Marketing. All companies do it. But with digital media changing the way people share and consume information, old marketing techniques are becoming increasingly ineffective. That’s a bold statement and you don’t have to take my word for it. Traditions are hard to break, and resistance to change is a natural reaction, but if your company [...]
Digital media is having a profound impact on traditional media. That’s a fact. And for companies, this means the way you communicate with your audience has to change too. Gone are the days of faxed press releases. And gone are the days when people only read their news in the paper or watched it on [...]
Social media marketers talk a lot these days about “creating buzz”, by which they mean chatter about a brand. Forty years ago a duo named Cheech and Chong talked about creating buzz of the Maui Wowie variety. If you squint hard enough you can connect these two cultural phenomena and draw some lessons from a [...]
Smile, You’re On Candid Camera. That’s how Allen Funt started the reality television craze back in 1948. Oh sure, it took a few decades to really catch on, with a Gong Show here and a Dating Game there, but nowadays we’re awash in Big Brother, Survivor, and YouTube viral sensations. Why, you might ask, are [...]
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” ~George Orwell Ah, the seemingly age-old tension filled, mutually distrustful, relationship between journalists and PR pros – it’s been said that journalists speak the truth and PR pros dazzle and confuse with spin. Where does this relationship stand in today’s [...]
Over the past week, two very different news stories have created a flurry of activity on social media sites – Twitter in particular. Last Friday’s tragic theatre shootings in Aurora, Colorado played out in real-time on Twitter. And then on Tuesday night, the Twitterverse was ablaze with tweets from angry and distraught Twihards reacting to [...]
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. ~Robert McKee It’s no accident that a sense of belonging is listed as one of humanity’s basic needs. We’re a social species, interested in shared experiences and united in our love for [...]
“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.” This quote, from the outspoken American poet, Allen Ginsberg, seems to have particular resonance in today’s digital world – and provides an apt starting point for this installment of the digital literacy series. According to the bio on the website for his estate, “…the foundation of [...]
A healthy skepticism goes a long way CALGARY, AB, Jun 5, 2012/ Troy Media – Social media is such a hot topic right now, especially in corporate communications, it’s really easy to slip in the snake oil. Supposed experts, many at traditional agencies, are coming out of the woodwork and providing all kinds of dubious [...]
In last week’s post I shifted the focus of the digital literacy series to an unavoidable topic: the impact it’s having on traditional media. While there doesn’t seem to be a concrete answer to this oft-debated subject, there’s no ignoring that what’s happening online is forever changing how we see “media”. So what does this [...]
