The Next Big Thing

I think that the next big thing in Public Relations and Advertising will have something to do with interactivity, which is what many of the articles we read this week suggest. I tend to agree with the definition given by the article “Conceptualizing and Measuring the Perceived Interactivity of Websites”, it says “interactivity is the capability of a computer enabled communication system that allows exchange of roles between senders and receiver in real or delayed time so that communicators can have more control over the pace, structure and content of the communication”. I also agree with the pod cast “Selling Big Ideas to Big Clients”, that typically the next big thing will be “usually pretty simple, and self evident”. This is true because those are the ideas that aren’t hard to sell. I also think that the next big thing must have legs online as well as offline.  I don’t think that having one and not the other is as effective.  An example of this would be in the article “Chrysler makes interactive the cornerstone of its strategy”.  In Chrysler’s Spring Sales Event they utilized off line ads in TV and newspapers to show web addresses  for dodge.com.  This campaign was very effective in its use of both offline and online resources. The pod cast even mentioned the success of Chrysler in their interactivity.  Chrysler realized that 70% of all consumers research a car online before buying it and used this information to form a campaign that would be incredibly successful.  By incorporating interactivity into there campaign their first quarter sales increased by 7%. Another company that has had great success with interactivity is R/GA , an advertising and communications company. This company was ranked 11^th in 2005 on the list of the country’s largest interactive agencies. The owner of this company, Robert M. Greenberg believes that because there are so many advertisements , we as consumers get overloaded and tend to tune the advertisement out. The key to fixing this is to “engage them in digital conversations that are so entertaining, so involving and valuable that they won’t want to ignore them” He believed this should be done through symbols and icons, where you are in control of where you go and what you do.  A company that has not been as successful in using interactivity as Chrysler and R/GA has been is Brawny.  Brawny’s attempt at keeping up with new media was to essentially make a reality TV show and blatantly brand it with Brawny.  The show involves 8 men competing in an obstacle course of different activities such as filling a baby bottle and cleaning a muddy floor.  This attempt failed because the brand failed to consider that the target, which are women who are busy at home taking care of children and cleaning the house, don’t actually have time to go online and watch this 13 minute heavily branded commercial.  I think the last line in the article summed it up very well “If you put the creativity ahead of the consumer, you are lost”.  This was clearly where Brawny had its downfall, perhaps if they had come up with an idea that was more interactive they would have been more successful in their new media venture.  Another attempt that, from what I have read didn’t go as well as planned was when Nike and Google combined forces to kick off the social networking site, Joga.com.  They wanted to find a place where people who were fans of soccer could come and have a social network.  Google hasn’t had the best track record with social networking sites and thought this might be the key to success.  It sounded simple enough, and perhaps I haven’t heard about it because I have no interest in soccer and it is invitation only, but it seems as though the branding on the site would be a turn off to me.  They article states how they plan to alleviate that issue by making this site open and authentic and not just an extension of Nike, but how can it not be?  Another example of an incredibly successful interactive attempt was described in the article “Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games”, this article talks bout how Trent Reznor, the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails wanted to develop the “worlds most elaborate album cover, using the media of today”.  He did this by contacting a company, called 42 Entertainment that could help him develop a sort of interactive fiction or game for his die-hard fans to follow in anticipation of the release of the new album.   A reason for the success of the game is definitely the interactive factor of it, “Games are about engaging with the most entertaining thing on the planet, which is other people”.  The games success was measured in that by the time the album was released 2.5 million people had visited at least one of the game’s 30 websites. One thing that remains steady though all these campaigns comes form the article “Modeling the Audiences Banner Ad Exposure for Internet Advertising Planning”, it states that “whether the goal of an online campaign is interaction or enhancement of branding, the audiences exposure to advertising messages is a necessary condition for an effective campaign”.  This may seem incredibly obvious, but without exposure your campaign has nothing. With all the success in interactivity, its amazing to me that according to the article “Digital-talent dearth breeds crisis”, that if you are in the market for interactive talent there isn’t enough of it to go around and what is out there is incredibly expensive. The article states, “The greatest threat facing the continued growth of interactive advertising is the paucity of great talent”.   Apparently this is due to a generation of talent that got laid off when the “dot com bust came and they got laid off by the hundreds.”  This makes me think that with the PR and advertising agencies inevitably becoming more interactive that becoming well versed in interactivity would be an incredibly lucrative and rewarding career path.  The article “Stakeholder Strength: PR Survival Strategies in the Internet Age”, discusses  how it is crucial as a PR practitioner to develop strategies to deal  effectively with online interactions with stakeholders.  The entire basis of PR is communication, so it is a natural progression to move this communication online.  Being online puts strength into the stakeholders.  It gives them more channels to communicate.  This needs to be watched carefully though because according to the article “the internet enables employees to go directly to customers and warn them about possible dangers areas within the organization” Whereas this would be more difficult to do without the Internet. The article Internet Communications…Let’s Get it Right!!! Also talks about how all emails are archived by the government so you should always be careful about what you send. According to the article "email is the primary tool of public relations contact and communications”. Because of this it is crucial to email effectively to clients and to be diligent in the spelling, grammar and effectiveness of our emails because they directly reflect what we do, which is communicate.   Above all I think that the next big thing in Public Relations and Advertising will involve interactivity, but at the same time it will be simple and self evident.