In this “Special Snow Day Edition” of the Theater of Public Influence, the panel goes unformatted and unscripted with an impromptu recording session in the midst of winter weather hysteria. Regular panelists, Ben, Brady, Rob and Kelly are joined by PR Guru, David Donohue and Designer, Alex Steege. After some brief conversation about music, movies and the weather Alex gets us started with a look at Xbox 360’s community games (11:20). David follows up with PlayStation Home, Second life and the phenomenon of virtual online communities (16:42). This leads to a lengthy discussion of all things Facebook (24:40). Finally, we talk about Current and the convergence of TV and the Web (37:07) which takes us full-circle, back to Xbox. For more on this episode, click here.
Archive for December, 2008
Theater of Public Influence – Episode 06
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008Trendspotting: Online Shopping Trends
Monday, December 22nd, 2008Posted by Michael, Griffin York & Krause Marketing Strategy
The Monday immediately following retailers largest day, Black Friday, is commonly referred to as Cyber Monday, the unofficial start of the holiday online shopping season. The term Cyber Monday originated in 2005, when 77% of the e-commerce community noticed a significant increase in sales activity on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Over the past couple of years, retailers have been offering special discounts and deals on Cyber Monday to help increase overall sales. Some of this year’s Cyber Monday deals include Banana Republic offering free shipping to consumers who spent over $100 and Express offering a $40 rebate to anyone who spent over $120. A number of retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes and Nobles and Best Buy have actually dubbed this week Cyber Week and are offering unique online sales all week on their respective Web sites.
This year, holiday weekend online sales were once again strong. According to comScore, online sales from Friday through Monday were up 13% when compared to last year. In addition, this year’s Cyber Monday was the second-heaviest online spending day on record with sales of $846 million, that’s up 15% from the previous year. There are multiple factors helping that when combined are the reasons as to why retailers are seeing positive online results.
Theater of Public Influence – Episode 05
Monday, December 15th, 2008GY&K Chairman, Pat Griffin joins the panel this week as we look at BlueTec (00:04:58), Barcamp (00:15:22) and the Amazon Kindle (00:32:40) in Check it Out. Then in Player, Played Up & Played Out, Rob leads a discussion on Britney Spears (00:46:18), Black Friday (00:54:02) and Dr. Pepper’s Chinese Democracy debacle(01:00:56). Finally we wrap things up with a Campaign Review of athlete/actor/endorser extraordinaire, Peyton Manning (01:07:13). For more on this episode, click here.
Making the most of a press opportunity
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008Posted by Kevin, Griffin York & Krause Public Relations
Kevin (rt) on Fox 25 Morning Show
Though my day job is in public relations at GY&K, my nights are spent freelance writing. Sometimes these two worlds come together, as was the case when I was asked to appear on the Fox 25 Morning Show to discuss my new book, Wicked Intentions. In prepping for this interview, I took my own advice that I give clients in order to make the most of the exposure.
Anticipate what the main questions will be. My book, a nonfiction account of a grizzly set of murders, has a strong main character in killer Sheila LaBarre. Interviewers want to kick it off with a “who is she” kind of question, then ask for facts from her life. (This guy actually jumps too far in to start, assuming every viewer knows the case. I took the opportunity to go back and set up the story so viewers could follow along.) Because I had the only media interview with her behind bars, everyone wants to know what that experience was like. And they want my opinion on the results of the trial. These are all questions for which I have practiced standard answers. These tend to be the easiest part of the interview for me, as I can simply roll out these well-crafted sound bites. (more…)
