Intro: Quick review of Ragan ING conference, two more FIR podcasts from the B2B Huddle are up, FIR Book Review of Philip Sheldrake’s Attenzi is up;

Quick News: Vines are shared four times more than online video, IABC’s CW magazine goes digital only, the state of social media advertising, first Quartz, then Defense One: Atlantic Media’s next venture with digital-only publications; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: BYOD focus on policies, behaviours and what matters to employees; Yahoo board approves deal to acquire Tumblr; think that social media crisis from seven years ago is ancient history? guess again; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments; social media and digital agencies will vanish within 10 years, say next generation of marketers; Dan York reports from Dublin with Bernie Goldbach, comparing Audioboo and SoundCloud; Google+ evolves; native advertising and the future of journalism;

Music from DJ YRS Jerzy Ft. Chox-Mak; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 20, 2013: An 87-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #704 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 27…

(c) Can Stock Photo

Should your boss be able to fire you for who you like?

Danny Carter worked suggestion that such communication has less than full constitutional protection would result in chilling the very valued means for communication the Internet has made possible.” Count me on Facebook’s side of the argument. One of the judges asked the sheriff’s laywer how clicking a like is any different from “putting a sign in a yard that says, ‘I Like Ike’?” The Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that yard signs are protected speech. Bloomberg News has the story.

Bad news for Google+

Yes, brands do need to be on Google+ if for no other reason than to avail themselves of the SEO benefits. But Google’s social network—which just introduced a new design that looks like a mashup of Facebook and Pinterest (Faceterest? Pinbook?)—is nevertheless “struggling to win over brands and businesses that have been its most loyal customers in the Internet search market,” according to Alexei Oreskovic in a Reuters piece. Not only are consumers more attuned to using Facebook and Twitter, they also spend more time on Facebook than on Google+ (for those who use Google+ at all). “The average U.S. visitor to Google+ spent 6 minutes 47 seconds on the site in March, versus more than 6 hours on Facebook.com, according to Nielsen Media Research, though the data does not include activity on the social networks’ mobile apps.” Of the 100 most valuable brands worldwide, 72 have a Google+ presence compared to 87 on Facebook. Many of those on Google+ aren’t updating their content—Pepsi, for example—even as they update regularly on Facebook. McDonald’s has a Google+ page—with absolutely nothing on it. A McDonald’s spokesperson said the company wasn’t active on the platform.

Social media creates Wall Street generation gap

Do investors trust social media? That depends on how old they are, according to a Marketwired report. “A generational divide is emerging, with people under 40 increasingly turning to and relying on social media to inform investment decisions,” a Bulldog Reporter article explains. In a news release, Marketwired CEO Jim Delaney said, “Nearly 40% of respondents use information from social media when making investment decisions, and the number jumps to 60% when looking at the next generation of decision-makers.” Respondents under 40 are most inclined to use social media to get investment information, and they’re three times more likely than other age groups to find the information they find credible. I’m compelled to point out that the report also finds that about half of the respondents to the Marketwired survey say their companies block access to social media, so 39% simply use their own personal electronic devices.

What’s the top hotel amenity for luxury US travelers?

Hot towel racks? Keurig coffee makers? Custom mattresses? Special salts to help you sleep? You’re getting colder. Internet access is the top most coveted feature with 54% of affluents both under and over 55; among those in high net-worth households, Internet access ranks even higher, at 57%. For those choosing a hotel for a vacation, a beach came in second, quality food third and privacy fourth, according to the Resonance Report on Affluent Travel and Leisure, as reported in Luxury Travel Magazine.

Agency execs find native ads perform better

Spending on native advertising—those articles that appear in a publication’s content stream but are labeled “sponsored”—is creeping closer and closer to spending on display ads, with a report by BIA/Kelsey anticipating more than $4.5 billion will be invested in native ads by 2017, compared to $6.5 billion on display ads. The report anticipates the growth despite reservatins by some over “the blurring of lines between content and advertising that occurs with native ads, particularly in the context of news sites,” according to an eMarketer report. The article also notes that U.S. agency executives surveyed late last year see native video ads performing better than conventional ads, while on the flip side, a MediaBrix study found found a high percentage of Americans believe native ads are misleading. Whether native advertising’s star will shine long is anybody’s guess, but with publications struggling for revenue while marketers need better channels to distribute their messages, it should remain hot for the foreseeable future.

Newspapers’ ebook experience offers insights for communicators

News organizations are publishing ebooks in their search for new revenue, according to Taylor Miller Thomas writing for Poynter‘s blog. “The ebook market’s growth has strengthened bonds between publications and readers, particularly for news organizations that choose to publish their ebooks in-house rather than work with a publishing company. Some news organizations’ ebooks are entirely new writing and reporting,” she writes, “while others repackage archived material as commemorative collections or primers about topics of interest.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s latest book is a novel; earlier ventures include cookie recipes featuring entries in a reader contest. The book sold well as a Mother’s Day gift. The New York Times publishes ebooks to serve as educational materials. As reader habits shift to ebooks, organizations should be exploring the medium as a channel for their messages. McKinsey & Company, for example, published a detailed report in the Kindle and ePub formats, making it easy to read on a Kindle or iPad. What are the opportunities for communicating via ebook in your company?

Vines earn four times the shares of other videos

Marketers are finding that Vines—the six-second videos produced using Twitter’s new platform—can be highly effective. Look at Lowe’s, which produced a dozen of the short-form videos to demonstrate clever ways to handle irksome household tasks (like unscrewing a screw with a stripped head by using a rubber band). According to research from Unruly Media, “five Vines are shared every second on Twitter, so the non-advertising world apparently digs the six-second videos, too.” Four percent of the top 100 shared Vines were brand-produced, compared to only 1% of the top 100 viral online videos, Christopher Heine writes for Adweek. Another finding: More Vines are shared over the weekend than during all of the weekdays combined.

Add Snapchat to the list of image-based marketing channels

Really? Snapchat? Isn’t that the tool kids use to send each other images that then vanish, keeping them from returning to haunt them later on down the road? Yep, that Snapchat. According to Say Daily, Taco Bell has become the first major brand to try the channel (which, of course, was screen-captured and shared on the web). “The gimmick was to announce the return of the Beefy Crunch Burrito in a way that would go viral, so maybe that worked,” according to the article, which also notes that a New York City frozen yogurt chain distributed coupons via Shnapchat after those customers “sent in pictures of themselves enjoying (the company’s) product.” Since the promotion started, the company has received more than 1,400 snaps. Both case studies involve companies that “have only engaged with Snapchat users who have voluntarily added those brands as friends,” the article notes. The primary benefit of the channel compared to others: urgency. “That is, there is a certain do-it-now! quality to Snapchat because it is built around a structure that self-destructs (or at least pretends to.) This sense of urgency could compel users to act on a branded snap’s call to action more readily than they would a tweet or a Facebook whatever.”

Bing folds Facebook comments into sidebar results

Say what you will about Microsoft’s also-ran search engine, Bing. They do keep trying to differentiate the service from its mega-rival, Google. The latest: You can leave a Facebook comment on content directly from the search engine’s Social Sidebar. “This means you will be allowed to directly engage with your Facebook friends right from the search results,” Thom Craver explains in a post to Search Engine Watch. “The new tool will allow you to ask questions or provide comments or answers on posts that are relevant to the search…If you search for an event in your area and you have Facebook friends who are talking about attending, you can not only find that out easily with the Social Sidebar, but you can also join in the conversation without ever leaving the search experience.”

When something as big as content marketing comes along and transforms an entire discipline, it creates a lot of anxiety. Change is scary and it can sometimes feel like you’re hopelessly behind everyone else.

At The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters, keynote speaker Doug Kessler shone a powerful spotlight on the future of B2B content marketing, offering compelling ideas and suggestions on what the future will look like - for content, and for content marketers.

With references to his frank messaging in Crap: Why the Biggest Single Threat to Content Marketing is Content Marketing - a viral sensation across the social web with nearly 230,000 views on Slideshare - Doug offered Huddlers credible calls to action on the practical issues that concern B2B marketers, and discussed in the questions-and-answers session that followed his keynote.

You can listen while following along with Doug’s PowerPoint deck below (updated since the B2B Huddle with some additional content):

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About the Speaker

Doug Kessler is co-founder and creative director of Velocity Partners, the London-based B2B content marketing agency.

Doug’s own content includes The B2B Marketing Manifesto (a rant), The Big Fat Content Marketing Strategy Checklist (a workbook), and Crap: Why the Biggest Threat to Content Marketing is Content Marketing.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Speakers and Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Attenzi - A Social Business Story is a novel that shines a light on social business that goes beyond the all too typical homages to social media. It’s a relatively short and easy read intended to help readers explore what social business means for their organization, marketplace, communities and career.

With Attenzi, author Philip Sheldrake presents a sympathetic hero in the story-teller Eli Appel, newly-installed CEO of Attenzi, a fictional international company that makes and sells top-range kitchen equipment and services.

The book tells a compelling and credible story of one man’s journey that, unbeknownst to him at the start, would help him and his leadership team "redefine the way we all think about our business and its place in the market and its place in the world."

FIR co-host Neville Hobson reviews the Kindle edition of Attenzi and considers the power a work of fiction - a novel - can have in empowering the Eli Appels of our world with the clarity of vision and perspective to explore the evolution of the customer-centric mindset that has dominated management thinking for the past two decades.

As Eli says, "I hope it helps you develop your organization’s relevance, competitiveness and profitability. I hope it helps you forge your career and helps you bring your colleagues with you."

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Attenzi - A Social Business Story by Philip Sheldrake.

Publisher: Philip Sheldrake
Digital formats (content equivalent to about 100 print pages)
Published: May 15, 2013
Price: Free under Creative Commons license.

Attenzi is available in HTML, PDF, ePub, Kindle, and iBooks formats at www.attenzi.com.

About the Author

Philip Sheldrake is managing partner at Euler Partners, a London-based consulting firm.

He is a widely regarded consultant, author and speaker. He is a Chartered Engineer, a main board director of Intellect, the UK trade association for the technology industry, a board director of 6UK, a government backed non-profit promoting adoption of the new Internet protocol, and a founding partner of Meanwhile. He built and sold an award-winning public relations consultancy.

Philip wrote The Business of Influence in 2011 and was interviewed on FIR at the book’s launch.

Connect with Philip on Twitter: @sheldrake.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future reviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Book Review podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

The lack of a real-time missive from Poland Spring Water was widely criticized when it occurred in February. C|Net proclaimed that Poland Spring blows Rubio #watergate moment, fails Twitter 101. A day-and-a-half after Rubio’s GOP response to the president’s State of the Union address, Poland Spring posted an image to its Facebook page of a bottle of its water looking at itself in the mirror. The caption: “Reflecting on our cameo. What a night!” The Huffington Post proclaimed that Poland Spring Finally Responds and characterized the lack of engagement as a “failure to seize on the Rubio meme.” Marketwatch said Poland Spring fumbled its Rubio moment and FastCompany said the Poland Spring “botched” a product placement meme.

And that’s just a small sampling of the heat Poland Spring took for not saying anything. That kind of pressure could lead marketers to develop an itchy trigger finger. After all, who wants to be accused of missing an opportunity when his brand suddenly and unexpectedly makes an appearance in a breaking news story? Especially when real-time marketing has been hailed as the future of marketing?

Knowing they might have been subject to a piling-on to ignore an overt reference in much viewed news reports, McDonald’s may have felt compelled to comment when Charles Ramsey said he was eating McDonald’s when he heard screams from next door, leading him to kick in the door panel leading to Amanda Berry’s escape from the Cleveland home where she and two others were allegedly held hostage for a decade. The verified McDonald’s Twitter account featured this missive:

We salute the courage of Ohio kidnap victims & respect their privacy. Way to go Charles Ramsey- we’ll be in touch.

— McDonald’s Corp. (@McDonaldsCorp) May 7, 2013

The initial flurry of reports of McDonald’s tweets were generally positive, simply noting that McDonald’s had been quick to jump on the story. But things rapidly went south from there. First were the grumblings that the burger chain was capitalizing on a tragedy. No matter how sincere the sentiment, or the person who decided to send it, injecting itself into a story like this will always include a subtext. People will always see ignoble motivations, like one retweet that read, “REALLY??? cause he was eating $MCD Corporate whores!”

But it gets worse. As news reports continued to emerge, it turned out Ramsey had a rap sheet of his own; he served time for domestic violence, burglary and drug possession. Next came word that it might have been another neighbor—Angel Cordero—who claims he actually aided in Berry’s rescue; Ramsey actually showed up afterward. But Ramsey spoke English, which the TV journalists preferred to Cordero’s Spanish-only accounts

Some are even suggesting that McDonald’s helped shift the focus from the seriousness of the story to a more comical racial stereotype. Slate’s Aisha Harris objected to the perception Ramsey perpetuated of the “hilarious black neighbor.”

Now, McDonald’s is staying mum about the whole thing other than to say they’ll do as the tweet promised: reach out to Ramsey one-on-one.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if McDonald’s had just opted to say nothing. Which brings us back to Poland Spring. Remember that Sen. Rubio’s gaffe occurred while he was delivering the Republican party’s response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Would a quick response have angered Republicans? Or Democrats? Is it worth alienating half your customer base in order to get a quick marketing hit? (Poland Spring reportedly saw a bump in sales as a result of the meme without uttering a single word.)

All those who are twitching to jump on brands that don’t deploy real-time content whenever their logo or name finds itself the subject of attention need to shut up. Not succumbing to the pressure to issue real-time marketing is not a fail—at least, not necessarily. Undoubtedly, the same voices that were quick to slam Poland Spring would have chastised McDonald’s if they hadn’t responded. McDonald’s now undoubtedly wishes they hadn’t.

There will be plenty of real-time opportunities to be clever and quick without risking your company’s reputation. But when dealing with news that bears even a whiff of sensitivity, think long and hard before giving in to the pressure of the shiny-object crowd to do something Right. This. Minute.

It’s your job that depends on it, not theirs.

With social media so prolific, are B2B companies taking advantage of all that exists? That question formed a foundation for the keynote presentation by Allan Schoenberg, Executive Director of Corporate Communications for CME Group, at The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters in Reading.

During a break at the event after the presentation, FIR co-host Neville Hobson spoke with Allan to capture his thoughts on topics from his keynote including what makes CME employees feel comfortable and confident with social media, and further insights into CME’s employee use of social media.

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (4.1Mb, 9:02)
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The presentation deck Allan used in his keynote presentation:

• See also: FIR Interview with Allan Schoenberg on February 13, 2013.

About the Speaker

Allan Schoenberg is Executive Director of Corporate Communications for CME Group (@CMEGroup), the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace.

Based in London, he manages international corporate communications for the company, which includes media relations, social media, reputation management and exchange partner relationships.

Prior to working at CME Group, Allan was with Accenture, Edelman and Fleishman Hillard. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University in Economics and his master’s degree in Communications Management from Syracuse University.

Allan is a regular contributor of content to the blog B2B Voices. You can follow Allan on Twitter: @allanschoenberg.

 
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Intro: First B2B Huddle keynote published as an FIR Speakers and Speeches podcast, more this week and next; FIR Book Review of Philip Sheldrake’s ‘Attenzi’ coming;

Quick News: Calgary Zoo publishes annual report to Instagram, Salesforce acquires bookmarking startup Clipboard, Associated Press updates its social media guidelines, Facebook’s newsfeed will get even more annoying with video ads… or will it?; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: American Airlines’ influencer promotion with Klout (and is it misleading?); Dan York reports on GaggleAmp, SoundCloud, and more; McDonald’s tweets illustrate the risks of marketing in real time; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments and roundup from the FIR Community on Google+; addressing the dark side of reputation management; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on suggestive marketing tactics in Japan and China from Fleishman Hillard’s Authenticity Gap study; the big picture in the Fleishman-Hillard data reveals the authenticity gap;

Music from Novi Novak; and more.

Get FIR:

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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 13, 2013: A 92-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #703 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday May 20…

(c) Can Stock Photo

Fleishman study predicts a coming corporate reputation crisis

Every brand Fleishman Hillard reviewed in its Authenticity Gap study “found a gap between people’s expectations of the industry category and their actual experiences of the company or brand,” according to an item in Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog. Three high-level characteristics contribute to a company’s perceived authenticity, consumers in the study said: management behavior, customer benefits and society outcomes. For consumers, corporate behavior mattered as much as customer care. The categories that seem to be doing best at meeting consumer expectations include online shopping, major appliances, tablets and e-readers, and pharmaceuticals. The biggest gaps appear in the vacation and travel industry and among Internet service providers and wireless carriers. “When brand and reputation are not aligned, it creates a gap that damages an organization’s credibility and authenticity,” says Fleishman president and CEO Dave Senay.

We’re spending more time online thanks to videos and social media

All those commentators who lament that all the time we’re spending online is going to make us more distant and less social in the real world have new ammunition. We’re spending more time online—3 hours and 7 minutes per day in 2012, up from 3 hours in 2011. “As more compelling content moves onto digital platforms—including social networks that appeal to every iteration of hobby and personality, and an expanding selection of online video content—old media continue to lose share to the internet. Radio and newspapers each lost minutes of daily time spent with media. And even daily TV time declined by a minute,” according to eMarketer.

Remember when IR departments hesitated to use the Web for annual reports?

There was a day when investor relations departments were reluctant to publish annual reports to the Web. These days, just about anything goes, as the Calgary Zoo demonstrated with its decision to publish its report via Instagram. Using an account dedicated to the report, the company used 55 photos and captions that include statistics, financial numbers and the traditional welcome from the zoo’s president and chief operating officer. Titled, “The Year of the Penguin,” the report is a first for Instagram, according to Jessica Gioglio, writing for Convice & Convert.

Word of Eye: visual communication is a key to branding success

Sharing content is a critical element of any content marketing or social media plan, and images are easier to share than just about anything else. Consequently, brands should be turning their attention to images as a primary content unit in order to tap into what marketing consultant Julie Cottineau calls “word of eye.” In a Forbes piece, Allen Adamson notes, “We live in a culture whose technological advances have made images so simple to capture and disseminate – and in which images are fast becoming the currency of news and information – that this visual currency has become the currency of choice.” The article includes compelling examples from Disney, Apple and Virgin America.

Don’t forget the lowly webinar in your content marketing mix

A Marketing Sherpa case study reminds us that webinars can be an effective form of content marketing. It made particular sense for Adobe, since the product they wanted to introduce with a demo was the company’s Adobe Connect webinar platform. By presenting a webinar on the software, the company earned “a 500% increase in conversion to sale within the webinar funnel and placed webinars as the second largest generator of sales behind only product trials.” The full case study provides details on the process that led to this stellar outcome.

As brands adopt Klout, you may have no choice but to boost your score

It’s easy and fashionable to dismiss Klout, the service that purports to rank your social media influence. But as more and more brands use Klout scores to determine which customers get preferential treatment, having a high score may become an imperative whether you believe in Klout’s methodology or not. Influential marketing consultant Danny Brown is so anti-Klout that he has worked to wipe his own identity from any hint of a Klout score, which means he won’t find himself in an Admirals Club—the upscale lounges American Airlines offers in airports—unless he buys a regular old membership. The perk gets those with high scores into American Airlines lounges in 40 airports, even if they’re booked on a competitor’s airline. It’s far from the first such perk; the Klout Kolub at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was introduced in 2010, providing special amenities to guests with high rankings, according to Cotton Delo, writing for AdAge.

BuzzFeed to train agencies in the Buzzfeed Way

BuzzFeed is a native-advertising leader, hosting sponsored content from a number of organizations like Virgin Mobile. This content will work better if it fits the BuzzFeed style and, to that end, the company has introduced the Social Storytelling Creator Program, “meant to seed the market with agencies and people that will do great work in the social storytelling space,” writes Michael Sebastian in AdAge. Buzzfeed’s president and COO, Jon Steinberg, says, “We want more people doing it in a high quality way.” Participating agencies earn “accreditation,” which includes a badge to add to their sites. Earning that badge requires extensive three-to-six-week training from BuzzFeed’s branded content creative team. “Instead of relying on capturing attention in Instagram’s busy photo stream, having each photo contain important information made their Instagram profile page a destination.”

Must…post…something…clever…to…Pinterest…

Nearly half of U.S. moms occasionally suffer from Pinterest stress, “the worry that they’re not crafty or creative enough,” according to a USA Today study, reported by Rebecca Dube. The 42% of mothers admitting to Pinterest stress say they stay up late to sort through photos or “sob quietly into a burnt mess of expensive ingredients that were supposed to be adorable bunny cookies for the school bake sale,” Dube writes. The article features Jenna Andersen, the blogger behind Pinterest Fail, “which chronicles Pinterest-inspired crafts and recipes gone oh-so-wrong.” Andersen notes that it has become common to hear moms say things like, “It was just a little party, nothing I’d put up on Pinterest.”

Saudi prince speaks out for open access to the Net

The Saudi Telecommunciation Authority plans to block social media platforms in order to give the government tighter control over what its citizens see. That doesn’t set well with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has called on the Authority to drop those plans, calling such censorship a “losing war,” according to CNN writers Laura Smith-Spark and Samya Ayish. In his tweet, the prince wrote, “Social media is a tool for the people to make the government hear their voices. Just thinking of blocking them is a losing war, and a way to put more pressure on the citizens.” Bin Talal and his investment firm hold a $300 million stake in Twitter, which might have something to do with his desire to keep the tweets flowing in his native country. but the article notes that the prominent businessman has more progressive views than the rest of the ruling elite.

For social to become recognised by business as the next marketing powerhouse that it is, it needs to prove its return on investment every time, says Oracle’s Kimberley Brind.

In this podcast of her keynote speech at The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters, Kimberley explains the reach and power that social is giving her company, and joins a vibrant question-and-answer discussion with the audience that followed her presentation.

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (15.3Mb, 33:30)
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About the Speaker

Kimberley Brind is Global Marketing Executive and Social Strategist, Oracle. She is an accomplished and pragmatic goal orientated Technology Marketer with an entrepreneurial approach and 20+ years international, strategic marketing, demand generation and marketing communications experience.

Kimberley is responsible for social media marketing strategy and operations, inside sales demand generation programs, midmarket awareness and demand generation as well as preferred vendor management across Europe, Middle East & Africa.

Connect with Kimberley on Twitter: @kimberleybrind.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson and Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Speakers and Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

The campaign attracted massive attention and was even reintroduced this year as one winner “is regretfully handing over the keys to his island hacienda.” The new campaign will lead to a replacement.

The campaign worked so well at shining a light on Queensland tourism that the Australian tourism group decided to borrow the campaign idea. Not for one job, mind you, but six different jobs located in six different parts of the country. The Wildlife Caretaker, for examlple, will work in South Australia while the Lifestyle Photographer will snap pics in Melbourne. Each job runs six months and pays $50,000, along with another $50,000 for living expenses.

Some 330,000 people expressed interest and 40,000 made the effort to submit 30-second videos explaining why they should be picked for the job they want. On April 24, the organizers unveiled their short list of 25 candidates for each job. Those videos are available for viewing on the campaign site. Among the 25 finalists for Chief Funster in New South Wales (which comes with VIP access to exclusive Syndney parties and festivals), along with candidates from France, Lithuiana, South Africa, the U.S., India, Mexico, the U.K., and Canada is Sophie Gudmann Knutsson, the lone finalist from Sweden.

Sophie—a videographer studying multimedia communications—is one of the more enthusiastic and engaged students in my graduate-level social media class at Academy of Art University. She was one of the organizers of the University’s Viral Video Summit (where I emcee’d the panel discussion a couple weeks ago). And she was stunned to learn that, out of all those 30-second video applications, hers was among those short-listed.

Sophie’s task now—the deadline is today—is to get friends and colleagues to recommend her for the job and otherwise convince the organizers that she belongs in the group of 15 finalists, who will be flown to Australia for interviews next month, with winners announced on the 21st at a media event.

To that end, Sophie has set up a Tumblr blog, #SophieToSydney, where she has posted recommendations and shared other material, such as a video tutorial on how she made the initial video application. The page also lists tweets from Sophie’s Twitter account.

The campaign—which cost Australia’s tourism group $4 million—is producing a handsome payoff. According to Andrew McEvoy, managing director of Tourism Australia, the working holiday maker Facebook page has added 300,000 new fans since the competition got underway, and more than 430,000 people have sought information about a working holiday in Australia, he told the International Business Times. Working holidays in Australia contribute about $2.5 billion to the Australian economy.

Organizers helped spread the word buy selecting a geographically-diverse group of short-listed candidates. Articles have appeared in mainstream publications in India, Taiwan, , the UK, Singapore, and Ireland. A Google News search for the competition produces some 1.7 million results. That’s a lot of global exposure for Australia.

The lesson Tourism Australia learned from the original Queensland campaign should be clear to anybody else, too: Getting people from the desired target audience to create inventive and original content that lets everyone know why and how badly they want a shot at your product or service can attract a lot more attention than you telling everyone how much they should want your product or service. Watch some of the short-list videos; you’d be hard-pressed to find better marketing for getting to Australia.

I also have a message for the organizers: While I’m sure all the finalists for the Chief Funster position would make fine additions to Australia’s official tourism representatives, Sophie is your best choice. Her work is excellent, her energy knows no limits, her willingness to help others in class is noteworthy. She’s active socially in real life as well as online, where she has accounts on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Etsy, YouTube (where you can see some of her video work), Prezi, Twitter, you name it. A high-performing student in America but with roots firmly in Sweden, speaking both languages with ease, spending her free time chronicling fun events and (by all accounts) having a blast doing it, Sophie embodies what a “Chief Funster” should be.

Add this endorsement to the list, Tourism Australia.