PR 101

So, after unplanned week off from blogging – more about that later – I sat at my keyboard trying to come up with a topic for this week’s blog. I realized I have a lot of items that wouldn’t make up an entire blog, but are still things I want to put out there. So, here are some of them.

Apple Inc.’s Marketing

Whether you are a Mac or a PC, you have to admire the way Apple markets itself.  The phrase I used to start the previous sentence is an example. Apple has become an iconic product. It’s marketing is transcending its market and becoming part of the general conversation. Which frankly is genius.

Of course Apple runs television advertisement for its products. However, those commercials are just one leg of the centipede that is Apple’s marketing plan. I cannot think of another company whose products go viral faster than Apple. They are word-of-mouth geniuses. You gotta admire that.

BP and The Oil Spill

That would make a great name for a punk band. In the real world, it has been an unmitigated disaster for British Petroleum on so many levels.

If you remember, last I blogged about the need for a crisis communication plan. That plan cannot sit on the shelf and gather dust. Just like every other part of crisis planning, a crisis communication plan has to be practiced. In that way, when the real thing happens, the communications team will know what to do.

I have to say that if BP did have a plan, it ain’t working. They have so ham handed about the way they dealt with the media. Their people actually got testy about what the company was doing. Bad idea. That just leads to more bad press.

The only way to act when there millions of oil that will potentially damage eco-systems from Louisiana to Florida and beyond is contrite.

Ford’s Advertising Campaign
Ford Motor Co. clearly gets it when it comes to telling the public about their products. Their current ads are the firs I have been in a long time that actually talk about their product’s attributes. That is a good way to get consumers interested.

If you watch television commercials for automobiles, you will notice that the ads rarely talk about what’s in the car. Most of the time, the commercials are trying to sell image. The one exception to that are truck commercials. The people who buy trucks want to know about horsepower and payload. They don’t care about image. They care about owning a tool that will get the job done.

Ford seems to have transferred that idea to car advertisements. The commercials for such things as the Ford Fusion or the Escape SUV talk about cargo space, gas mileage and horsepower. Those are thing I want to know about when I look at cars.

The Internet

I never realized how much I relied on the ability to use the Internet until part of it was taken away from me.

As I am sure you all noticed last week PR 101 was attacked by a virus. It was part of a larger attack on WordPress Blogs hosted by Go Daddy. I eventually had to take the blog down to protect all of you from getting infected. It took awhile, but the viruses were eventually flushed from the system. I have to give kudos to the Go Daddy customer support for helping me.

I also have to give a huge thank you to Joao Moraes of Sao Paulo, Brasil. Joao is the man who designed this blog and maintains it for me. It was he who helped me work my way through all of the issues a virus attack presents. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have a blog.

I also have to thank of all of you readers for sticking with me. I appreciate it. Thank you.