The MoPR Blog

We’ve been telling our clients for years that they need to be blogging, have a strong online presence and use online tools to spread the word about their product, strengthen their brand, and achieve the corporate transparency that is expected by customers and partners in today’s business climate.

A new report from Universal McCann proves the very message we’ve been shouting from the mountaintops: If you don’t have some sort of social media strategy, your brand and message will get lost.

Need some proof? A compelling paragraph from the report says:

Contributing to the internet has never been as accessible and less technical. Innovations in web development, computing technology and the proliferation of broadband have come together to drive monumental consumer take up. This is why the phenomenon of social media is important now – it has the potential to impact on all our media consumption therefore shifting the emphasis from professional content producers to the consumer.

So, I’m guessing half of the readers of this post are thinking to themselves, “Great, then we’re covered. We have a blog and we understand the value of online communities.”

The other half? Read on.

The report, “Power to the people: Social Media Tracker” has some compelling stats and lays it out on just how much people [e.g., YOUR customers and potential customers] are using social media to find information:

• 57% have joined a social network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content
• 55% of users have uploaded photos
• 22% of users have uploaded videos

Also according to the report, the role for advertisers and brands has never had so much potential – branded applications, content and services all offer huge promise for grand results and return on investment in social media.

And what about blogs - the red-headed stepchildren of traditional mainstream media (MSM)? The report claims blogs are a “mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media.”

Wow.

That’s why most traditional print publications – many struggling to stay alive with sagging circulation numbers and a slumping economy – are finally offering complementary and exclusive online content.

And television is included in this mix, too.

Smarter networks with television shows such as Lost and American Idol have poured money into building and maintaining active online communities; offering sneak peaks and exclusive features for online viewers along with various opportunities to interact within the community with like mined fans.

The report also proves why the PR community takes bloggers more seriously. We plan entire programs to ensure we are communicating effectively with them. We read their work and engage in interactive exchanges with them. We pitch them exclusive content and offer them breaking news on a level playing field with the industry and business publications. And at the end of the day, it’s why we consider a client mention in a blog post often times just as valuable as a mention in a traditional mainstream media outlet.

Sure, getting a client on the cover of Time is still a fantastic win. But at the same time consistent, accurate coverage in a blog that has a pure, core readership made up of the same audience our client is trying to reach should also be considered a homerun.

If that’s not enough to convince you to jump into the social media fray, here’s one last stat:

Social media impacts your brand’s reputation – and so does NOT having conversations with your customers, partners and employees.

• 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog
• 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

So, you DO have a blog right? Your CEO or executive team is blogging about new products, issues and trends in your industry, and making themselves available to an audience that expects to have a two-way conversation.

They’re not?

Then we need to talk. Give us a call or drop us an email. We can help you.

Mobility Public Relations is pleased to introduce a new service — MobilityWire, a newswire for social media press releases.

MoPR is working with SEO and webdesign company Kosmos Central to finish (i.e. trick out) MobilityWire, but Phase I is complete and our clients are now using this tool.

MoPR is excited by how social media and new communications technologies can make our clients more accessible to the blogosphere. We feel this type of communications is vital to advancing many important business objectives that companies have — from advancing sales to finding business development opportunities, raising venture funds or hiring the right people.

Expect to see more social media PR applications from the team at MoPR.

[Warning: some of the links embedded in this post are rated PG-13 for language.]

What kind of blog would The MoPR Blog be if we did not have at least one post about Snakes on a Plane (aka SoaP).

If you’re not familiar with the movie Snakes on a Plane (see the trailer), it’s about a plane. And there are snakes on it. It also stars Samuel L. Jackson (not in this picture). I don’t think I’m giving too much of the plot away if I say that Samuel L. Jackson probably kills a few of the snakes (that are on a plane).

Why is the movie Snakes on a Plane featured in The MoPR Blog? Because the back story of this movie is the PR person’s dream about the impact of blogs, social networking and the Internet for a product launch.

The movie, in theaters August 18, had a troubled marketing life and might have ended up being a complete theatrical disaster. But thanks to the blogosphere, Snakes on a Plane might end up being a surprise hit film of the summer season.

The script was given the working title Snakes on a Plane. That title captured the interest of Samuel L. Jackson who agreed to star in the film based on that title alone. But then the studio, New Line Cinema, changed the name of the project to Pacific Flight 121. To quote Jackson, “Give me a break.”

The next problem was the film garnered a PG-13 rating, which actually is a bad thing for an action thriller. The studio wanted an R rating. The movie seemed doomed.

Or did it?

About a year ago word got out that Samuel L. Jackson was committing career suicide by signing up to do a movie with the laughingly simple title Snakes on a Plane (a title that later became a Hollywood joke: “So-and-so can’t get a movie made, but New Line is making Snakes on a Plane”; “they’re already in preproduction for the sequel, Snakes on a Train”; “it’s a trilogy, the next movie is Snakes on a Submarine”).

Word spread, as word often does, to the Internet. Suddenly, it seems, the movie was a blogging “phenomenon.” Bloggers began to refer to this phenomenon as a “meme.” Culturally, memes are things like tunes, catch phrases or fashion that propagates from one person to another until it has completely caught on within the pop culture. Lance Armstrong’s yellow “Livestrong” bracelet is a meme.

The blogging about Snakes on a Plane caught the attention of the press. The reporting on the blogging caught the attention of the producers. The producers started paying attention to what people in the blogosphere were saying. They changed the name back to Snakes on a Plane. Using ideas from bloggers, the studio shot an additional 15 minutes and now seems headed for an R rating.

The sustained buzz lasting for far longer than six months seems “unprecedented”, and many movie pundits are saying the bloggers should be given credit for giving a film — that will likely be critically panned — cult status before it even hits the screen.

The blogosphere has created its own (unsanctioned) marketing campaign with movie art and movie gear. The movie already has its own Wikipedia entry. In part to show gratitude to the Internet community for this buzz, New Line Cinemas released the first movie trailer via Yahoo! before any other advertising began.

Let’s not forget the buzz about the buzz. There are now blogs reporting on the press’ reporting on the blogs reporting on the movie! One fascinating aspect about the coverage is how words like “unprecedented” and “phenomenon” are used in news articles about the blogs.

While I fully recognize the importance blogs played in the back story of this movie, I would hardly call the blogging unprecedented nor do I find anything phenomenal about it.

For example, a Google search of “Snakes on a Plane” (in quotes) returns a very respectable 5,080,000 results, but a Google search of “Nacho Libre” returns 31,900,000 results. A Feedster search of blog posts for “Snakes on a Plane” returns 6,164 results while returning 19,508 for “Nacho Libre” (these statistics don’t measure the traffic to these various websites, but one might imagine they are on par). If some of the conclusions in the reporting holds, Nacho Libre should sell between three and six times more tickets than Snakes on a Plane.

Lets not forget the first movie to become an actual Internet phenom: The Blair Witch Project. In 1999, before there was a blogosphere, a $25,000 horror movie shot like a documentary was marketed almost exclusively via the World Wide Web until it could find a major distributor. Many people who saw the movie read the story on the Blair Witch Project website and went to the theaters thinking they were really watching the recovered video footage from three lost student filmmakers. The movie grossed over $248 million. Now that is unprecedented!

But it is precisely because such buzz has its own momentum that I find this story so fascinating and why I believe this is a PR person’s dream story. The lesson: The Internet and the blogosphere within it must play an important role for all product and service launches to be successful.

I am going to see Snakes on a Plane (and for the purpose of full disclosure, I’m going to see Nacho Libre too). And I also signed the petition to let the owner and webmaster of snakesonablog.com attend the movie’s premiere!

The MoPR team would love to hear your thoughts on Snakes on a Plane in the blogosphere as well. Share your thoughts today…

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