Media relations is obviously a crucial part of any companies success. Back in the day it was done by traditional slow mailing and press releases filled with corporate speak. That is way less engaging than what the internet has allowed media relations to become. In today's media relations world the way to connect with media and the way to offer journalists information and story ideas is by having dynamic online presence. The use of blogs, microblogs, social media and video sharing provides faster and more interesting ways of receiving and develop information into articles.
Procter and Gamble has a dynamic corporate newsroom with loads of information about products, promotions, events and corporate movements. They provide links to their social media and microblogs such as twitter and Facebook. Even better they offer their four most recent tweets on the side of the newsroom home page to allow journalists to see their tweets without having to leave the page. P&G is very aware that twitter, as Argenti puts it, "crawls with media at any given time, day or night." P&G posts anywhere between 3-10 times a day. Each tweet is an invitation to a press release, blog, or product update. They tweet to market their brands and announce new sponsorships. Twitter is great way to announce your company news and P&G utilizes it well, and their logo, default picture and bio all incorporate the P&G branding.
The P&G newsroom homepage has access to all media relation needs and intrigues the user to dive deeper into the releases. The very first thing you see in the newsroom is a scrolling list of P&G's top seven "featured views" and underneath that are the top seven "featured news releases". These are the top seven corporate blogs and new releases that P&G wants you to see and they offer a picture and snippet to intrigue the reader to click and become interested in the release. Underneath the snippets they have recent videos. Currently they have a Youtube video that interviews the subject of one of the corporate blogs. They show an interview with the new leader of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) P&G's very own Asia Group president Deb Henretta. Henretta has been the leader for PG's Asia business and now will lead the APEC in its efforts to "advance Regional economic Integration and prosperity" as well as "reduce tariffs and other trade barriers across the Asia-Pacific region". To read more about P&G's involvement click here http://news.pg.com/blog/innovation/asia-pacific-represents-%E2%80%98huge-growth-opportunity%E2%80%99. Visit the APEC site to learn more http://www.apec2011hawaii.com/what-apec. When speaking about newsrooms Argenti says "they give journalists access to information they want, when they want it. Plus, multimedia platforms like these are catalysts for increasing traffic to the corporate web site, and their content is completely in the control of the company"
P&G Corporate Newsroom http://news.pg.com/.
P&G's media relations is consistent with their overall organizational personality. P&G is a company out to improve lives by offering products that make living healthier, cleaner and easier. Their presentation of their media relation tactics is consistent with that personality and branding. When you enter the newsroom their is a picture of a mother with her small child smiling. The first snippet underneath is for a story about P&G's effort to help bring clean water to the Thai flood victims. Immediately without clicking anything the personality of P&G screams we care! and we will go out of our way to improve life with our products anywhere we can. They are targeting bloggers and journalists that will talk about their efforts and that care about organizations that are doing positive things around the world. In a quick search I found the P&G was benign covered in the Harvard Business Review blog, AdAge blog and multiple business blog. So P&G is doing a good job targeting high level media to match their high level brand.
Good summary Julien, it sounds like P&G has a very well rounded and solid media relations operation.
ReplyDeleteNicely put Julian. I think it is very important that corporations engage in corporate social responsibility, as you mentioned Proctor and Gamble does. One thing that we as consumers must pay attention to is "what companies are really doing". For e.g. a company may help fix some sort of social problem in a third world country but at the same time are they using cheap labor in another? I personally do not think it is ethical for companies to engage in such a practice nor advertise the good things they are doing if some of their practices are not socially acceptable.
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