle @kingjames sent out its first tweet announcing it was live. So it is understandable that many in the social media industry had their Twitter feathers ruffled when he opted to make use of live TV – yes, that box in the center of your family room with the DVR on top – to make his announcement.
I think it proves that even though social media is all the rage, it is PART of the marketing plan and not solely the only answer. Here at Robin Leedy & Associates, we always look at the overall messaging picture and make sure that a social media effort makes sense for a brand before we recommend it to a client. There are some key factors to consider before just jumping on the bandwagon and each one needs to be weighed with the positives and the negatives of a brand joining a particular medium….and providing enough resources to manage each medium.
Social media is more than just using the tools, it is developing the strategy to make sure you are not just a voice in the wind. As for King James, despite the lure of social media, his team decided that a traditional press conference during prime time would have more effect and in the sports world having a two-hour special on ESPN seems to be the right move.
Now if only he makes the right decision and joins the Knicks!!!!
By Brittany Oat
In the 2010 FIFA World Cup it’s not Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo who are the biggest stars. No, it’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube…and the fans sitting at home using those tools to get so close to the game they might as well be in South Africa.
We’ve seen social media make huge leaps for Barack Obama’s election day victory and the death of Michael Jackson, but it’s nothing compared to the 2010 FIFA World Cup (officially deemed the largest event in social media history). Just look at Twitter- it set a record of 3,283 tweets per second during a tournament! If we could put a sound on the cheers being tweeted I bet you it would be a thousand times louder than the noise in the stadium.
Facebook is seeing similar activity. Fans are celebrating on the thousands of pages created specifically for the 2010 World Cup, teams and players.
So, it’s not surprising that major brands are using this as an opportunity to get some relatively inexpensive playing time. Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa and others are having their own competition…who can get the most benefit from the World Cup buzz
. Visa has done well on YouTube with their “Go Fans” campaign. You know, those semi-annoying videos where a fan lathered in face paint yells GOOOOOAL for about 20 seconds? People can even enter their own video on the site. Coca-Cola is using similar strategies.
Going forward, the social media explosion around large athletic, political and cultural events will only continue to grow. Fans, teams, brands, social media sites will all benefit from this. The only real losers I see in the 2010 World Cup are the traditional media outlets.