"The Vermonster"

September 14, 2009 is a day that challenged the reality of the American Dream that Matt and Renee Nadeau have been living in Morrrisville, Vermont. It's a "monster" of an issue. Small The Nadeau's, Owners of Rock Art Brewery, have a legal trademark case on their small business plates that began with the name of their 10-year celebration ale, "The Vermonster". The Nadeau's case hits close to home for a small town girl like me. As the daughter of a small business owner, a current consultant for small B2B companies with some even smaller clients - there is no way I could turn my head to the Trending Topic on Twitter today, #boycottmonster. If you don't have a Twitter account you can still search hashtags and keywords in Twitter. Here is a link of a Twitter search for #boycottmonster, the trending topic that caught my eye. Even a Google search results in quite a few articles and blog postings about the recent news of Monster vs. Rock Art Brewery. Media To get the official details of how this has unfolded, The Nadeau's have posted the cease and desist (c&d) order and their formal response on the Rock Art Brewery website. Matt Nadeau stated in a YouTube video entitled, "Matt and 'The Monster' Rock Art Brewery vs Monster Energy Drink" (also posted on the Rock Art website) how wonderful the support has been from across the country, which is all a result from utilizing the media to plead his case. As stated in the Nadeau's response letter, Hansen's Natural Corporation (owns Monster) wants to get into the alcoholic beverage industry, and that's why they have asked Rock Art Brewery to c&d their Vermonster beer - and not asked Ben & Jerry's to c&D their Vermonster ice cream. Many other 'Vermonster' titles exist, including a corn maze, monster truck and a musician. Principal The Nadeau's were told they would ultimately lose by default in court, and have to change the name of their beer. The professional recommendation? To change the name of the "Vermonster" and move on. But Matt stated with passion in the YouTube video, "I have to stand up for this. Change the name and move on. No, I can't do it." The verdict is unknown, but what we do know from Matt Nadeau - we can all stand up for what we believe in... no matter how deep (or shallow) our wallets are.

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

American Marketing Association Oregon MAX 2010

Feel like you've accomplished something big this year? The Oregon chapter of the AMA is taking submissions for its 2010 awards in: -Integrated Marketing Campaign B2B -Integrated Marketing Campaign Consumer/Retail -Integrated Marketing Campaign / Nonprofit and Government -Public Relations -Single Medium Advertising As well as Marketer of the Year and Rising Star. If you're not ambitious enough to enter, at least consider attending the Feb. 25 event. With clients cutting budgets and dropping out of the game, as well as more clients used to advertising shifting their budget to PR, there's no doubt there will be some interesting entries. I'll definitely be curious to hear about strategists other Oregonian publicists have cooked up (and curious to know who will be Marketer of the Year).

It's been a rough year out there and we know you've had to be more creative than ever with limited budgets and resources—we can't wait to see your amazing work and celebrate your remarkable successes.

Enter at www.maxaward.org by Friday, January 15th (early deadline) or Friday, January 22nd, (late deadline entries). Mark your calendar now for the MAX Event: February 25, 2010 • 4:00- 7:00 p.m. Ziba Auditorium • 810 NW Marshall in Portland, OR

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Search engine optimization for Google News

Follow the link above or click below to have a listen of how Google search ranks news stories. Bob Garfield interviews Brent Payne, director of search engine optimization for Tribune Interactive. While searching for Garfield's Bio, I found this great one-liner, "Bob Garfield isn't exactly a media whore, but he's extremely promiscuous." Also linked here is the video Google posted on Google News, featuring Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead. Ohye focuses on three main points during the video: 1. Ranking Factors, 2. FAQs from SEOs and Publishers, and 3. Best Practices to Publish. Cheers!

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

Bloggers required to give full disclosure

People used to think of the internet as a vast jungle, a massive tangled network of tubes, a decentralized library of information with infinite shelves. We assumed this frontier could never be regulated.

But it turns out that the internet is quite manageable. The government in China has successfully blocked a huge swath of unapproved web sites for most of its users, as an extreme example. And people are more frequently being held accountable for what they write.

The latest is an FTC ruling that bloggers must disclose their relationship with advertisers or companies that have paid them to endorse products. There is a minor uproar in the blogosphere from writers who say the new rule would require them to disclose a review copy of a book as an advertiser relationship. But in fact, a lot of obscured endorsement goes on. I used to write for a prominent environmental blog that paid its writers to pen positive posts for advertisers, which would not be labeled as such and were mixed in with the impartial "reporting," things we chose to write on our own for which we were paid "competitive blogger compensation" -- $20 per post.

The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently. The new rules also take aim at celebrities, who will now need to disclose any ties to companies, should they promote products on a talk show or on Twitter. A second major change, which was not aimed specifically at bloggers or social media, was to eliminate the ability of advertisers to gush about results that differ from what is typical — for instance, from a weight loss supplement.

My take is, hey bloggers -- with power comes responsibility. Your increasing relevance means increased scrutiny. The internet is no longer lawless; accept it. Read the full NYT story here.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Viral marketing your promotion

The overwhelming response to Oregon Chai's "Give Me Oregon Chai" promotion this weekend that caused them to run out of samples in four days was thanks to social media!

Timeline:

Thursday: Oregon Chai has budgeted a certain number of free samples for this promotion. Stacia sends me an email asking me to push out the word on the social networks first, so that our friends there will get first dibs.

Friday, 10:00 AM: The first notice is posted on Oregon Chai's Twitter, Facebook and MySpace pages.

Friday, 10:45 AM: We send the word out to freebie bloggers and promo trackers on Twitter.

Friday, 11:45 AM: Second notice posted on Twitter and Facebook.

Friday, 1:40 PM: Third notice posted on Twitter and Facebook.

Friday, 3:15 PM: Fourth and final notice posted on Twitter.

Saturday and Sunday: The http://givemeoregonchai.com is retweeted dozens of times and two dozen Facebookers "like" and comment on the promotion.

Monday, 11:00 AM: Judy gets a call from Oregon Chai saying that the promo web site has been swamped with visitors requesting samples. More than four times the number (and it was a large number) of samples budgeted were requested just on Monday. Stacia, who is the account manager, had not circulated the press release yet. "What did you guys do?" Judy asked me and Stacia. The wonderful folks at Oregon Chai said they would try to get more samples ready and shipped.

Tuesday, 8:00 AM: Oregon Chai called to say they had been able to scrounge up enough samples to meet the extra requests but would have to shut the promotion down, just four days after it went live. The http://givemeoregonchai.com web site was updated to say:

"So it seems a lot of people love Oregon Chai as much as we do. Due to a wonderful, overwhelming response for free samples, this promotion has ended...for now. Keep your eyes open for future offers from Oregon Chai. And in the meantime, visit your local market or oregonchai.com to get your hands on some 'me time.'"

Few things are tougher than ceasing a viral message. We put out the word today on the social sites, but people are unlikely to spread around the message in the same way.

Lesson: Social media is FAST. If you plan to promote something virally, you need to be ready for high demand over a short time. Fortunately Oregon Chai was happy and able to step up its offer and accommodate those who had already requested samples, and ended up shipping out almost SIX TIMES what they had originally planned. Love those guys!

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Informative links

Have you ever tried to Google a social media question? But, you never found a quick and understandable answer? Maybe one of your questions were: How to create a background for your twitter account? How to measure social media? Or, maybe your were just looking for new design inspiration, or new follows on twitter to mix it up? Via Google, I found a great link collection that can answer those questions and 29+ other questions related to social media! All on one blog post from Stefanm, my link collection, Websites I visit, personal link collection. Enjoy!

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

Jubelale pouring

Hello, fall. Seems like this rain and wind came out of nowhere. Suddenly, I'm craving hot soup and dumplings, and buying hot chai instead of iced. If you're feeling reminiscent about summer, there is one thing to look forward to -- the first holiday beer of the season, brewed by our favorite micro, Deschutes Brewery. Ta-da! JUBELALE! Deschutes Brewery is hosting the inaugural pouring of that very spiced, gut-warming winter ale tomorrow at the Bond Street pub in Bend, and Thursday at the Pearl pub in Portland. Come meet local artist Tracy Leagjeld, who designed the 2009 label. The Jubelale label is designed by a different Oregon artist every year. Leagjeld will be at the pubs, displaying the original artwork and signing posters.

"Brewed with dark crystal malt creating a luscious holiday note with bountiful hops to excite your taste buds— it’s easy to see why Jubelale is the perfect complement to the season."

The Head Brewers will be tapping their respective kegs at the pubs at 5:00 p.m. sharp, don't miss it!

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Twitter in schools

Check out this story about more innovative uses of social media in today's Oregonian:

Community forums and newsletters sent home in backpacks are so old school. You want to find out whether stewed tomatoes are on tomorrow's lunch menu? Check out the district's latest tweet. How about the date for the next school board meeting? Look on Facebook. Don't like a school district decision? Post a comment.

Read it at OregonLive.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

"Friends with Benefits"

I never really cared for the term, until now... Yet another book on social media is being published... "Friends with Benefits" - A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo. Alyssa Gregory with sitepoint.com reviewed Friends with benefits here, noting that the book is great for beginners while asking and answering tough questions.

It’s an interesting read that offers a lot of value for those starting in social media from square one. But despite the beginner’s focus, the book offers some great tips for even the most experienced marketers out there. Here are my highlights from the book. Overall, this is a great book for individuals and especially businesses ready to get into the world of online social media marketing because it provides a great primer into this new and growing culture and community.

The book is not available until November 2009, but until then you can download Chapter 4 as a .pdf on No Starch Press linked above. My favorite part... reading author Darren Barefoots' blog along with the other 10,000 other daily viewers of darrenbarefoot.com.

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

Top 100 most popular Wikipedia articles

Wikipedia houses more than 17.8 million articles in more than two hundred languages. Millions of people around the world use it, and apparently this is what they look at. #11 is encouraging for those worried about the public's state of engagement, #3 is predictable, #10 and #13 are probably due to aging PR professionals who are still scratching their heads over this social media thing and are hoping Wikipedia can spell it out for them. #8 is just puzzling.

1. Wiki (131,383 page hits per day) 2. The Beatles (111,896) 3. Michael Jackson (79,734) 4. Favicon.ico (78,077) 5. YouTube (72,318) 6. Wikipedia (52,542) 7. Barack Obama (49,401) 8. Deaths in 2009 (48,758) 9. United States (46,545) 10. Facebook (42,679) 11. Current events portal [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events] (40,962) 12. World War II (29,736) 13. Twitter (28,511) 14. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (28,395) 15. Slumdog Millionaire (26,755)

Read the rest here at TechXav.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Social Media Do Not: Shovelware

Via twitter, of course, I found a great link from REPORTR.NET about Social Media entitled "Study Finds US New Media Use Twitter as Shovelware," linked here. I was saddened to read the stats, but not surprised. What else would US Media promote? I have a few ideas, but I'm sure there is no budget or money in tweeting classified ads and events from the community calendars. The Wikipedia definition of shovelware is available, but I would like to compare the term 'shovelware' to the dating world. Here's a little phrase my girlfriends and I (after learning the hard way) have followed, "Quality over Quantity." Please note - this does not apply to shoes, accessories, blog posts, or Twitter followers. As a business, or as an independent tweeter - do not tweet to tweet. You'll loose credibility, appear boring ("@LameTweetExample at my desk watching the world rotate outside my window") and ultimately stop tweeting because you don’t get it. If you feel this may be you - take a deep breath and send @CCGPR a DM and we'll get you tweeting.

-Jacq (@jacqsmith)

DON'T. A public relations fable.

You bill yourself as a public relations expert, write a book of aphorisms about style for public relations professionals, and then throw yourself a party that gets made fun of by journalists in the New Yorker and the New York Observer. That's got to be a bummer for Marco Larsen, a (now) high-profile publicist in the big city who heads his own PR firm, called Public, nyc. The book is cute, and resists the trend among marketers-turned-authors of stacking one-liner on top of one-liner on top of simple sentence, but Larsen is obviously off the mark in his efforts to publicize it. Here's a link to the withering New Yorker piece (sub. req. -- but the first hit on Google for "don't marco larsen") and the eye-rolling Observer piece, which begins, "There were no famous people at a book party held for Marco Larsen..." Below is an excerpt from "Don't: The Essential Guide to Publicity in New York City and Any Other City That Matters."

DON'T confusing publicity with marketing ...People who think they understand the value of publicity may treat it as merely another appendage of advertising or marketing. In fact, the two are completely distinct; even with an already-existing marketing or advertising strategy, publicity requires a separate, yet parallel, strategy altogether. ...Appearing in an ad means simply that you have enough money to gain access to a certain club (Vogue, Forbes, etc.) to court customers. Successful publicity, by contrast, means that the club has chosen you. This perceived third-party endorsement makes all the difference... As different as the effects of these two approaches are, so too are the strategies that make each successful... A media placement, on the other hand, must provide information of such intrinsic value that the consumer not only a) becomes aware of the brand but b) personally identifies with it and c) accepts it as quintessential.

No doubt Larsen hopes these two write-ups of his little party aren't accepted as "quintessential." Truly there is such a thing as bad publicity, especially when your negative image is placed prominently in a high-brow magazine AND general audience newspaper.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

Woody the Traveling Bar in Seattle

Look out! Bar on wheels! Woody, the giant Deschutes Brewery keg which has been known to travel the country pouring the finest cold Oregon craft beer, will make a stop in Seattle for the annual Fremont Oktoberfest. The Fremont Oktoberfest is packed with beer, events and activities and is a must-not-miss for those lucky enough to be in the Pacific Northwest. Grab a mug and bask in the glory of more than 70 microbrews, three beer gardens and one traveling keg on wheels at this year’s Fremont Oktoberfest, Sept. 18-20. Mobile bartenders will pour five of Deschutes Brewery’s award-winning brews out of Woody, the truck-sized, keg-shaped bar which will be stationed somewhere along N. 35th Street and Phinney Avenue N. The festival kicks off Friday night at 5:00 pm with music, food, and beer, beer and more beer. Follow Woody, the Traveling Bar in a Barrel, at http://twitter.com/dbwoody. More information at www.fremontoktoberfest.com.

-Campbell Consulting (@ccgpr)

PR tools

Public relations has certainly gotten more sophisticated with the addition of technology. PR professionals now have access to enormous databases of media and clips and sleek distribution tools. One advantage of this is that it makes things faster and easier. But the disadvantage is that having a huge database means it's tempting to blast a ton of people at the same time. We build massive media lists, sometimes with hundreds of names. But sometimes it's better to keep it simple. These are some of the tools I have experience with: Vocus Vocus is definitely not the most user-friendly program -- everything is named vaguely -- "projects," "activities," and it's tough to figure out how to do something on your own. But Vocus has a giant database of media contacts that's updated frequently, and users can add new contents, expanding the database. Also, Vocus lets you keep private contacts private. Distribution is fairly easy, although you can't edit a distribution once it's been sent out or use it as the basis for a new distribution, and its HTML editor is sketchy. Pros: Big database. Cons: Usability, sub-par news tracking, and bad name among journalists. At a recent Media Relations Summit, a New York Times reporter called Vocus a prime purveyor of PR spam before an audience of 500+ PR pros (including the company's sales reps), and four of his colleagues publicly echoed the same. "I get more inappropriate pitches through Vocus than any other way," tweeted Vindu Goel, the Times's deputy tech editor. MyMediaInfo MyMediaInfo is similar to Vocus and slightly more usable, including an easy way of looking up editorial calendars. The database is not as large and it's more difficult to figure out how to send a distribution. In Vocus, you can scroll over the media outlet in a list and get a real description of the outlet, and a real description of the reporter, but MyMediaInfo just has stubs. Pros: Includes reporters' Twitter handles and personal blogs in contact info. Inexpensive. Cons: Inconsistent customer service. Some speculate that MyMediaInfo gets a lot of its data by scraping, and some of the info supports this -- for example, Katie Couric is listed as the main contact for CBS. I also noticed some reporters in misplaced categories -- for example, a well-known DC writer who writes about politics and nothing else, except occasionally comic books, was listed as a food writer. This does not give me a high degree of confidence in pitches I send through MyMediaInfo. Also, they have some quirks due to the wall between edcal contacts and media contacts -- you can't do a distribution to edcal contacts, for example -- but they say they are fixing this. **UPDATE: More frustrations with MyMediaInfo have arisen. Most egregious: 1) The "self-service" versus "supported" distribution options. MyMediaInfo will not let you include an image in the distribution if you are doing it yourself. And they ask for 24 hours notice to do it with their help. And 2) The system crashes and logs you out randomly. Constant Contact Constant Contact is good for newsletters and well-laid out, complex HTML emails. Pros: Works well, affordable at $150/month for 25,000 contacts. Cons: Wish there was some easier way to import contacts from a PR database. Also, it doesn't have that much functionality so it's tough to justify having it on top of a PR database like MyMediaInfo. Meltwater News Meltwater News is a clipping service that has great functionality with metrics. You can organize the clips and generate info-rich reports for clients in easy-to-read formats with graphs and charts. Pros: Metrics. Cons: In my experience, Meltwater News only collects about 1/2 the clips. Recently, it missed a big story in the Washington Post. Also, it doesn't save a copy of the story, only links to it -- so you only have the first sentence if the story is no longer live. If there was a way to add stories from outside sources and crunch them into the metrics, this would be a great service. As it is, it's not nearly as useful, and I use it mostly to supplement my clip-searching in Google and Lexis Nexis.

-Adrianne (@msfener)

What kind of action figure will you be?

There are multiple reasons why you should check out this post at Welcome to L.A. about personal branding. 1) It's funny. 2) It discusses Seth Godin. If you are not a Seth Godin groupie, you should be. 3) It should make you think about how you leverage your personality to build a brand you can capitalize on. And it makes you think about how your personal brand may live on after you do.

Yes, it’s true. I now officially own the marketing guru himself Seth Godin. After spending just over $10, I now own Seth Godin along with a copy of “The Little Book of Marketing Secrets.” While I might never be able to read “The Little Book of Marketing Secrets” because of it being no bigger than my thumb, I already feel smarter and full of confidence. This is what a 5.375″ action figure of Seth Godin does to you. It makes you feel like a champ.

Seth Godin would be pleased to know that he was in good company. To the left of him was an action figure of Jesus and to the right of him, Albert Einstein himself.

Read the rest here. Or you may want to check out the whole blog, good stuff abounds.

-Adrianne (@msfener)