Cyber-bullies Could be Sent to Real-life Jail; Saratoga County Unveils Next-Gen Voting Booths
July 30, 2010 | Tech Worth Talking About | 1 Comments
While the internet is arguably the greatest of recent inventions, like all technological advancements, it has come with its fair share of unintended consequences. One negative side effect, Cyberbullying, has been gaining increased attention in recent years as the media sheds a light on the nefarious practice.
Locally, Albany County Legislator Brian Scavo is looking to tackle the issue head on, proposing a bill which would punish harassers with up to one year in jail or a one thousand dollar fine. If passed, the law would rank as the toughest in the nation, setting quite a precedent for not only the Empire State’s school yard bullies, but the rest of the country’s as well.
With election season bearing down, Saratoga County is putting the finishing touches on its transition to a new set of HAVA approved voting machines. These new booths aim to make the voting process more transparent and accessible, storing and processing paper ballots, keeping an electronic tab on votes cast, and accommodating nearly every type of handicap.
The machines, which performed flawlessly during a pilot run last year, will be demonstrated throughout the month of August at Townhalls and community centers throughout the county.
YouTube Campaign Helps Double Sales of Body Wash
July 29, 2010 | Thursday at Three | 0 Comments
Look at your man, now back at me. Is this the star of the best YouTube campaign in recent history?
Isaiah Mustafa, better known as the “Old Spice Guy” is quickly becoming a viral video king.
Mustafa plays “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” in a trio of Old Spice shower gel commercials and was recently featured in a wildly popular campaign found on the Old Spice YouTube channel.
The campaign featured Mustafa reprising his character, while responding to over 100 posts left on the Old Spice Twitter, Facebook Fan Page, and YouTube channel comment section, left by prominent bloggers, celebrities, and random fans a like.
An article at BrandWeek features a Nielsen report stating Old Spice sales have increased over 55% in the last three months, correlating with the release of the first “Old Spice Guy” ad and sales have increased 11% since the beginning of the YouTube response campaign.
But how popular are these videos anyways? Well, video analytics company, Viable Measures released a report that may shed some light.
Visible Measures compared this Old Spice campaign to three other popular viral video sensations: President Obama’s victory speech, President Bush’s speech in Iraq when he dodges a shoe, and British singing sensation, Susan Boyle. Within the first 24-hours of posting, Old Spice has over one million more views than the second place Obama speech.
Tech Valley Community College a Step Closer to Securing Federal ‘Green’ Funding
July 23, 2010 | Today's Headlines | 0 Comments
Yesterday, U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced that a Senate Appropriations subcommittee has approved a $250,000 award for the Fulton-Montgomery Community College to expand its Center for Engineering and Technology.
Due to the growing green tech industry in Tech Valley, emphasis has been put on the need for green tech-oriented curricula in local centers of higher learning, FMCC being no exception. If approved in the final budget, the $250,000 grant is to be specifically geared toward cultivating a new curriculum that focuses on alternative and renewable energy.
Dustin Swanger, the president of FMCC, said that this year’s money is going to be used to purchase fuel cells, biofuels, and photovoltaic cells. While a third straight year of funding in support of green tech education at FMCC would be hugely beneficial to the institution as a learning center, it also will help students prepare for careers in the ultra-competitive high-tech industry.
Facebook now the third biggest country in the world!
July 23, 2010 | Thursday at Three | 0 Comments
Facebook surpasses yet another milestone – 500 million users. Quite the accomplishment for a company launched out of a Harvard dorm room six years ago. Forget the hoopla surrounding the books, movies, and lawsuits, amazingly enough, Facebook has room to grow. In fact, while the number of U.S. users has begun to plateau, the site is spreading like wildfire across South America and Europe. Experts say with the international progress made in recent months, the site could potentially eclipse 1 billion friends.
In honor of the 500th million user Facebook is producing a special called “500 Million Stories” which offer users the opportunity to share their best experiences with the site. So, what’s your Facebook story?
The Facebook Movie
July 8, 2010 | Thursday at Three | 0 Comments
Seemingly overnight, Facebook transformed from a dorm room dream of a couple of college kids into a multi-billion dollar company. Unsurprising, the meteoric rise of Mark Zuckerburg’s company has not been without controversy, the latest surrounding the social networking site’s apparent disregard for the privacy of its 500 million users around the world.
While there have been several books written on the site, only the most recent, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A tale of sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal” has been tapped to transform its story into a major motion picture. Tentatively called “The Social Network”, the movie will certainly not be short of star power. Beyond up-and-coming actors Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield, the film boasts writer Aaron Sorkin, director David Fincher, and producer Kevin Spacey. If you don’t think Facebook is a household name by now just wait until October 1, when the film is released nationwide. You can check out a trailer here.
How to Launch an iPhone App
July 6, 2010 | Advice for local companies, Great PR | 0 Comments
The App: ScanBizCards
The Challenge: To increase user downloads and sales of the premium version ($5.99) of the app while overcoming an oversaturated iPhone application market and direct competition from two well-known competitors.
The Strategy: Raise brand awareness and strengthen the client’s reputation through a comprehensive PR campaign composed of targeted media coverage, social media, calls to action, and promotional giveaways.
The Result: Within 21 days, ScanBizCards had jumped just over 40 spots, standing as the 15th most downloaded business app on iTunes (today, it stands at #3). The app has also generated rave reviews from well-known iPhone app reviewers at Tech Crunch and AppCraver, and was named as “one of the best tools for digitalizing your life” by Lifehacker.
Launching an iPhone app may sound like an easy proposition, especially for an agency that specializes in pitching the smartest industry technologists in the world on cloud middleware products, organizational dynamics storage breakthroughs, and geospational information systems. But pitching a mainstream consumer product, especially one in an oversaturated of a market as iPhone Apps is, requires a different approach – one based on numbers, targeted research, and outside-the-box strategery.
Week One – Set the foundation, test your pitch
As with any PR launch, the first few days are the most important: this is your opportunity to set the foundation for the rest of your campaign. For us, this was our chance to build a targeted list of the top app reviewers and influential tech and iPhone bloggers. To develop a facebook fan page, revamp the ScanBizCards twitter profile and to follow app reviewers, potential customers and iPhone fans with a considerable twitter audience. Google Alerts for targeted phrases were created to track potential leads.
We wrote specific pitches for each type of outlet, whether that be high trafficked tech blogs such as Tech Crunch or Gizmodo, mainstream news outlets like USA Today, AppCraver and other niche review sites, or even personal blogs.
Two days later, our pitch-krieg (get it?) commenced. Immediate responses – or the lack thereof – helped us to gauge the effectiveness of our approach, and provided the necessary feedback to re-tailor our pitches – and reengage our targets. Two days later, we had scheduled three reviews with smaller niche app sites. A day after that, our first major reviewer bit on our pitch: TechCrunch.
Week Two – Ramp up the pitch, engage the social media community
“I’m intrigued” responded TechCrunch blogger Scott Merrill, one of the best phrases a PR practitioner ever hears. We set up a demo for the next morning and by that afternoon the review appeared – syndications, downloads and site visits soared over the ensuing days. Over the course of the week, four additional blog reviewers joined the party, hosting ScanBizCards giveaway contests for their readers.
Week two also marked the ratcheting up of our social media campaign: publishing the best reviews, giving away promo codes to fans, and engaging the facebook community without selling them on the product – showing our “fans” that their was a living, breathing human being behind the brand.
On Twitter, we attempted to establish ScanBizCards founder Patrick Questembert as a leading thought-leader in the iPhone industry – not by hard-selling, but by becoming a resource for the twitter community by sharing information on all things iPhone, apps, and networking.
Week Three - Expand the outreach, but keep the pressure on
During week three, we launched the second phase of our outreach – securing promotional partnerships to raise brand awareness and increase the number of consumers taking ScanBizCards for a spin. One member of our team identified 14 fatherhood, parenting, and marriage-focused bloggers for a Father’s Day promotion. A second team member focused on compiling a list of networking conferences in the region, with the intention of convincing each to offer a free premium version of the ScanBizCards app to their attendees on the day of the event. Another member began scouring the net and HARO for gift bag opportunities.
Our first week of promo pitching yielded Father’s Day giveaways with two significant websites and two conference partnerships, one with the possibility of a long-term relationship depending on attendee feedback. I would call that a success.
However, don’t think that we stopping pitching for new reviews. On the contrary, we expanded our targets but with a new angle: the release of a new feature, ‘cloudsync.’ This was actually a really cool feature that allows users to upload their contacts to the web. Coupled with the hype surrounding this type of “cloud” technology, we had created a hard news story angle – the job of every PR practitioner.
Finally, we kept up to date on trending news and looked for “calls to action” – the chance to pitch Patrick, as an industry expert, to media outlets. The release of the iPhone offered just such an opportunity, and we sprang into action (sprang is probably the wrong word for this particular situations since the release of the iPhone wasn’t a surprise announcement, but it does convey the type of action normally required). The outreach garnered interview opportunities with two review sites and secured a review commitment from another popular blog: Crazy Mike’s Apps ; though, as of this writing, we’re still waiting for the review to be published.
Measure your results, adapt, repeat
To recap, within the first 21 days of the PR campaign we secured seven reviews, four of which were published; eight syndicated stories; two Father’s Day giveaway partnerships and two conference promotions. ScanBizCards Twitter following increased by 60 percent. The initial feedback provided insight into effective pitching strategies, the types of gift bags that yielded positive results (and which, were a waste of money), and established the media relationships we need for continued long-term success.
Over the next three weeks we landed another positive review with AppCraver and numerous gift bag opportunities, from a Mommy Bloggers summit in NYC to a fashion week in Hot-lanta. None of that would have been possible however without setting a foundation for success from the outset. If you are planning on using a launch campaign for transitioning into a long-term PR-client relationship, then I suggest you follow suit.
Mike Lesczinski is a Senior Account Executive & Social Media Manager at a public relations firm located in Saratoga Springs, NY specializing in securing national media coverage for technology clients throughout New York’s ‘Tech Valley.’
Samasource’s mission worthy of applaud, One small step in the war on piracy
July 1, 2010 | Thursday at Three | 0 Comments
Samasource, a San Francisco-based non-profit founded in 2008 by Leila Chirayath Janah, vows to help women and refugees in developing countries earn a living through the use of the internet.
Many people throughout Kenya, Uganda, India, Pakistan and Haiti are barely surviving on their $3 per day income. Samasource is helping to improve quality of life in these countries by paying $1 to $10 per hour to workers willing to complete simple tasks such as database cleanup, translations, transcriptions, etc.
The company currently employs roughly 800 people and donates nearly 15 percent of its total gross revenue back to it’s employees.
The government crack down on the illegal pirating of movies continued over the past few days as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency shut down nine websites: TVShack.net, Movies-Links.tv, Filespump.com, ZML.com, Now-Movies.com, ThePirateCity.org, PlanetMoviez.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net.
While each of the nine ad-based sites were registered in the U.S., some were being run out of foreign countries. I think it’s safe to say government policy seems to be directed toward attacking the source – the sites themselves – as opposed to the user.
Unfortunately for Hollywood, perhaps the only guaranteed result of the pirate crackdown is that more pirate competitors will emerge to take their place. As they say in “The Wire” – the players may change, but the game stays the same.
Liz