Playing an unlikely but crucial role in the recent Presidential elections in France was a five-minute video called the “Human Bomb”. It was produced as advisors worried that Sarkozy was being constantly demonized in the online media through videos like la France D’après, which imagines a new repressive nation state under Sarkozy with riot police, urban unrest and burning cars.
The video drew more than 450,000 viewers attracted by an old chapter from Sarkozy’s life: as the brash suburban mayor of Neuilly sur Seine personally negotiates with the “Human Bomb,” a deranged man who seized kindergarten students as hostages in 1993.
The video offers a pensive look at this past along with equally pensive soundtrack music (“Honor Him” from the movie, The Gladiator). According to Arnaud Dassier, a strategist for Sarkozy, their “Human Bomb” video was so effective that people were literally left in tears. “We were losing the battle on Dailymotion and YouTube and before we launched this video there was not one pro-Sarko video in the top 50.”
Accorodng to the IHT – When the backstage story of this presidential campaign is written, new media will play a starring role. American campaign strategists have already traveled to France for a glimpse of the new political rituals and pronounced them “one click ahead” of techniques in the United States, as Michael Murphy, an advisor to the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, put it.
Decide whether it’s worth reaching for tissues when you watch it.
Connecting with people is critical for selling, persuading or getting the point across. And one of the ways we connect with people is to tell them stories about ourselves.
I was at a business workshop recently, and the stories that were most effective (by acclamation of the attendees) were ones where the person let down his/her guard, and revealed something personal. This is one of the reasons storytelling is more effective than reciting a list of benefits to a prospect. In addition to being interesting and easy to understand, it also helps create a personal bond with the prospect. It means that you may want, in your business storytelling, to reveal anxieties, fears and feelings.In other words, to give the prospect your confidence.
While there has been quite a bit of buzz with regards to twitter, a visit to the homepage would probably leave the uninitiated rather unimpressed. Robert Scoble calls it “blogging mated with IM” and is a frequent user. While some say that it will be dead pretty soon – I do agree that at the moment it adds to the general clutter or noise and would probably not be worthwhile to most organisations. However there may well be a few uses for twitter which are as below:
1. Great for live events or as a broadcast tool. Kim Bayne offers a few suggestions including a feedback channel for customer service, marketing ticker for journalists and analysts, and monitoring of system status. Key to this would be the ability to segment your Twitter life into different areas if it is to be relevant to various social networks. Also the ability to broadcast perspectives or conversations around a particular event or festival would become more of a usable feature. This would enable the ability to keep tabs on the pulse of an event and enable people to decide where to spend their time.
2. Promotional element
It would allow marketers to user developed content marketing campaigns and other reality based marketing campaigns could be used to encourage user dialogue and participation. It really offers an IM type dimension to the campaign without the issues of privacxy and permissions usually associated with IM.
3. Collaborative feedback
Watching content online or on TV along with others – allowing for feedback, ideas and impressions all while reading those of others could be a powerful tool.
4. Information aggregation and mashups. Charlene Li from Forrestor writes about being able to get Twitter Weather, Tube Twitter and mashups like Twittermaps.com, which uses specific tagging in Twitter to map your locations. While they are cool features they have little use for marketing and PR. Dealtagger.com however is of interest in that it allows any deals that you tag on the service to also show up on Twitter.
In its current state Twitter will really only appeal to a small group of marketers. However given trends with other social networking services could well evolve with new features and functionality to actually become a useful communication and information tool.
Charlene Li from Forrester has put out a new fascinating reporton social technographics which looks at how consumers approach social technologies. Forrester segmented the online audience into several different stratas – what they call a ladder of participation. They found that “Inactives” are by far the dominant group (52%). They’re followed by spectators, joiners, critics, collectors and last but not least creators. This last cluster, according to the analyst firm, dabbles in lots of different activities but few do all of them. See the chart below for more.
While those who engage tend to get all of the attention, the thickest part of the ladder is in the vast majority of people who have no desire to participate. I imagine this number will shrink some in the years ahead, particularly as the generation that grew up with the Web enters the workforce. However, there will always be a large portion of the online audience that remains just that – consumers. While technology is flattening the marketing landscape, there’s a need for agencies that can help guide clients in the dynamic two-way world. Marketing and PR is best suited to thrive in this environment and getting the right mix is where it all starts.
So what can PR and marketing learn from this?
The report provides insights into what drives and motivates people to engage with the web. For each program, you can assess where your audience sits on this continuum. Are they inactives, creators or somewhere in between? The key is to then devise the right kind of communication strategy depending on what you discover. While the ladder provides the outlines marketing and PR will need to provide the appropriate creative components for the concerned audience.
Here are a few ideas:
Let’s say you have a start-up that has a new piece of software that bloggers will love. Then it would seem appropriate that executing a peer-to-peer program that targets creators, critics and collectors would be main thrust of your strategy. In addition to the possibility of tapping into social networks, blogging and other Web 2.0 communities through the use of the peer to peer program. Media coverage targeting outlets that bloggers read would also help.
Where as if you have software like a 37 signals product that has value to a large number of consumers, then you’d want a broader mix that combines the best of new media/mainstream media, all while investing proportionately in strategies that reflects the groups on the ladder.
Connecting with people is critical for selling, persuading or getting the point across. And one of the ways we connect with people is to tell them stories about ourselves.
While there has been quite a bit of buzz with regards to twitter, a visit to the homepage would probably leave the uninitiated rather unimpressed. Robert Scoble calls it “
