Make sure you’ve got something to say. Sending out a press release for the sake of it will do you no favours and could actually annoy the journalists you’re sending it out to, so don’t think that every event is newsworthy—a press release needs to have a distinct topic and there should always be a clear reason for creating it, with things like new website announcements, a new product or even things like survey results being popular and effective choices.

Give something of value. Any press release needs to have a point and should offer something of value so there’s a reason to keep reading, and get that reason across as soon as you can. Ideally you’ll want to capture the problem you’re addressing and the solution/benefits you’re offering in the title and subheading—in the case of a new website announcement, for example, you’ll want to get across how it could help your target market solve some kind of problem.

Include quotes. Quotes should be included in every press release to give credibility and valuable sound bite potential—journalists love them, so at the very least get a quote from the company exec or, even better, get them from partners or customers of the company.

Be relevant and trend-led. An announcement that capitalises on some kind of trend is going to be far more newsworthy and appealing to journalists than if you’re in a class of your own, with the media generally not being interested in anything generic. It’s all about the category you’re in and you need to position yourself accordingly—you want to be part of a trend or even convince them that you’re at the forefront of a brand new one.

Be “first” wherever possible. Again, it’s all about positioning—if you’re able to tell journalists that you’re first in some way (or even that you’re an alternative to some established brand or product) you could soon attract attention, and even if you’re not launching anything particularly new or innovative you should still be able to find an area you can align yourself with.

These are just a few tips you might want to bear in mind when creating your press release, and remember it’s all about being current and newsworthy. A press release done well can garner enormous potential, so spend time making it work for you (or get in touch with the experts to help) and you could soon notice the difference.

1. KNOWLEDGE. You need to give consumers sufficient knowledge of the issue as well as detailing ways you intend to rectify the situation, taking away speculation so the rumour mill can’t get going. People will often fill in gaps of knowledge with their own suspicions, but if you focus on the facts the word of mouth response should be much more positive.

2. SPEED. Speed is vital in this kind of situation—the quicker you respond the faster a crisis can be dealt with and the less likely it is to spiral out of control, and you only need to think about the negative connotations of failing to react. It’s almost like you’re denying the issue, and that will only add fuel to the fire.

3. OWNERSHIP. It’s important for a brand to take responsibility for anything they’ve done wrong, thereby pre-empting the blame cycle so consumers won’t have the chance to get too riled up. Again, speed is everything, and if handled well (being forthcoming, explaining how you’ll prevent the problem from happening again, etc.) you could find you get a far more positive reaction.

There you have it—the three steps to ensuring a PR crisis doesn’t spiral out of control. It’s all about showing consumers you’re open to the reactions and understand the negative publicity, adding a human face into things rather than a corporate mask, and if done well you could effectively deal with a crisis so it’ll soon become old news.

And they’re all getting in on the action. Coca Cola’s drinks brand Burn (one of the new Lotus team sponsors) started the season with a bang—before the season officially kicked off last weekend they used Twitter to encourage fans to tweet questions to Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, whilst also taking to Flickr and Facebook to promote a teaser trailer shot by Ridley Scott. Sky Sports F1, meanwhile, is focusing on using brand advocates to promote its services and is launching a multi-million pound Twitter campaign to get people on board—fans will answer questions in a race-against-the-clock style competition, with prizes being awarded each week whilst an overall winner will receive tickets to a race next season.

A lot of brands are following in a similar vein and are changing the direction of their marketing campaigns, making the whole thing a lot more personal than in previous years. Social networking sites are, unsurprisingly, at the heart of it, and the emergence of more consumer-led sponsors as opposed to B2B campaigns is another shift for the sport. It’s a chance for brands to reach out to fans in a whole new way, and the push for engagement is no surprise given the popularity of social media and the ever-increasing expectations of consumers. They want a more personalised experience, they want to feel valued and they want to interact with their brands like never before, and capitalising on this need for engagement is something that the advertising industry as a whole needs to get on board with. It’s great to see the F1 sponsors taking this route, and it’ll be interesting to see the results of this strategy over the coming season.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you’ve got a page that perfectly reflects your brand, and this applies to the images you use as well as the language. It’s all about familiarity and instilling trust, because if your audience recognises your brand and feels comfortable in who they’re dealing with they’ll be far more receptive. You’ll want to get your offers sorted too with Facebook Ads being a fantastic channel, but that’s not the only option. Facebook Offers are quickly growing in popularity, and although a kind of Facebook ad they work a bit differently—they can be set up straight from your page and appear directly in the newsfeed rather than the right-hand column (which can generate as much as 6 times more engagement), you can hyper-target them and when a user clicks they’ll be sent an email to their personal email address to increase your chances of developing that lead.

This form of advertising can be ideal for promotions of all kinds, but remember that you should never use Facebook as a purely advertorial tool. It’s all about engagement and interacting with your target audience, so make sure to listen to what your customers are saying and respond to any comments—knowledge is power, and if you know what your customers want (i.e. by listening to them) you’re in a much better position to keep them happy. Remember the 80/20 rule too—you can talk about yourself 20% of the time but the other 80% should be devoted to wider topics, perhaps discussing industry news or covering things that matter to your audience, and in doing so you’re not boring your customers but are instead keeping them engaged. You could even take this one step further—rather than simply asking your audience to like your page, why don’t you like theirs? Doing so means you’re making things far more personal and are effectively creating and nurturing wider relationships, and for a lot of brands that can make all the difference.

So, what are you waiting for? A bit of time and attention could ensure your Facebook marketing campaign works, so bear in mind these ideas and you’ll soon be able to make the most of this most lucrative of channels.

The company is focused on becoming more “customer centric” with real-time data being used to monitor its marketing activity across online channels as well as TV and in-store, using the information gleaned to improve decision making and ultimately change the direction of the campaign. It’s a very fluid construct and offers a stark change to their normal method of communicating—BB executives have even admitted that the company has never been that good at communicating their message via 30-second TV slots or billboards, but this new way of operating seems to be showing signs of success.

Arguably, this is all about attracting an audience at a more personal level with BlackBerry purely focusing on their target market, and with pre-registrations for its new device (the BB Z10 smartphone) being three times higher than for its previous incarnation the results are looking good. Overall favourability towards the brand is also increasing, with targeting their core users and looking after their customer base seeming to work on every level.

This just shows that utilising real-time data and being highly-focused can be a great way to mould campaigns and deliver the right kind of impact with an audience, and with more and more companies realising the benefits of effective data management it looks to be a tactic that’s only ever going to rise. BlackBerry will be reporting their quarterly results in March and it’ll be interesting to see just how much of a financial impact this strategy has, and it could be the case that companies could learn a lot from them…

You might think that logical arguments would hit home a lot more in this kind of industry, but actually, this isn’t always the case. Emotion works—it’s that simple, with it being all about psychology and how you portray your ideas to deliver the level of awareness necessary. Logical arguments might help explain things but often they’ll just confuse matters, and chances are they won’t change the way someone feels intuitively anyway. Emotion, however, is different. Put forward emotional appeals rather than trying to make a logical point and your audience will be much more receptive, because as soon as a message starts to argue it’s fallen flat on its face.

It’s all about presenting your idea in such a way that can really resonate with your audience. You need to display rather than explain, perhaps using images and metaphor rather than empirical evidence, because facts and figures certainly won’t have the same kind of impact. In other words, to quote the master of advertising David Ogilvy, you need to sell without selling—it isn’t a conscious thing, but appealing to your audience on a more personal, intuitive and emotional level could make all the difference.

So, whilst emotion and reasoning will both play a part in decision-making there’s a clear argument for putting emotional appeals before rational claims. Always remember this when devising any green marketing campaign and you could attract the attention of your target market to get the message out there and, ideally, put your case in the hearts and minds of consumers to deliver the environmental awareness necessary.

Twitter has helpfully published a study to give advertisers a better understanding of the habits of its primary mobile audience, and in doing so we’ve got a great insight into how we can target things. Let’s take a look at the stats:

Primary mobile users are typically between the ages of 18 and 34
Smartphone and tablet users are the most engaged
They’re 57% less likely to access Twitter from their desktop compared to average Twitter users
96% more likely to follow 11 or more brands compared to average users who follow five or more
58% more likely to recall seeing an advert on Twitter
They’re 86% more likely to access the network several times throughout the day:
3 times more likely to use when commuting
160% more likely to use at work/school
169% more likely to use whilst shopping
157% more likely to use when waking up
129% more likely to use when going to sleep

This all means that advertisers need to remember the importance of mobile targeting, ideally by targeting messages to each device to boost engagement even when people are on the go. You want to provide content that’s easy to interact with whilst thinking about the resulting experience too (post links to mobile-optimised sites, for example) and consider your timings as well. You want to target your audience when they’re most receptive so think about where they are and what they’re likely to be doing—you need to get into the head (and even the daily life) of your audience to develop a strategy accordingly.

These figures paint a fantastic picture of the habits of mobile Twitter users, and considering the use of mobile is only ever on the rise it’s a great time to think about tweaking your campaigns accordingly. So, don’t get left behind—take on board these insights and you could develop a campaign that effectively targets your audience for fantastic results.

It has been a long run for Cadburys since the beginning of January. Their heavy advertising of the Cadbury Creme Egg deserves a congratulations, not only for achieving early wide-spread coverage of the company as consumers’ thoughts shift towards the chocolate-festival of Easter, but also for its quirky style. The brand manager commented that the multimillion campaign’s tag line of ‘Have A Fling With A Creme Egg’ “encourages fans to act spontaneously” and “give into their cravings” – something that, whilst existing before Lent, would certainly encourage those giving up chocolate to go crazy before their self-ban, and to wait on tenterhooks till Lent is over when they can ‘Have A Fling’ once more.

This campaign was followed shortly afterwards by the Cadbury ‘Egg ‘n’ Spoon’ advertisement, which presents its new mousse-filled chocolate egg as a kids’ dessert. Targeting families closer to Easter in this market is textbook, but you would think that the company’s twist on the traditional Easter egg and focus on novelty could be a winning strategy. This is until you see Nestlé’s competing seasonal products, the Rolo and Smarties Ice Cream Eggs. Breaking through the Easter-chocolate barrier, the Rolo ‘egg’ consists of vanilla ice-cream with a caramel centre and a topping of chocolate pieces and caramel sauce, whilst the Smarties ‘egg’ consists of vanilla ice-cream with a fondant centre and comes with smarties to decorate – two non-chocolate Easter eggs. This risk is based largely on the need for the Easter egg rejuvenation, and is supported by the UK’s largest volume manufacturer of ice-cream R&R, who claim that the novelty ice-cream market grew 360% in 2012. Herein lies the suggestion that Nestlé may be able to compete in the marketplace this Easter without the heavy promotion costs that Cadbury’s has invested. There is also the possibility that Nestlé can extend summer sales by starting early, allowing Cadbury to take the height of sales January-March, and taking the same consumers April-August.

However, where have Nestlé been? And where are they now? Whilst Cadbury have been grabbing the hearts, minds and sweet tooths of the nation, Nestlé’s products cannot speak for themselves. We wonder whether Nestlé’s silent-treatment is merely a waiting-game, and if they will pull out the promotion big guns in the next few weeks. We look forward to an Easter battle-ground in the world of marketing between these two, and look forward to when the end to the 40 days and nights allows us to make the most of their products.
Juno’s own work experience Eli Springett is giving up such-like delights for Lent to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation for terminally ill children. For sympathies and to donate to a great cause, please help us by visiting Eli’s Just Giving page.

It’s this level of growth that’s so impressive, particularly given the largely disloyal nature of the coffee category. Coffee drinkers tend to flit between brands without a second thought, but Costa has managed to buck the trend by turning its customers in loyal brand advocates—clever loyalty marketing is behind it all, with the Coffee Club scheme not only boasting some 2 million members but also increasing the number of visits and average spend of those members by as much as 50%.

The key to the success of such a strategy is effective data management. Data is the backbone of any marketing campaign these days and it’s something that Costa has tapped into to ensure they live up to (and exceed) expectations, and as you can see, the results are impressive. They carefully record every point of contact between the brand and the customer and use that data to tailor email messages accordingly, offering a truly personalised experience with rewards being at its heart.

They’re pretty blasé about the whole thing too. In one of its entry submissions, the brand freely admitted that the reasons behind its success aren’t exactly a secret: “It’s not rocket science. When customers take out a loyalty card and give you their data, they expect you to speak to them as if you have understood every interaction they have had with you.” It makes perfect sense, and we think it’s something brands of all kinds should take on board if they want to experience the same kind of results. Bravo Costa for showing how it can be done.

So far it seems that Tesco has been hit the hardest, and considering it was one of the first retailers found to have had horsemeat in its products it isn’t hard to see why. Their image was further damaged this week when their Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese was found to contain horsemeat DNA too, and according to YouGov’s BrandIndex scores their reputation has dropped dramatically.

But, Tesco isn’t the only supermarket to have been hit. Just about every major supermarket has suffered a drop in consumer confidence with Aldi being another noteworthy example, and it’s only Morrison’s that seems to have escaped. In fact, their reputation has even improved, largely thanks to their press ads highlighting the fact that they only ever use 100% British meat in their products (a great example of marketing done well).

Elsewhere in the food industry the outlook is similarly bleak, particularly for the likes of Findus (some of whose products contained up to 100% horsemeat DNA) and Burger King, and despite the fact that all brands caught up in the scandal have implemented widespread campaigns to try and allay the fears of consumers it seems that more needs to be done.

More robust action needs to be taken to prevent permanent damage to the entire food industry, because there’s a danger that this scandal could affect more than just meat. Consumer confidence in the quality of all kinds of products could potentially be compromised, and that means the challenge is two-fold—not only do marketing departments need to build back the reputation of their brand but food companies need to focus on building confidence on a wider scale, with quality control and assurance (and subsequent communication of that) needing to be paramount.

It’ll be interesting to see the reaction of brands over the next few weeks, and with more revelations in the pipeline (the Food Standards Agency has ordered DNA tests to be carried out on the meat products of all UK retailers and suppliers) we’re expecting to witness a great deal of campaigning to get things back on track.

The question of whether or not brands can recover is yet to be answered. Supermarkets rely on meeting FSA standards and if they can’t do that they could have irreparably damaged their reputation, and once trust is gone it’s hard to win back. The food industry as a whole is facing a challenging time and, as is so often the case, ultimately it’ll be down to marketers to bring back consumer confidence and build the reputation of their brands once again.