Clicking and Screaming

Pepsi reaches out to blogosphere

Pepsi, with help from PR agency, Edelman, are the latest big brand to engage in the social media space as they launch their new logo.

The drinks company has sent a care package to 25 “digital and social media influencers” in the marketing sphere, including David Armano, Chris Brogan and PSFK, the trends and innovation blog. The package contains empty cans with pepsi cans through the ages – easy camera fodder for blogs and Flickr.

No activity, though, on the more consumer-facing Facebook — where pages for Pepsi [1,2] have tens of thousands of fans, or — indeed — on Pepsi’s own site.

Instead, this is a very good example of a brand reaching out to the important early audiences — quite often, the people who will be most interested in and vocal about a campaign will be other marketing professionals. Porter Novelli’s digital planning framework (Listen/Respond/Influence/Enlist) recommends that you always start with such easy targets. People who know you and who are known to you are much more likely to respond than an unknown and faceless “consumer”!

Environmentally-friendly Halloween

PN green blogger Fatima Khan offers links to an eco-friendly halloween on our Greenfluencer blog.

Personally, I prefer these bizarre costumes (people with a sensitive nature should not click through): [1, 2]

How blogs are changing the face of PR

This interview with Edelman’s Steve Rubel on iMedia Connection was sent to us by Meegan Simms, PN’s Digital Ambassador in Chicago.

Rubel covers off the main points: as an industry we should embrace the opportunities offered by bloggers, but that — more than ever — we need to adapt our practices (you should have read Kerry Gaffney’s article, How to approach a blogger on our PNeo blog – but even if you have, please go back and Digg it up!)

But Rubel doesn’t address the problem that is in front of everyones’ noses: how can you lump a big professionally-run blog like (say) Treehugger together with the micropublishing efforts of a working mother, or the vanity publishing efforts of a company CEO or marketing director? We believe that the category “blogs” causes more confusion than it solves.

LinkedIn launches apps

LinkedIn has finally announced the launch of its own platform for running applications, using Google’s OpenSocial technology.

You should already be used to applications from using things like Facebook Apps, or Google Widgets. Apps allow users to extend the functionality of the profile or group pages on social network platforms, their blogs, and their home pages by embedding tools and toys created by third party developers.

LinkedIn is a great tool for us at Porter Novelli — as we hear from Nathan Michel (Boston) who has helped create the Digital Imaging Group for our client eCopy. Launched in June, and promoted on the eCopy digital imaging blog and in every press release, the group now has over 1,300 B2B members.

Using LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Discussions, eCopy is now able to monitor what key stakeholders are saying about the company, question them and take part in discussions with them.

The group has also been used to promote real world events: a recent Boston-based event invited Digital Imaging group members from the New England area.

Now that LinkedIn has launched its apps, the Boston team will soon be using LinkedIn’s CompanyBuzz tool. Come to think of it, we might use it on the new site. What do you think?