If there’s one tactic that has stood out in this presidential campaign, it is the way GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has slain his foes with the jawbone of an ass.
Trump’s penchant for labeling his opponents—from “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz to “Low-Energy Jeb” Bush—has been like a boxer’s left hook to the liver. It doesn’t look like much until the other guy drops.
Now Trump is trying to do the same to his Democratic foes, calling them “crooked” and “crazy.”
After The New York Times Magazine explored the issue (“Donald Trump Shares His Opponent-Branding Secrets”), I wondered: Do the same labeling techniques work in PR and marketing? Whether it’s throwing mud or branding oneself positively, does Trump offer lessons to PR pros?
The consensus is that such tactics can work, but mudslinging is “risky,” a word Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton uses in an effort to brand Trump.
“Trump has a knack for coining just the right moniker, the perfectly dismissive and catchy thing,” The Times writer stated. “‘It works, it flows,’ Trump said, admiring his latest work.”
There used to be an old PR saying about the risk of fighting with the media who buy ink by the barrel. or, how about this, George Bernard Shaw quote: "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
Those are two important lessons for the Democrats as they consider how to engage with The Donald.
It looks as if Amazon is getting into the food business.
A new report from The Wall Street Journal says the online retail giant is gearing up to launch its first brand of foodstuffs by "as soon as the end of the month."
These "private-label brands" will reportedly include Happy Belly (including nuts, tea, and oil), Wickedly Prime (snacks and treats), and Mama Bear (baby products). But they are designed and created by Amazon, with all the profits going straight to the company....
When cable TV subscriptions in the U.S. peaked in 2012 — and 97.6 million Americans paid to watch television delivered via cable — it seemed the traditional media supply chain was stronger than ever. Since then, however, cable subscriptions have steadily declined each year.
The usual culprits blamed for this decline are the streaming services, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and HBO Go. A recent report from MoffettNathanson Research found that 81 percent of adults under 35 have a Netflix subscription. Additionally, millions of Americans are watching television from their smartphones or other handheld smart devices, which makes app-based services convenient choices.
The story goes, “Cord-cutters are canceling their cable services and going over-the-top, therefore it’s the demise of the television business as we know it.”
This premise is wrong. Here’s why: The consumer has their own definition of TV.
To start, we should clarify that consumers now perceive “TV” as content, not as content delivered through a linear hardware box in their living room. HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Buzzfeed — consumers don’t care about where content derives, they only care that it’s quality....
While many companies, big and small, have been jumping into the wearables space in recent years, the use-cases for these devices often feels superficial — with fitness perhaps the most compelling scenario at this nascent stage. Yet smartwatches have far richer potential than merely performing a spot of sweat tracking.
The other problem with the current crop of smartwatches is the experience of using apps on wrist-mounted devices does not always live up to the promise of getting stuff done faster or more efficiently. Just having to load an app on this type of supplementary device can feel like an imposition.
If the primary selling point of a smartwatch is really convenience/glanceability the watch wearer really does not want to have to be squinting at lots of tiny icons and manually loading data to get the function they need in a given moment. A wearable needs to be a whole lot smarter to make it worth the wearing vs just using a smartphone.
At the same time, other connected devices populating the growing Internet of Things can feel pretty dumb right now — given the interface demands they also place on users. Such as, for example, connected lightbulbs like Philips Hue that require the user to open an app on their phone just in order to turn a lightbulb on or off, or change the colour of the light.
Which is pretty much the opposite of convenient, and why we’ve already seen startups trying to fix the problems IoT devices are creating via sensor-powered automation....
Executives at a number of US retailers may be surprised to see Bloomberg’s headline on Friday: “Retail Sales Rise Most in a Year, Marking U.S. Consumer Comeback.”
This despite a number of America’s top retail chains reporting dire earnings reports and lowering their outlooks this week. Macy’s shares fell to a four-year low this week, with one analyst saying its woes could doom a third of US shopping malls. Kohl’s reported an 87% drop in net income for its most recent quarter. Nordstrom is cost-cutting following its drop. Gap Inc. may close more Old Navy and Banana Republic stores as its portfolio struggles. JCPenney shares sunk 10% on Friday morning after its disappointing quarterly report.
Kohl’s quantified its distress with the report of a sales drop of 3.7 percent and a profits plunge of more than half; sales at stores open at least a year were down by 3.9 percent. This followed an earlier report by Macy’s that first-quarter sales had fallen off by a huge 7.4 percent, while profit plunged by 40 percent; same-store sales were down by 5.6 percent, Macy’s fifth consecutive quarterly decline. Earlier, Gap said its comparable-store sales for the quarter would be down by 5 percent....
At one point or another, we all need inspiration to do our jobs better. It doesn't matter whether you're a marketing veteran who has navigated through years of changing technology or a newbie fresh out of college -- we all need examples of outstanding content. It helps us get through creative ruts, make the case to our boss for experimentation, and improve our own marketing.
Most of the time, inspiration is easy to find because most marketing content is publicly available. You can scour the internet or go on your favorite social network to see what your connections are talking about.
But there's one marketing channel that is really, really hard to find good examples of unless you're already in the know: email. There's nothing casual about it -- you usually need to be subscribed to an email list to find great examples of emails. And even if you're subscribed to good emails, they are often bombarding you day after day, so it's hard to notice the gems.
Because it's so difficult to find good email marketing examples, we decided to do the scouring and compiling for you. Read on to discover some great emails and get the lowdown on what makes them great -- or just keep on scrolling to get a general feel for each. However you like to be inspired is fine by us!...
Reporter Jonathan Pie thinks politicians should just answer the fucking question. To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please emai
Always-funny, pseudo-reporter Jonathan Pie goes ballistic about British politicians who don't answer questions without a sound bite. I'd love to see him go after Trump.
Big box retailer stocks are getting hit hard Wednesday, following Macy's dismal earnings report.
Macy's shares are down 13%, while some of the largest retailers like Sears, Target, and Nordstrom all dropped by at least 5% during the day.
Amidst all this, Amazon, the online retailer that just opened its first physical store last year, is trading at an all-time high, reflecting a clear shift in consumer behavior.
The growth of online shopping is nothing new. But this chart that compares the 12-month stock movement of Amazon, Walmart, Macy's, Target, and the retail index fund "XRT" clearly illustrate the online retailer's growing dominance in this space:...
Amazon's services are in constant evolution. Its growth is surely not threatened for the moment, on the contrary! Its innovative status is crushing its competitors and in the near future they'll maybe be the major retailer in the world, if they continue like this.
Here on Search Engine People you can read articles from some the most knowledgable video and search engine marketers in the world. There are real insights which can actually help you get more views, subscribers, and better search rankings.
But how is it that Smosh, two goofy friends since high school, and the frequent creators of such 'sophisticated' videos as The Wiener Song, become so popular? What could these idiots possibly know that dozens of professionals don't?!?
You'd be surprised. Read on to find out just what they know about YouTube marketing....
As an artist i like to learn as much as I can about youtube. We all would like to get millions of views, these tips can be very useful. Knowledge is power!
A study from HRC Advisory finds that operating earnings as a percent of sales has declined by up to 25 percent for retailers due in part to a shift from in-store to online sales. The high cost of fulfilling e-commerce and omnichannel transactions also took its toll.
As part of the study, HRC analyzed the financial data of department stores, luxury, specialty apparel, beauty and off-price retailers as well as interviewing 15 c-level retail executives to gain their perspectives.
The study found that investments made in supply chain upgrades, digital marketing, IT, variable logistics costs and managing a high level of online returns generated incremental SG&A costs of two to three percentage points of sales. At the same time, real estate and wage inflation as well as declining in-store sales are resulting in a one to two percentage point reduction in physical store profit contributions....
“We want most of all to enrich man’s spirit,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s words in launching the Corporation for Public Broadcasting set the tone for a discussion on public media in today’s digital world at Knight Foundation’s Media Learning Seminar.
“That’s a little bit of the role we have today in thinking about what is public media’s role in enriching man and women’s spirit in our country, and ensuring a thriving and informed democracy,” said Knight Foundation’s Vice President for Media Innovation John Bracken kicking off the conversation with representatives of NPR, Detroit’s WDET and St. Louis Public Radio.
While public media continues to be guided by the spirit of Johnson’s remarks, the digital age has brought huge changes to the kind of information people want and the way they access it, pushing news organizations to meet new information demands, the panel agreed. Yet while Americans are inundated with news and content, “it’s not true that all our information needs are met,” said Mike Oreskes, senior vice president, news, and editorial director at NPR.
The biggest unmet need is in local journalism, he said....
Like most news publications, the 14 organizations that participated in a recent study of native advertising label the content to distinguish it from their independent editorial content. They said they were well aware of the need to maintain audience trust in the crowded news and information market.
However, in general, the use of the same storytelling conventions and formats as news in sponsored content has prompted user confusion and drawn the attention of the Federal Trade Commission.
The 14 publications that participated in "The Rise of Sponsored Content in Digital News Publications," a study I produced for the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University of New York, maintained that native ads done well aren’t necessarily deceptive or even unwelcome. The key they said, is to provide engaging content that is relevant to the audience and to generally avoid making direct sales pitches.
“I don’t think anybody objects to native advertising. People just object to bad advertising,” said Sebastian Tomich, Senior Vice President Advertising & Innovation at The New York Times. “It comes down to quality, user experience and quality.”...
The current projection data from Cisco is that the IoT (Internet of Things) will reach 50 Billion devices by the year 2020! Visualized by the NCTA (National Cable & Telecommunications Association) as the Growth in the Internet of Things.
Today’s Internet is driven by wired and wireless networks, keeping us connected throughout our daily lives. With the advent of new digital devices that constantly link us to the Internet, these networks have become much more than just a simple vehicle for information and communications. They now enable us to track our daily habits, monitor our health, manage home energy use and track nearly any other data we can imagine. These devices make up what we call the Internet of Things – a web of connected objects that are linked via networks that can interact with each other and with us.
The Internet isn’t merely developing, it’s exploding, and the numbers prove it. Take a look at our graphic below — it shows the advancing surge of connected devices using the Internet.
Today, there are more connected devices than there are human beings on the planet. This expansion isn’t just from cell phones, tablets and computers – it’s thanks to toothbrushes, stovetops and millions of other devices that now have IP addresses. Estimates show that there will be over 50 billion connected devices by 2020.
Fast, ubiquitous Wi-Fi and increasing home broadband speeds will drive the Internet of Things and the ever-expanding web....
A lot of people were surprised when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013.
At the time, The Post was a legacy media company facing years of decline, while Bezos had no prior experience in the newspaper business.
But in less than three years, Bezos has completely changed the outlook of the 140-year-old newspaper. Its readership has exploded, and its content has become more suitable for the digital world.
Here's a look back at how Bezos revitalized The Washington Post since taking over less than three years ago....
Let’s put it this way–if there are 70 million business owners looking at the content on SlideShare every month, then there is a good opportunity for you to take advantage of that traffic and redirect some of it back to your own site.
But here are a couple of problems I have encountered in my attempt to upload content to SlideShare:
If you’re not on the featured page, you probably won’t get a whole lot of traffic.
Presentations that are on the featured page seem to stay there for more than a week.
So if whatever I create will only get me tons of traffic if it makes it to the featured section, but I can’t get on to the featured section unless I can prove my content is worthwhile, and it takes FOREVER for the featured section to rotate content, then I might as well just give up because life seems too impossible right now, right?
Wrong.
Being the impatient person that I am, I decided that rather than figuring out how to get my presentation to the featured section on my own, I would ask the pros. After all, these are people whose presentations have been featured multiple times and who seem to have the method down pat!
I personally reached out to every single one of the experts listed below and got some exclusive nuggets of wisdom, which I will now share with you and the rest of the world. Instead of giving you false information that would likely lead you on a wild SlideShare goose chase, I’ve rounded up some highly actionable tips from the ones who have mastered SlideShare altogether....
More than 1 million users. Sixteen billion monthly page views. Ninety-nine percent user engagement.
If these sound like stats from tech companies, you’re right. Except these tech companies are nonprofits.
In Steve Case’s new book, The Third Wave, he argues that this next generation of the Internet will transform major industry sectors and become integrated into everything we do. We are already seeing the tremendous impact of software and the Internet transform one of the least discussed areas — the nonprofit sector.
With the growing ubiquity of mobile phones and the Internet, combined with plummeting connectivity costs and, in some cases, free infrastructure, it’s not surprising that organizations focused on scaling impact are integrating technology into the core of their solution. But you may be surprised to hear how deep technology’s impact has already been on the nonprofit sector....
The status box is an icon of the Information Age, a period dominated by desktop computers and a company’s mission to organize all the world’s information. The icons of the Experience Age look much different, and are born from micro-computers, mobile sensors and high-speed connectivity.
The death of the status box is a small part of a larger shift away from information moving toward experience. What’s driving this shift? In short, the changing context of our online interactions, shaped by our connected devices.
You are not your profile
To illustrate how this is playing out, think of Facebook and Snapchat.
Facebook is an Information Age native. Along with other social networks of its generation, Facebook was built on a principle of the desktop era — accumulation.
Accumulation manifests in a digital profile where my identity is the sum of all the information I’ve saved — text, photos, videos, web pages. (Evan Spiegel explored this first in a 2015 YouTube video titled What is Snapchat?). In the Information Age we represented ourselves with this digital profile.
But mobile has changed how we view digital identity. With a connected camera televising our life in-the-moment, accumulated information takes a back seat to continual self-expression. The “virtual self” is becoming less evident. I may be the result of everything I’ve done, but I’m not the accumulation of it. Snapchat is native to this new reality.
You are not a profile. You are simply you.
Many people think Snapchat is all about secrecy, but the real innovation of Snapchat’s ephemeral messages isn’t that they self-destruct. It’s that they force us to break the accumulation habit we brought over from desktop computing. The result is that the profile is no longer the center of the social universe. In the Experience Age you are not a profile. You are simply you....
Multipurpose WordPress themes make it possible for any web designer to build a truly amazing website. Where these web tools really strut their stuff however, is when they are put to use by a web designer who must satisfy multiple clients in need of a variety of website types.
The reason is simple. Each of these multipurpose themes comes with an array of thoroughly-tested core features. Each has a selection of pre-built websites or layouts. All are easy to use, and none of them require any coding knowledge in order to create powerful websites, web apps, or blogs.
No matter which one you choose, you can expect your productivity to experience a definite uptick. The same will be true with the quality of the end products you deliver to your clients. As an aid in making just the right choice, ask yourself the following....
For beginning freelancers, figuring out the right rate to ask for can be almost as difficult as landing the gig itself. Who Pays Writers is an anonymous, crowdsourced open data that lets writers report their rates from various publications for print and Web. Though it has been around since 2012, this week the site received a redesign to let you easily search and report your rates.
You can sift through the site for publications you’re thinking about pitching (or are simply curious about) or search by name. If there’s data for said publication, you’ll see a per word rate or a flat rate fee, along with the year submitted, a small description of what the piece was, and whether the writer had a relationship with the assigning editor going into the job....
For many Americans, smartphones are as much a necessity in their daily lives as the air they breathe and the food they eat. These devices are constant companions, helping us take care of just about everything we need to do each day—watching our favorite shows and movies, keeping up with our friends, learning new languages and managing our finances.
And spending money is no exception!
In addition to growing as a new purchase channel, mobile commerce offers a plethora of opportunities for marketers and advertisers looking to reach their desired consumers. According to Nielsen’s fourth-quarter 2015 Mobile Wallet Report, 37% of respondents said their purchases start with mobile shopping more than one-quarter to half of the time. However, the competition is fierce, and in order to maximize these opportunities, marketers must know the best ways to position their products and communicate with appropriate audiences.
Consumers handle a lot of their shopping activities on their mobile devices, and everyone knows that savvy consumers do their due diligence before handing over their cash. In fact, 72% of smartphone shoppers research an item before purchasing it, 70% check the price of an item and 60% use a store locator to find a store where they can buy their desired product of choice....
With 21% of the entire adult population using Instagram, now is the time for your brand to implement a sound marketing plan, with the goal of generating immediate results.
In the post to come, we’ll examine 7 guides and 5 courses you can rely on to achieve Instagram success. While some of these guides and courses share a similar focus, each one can teach you something unique about succeeding with this social platform....
Kitewheel took stock of more than one billion brand and customer interactions on its platform, which revealed that marketers are in fact taking advantage of omnichannel campaigns.
Social media led the way in interactions at 48%, while mobile apps were the fastest growing channel for interactions, and email (23%) is up 270% year-over-year.
Even though social media accounted for the most interactions, the research also found that 70% of marketers are still using the channel for broadcast messaging rather than more tailored and targeted campaigns....
With a rapid rise in messaging apps that nearly rivals social media use, apps could become prospective content distributors for publishers. Easier said than done because most apps were not conceived with content distribution in mind, according to NewsWhip.
“The majority of people don’t sign up to get news pushed at them; they sign up to talk with their friends. That remains the case, and publishers looking to experiment with any messaging app should be aware of the pitfalls of applying a blanket strategy. Patience and creativity is needed,“ writes Liam Corcoran of NewsWhip.
Corcoran cites three examples of mobile apps recently used by publishers....
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There used to be an old PR saying about the risk of fighting with the media who buy ink by the barrel. or, how about this, George Bernard Shaw quote: "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
Those are two important lessons for the Democrats as they consider how to engage with The Donald.