Wow, couldn't stop picking great posts for this week's Roundup. What other marketing communications insight brings you all this in one nifty email?...

All the best, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

What Brands Can Learn From P!nk

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

Let's face it, once you're known around the world solely by your first name, you've got to be pretty famous. A really, really hot 'brand'. But when your name is generic - a colour for instance - then 'wow', you've obviously done something right over a significant period of time.

I'm talking about P!nk, of course, who seems to be getting stronger and stronger while her peers such as Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne and Christine Aguilera tread water.
The P!nk story continues to gain momentum as she works her way through a record-breaking Australian tour - four months, 525,000+ tickets sold, and 14th and 15th new shows announced for Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena. More...

Losing customers is hard but staying friends is possible

by Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets

One of my clients signed up to BudURL services when it was in Beta. They provide click stats. They played around for a while but failed to find utility after a couple of months. Today I got a nice email form the BudURL team

Some time ago, you downgraded your BudURL plan to a free account. After we wiped a few tears from our eyes and stopped stuffing our faces with chocolate, we started wondering if it was us or some other factor that lead to our break-up. Here is a quick, 3 question survey that will lend a hand in making us the kind of application you always wanted us to be. More...

Don't Laugh, This is Serious!

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

Okay, you have my permission to laugh! This is an excellent piss-take on the client-supplier relationship. Anyone who has worked in a PR agency (or similar) will get a giggle out of this, albeit through clenched teeth!
Hat-tip to Emily Wearmouth (Thoughts-On-Everything blog). More...

Positioning magic at the top end of the market

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

On Saturday I enjoyed an evening of very intimate magic—a showcase of modern conjuring—by Steve Cohen, the "Millionaire’s Magician".

Steve's story is a fascinating example of personal branding success with exclusivity as a market position.

Steve doesn't advertise his Chamber Magic shows. He doesn't sell his services. It's his positioning plus word of mouth (and word of mouse) that gets him attention and selling out his shows many months in advance. More...

Bluetooth Marketing - Fangs or no fangs? part 2

by si crowhurst of We Love Mobile

Back in March we published a blog piece about the barriers to successful Bluetooth marketing. The piece was picked up by Gregor Isbister, Managing Director of Breeze Tech. Gregor kindly agreed to write a response to our original piece, in which he deals with many of the issues we raise. Despite the fact we think we know it all at WLM, we probably have to admit that Gregor is better positioned to analyse Bluetooth as a marketing tool, his company being an acknowledged leader in the field.

Gregor’s reponse is as follows: More...

“Insecure, threatened, worried, exposed, skeptical, suspicious”: How PR buyers feel

by Andrew Smith of escherman

David Maister’s book Managing The Professional Service Firm remains the gold standard text on the subject, some 16 years after it was first published. In fact, the book is a collection of essays and articles that he had written over previous years, stretching as far back as 1982.

The main thing that struck me about re-reading this again recently was how little things have changed in terms of the major issues still impacting professional service firms of all kinds – everyone from lawyers, accountants, consultants and, of course, PR agencies. More...

How to make blogging easy

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Bloggers in business settings frequently give up writing their blogs fairly promptly after that first flush of enthusiasm is waning. Indeed, most blogs are set up, contributed to occasionally and then left to wither and fade away. But it need not be like this.

You need to plan your blog in advance The reason that many bloggers give up - especially in business - is that work gets in the way. Profiting from a blog is not an "overnight success" story (in spite of what some of the so-called "gurus" More...

What Copywriters Need to Know About the Changes in SEO

by Matt Ambrose of The Copywriter's Crucible

There was a time when I ranked on page one of Google for my trophy keyword (copywriter), but then thought it wise to change my domain name and lose my hard won ranking in the process. Despite implementing redirects, an assortment of WordPress plugins and anything else that might make Google happy, my website continues to languish in banishment (for UK listings anyway) until Google sees fit to forgive my stupidity and allow me back in from the cold.

So, in the meantime I’ve been scouting for SEO tips, and discovered a few things on the Conversation Marketing blog which copywriters ought to know: More...

How to avoid the viral marketing bug

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Marketers are a happy bunch of people, especially when they are slapping each other on the back for "fantastic campaigns" or dreaming up creative ideas. No doubt at next Monday's Marketing Society Awards in London, there will be an excessive use of the words "brilliant", "fantastic" and "amazing". Going down the marketing road takes your eye of sales But being brilliant, fantastic or amazing is only really any good in terms of your ego. What matters most are sales. More...

Time Spent on Twitter Soars by Over 3,700%, Facebook up 700%

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

I just read an interesting report published by Nielsen that examines time spent on multiple Social and Micro Networks. The study compares total minutes in April 2009 compared to April 2008. The results are not as much surprising as they are revealing.

According to Nielsen, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year.

Twitter, the social media darling that can never seem to satisfy our insatiable appetite for all things orbiting the Twitterverse, experienced extraordinary growth in the last year with total time spent up by over 3,700%. More...

Attention GM: Here are the top 5 marketing ideas for your reinvention

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

This morning when I opened my Boston Globe, I found a full-page ad from General Motors. The ad and a new television commercial both say that GM is re-inventing. (I've re-written the newspaper ad text at the bottom of this post.)

Hey GM that's great and I wish you the best.

But I wonder if, during the reinvention of the COMPANY, you are really serious about re-inventing your MARKETING?

I see some tiny glimmers of hope. The new site at GMreinvention.com is quite good. I found some interesting and valuable information to check out on the site. More...

Mobile Monday Amsterdam video on mobile advertising

by Andrew Grill of Gigafone

Shown below is the video of the talk I delivered in Amsterdam to an enthusiastic audience of 400 people at Mobile Monday on 1st June 2009 titled:

“This time…it’s personal. How mobile challenges everything we thought we knew about advertising“.

From the website description…

“Andrew, a mobile advertising evangelist, talks about how mobile impacts advertising. Your mobile tells a whole lot about you, but the advertising industry has not yet tapped into the full potential. More...

Is Twitter Evolving from the Facebook to the Myspace of Microblogs? Analyzing Twitter trends and demographics

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

When I attended TWTRCON in San Francisco and also the 140 Twitter Conference in Mountain View recently, the intent of businesses was perspicuous. Speakers and attendees were on hand to actively share, inquire, and learn about how to increase visibility, engagement, and brand presence on Twitter and other social networks.

Equally paramount was the division of those who believe they’re already successful on Twitter and those who have yet to discern measurable value for the long-term.

The consensus defined engagement as a way to join the conversations that were transpiring around their brands – More...

Social web analytics key to proving value of PR

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

The measurement debate continues. Niall Cook makes the case on the Hill & Knowlton Collective Conversation blog that Social media influence cannot be measured. It all depends what you want to measure. Influence cannot be measured without direct conversations with your audience before and after a campaign to determine its attitudinal and emotional impact. Its expensive and is likely to dwarf your budget and is why such a rigorous approach is rarely undertaken to support a PR campaign.

The digital environment does enable us to identify audiences with relative ease and get close to a measure of influence by monitoring web traffic at points along a communication framework (brand) or buying cycle (sales). More...

Tell us about an ad you’ve come across and loved today?

by Philip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group UK

This was the question I posed upfront at the Convergence Conversation I chaired last night. The topic of the conversation – “Advertising and the impact of convergence”, and a topic sufficiently compelling to attract 80 people on a summer’s evening.

Deloitte kindly hosted us, with Jolyon Barker, their Head of TMT, kicking off proceedings, and Knowledge and Research Director Paul Lee presenting an overview of their third “The state of the Media Democracy Survey”. More...