Campaign launch

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school has launched a new campaign — “Knowledge For…” — that finishes the phrase with words that go beyond the academic experience one would get at the school including “action,” “life,” and “global impact.” Work on the rebranding began back in 2009.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

This tear-jerker is part of Proctor & Gamble’s “Thank you, Mom by P&G” push for the 2012 London Olympics. Launching 100 days before the Games, the clip, called “Best Job,” is available on a Facebook page dedicated entirely to the campaign. In addition to the video, there’s a scrolling page containing “Thank you, Mom” messages from visitors, an app, and a website dedicated to the campaign. The company is also raising $5 million for youth sports groups around the world and is donating more than $50,000 to KidSport Canada.

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One of the easiest ways to snag a mass influx of followers is running a promotion on your social media networks. But contests, giveaways, sweepstakes, and the like can often bring in uninterested consumers merely attracted by a freebie.

“It seems like people that are short-sighted on this thinking are trying to get that hit,  that burst of fans,” said Jason Cormier, co-founder of social media agency Room 214, in the latest mediabistro.com AvantGuild article. “It’s what we refer to as the ‘placement crash,’ where if you look at the Web analytics of a PR hit what you’ll see is you’ve got the awesome spike, and then 48 hours later, it’s completely dead and you did nothing with that traffic afterwards.”

For tips on crafting a promotion that will attract the right audience in the first place, read Do’s and Don’ts of Running Social Media Promotions. [subscription required]

With Jason Russell, the co-founder of Invisible Children, (hopefully) resting after an episode that his wife says was “brief reactive psychosis,” the Kony 2012 campaign rolls on. Today we have word from CEO Ben Keesey and director of idea development Jedidiah Jenkins that a sequel is coming next week, which will provide an update on the LRA and the conditions on the ground in the places affected by its heinous acts.

This time around, with some help from the PR firm Sunshine Sachs, the group will likely be ready for any questions, responses, backlash, and positive reactions to the video.

Let’s hope no one is running around asking publicists and marketing pros to whip up a viral campaign. But sometimes, whether we expect it or not, that’s exactly what happens. Kony 2012 is the most viral video in history, so that sort of situation is unlikely to be duplicated for a long while. Still, after the jump, we have three tips to help campaigns of all kinds prepare for the possibility of spreading quickly, far, and wide.

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ABC News has launched a branding campaign, “See the Whole Picture,” that takes a very direct message to its potential audience: we’ll give you the news in a clear and digestible way. According to the network, this is the first branding campaign in more than 10 years, when it launched “More Americans Get Their News from ABC News than Any Other Source,” which they say is still true in light of the partnership with Yahoo announced in October.

ABC News president Ben Sherwood said in a statement that, in 2012, there will be other promos in addition to the one above and called attention to coverage of the campaign in Variety today.

Compare that, for instance, to the MSNBC “Lean Forward” campaign that launched in October. Besides the ad that we posted at that time, other MSNBC ads, like the one after the jump starring Rev. Al Sharpton, who relates a childhood memory of eating blueberry pie to the Republicans, take much more creative license when explaining what the network has to offer.

Which campaign do you think works better?

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The PRSA has teamed up with 10 other PR organizations including the National Black Public Relations Society, the Arthur W. Page Society, and the Canadian Public Relations Society on a campaign, “Public Relations Defined,” which seeks to develop a modern definition of “public relations.”

The campaign got a write-up in today’s New York Times, with Stuart Elliott pointing out that previous attempts to define PR failed, leaving this: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

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For every movie or TV show illegally downloaded, an innocent camera person or actor loses his or her job.

That is the message behind Creative America, a group organized to stop digital theft of film and television work. More than two million Americans in 50 states work in the creative industry, from directors to craft services. Those people’s livelihoods are at risk thanks to the ongoing problem of piracy.

This grassroots campaign, announced this week, is backed by labor unions, studios, and television networks. According to Creative America’s figures, websites offering stolen content attract 146 million visits per day and 53 billion visits per year. That adds up to half a million movies illegally distributed each day worldwide.

Supporters can sign up at creativeamerica.org, “like” or share the campaign on Facebook, and/or follow Creative America on Twitter.

The tablet wars continue. Amazon is hoping to cut into iPad’s dominance with its latest iteration of the Kindle e-reader that’s expected to have all sorts of bells and whistles along with a lower price tag.

Sony is also getting in on the tablet action, revealing info about its new devices a few weeks ago along with the launch of a social media campaign meant to drum up online excitement before the tablets hit stores.

Working with its firm Atomic PR, Sony has launched Catch the Tablet (or #CatchtheTablet), which used Sony Facebook and Twitter pages to drive fans to events, spur them to snap photos of the tablet to post on social networks, and encourage them to enter a contest with a Sony Tablet S prize.

According to an email from Atomic, the campaign has resulted in an eight percent in rise in the number of Facebook fans and a five percent increase in Twitter followers. The campaign has also gotten the company some media attention with TheNextWeb calling the it Sony’s “most successful social media campaign.” You can click that link for more campaign details.

If you’re a Netflix customer, your inbox this morning contained an email from Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, that opens with, “I messed up. I owe you an explanation.”

With that, Hastings discusses the need for Netflix to move into streaming, his business fears, and the differing cost structures for a DVD business and a movie streaming business that made the cost increases that angered customers necessary. He also introduces “Qwikster,” the new DVD service that will have its own website and logo when it launches in a few weeks, splitting the company into two businesses.

Netflix has had a hard go of it since it sprung its price increases on consumers. Subscribers have fled and the stock has taken a beating.

But, this is exactly what PR experts advise a company in trouble to do; come out and speak directly to consumers, let them know their feedback has been heard, and respond. However, in PR as in life, there are no guarantees. People are in the comments on the company’s blog post saying this isn’t a real apology (he doesn’t apologize for jacking up prices) and continue to voice their complaints. Not to mention the criticisms of the new name for the DVD business. Qwikster?!

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