LaunchSquad FTW

On March 4th, the partners of LaunchSquad invaded New York City to attend the PRWeek Awards ceremony on March 5th. Feeling like the underdog, they came with a resilient and celebratory spirit to be just considered.

The next day, LaunchSquad was in full campaign mode, even knowing that the decision had already been made, “Tweeting” their support for LaunchSquad and filling the #PRWeekAwards Twitter thread with LaunchSquad spirit, prompting clients, media friends and friends of the firm to also show their support on Twitter. Working from the New York office at the time, I watched throughout the day with my NY colleagues as Tweets came in with similar messages:

• sinkov: @Launchsquad If Evernote had a say, we’d vote for you.
• Rhetbee: Rooting for @LaunchSquad for Best Boutique Agency of the year at the#PRWeekAwards tonight!
• JDTwitt: RT @LaunchSqdEmilie @brettweiner, @throck, @jmandell and@jesseodell good vibes for #prweekawards! @LaunchSquad up for best boutique agency.

It was just cool. And what ensued? LaunchSquad was named PRWeek’s Boutique Agency of the Year!

We’re all tremendously excited by the honor and it was amazing to be there when it was announced. The awards ceremony was held at Tavern on the Green. It was really cool to see the partners of the firm see the fruits of their labor and their dreams for LaunchSquad come to fruition and recognition, especially. We all knew LS was great. The award was just a testament to how great work can come full circle. Very cool.

From left: Jason "Throck" Throckmorton, Jesse Odell, Jason Mandell and Brett Weiner

To hear it from their point-of-view, please see the What’s New post at: LaunchSquad.com: http://www.launchsquad.com/blogs/whatsnew/?p=237

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Also, PRWeek showed a photo of the winners in Times Square the next day:

Pretty rad all around.

See the PRWeek story here: http://www.prweekus.com/BoutiquePRAgencyoftheYear2009/article/123801/

Fresh Meat Advice: Contribute what you know – in my case, Twitter.

On a tip from Kelli Matthew’s PRos in Training blog, to which I still subscribe, I read the post by Julia Roy called “Getting More Twitter Followers and Twittering for Business.” In the post she talks about gaining more Twitter traction – a whopping 4,000 followers – and how she decides to follow people back.

STUDENT TWEETS: Everyone has to start somewhere.

I started Twittering in February with no idea what I was doing. How did I become acclimated? I was online three or four times a day looking up tech news, reading Mashable and TechCrunch, NYT Tech columns, PRWeek, Business Week, poring over Google Trends, getting GMail alerts for news and blog posts on PR and Social Media, virtually all of the blogs in my Google Reader were tech and PR blogs. I needed to be able to engage with the people who were on Twitter about things that were important to them.

When LaunchSquad, found me on Twitter, though, it was because I’d “tweeted” about one of their clients – Vivaty.

TWITTER ON THE JOB?

JetBlue was one of the first business Twitter feeds that I followed and actually tweeted back at. They are one of the best Twitter business models I’ve seen.

When I started here, one of the first things I was asked to do on each of my accounts was either establish or revamp their Twitter activity. I wrote a Twitter strategy based on a case-study on JetBlue’s Twitter activity.

WHY I PAY ATTENTION: Their 4,800 followers are resulting from updates about their flight schedules, flying/travel tips and steady responses to customers and other Twitterers.

WHAT I TAKE AWAY: To be savvy with customers and Twitter, you need to pay attention to what they’re saying. People often express frustrations with software and companies on Twitter.

Another great example is Mighty Leaf Tea. They’re hardly tech, but they’re in the East Bay and so here in San Francisco – and silicon valley, we’re big fans. They’ve got great, unique flavors which makes for great “Tweets”. 

WHY I PAY ATTENTION: They’re not tech. At all. They sell tea, for god’s sake. But they come up with useful ways to discuss their products over Twitter and currently have 500+ followers in their pocket.

WHAT I TAKE AWAY: They post “relevant” issues and articles and are engaged in their industry beyond just their product – like the above post: List an interesting article and bring it back to the product. Very nice.

THE SKINNY

I suggest before taking on a client’s Twitter campaign, work on beefing up your own feed in addition to the rest of your online presence. Social media savvy applied to personal uses can only help when you’re asked to do it for a client.

A friend of mine and former intern here at LaunchSquad, Ben Kessler, has a great blog as well as a juggernaut Twitter following (currently at 579) and has managed 6,200+ updates so far – In September he averaged 24 updates a day. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

In my own case, I eventually found an even balance for my Twitter feed: my initial rabid tech/PR discourse combined with a cultural commentary (articles, music, film, events) and have – to reinforce Julia Roy’s point – seen a steady increase of 5-10 new follower’s a week.

Once you’ve honed this aspect of social media – and not to imply, by any means, that I have – you’ve become a valuable asset to any company, client and agency as they all are trying to figure out what Twitter means and could do for their business.

Cinematic Savvy: The Dark Knight

The Cinematic Savvy series is designed to explore themes and ideas from certain films. Inspiration can be drawn from characters, their quotes, their circumstances, historical approaches depicted – it’s my blog, I’ll take it where I get it. I love film and I love PR. Let’s see how they influence me.

Come on. You knew it was coming. This blog started out with a post about Batman so why shouldn’t the franchise be included in the “Cinematic Savvy” series?

Now, this was an incredibly delicate situation. Heath Ledger was already inspiring much anticipation for the film before his death. Reports of his extensive and seemingly obsessive preparation for the role were rampant. His death only heightened that anticipation, enlarging and redefining the audience to movie-goers who might not be interested in the story, but would absolutely go to see the actor’s last film.

Image courtesy of www.batman-movie-buzz.com

In my first post, Saving Face, I addressed the question of how publicity for the Dark Knight should continue, giving the film the publicity and energy it needed while still respecting the actors death for what it was, a death and not an opportunity on which to capitalize.

PRWeek, in an effort to not only answer that original question, took it a step further and asked what the result was. In an article asking whether or not the publicity campaign for the Dark Knight was a hit or miss, called it a hit attributing its success to the ‘posthumous Oscar debate’ which ultimately drove attention to the dead actor and his performance rather than to the overall genius of the film all the while driving massive profit.

Another lesson in reputation management, crisis management and ethics all at the same time for this PR novice.