Mike’s Points

(UPDATED: 3:30 p.m. Oct. 11, 2007, with another great point, added at the top.)
For your amusement and awareness (in no particular order), I offer:

Amanda’s Backstory Reveals Ugly Character: Did you Know?, infOpinions/Robert French

What can happen when you push the PR pitch too far, Corporate Engagement/Trevor Cook (courtesy of Paull Young via Twitter)

Global PR Blog Week 3.0 needs your ideas, PR meets the WWW/Constantin Basturea

To respond or not to respond, Airfoil Public Relations/Tonja Deegan

Flickr Famous, BlogWorks/Laurie Mayers

On the American Cult of Individuality, History Mike/Michael Brooks

Signal to Noise, Occam’s RazR/Ike Pigott

I guess it depends.

Earlier this week, MarketingVox reported that BrandWeek reported that mobile and banner ads were the least trusted sources of media. Here’s a rundown:

• Newspaper ads: 63% of media consumers surveyed said they trusted newspapers ads.
• TV ads: 56%
• Search ads: 34%
• Banner ads: 26%
• Mobile ads: 18%
• Sites focusing on one brand, built by brand marketers: 60%. (Also called microsites. See my previous post.)

Contrast those trust percentages for ads with blogs:

Consumer-created blogs were trusted by 61 percent of global respondents, a figure that shot up to 66 percent for US-only respondents. That, combined with the 78 percent who trust word-of-mouth recommendations, suggests people put far more stock in the opinions of other “real” people.

So, for advertising, is it a person’s level of comfort and familiarity with the medium that impacts trust? Why are newspaper ads more trusted than banner ads?

And, funny how, even if a person is familiar with a company — say via advertising and other marketing efforts — he/she will trust a stranger — that is, a blogger — more so.

The survey reinforces the notion that bloggers are viewed as everyday people, given the benefit of the doubt, and trusted. Not some cold-hearted, profit-greedy corporation.

And, for ALL bloggers — even marketer types — we must not take that trust for granted and fake blog or fail to ensure transparency in our work.

Otherwise, we’ll get rightfully blasted, and whittle away a huge trust factor — which can be so valuable to our companies and clients when we do develop trusted relationships with bloggers. And, need them.

– Mike

While mainstream media (and the media relations/PR pursusing them) and mass-marketing tactics like advertising (offline and online) will always have their place, the future is definitely small.

As in small, targeted, niche-focused marketing. Micro marketing.

Okay, that may not be an “ah-ha” moment, but it is something to think about.

It’s easy to see micro marketing in social media. The blogosphere is pretty much nothing but a bunch of niche, topic-, cause- and geography-focused bloggers. The same is true for discussion boards.

But, there are other areas to view small marketing.

Website development. Microsites are growing for campaigns, product launches and just product emphasis. Bill Hanekamp, CEO of The Well has touted microsites, particuarly through WOMMA. (And, my employer has and continues to develop client microsites, as it’s determined that, that’s the best strategy.)

And, when you think of it, good media relations and public relations is about targeting your message, and working with the media as they prefer. While some mass media contact and distribution is appropriate, with today’s tools, every contact should at least appear as if it’s one-on-one. (Disclaimer: I researched and used GroupMail in a previous professional life. And, liked it.)

Don’t just take my word for this micro marketing work. Major auto OEMs and aftermarket manufacturers have also turned to micro or niche production to allow auto owners to customize their vehicles.

And, coming back to the online world, Amazon.com has known about personalized marketing for many years.

All the above and more is why, in today’s marketing world, to be successful, you have to be micro, not macro.

– Mike