the big brand issue

Ornico’s KNOW HOW TO GROW issue 3 • november 2011

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Ornico‘s KNOW HOW TO GROW issue 3 – november2011

Editorial – Oresti Patricios 3

BlackBerry’s Big Brand Bluster 4

Tribute to a brand giant 6

10 ways to improve your PR 11

Media 13

Social Media Insights 14

Social Media by the numbers (Infographic) 15

the big brand issue

big brands

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It has been an interesting couple of weeks on the brand and reputation front. Malema marched with the ANCYL from Johannesburg to Pretoria in an effort that many say won the youth leader new respect. But the media coverage of the event was very mixed. Our President Jacob Zuma flexed his own brand muscles and reinvigorated his perceptions by taking decisive action on erring government ministers and putting police chief Bheki Cele on suspension. There was politicking in the advertising world as well, but this time it was about religiousity. The Axe advertising featuring those angels got the chopped after one complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority. The reason given was that the commercial was insulting to Christians. The ASA bowed to that one mere complaint, the ad became history and SA‘s advertising conservatism became global marketing news. But the biggest brand blowout this month of course was caused by Blackberry. A global outage that deprived half of the brand‘s users – some 70 million people – of services. That‘s 70 million badmouthing brand ambassadors that included high profile opinion leaders that stuck it to Blackberry. Unfortunately the mobile brand didn‘t handle the outage well from a reputation perspective. Read all about that in this issue of Ornico‘s Know How to Grow. Lastly the world was expecting the passing of Steve Jobs, but it still came as a massive shock. Hamba kahle to this global giant that built the Apple brand.

Oresti Patricios CEO : Ornico Read Oresti‘s Tumblr blog Follow Oresti on Twitter Find Oresti on Facebook

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BlackBerry‘s Big Brand Bluster

Gizmodo said it all right. ―BlackBerry Picked the Wrong Day to Die‖. In the week that every newspaper around the world was mourning the wizard of Apple, the late great Steve Jobs, and Apple Inc‘s iPhone 4S made its debut, RIM froze. Stopped. Went down. And took half the world with it. Half the world‘s BlackBerry using population is a lot. More than a lot. Particularly given most of them are influential, peer modifying, vocal… and at the time of RIMS service outage, angry consumers. This has enabled Apple to make one of its strongest plays for dominance in the handset and mobile device market. Blackberry was already hurting following a dismal Playbook launch. The Playbook was meant to be Blackberry‘s answer to the iPad. Except it was nowhere close to the Apple tablet and it appears that the company that Steve Jobs built is cleaning up that market too. Blackberry Playbook‘s are now being flogged in the US for discount prices.

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BlackBerry‘s Big Brand Bluster

But back to Blackberry‘s outage which put an estimated 70 million people in the dark. As Gizmodo puts it: ―Every last bit of data that flows to and from a BlackBerry does so through RIM's vast expanse of servers. When those servers go kaput? So do the phones.‖ The problem with Blackberry‘s communication has been the test pattern effect. All that‘s really been coming from the mobile brand is: ―Please be patient. We have a problem‖. Take a look at BlackBerry‘s service updates by way of example. Yes. 70 million people around the world knew that the mobile brand was having a problem. That‘s because they‘ve went without Twitter, email on their mobiles, Facebook and the hundreds of other apps and internet powered services that make BlackBerry such addictive devices. A mobile brand is brilliant when it is working because it is such an integral part of our lives. It is perhaps one of the most intimate brands in that it insinuates itself into every part of our experience. But boy oh boy when things go wrong that love turns to hate very quickly. The other lesson that BlackBerry taught the world was that communication is everything when there‘s a crisis as big as BB‘s outage which touches such a massive market.

Long after BlackBerry‘s crisis had come and gone and consumers for the most part had moved on, users got an email from Reasearch In Motion‘s (RIM) joint CEOs to say how sorry they were for the outage. The tone was formal, the message was corporate and it was too little too late for frustrated consumers. When people are angry and upset, they want to be heard. BlackBerry‘s missive came at a time when the emotion had passed, and probably only served to remind people of how bad Research In Motion‘s communication had been during the crisis. For brands like BlackBerry the service is the brand. That‘s it. That‘s as simple and as complex as it gets. The big lesson for BlackBerry now is how does it ensure this kind of outage never happens again. Then how does it try to unbundle corporate brand guidelines that keep RIM inflexible, a massive monolith. How does it make the brand more approachable and reflexive? Sadly this global #BrandFail comes only months after BlackBerry was chosen as one of SA‘s top youth brands. It is fine and well having brand guidelines, but they are supposed to help, not hinder. When brand tomes become constructs that obstruct quick, fluid consumer communications in a social age of what help are they?

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tribute to a brand legend

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tribute to a brand legend One of the world‘s greatest CEOs, it is difficult to even comprehend Apple without Steven Paul Jobs who died on the 5th of October this year. Millions of tributes have poured forth on blogs, at iStores, in newspapers, on Twitter and televisions shows for a man who was a business legend. To commemorate the passing we can think of no better way to salute Steve Jobs, than through his own words, thanks to Longform.org

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Playboy Interview: Steven Jobs By David Sheff • Playboy • February 1985 A 29-year-old Jobs on the culture that gave birth to Apple: ―Playboy: Why is the computer field dominated by people so young? The average age of Apple employees is 29. Jobs: It‘s often the same with any new, revolutionary thing. People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It‘s a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things, a specific way of questioning things. It‘s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they‘re rare.‖

Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing Gary Wolf • Wired • February 1996 Having departed Apple, a slightly disillusioned Jobs describes his new project, NeXT, and his views on the future of technology: ―Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much—if at all. These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that. But it's a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light—that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to change the world to be important. The Web is going to be very important. Is it going to be a life-changing event for millions of people? No. I mean, maybe. But it's not an assured Yes at this point. And it'll probably creep up on people.‖

tribute to a brand legend

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"You've got to find what you love": Stanford Commencement Address Steve Jobs • June 2005 Jobs, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, addresses the graduating class of 2005: ―No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.‖ Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) American inventor, entrepreneur. Co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc.

tribute to a brand legend

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By Wendy Marx, in FastCompany ―I want to get my company known and be perceived as a leader.‖ I hear that request a lot from potential clients looking for PR, along with people thinking there is some magic bullet to getting buzz. So let me set the record straight and also share with you some easy ways to get your company (or yourself) better known. • Communicate what you do succinctly and simply. Too often

people try to explain what they do with five dollar words and a lot of jargon, using words like ideate, holistic, endemic, and scalable, that simply gum up the mouth. They repel, not attract. Instead, in basic English, explain what your product or service makes it possible for someone to do. Pretend you‘re talking to a 10-year-old. I don‘t care how complicated and high falutin‘ your product or service is. No one has the time or patience today to try to figure out what you mean. And that goes double for reporters and bloggers.

• Tout why anyone should care. Most people can‘t be bothered to know how something works, nice as that can be. They want to know what it will do for them. Will it save time? Make you more money? Save you money? Let them know.

• A good picture says it all. Sometimes what you do can be explained much more clearly in words. I can read, for example, that the iPhone 4S has an 8-megapixel camera but when I see magnificent images, I suddenly know what that means.

• Make the reporter or blogger's life easy. Reporters and bloggers, like all of us, are super busy. Provide the facts straight up. Don‘t have a long windup before you get to the point, unless you want your note trashed. Simply tell them why they should care and the value of what you‘re doing.

• Keep it real. Nothing turns someone off more than exaggerating what you‘re doing. Most of what is said to be unique, first of its kind, or leading, is hyperbole. The only person who believes it is you.

• Be on point. I sometimes get pitches that have absolutely nothing to do with my business. Why would I care? Understand what the person you want to cover your business writes about and personalize your note accordingly. You might want to reference a previous article a reporter wrote and say that you enjoyed that piece and have a related, but different, story idea.

• Personalize. Reach out individually to reporters or

bloggers you believe would be interested in what you‘re doing. Ideally, get to know them first. Read their articles or posts, comment on these where you think it adds value or can extend the conversation. Help them even when it does nothing ostensibly for your company. Think of it as relationship building.

10 easy ways to improve your PR

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• Be your own best promoter. Content is the new thought leadership currency. If you have time to write at least once a week or have someone in your company who can do so, blog. Nothing engages more than your speaking conversationally about what you do. According to Hubspot, companies with blogs attract 55% more website visitors than those that don‘t have them. If you don‘t have time to blog, start engaging with customers and prospects on social media. Listen first and understand the rules of engagement before you start actively posting. Too many companies broadcast rather than have conversations on social media.

• Contribute articles. Trade publications today are always in the market for good content.

Read the publications and understand the type of articles they publish. A quick call to the publication will let you know whom to pitch. Send a brief note explaining what you want to write about, why the readers would be interested, and a few sentences about you and your company.

• Create word of mouth. Nothing beats a happy customer touting what you can do. And if your

customers don‘t want their names attached to a quote or case study, don‘t forgo this. Instead, refer to the company in a generic way, such as a major retailer or manufacturer. At least you‘re providing an outside perspective on what you can do.

And finally, an oldie but goodie: Issue a press release. This old workhorse is still effective. Just keep it brief, avoid hyperbole and make it easy to understand. Focus on a new initiative your audience will care about. Include key words that prospects are likely to search. If all of this sounds like too much, begin slowly. Carve out a few areas to focus on. I would start with your making your communications easy to understand. And then work on creating a little content, be it a blog or contributed article. After all, you don‘t have to be famous in a day. Just get a little better known each day. Author Wendy Marx is a B2B PR and Marketing Specialist, Marx Communications

10 easy ways to improve your PR

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City Press's new magazine the talk of the town By: Oresti Patricios Hot off the back of a strategy lead by editor Ferial Haffajee, City Press is investing heavily in ensuring it becomes the most noticeable and noted Sunday media brand. The latest accent in that drive to own the Sunday newspaper market is a magazine that Media24's publication has simply called i magazine. Read the full insight here: How the F-bomb made an obscure newsreader an overnight viral celeb Former newsreader Mark Esterhuysen has become an overnight celebrity on social networks after swearing on the air, but the question is how did it all happen? Because Ornico monitors most, if not all, major news media the brand and reputation research company was able to decode Esterhuysen‘s viral effect. Here‘s more on the F-bomb by the numbers and the social media swell that made Esterhuisen a new media hit. Read the full article. Innovating new brand markets. How do you break into new markets and develop innovative strategies that help grow emerging market share. Ornico CEO, Oresti Patricios joined Urs Honegger, publisher/MD of Panorama Publications on the Bizcommunity/Chai FM Media & Marketing radio show. Listen to the podcast of that show here.

media

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Reasons why people drop brands on Facebook by Jonathan Cherry of CherryFlava Shame – realizing that people spend some time on things like Facebook and Twitter, brands have hired fancy social media consultants and people like that to help get them a ‗presence‘ on these platforms. Read the full story. Are Corporations Giving Up on Social Media? Terms like ―blogging,‖ ―tweeting‖ and ―liking‖ are continuing to gain traction in the lexicon of the marketing industry –or so it seems. New research from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth shows that the use of blogs, Twitter and Facebook among the Fortune 500 actually leveled off in 2011, and the results have me wondering: Are the nation‘s largest companies giving up on social media? Read more. Twitter stories show social media’s impact In its five-year history, Twitter‘s been used for inane updates on what was breakfast, as a vehicle for real-time news and as a way to spread revolutionary social ideas. On Tuesday, the service launched a new site, ―Twitter Stories,‖ to share a handful of stunning ways that the micro-blogging service has made a positive impact on people‘s lives. The stories range from the heartwarming story of a son who saved his mother‘s bookstore with a tweet, to the bone-chilling tale of a man who relied on Twitter for help when snipers entered his backyard in Tunisia. The site even features the story of one man who found a kidney donor after tweeting, ―[expletive], I need a kidney.‖ Read the story.

social media insight

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