For me, it’s official – the world has gone totally mobile. The other night a commercial, on a kids’ cable channel my daughter watches, featured a Grandmother giving her little grandson (he looked about six to me) a tablet-reader for Christmas. I’ve been forewarned and won’t be shocked if my eight year old asks for one.

No wonder the rush continues for traditional media to expand to mobile devices, with some innovative apps already rolled out and others on the way:

• The Economist just launched an enhanced version of its publication for the iPad and iPhone. Readers can tweak the layout and graphs so they can receive all the robust content of the magazine, but in a format that makes sense for a small screen. “You’re trying to recreate your print magazine but redesign it to make the most of the medium,” said Oscar Grut, managing director of digital editions for The Economist.
  
• Oprah’s O, The Oprah Magazine has just released its iPad app to much fanfare. As described in the Marketwire release, “’I love the written word, and I love the iPad — to me, it’s another way to experience the intimacy of this magazine and its part of the future of the business,’ said Oprah Winfrey. ‘It’s a new way to connect with our readers, who are on a path of becoming their best selves.’”
• New Corps’ Rupert Murdoch and Apple’s Steve Jobs recently announced they would be teaming up to create a new iNewspaper. “The collaboration, which has been secretly under development in New York for several months, promises to be the world’s first ‘newspaper’ designed exclusively for new tablet-style computers such as Apple’s iPad, with a launch planned for early next year,” writes Edward Helmore in this Guardian UK article. “According to reports, there will be no ‘print edition’ or ‘web edition.’”

In fact, there are already enough publications with apps (over 700) available to audiences and readers on the iPad that strategic research company McPheters and Company was able to put together a ten best list. “McPheters ranked the print-to-iPad products based on design, functionality and use of rich content.” The list presents an interesting mix of both newspapers and magazines covering the gamut of lifestyle, culture, politics, news, sports, food, fashion, etc. The number one spot went to The New Yorker app, with apps for newspaper circulation heavy-weights USA Today and The Wall Street Journal making the list at number eight and ten respectively. Fashion entrant Net-A-Porter made the list at number five.

Mobile applications are becoming such an integral part of the media landscape that other industry organizations are taking notice. The American Society of Magazine Editors announced that among the changes to the National Magazine Awards 2011, they will include a new award for mobile editions.

In this age of PR 3.0, how are you using mobile apps to connect with your audiences? If you use a mobile device to read newspapers and magazines, what outlets would top your list of best media apps? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

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Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce

We all live on planet earth and most of us own or use some sort of tech-gadget(s) that allows us to communicate and interact with each other and the world. It’s hard to believe we survived all those centuries without computers, cell phones, Internet, and social media. I can’t remember what I used to do “back in the day” when something comical happened and I wanted to share it with my friends…maybe we paged each other! 

Most of us are very familiar with the advertising and marketing campaigns used by HTC (Android), iPhone, Mac, PC, iPad, and BlackBerry. They are designed to connect with “you” on a personal level:

• HTC’s “You” campaign – “You don’t need to get a phone, you need a phone that gets you.”
• iPhone Facetime – woman tells her husband she is pregnant.
• Microsoft – “Get to everything you love faster.”
• BlackBerry – “Don’t just like, love what you do with Blackberry.” 

Do these campaigns actually affect our perception of what’s best when it comes to purchasing a gadget(s) or do we subconsciously choose based on other factors (e.g., trends, capabilities, ease of use, etc.)?

Retrevo, a consumer electronics review and shopping site, conducted an online survey of 7,500 Retrevo users across all genders, age demographics, and locations between March and July of this year. The Gadget Census Report shows that owners of iPhones, Androids, and BlackBerry’s exhibit different behaviors and characteristics based on which gadget(s) they use.  So I know what I am, but what are you?

If you’re like me, you probably own a Droid. You probably also do not have a landline in your home.  According to Retrevo, 31 percent of Droid owners do not have landlines, compared to iPhone (23 percent) and BlackBerry (23 percent) users. Retrevo did note that one reason for this is because Android owners tend to have more reliable coverage.

Is it true that once you go Mac you never go back? I would say so! If you have a Mac in your household, you are three times more likely to purchase an iPhone and six times more likely to purchase an iPad, according to the survey. 

iPhone Characteristics.
According to the census results, iPhone users act and think differently than Droid and BlackBerry users. They are also usually younger (especially when it comes to BlackBerry users) and have a tendency to adopt technology earlier, like watching TV online. On a surprising twist, iPhone users are not as “Genius Bar” as they might think they are. They are 23 percent more likely to rent a movie from Blockbuster (are they still around?) than their Droid peers, and 22 percent more likely than Droid owners to not know what brand of television they own.

Android Characteristics.
Retrevo reports that Droid users are more tech-savvy, usually owning techier gadgets than their iPhone and BlackBerry friends. They are less likely to own a GPS though. (But if your phone was running Google map software, there would be no need for a Garmin lying around taking up space.) The downfall to being so techy and brilliant, 25 percent of Android owners are more likely to not read books and 20 percent more likely to not care about recycling old gadgets.

BlackBerry Characteristics.
2002 called and they want their BlackBerry back… According to the Gadget census, BlackBerry owners/users are old fashion. In fact, a recent article in Trader Daily discussed BlackBerry losing its “stimulant addiction” for Wall Street, who is considered the early adopters of BlackBerry’s: “FierceFinance pointed out this week that some of the major banks, whose employees traditionally dared to touch no cell-phone bearing anything other than a BlackBerry emblem, are beginning to move towards the fancy new options.” When it comes to keeping up with other forms of tech-gadgets, Retrevo found that BlackBerry users are more likely to have a CRT (tube) as their primary television and listen and get their music from terrestrial radio. However, they are 15 percent more likely to recycle old gadgets than Android users.

So based on the results from Retrevo, do you have the characteristics of the gadget(s) you own?  If you own an iPhone are you upset to find out you are not as unique as you might think? Androiders, is it true that you do not read books? And last but not least, BlackBerry users, are you really old school?  What factors played into you choosing your gadget(s)? Do the “you” campaigns play a factor into your decisions? I look forward to reading your thoughts along with the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers.

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*Bio: After graduating from East Carolina University with a Marketing degree in 2005, Crystal DeGoede moved to New Jersey. In her four years as a member of the BurrellesLuce marketing team and through her interaction with peers and clients she has learned what is important or what it takes to develop a career when you are just starting out. She is passionate about continuing to learn about the industry in which we serve and about her career path. By engaging readers on Fresh Ideas Crystal hopes to further develop her social media skills and inspire other “millennials” who are just out of college and/or working in the field of marketing and public relations. Twitter: @cldegoede LinkedIn: Crystal DeGoede Facebook: BurrellesLuce

Although it would be interesting to hear songs from the album “Destroyer” acoustically, I am talking about the acronym, not the band:  K.I.S.S., “Keep It Simple Stupid” or “Keep It Short and Simple.” My BurrellesLuce colleague, Cathy Del Colle recommends this principal to our team and clients each day. However, K.I.S.S. hasn’t quite effectively crept into all parts of our everyday lives…

Flickr Image Source: ryantron

I attended a luncheon, this past September, hosted by the Publicity Club of New York. The panel consisted of five senior TV producers/reporters who cover business news, all providing insight for PR professionals on effectively pitching their ideas.  All five panelists essentially preached the same mantra “You have to get your pitch across within the first three sentences of your email; otherwise, the email is deleted.”  Yes, three sentences. For a novice like me, that was an eye opener.

Afterwards, I began to realize that the essence of that statement has pretty much defined how we now interact as a society. Real time news – or more precisely, “today’s news yesterday” – TV shows with 45 second scenes, initialisms and acronyms, and our inner most thoughts in 140 characters or less are just a few of many examples. We also have a host of devices and websites such as Twitter, Facebook, video games, Droids, iPods, and iPad all designed to help keep connecting simple. When was the last time you went to a conference or even a coffee shop without seeing people typing away on their BlackBerries? Even the world of sports, once the cradle for colorful nicknames, has also fallen victim to our need for “simplicity.” The Yankee Clipper, Earl the Pearl, Larry Legend, and Magic, have given way to the mundane A-Rod¸ D-Wade, and T.O.  And we won’t even begin to discuss what our teachers have to deal with, while grading papers in the advent of the texting era.

Has our appetite for instant access and gratification been borne out of a lack of creativity or are we so plugged into technology that we simply do not have the time to use our creativity? In other words, has our need to “Keep it Simple” gone to the extreme and become counter-intuitive? (If you need any more evidence, I have two words: Speed Dating!) So where is the balance?

A group of researchers from the University of Stanford performed a study that found “People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.”

After putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized the heavy multitaskers are paying a big mental price.

“’They’re suckers for irrelevancy, said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ‘Everything distracts them.’” 

In each test, the light multitaskers out performed the heavy multitaskers. “’When they’re in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal,’ said Anthony Wagner, an associate professor of psychology. ‘That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.’”

In short, the human brain is not designed to multitask and hold all that information. When interviewed for this BurrellesLuce newsletter, Carol Schiro Greenwald of Greenwald Consulting, who was not involved in the study, explained: “We can’t multitask because the brain isn’t set up that way. It is set up to think in logical order, from general to specific. If you stop doing something in the middle — Think about when you start doing it again. You have to go back to the beginning.”

So while I am not advocating we become inefficient while on the job, I am advocating a re-evaluation of “Simple.” Perhaps it is a matter of unplugging from the world and our “need for now” while at home. In essence, apply the K.I.S.S. method at times when we are not on vacation, even if it is only for just an evening or a weekend. This Saturday, do not tweet that you are brushing your teeth, even if your dentist is following you on Twitter. Take a drive or a walk. Visit your parents, or a relative you haven’t seen in awhile. They will thank you for it and so will your eyes and brain. (Just don’t use the word decompress, it sounds so decompressing.) After all, life goes by in a blink and it’s much sadder if you haven’t noticed a tree until you are 65.

We may need information now and have the technology to get it; but, let’s face it, sometimes what we think will simplify things only makes it more complicated. But don’t worry. Monday morning, it’ll all come flooding back to you – the LOLing, the the multitasking, real-time news, etc – the moment you walk out the front door, or more precisely when you begin your morning commute. 

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*Bio: Richard Gallitelli brought a wealth of sales and customer-service experience when he came to BurrellesLuce in 2007. His outstanding performance as a sales associate and personalized shopper for Neiman Marcus (he also has worked for Nordstrom) earned him a nomination by Boston magazine as “Best of Boston” sales associate for high-end retail fashion stores. Rich’s talents also won him praise and a profile in the book, “What Customers Like About You: Adding Emotional Value for Service Excellence and Competitive Advantage,” written by best-selling business author Dr. David Freemantle. Rich majored in English Literature at William Paterson University, and is a published poet and short-story writer. Facebook: BurrellesLuce Twitter: BurrellesLuce LinkedIn: BurrellesLuce

Rumors of iNewspaper, the new iPad application, have begun taking center stage with Internet chatterboxes. With its new app, Apple would create digital versions of publications by selling subscriptions on behalf of the publishers (and taking a cut of the profit, for sure!). However, the iPad friendly newspaper is not a new idea by any means.

Flickr Image Source: Byrion (Byrion Smith)

The biggest names in publishing have already established themselves on the iPad including the New York Times, BBC News, Wall Street Journal and AP News. Some downloads, such as the Wall Street Journal, are even free; however for access to exclusive content, a subscription purchase is required. According to PCWorld.com, WSJ users can even create a custom “watch list” of their stocks and funds.  For BBC iPad readers, you can view articles in several languages including Spanish, Russian and Arabic. But, the real niche of online news subscriptions is the customization options. BBC News allows users to personalize the content they view based on interest. While offline, the application will search and locate stories for the next time you turn your iPad on.

Will the iPad subscription based model help drive revenue to electronic publications? The answer is, probably, yes – especially as free views of online articles become more limited by publishers. But the momentum and accessibility of online publications will likely urge readers away from the classic hard copy publication (e.g., commuters who rely on a good paper to read while taking a bus or train to work).

The trend toward an iNewspaper product is a sign of the times as the world becomes more reliant on the Internet than ever. Apple seems to have found itself at the forefront of this technology and has placed itself comfortably in the middle (as publishers learn how to better monetize their content) likely allowing Apple to earn quite a few pretty pennies in the meantime.

As a communications professional, do you think that e-publications will ever take the strength away from hard copy publications? How do you think this will impact your public relations, marketing, and advertising efforts? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas. 

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*Bio: Soon after graduating from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, in 2006 with a B.A. in communication and a B.S. in business/marketing, I joined the BurrellesLuce client services team. In 2008, I completed my master’s degree in corporate and organizational communications and now serve as Director of Client Services. I am passionate about researching and understanding the role of email in shaping relationships from a client relation/service standpoint as well as how miscommunication occurs within email, which was the topic of my thesis. Through my posts on Fresh Ideas, I hope to educate and stimulate thoughtful discussions about corporate communications and client relations, further my own knowledge on this subject area, as well as continue to hone my skills as a communicator. Twitter: @_LaurenShapiro_ LinkedIn: laurenrshapiro Facebook: BurrellesLuce

Image Source: WMPowerUser.com

I have an old phone.

I know it’s old because I’ve kept it longer than the service agreement I signed when I bought it. I know it’s old because it still has the logo of a now defunct cellular company on it. I also know it’s old because of my inability to download apps of any kind.

However, despite my phones technical limitations, it appears that I may not be the only one hasn’t been filling their phone with the all the latest available applications.

According to Mark Welsh’s recent story on Mediapost.com, Pew: Only Two-Thirds Of Cell Users With Apps Use Them, only four in ten mobile phone users have apps on their phone. And just two-thirds, of that 40 percent, actually use them.

(Not sure which apps to choose for the Droid? Check out this post from my BurrellesLuce colleague Johna Burke.)

Welsh notes that the download and use of applications is “still not among the most popular mobile data activities, with only 29 percent of mobile subscribers having downloaded an app…” In fact, “People are more likely to use their phones to take a picture, text-message, browse the Web, email, record a video, play music and send instant messages than they are to access an app.”

Does this mean that downloading the latest apps for my mobile device isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be? I have to admit; it’d be nice to have sporting event updates or get restaurant reviews before leaving the house and then be able to accurately calculate a good tip.

However, like many of those surveyed, I use my phone as, well, a phone. The reliability of the service is paramount. Anything beyond that is just gravy.

Of course, there are always benefits to owning an older phone. For one, unlike so many people, I can break my cell phone contract without a penalty. Also, I never get frustrated with my phone because I really expect nothing from it other than the most basic of services.

Confidentially, though, I’m really just waiting for my birthday present iPad anyway.

How about you? Have you been quick to download apps? If so, do you still use them? If you haven’t added any or no longer use them, why?

Image: www.aftermathnews.wordpress.com

In March 2009 I wrote my first blog post, here on BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas, about how emerging technologies and platforms were changing the way we consume news – supported by input I gathered from a media summit I had attended that featured panelists such as Joe Scarborough from MSNBC’s Morning Joe and BBC’s Rome Hartman.

I wrote, “And with the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and this ‘Pro-Am’ partnership that is developing with media, the panel agreed that consumers will have a stronger need for trusted brands, filtering, and editing to help navigate the media.” A year and a half later, the cream seems to be rising to the top in this fragmented media universe.

Today the “trusted brands,” such as The New York Times, are beginning to abandon the old business model of offering free content in exchange for paid advertisements. They are instead looking to generate additional revenue by putting their text, audio, and video behind pay walls or by offering their content as an app for a small fee. “I think we should have done it years ago,” said David Firestone, a deputy national news editor commenting on the NYT’s decision to put some of their content behind paywalls beginning in 2011. “As painful as it will be at the beginning, we have to get rid of the notion that high-quality news comes free.”

The Times Co. Chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. added, “This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going…This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”

In fact, no one is sure where the web is going; this undeniable shift away from free content will certainly make life more difficult for the Googles of the world who rely on free content to fuel their search engine. Consumers may turn to company’s like Apple for their media, who adopted the “paid content” model early on by making content available for small fees through iTunes and more recently showing consumers how convenient it is to access a magazine or newspaper digitally for a small fee on their iPad.

 Fox News this week launched its new iPhone political app, available through iTunes for 99 cents. “The idea is that this is your essential guide to daily political news,” says Chris Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor, “to put power into peoples’ hands to give them the opportunity in this history making, nation shaping election, to have the tools at hand so that they can really understand and add to the depth of their experience.”

With more people opting to have their media pushed to their smart phones and iPads rather than retrieving information over the Internet it will be interesting to see how this affects web browser traffic. As free content slowly disappears, news websites and aggregators such as the Drudge Report and the Daily Beast may have a tougher time filling their sites with the hyperlinks that contain the raw material that drives much of their sites traffic. Instead the eyeballs will be looking in other directions – with more people willing to pay for content this may ultimately prove to be the antidote that saves a hemorrhaging newspaper industry.

It appears we are on the verge of coming full circle on how we get our news. We’ve gone from relying on newsstands and subscriptions to searching and accessing free content online, only to return to paying the publishers directly once again for their content through app fees and online subscriptions.

Paperboys and newsstand operators may be on the verge of extinction; however, content providers like newspapers, network, and cable TV and movie studios may have the final say in how their product is consumed after all.

As public relations and marketing professionals, how are you getting your news? How do you think the evolving media landscape will affect your ability to successfully conduct media relations and assess the value of your efforts?

There are a lot of us that follow people on Twitter whom we have never met or heard of just because everyone else is following them. “They” must have something good to say, right? We should trust them. Or we like a brand on Facebook just because they are giving away an iPad, or friend someone from high school merely to see their photos. Yet, we never even talked to them – then or now.  (I know people that have over 2,000 friends on Facebook…come on. That number might be ok for Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. because we are “networking” with peers and colleagues, but these Facebook accounts are mostly personal.)  

In reality, we all are just building our personal brand. In fact, regardless of the network, these people may not really be our “friends” or even acknowledge our tweets but when we update our status or link to an interesting article, they are seeing it and vice versa.  Our own word-of-mouth marketing is taking place with every post, generating a buzz for ourselves, company, brand or clients.

Since the 1980s, when word-of-mouth marketing became the big craze, the continuing efforts of companies trying to create a buzz, by having people endorse their products, has increased. And with social media, it is easier than ever. All marketers know that the ability to generate word-of-mouth advertising is not something that can be purchased, or so they’ve been taught.

However, that may no longer be the case. Celebrities, along with other influencers are receiving compensation to tweet and blog, mentioning certain products to their millions of followers. Can you imagine getting paid $10,000 just to tweet?

Sponsored Tweets, a new Twitter advertising platform, connects advertisers with twitter users. Advertisers can create sponsored conversations on Twitter. Tweeters can earn money for spreading the word. Along with advertising on Twitter, the company also has a sister site Pay-Per-Post, which pays influencers to blog about certain products. Currently they have 400,000 participating bloggers and tweeters, and over 40,000 advertisers.

Besides paying people to tweet and generate a buzz around your brand, you can also gain followers or friends by simply buying them. One way to gain “fake,” “targeted” friends is Twitter1k, which offers several options for the quantity of followers. If you need Facebook friends/fans, well you can buy them too. (Interestingly enough, the use of such friending or advertising services could potentially get you banned from a given social network – though some claim that they are less likely to do so then their competitors - unless of course you are using a service affiliated with the network. Then it seems to be more “ok.” Go figure.)

Why are companies doing this? Well most of us trust a brand that has a higher number of followers, fans, and YouTube views. If a brand has this, many “friends” and most of those friends are speaking positively about them, then we assume they must be engaging or influencing.  We are also more likely to recommed the brands (personal or business) that have lots of friends and followers.  Those artificial friends that are doing your word-of-mouth advertising have real friends that trust them, and that allows your brand to reach different verticals without much effort. Therefore, for some marketers, the incentive to fallaciously drive-up those numbers is very attractive.

If you found out that a brand you trusted had paid for their followers or for praise from someone that doesn’t even use their products or service, how would you feel? Does the ability to buy friends or pay people to be brand ambassadors go against the etiquette for transparency in social media? How does that reflect on the brands and companies who legitimately build their following, slow and steady, over time? Would you ever consider purchasing friends and followers for your brand? Share your thoughts with BurrellesLuce and our authentic Fresh Idea readers. 

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*Bio: After graduating from East Carolina University with a Marketing degree in 2005, Crystal DeGoede moved to New Jersey. In her four years as a member of the BurrellesLuce marketing team and through her interaction with peers and clients she has learned what is important or what it takes to develop a career when you are just starting out. She is passionate about continuing to learn about the industry in which we serve and about her career path. By engaging readers on Fresh Ideas Crystal hopes to further develop her social media skills and inspire other “millennials” who are just out of college and/or working in the field of marketing and public relations. Twitter: @cldegoede LinkedIn: Crystal DeGoede Facebook: BurrellesLuce

The iPad was released last Saturday. Until last week coverage of the iPad was limited by Apple’s press embargo, which restricted the potential

Flickr Image: lighthack

consumer’s access to both imagery and analysis. For the online Apple enthusiasts, this may have been an unavoidable hindrance, but it did little to quell the enthusiasm for all postings iPad-related. While social media circles were abuzz for weeks prior in anticipation of the April 3^rd release, the coverage in the traditional (print) media was more subdued in the buildup.

The first images of Apple’s tablet computer were revealed, along with its name, in late January. Outside of tech circles, the public (online or offline) saw precious little imagery of the product in action until the release weekend. And again, for that dedicated market segment, that was of minor impart as their purchasing decision was set. But for another segment of the populace the coverage of the iPad by the traditional media in that crucial introductory weekend window would be their introduction to Apple’s revolutionary platform. What did the readership see of the iPad in their weekend newspapers? What did or didn’t they encounter if they happened to read that self-same article online?

Analysis of the coverage drawn from 60 major U.S .newspapers, for the release weekend of April 3-5, reveals a familiar pattern of content and coverage that we have seen in previous postings.

April 3
Out of 45 iPad-related articles which ran that day – the day of the iPad’s release – 33 were accompanied by an image of the product. The majority of these graphics were reproductions of the official release photo of the iPad. When compared with their corresponding web versions, only eight articles published the original image. The remainder consisted only of text. Only one out of a dozen syndicated articles could be located online.

April 4
Sunday sees a doubling of articles and imagery as the focus shrifts to local iPad frenzy. Newspapers in all major markets published a combination of syndicated and original content typically datelined from an Apple retail showroom. Photos of campout lines and of the lucky first purchaser accounted for nearly 100 images found in print that day. While some corresponding sites did contain a wealth of extras, such as video and interviews, the overall ratio was only slightly higher than from the previous day. Only 44 of those valuable images transitioned from print to web.

April 5
Less than 40 of the major papers ran an iPad article in their Monday editions. Many of them took a business news angle, reporting sales figures from the previous weekend. And, quite interestingly, only half of those were accompanied by a graphic of either an original or syndicated flavor. While this may have been related to either the news cycle or typical Monday space limitations in print, on the web-side a mere 10 of the 40 ran with graphics.

The release of the iPad was a huge event and not only for Apple. Application providers and traditional media outlets are betting on the iPad for the delivery of multiple layers of content and increased revenue. Thus, more than a few industry watchers have commented that the iPad’s release was simply “too big to fail.” Even with all of these factors in its favor, though, there was a considerable loss in content for the iPad’s coverage when transitioning from print to corresponding web coverage.

I’ve heard it said that “some people will read your story and some people will read part of your story, but EVERYONE will look at the picture.” If this is the case the accompanying image is vital to measuring impact. If the picture isn’t there could you be losing a prospective buying audience? If you aren’t evaluating the whole story with pictures, where they are included, is your marketing team able to properly evaluate the impact of your brand? This study again leaves me with a lot of questions and one answer: the image is a powerful component to have in your PR and communications arsenal.

If the release was for a lesser known product or a launch of a new brand, what kind of impact do you think the lack of consistent translation from print to online coverage or lack of image would have on reception? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

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*Bio: A native of Mesa, Arizona, I graduated from the University of Arizona with a major in Near Eastern Studies. I began my career with BurrellesLuce in 1997 as a reader. As with most readers, I developed a special relationship with my assigned papers – those small town dailies and weeklies of the same flavor that my family had been employed in for two generations. Currently, I hold the position of quality assurance specialist, troubleshooting daily production issues. Outside interests include woodworking, and keeping my wife and dog happy. Twitter: BurrellesLuce; Facebook: BurrellesLuce