Using online marketing and PR to compete with bigger rivals
By Editor on Jan 18, 2007 in PR2.0
How is the Internet changing the way people do business? How is it boosting the PR practice? How can small companies use the internet to challenge the huge marketing budgets of bigger rivals?
I saw an interesting story on HT City today that talked about a new music band making their music available free online, using good PR, and making it to the Top 40 chart.
Here goes a snippet of the story…Koopa, a punk pop three piece from Colchester, made history on Sunday by entering the chart at No 31, with the download-only singles Blag, Steal & Borrow. After encouraging fans to pre-order the singles via SMS, the PR company garnered acres of publicity using the e-team of fans to publicise the band. Since January 1, sales of the down loads, count for the charts without any physical release. The change is expected to lead to long deleted singles, re-entering the charts, as well as songs featured on movies and TV ads. But it also gives unsigned acts such as Koopa the chance to compete with the huge marketing budgets of major labels. The band had built up a loyal following by playing more than 500 gigs around the country in the past three years…
Now maybe in the yesteryears, probably it would have been harder for the PR agency to generate that amount of publicity using the traditional forms of media like newspapers and televisions. However in this case, they used the Internet and its new forms of media to create a discussion and curiosity about the new band. Fans then supposedly would have had started taking the conversation among themselves and soon the word went out to the blogosphere and online forums. It was enough for the band to have their music downloaded enough times to get them to the Top 40 chart. Of course the quality of the song matters. But that’s another topic of discussion. The approach they conducted is a good learning, even in India, in case we are handling small companies. Media 2.0 can be a quite a good tool for PR folks if we know how to use them well.
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On Jan 26, 2007, bhaskar said:
Good views Hobbit….
The growth of future of PR practitioner is and will dependent on IT Smart Marketing.
The media habit of general people is moving fast towards Internet. How many of us here (blog site) have plenty of excuses for missing our parents, family, spouse or simple girl frnd or boy frnds. But we do read and many contribute their thoughts and expressions.
Internet unlike traditional media enjoys potentials of instant participation, fast and unlimited accessing of interest, entertainment and its very personal – (unless one access orkut in office or have an boss like Dilbert who spends time watching subordinates explorer through server)
Laptop is cheaper where movie tickets and DTH are getting costlier.
Perhaps we can add here Kotlers recent speech during his visit to India – future of marketing lies in Internet community marketing.
On Jan 26, 2007, hobbithob said:
Yes Bhaskar, we should educate our clients more on benefiting more out of the Internet medium.
Well people banning certain sites in some offices might have their own good reasoning. Even this blog is banned in a few PR agencies
But restricting or ignoring information sources goes against the foundation of PR I think, it implies that one cannot manage that information source. We are supposed to be the information managers.
On Jan 26, 2007, bhaskar said:
I doubt Hobbit whether ‘educate’ is the right word to use in marketing. Imagine what will happen if an toothpaste article or an add tells a customer the whole truth – its made of animal fats, various chemicals.
Internet is yet not been monopolized. Neither the traditional media strategy are equally effective here – netuser have pop up blocker.
If PR practitioner break the code of net for effective use for publicity and reach our clients goal in a efficient and economic manner. I think we will be in the right track for our future career.
On Jan 31, 2007, bella said:
Hey HH…
) and to start with first of all “wow” you have made lot of changes to your blog and it looks better J.
I was not able to read the blog for quite some time (as I was very much involved in some stupid things, but well now im back
As usual great and useful topic, I must admit that I have learned a lot from your blog. Yes I accept that PR2.0 is very beneficial and cheaper as compare to traditional PR practice. But I think, it will take quite some time to be in full action here in India.
Well, there are few corporate who are already in to it like sunsilk’s gangofgirls.com, lee to name a few. But how many of PR professional takes PR2.0 seriously. I know a lot of people from well-known PR firm who think blogging is nothing, but waste of your time. With people having this attitude do you really expect them to recommend their client about PR2.0 or for that matter aware them??
Cheers!
Bella
On Jan 31, 2007, hobbithob said:
Hi thanks. glad you r back. well, blogging might not be beneficial for every company. and well, some companies have got lot of mileage from it like Sunsilk, as you mentioned. We need to see if our clients can benefit and if their target audiences will read the blog or are readers of blogs in general.
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