By Aarti Shah
January 5, 2009
NEW YORK: Virgin Mobile has named SHIFT Communications as its AOR. The agency will focus on broadening the company’s message to fit with the current economy, as well as promote its expanded offerings.
Virgin Mobile offers prepaid and pay-as-you-go cell-phone coverage, but the company added post-pay service after it completed its acquisition this past August of Helio, which included its product offerings like Ocean, as well as its almost 200,000 customers.
SHIFT, which was expected to commence work on the account January 1, will assist Virgin Mobile on three major challenges facing the company. Among them is changing the perception of prepaid cell phones in the consumer marketplace, according to Jayne Wallace, VP of corporate communications at Virgin Mobile.
In addition, the agency will be tasked with maximizing Virgin Mobile’s social media opportunities and raising awareness of its post-paid cell-phone offerings.
The company’s previous messaging carried an anti-contract sentiment, but it will now emphasize that consumers can have any wireless service and on their own terms.
“We are developing a new campaign and branding to be broad enough to encompass prepay and post-pay,” Wallace explained. “But prepay is still our bread and butter and we want to let people know that in this economy it’s a great alternative, not just a second-best option.”
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By Todd Defren
December 15, 2008
Peter Kim, the former Forrester analyst, was kind enough to invite me to join several other smart folks in looking ahead to Social Media’s likely evolution in 2009.
“Community and collaboration are wonderful things,” he says. And then I realize that the 14 voices Peter’s lassoed into ginning up their ideas could’ve been 15, if Peter himself had hazarded some predictions! Crazy like a fox, that guy.
Without further ado, with true thanks to Peter, “fourteen great minds on social media have shared thoughts on what 2009 may have in store for us.” Here’s some of what they’re thinking:
“Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology - it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.” - David Armano
“You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way.” - Rohit Bhargava
“Intimacy touches emotion; emotion powers conversation.” - Pete Blackshaw
“Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.” - Chris Brogan
“The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media.” - Todd Defren
“There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done.” - Jason Falls
“Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball.” - Ann Handley
“We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.” - Joseph Jaffe
“The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis.” - Charlene Li
“After a pre-qualifying wrestling match…” - Ben McConnell
“These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them.” - Scott Monty
“The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies.” - Jeremiah Owyang
“Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return.” - Andy Sernovitz
“Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” - Greg Verdino
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By Neville Hobson
November 7, 2008
Content summary: The live call-in episode on BlogTalk Radio. Panel discussion addressed the value public relations professionals bring to startups. The topic was a response to several posts dismissing PR’s worth, suggesting startup CEOs can handle their own public relations (the post by Jason Calacanis served as the focal point of the discussion).
Panelists included Rob Lane, CEO, Overlay TV; Katie Paine, president, K.D. Paine & Partners; Todd Defren, partner, Shift Communications; Sherrilynne Starkie, from Strive Public Relations; and Michael O’Connor Clarke, from ThornleyFallis Public Relations.
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By Lisa van der Pool
October 24, 2008
Looking to shave discretionary spending where he can, Jim Joyal, principal at public relations shop Shift Communications LLC, has drawn up a list of more than a dozen spending cuts. Among them, curbing corporate travel, paring back on outsourced IT services and employee expense accounts, shutting down two of the company’s printers to save on toner, encouraging staff to use porcelain mugs rather than paper cups and hosting a “more modest” holiday party this year.
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By Sarah Wurrey
September 26, 2008
For this episode of the Roundtable, my usual co-host Jen Zingsheim was out on vacation, so I needed two special guests to fill her venerable shoes. I am joined by Valeria Maltoni and Doug Haslam. Valeria, whose blog Conversation Agent is one of my favorites, is the director of marketing and communications at Sun Guard Availability Services. Doug, who is joining us on the Roundtable for the second time after serving as one of our first guests several months ago, is an Account Director at Boston’s SHIFT Communications, and blogs at DougHaslam.com (and naturally, Doug’s blog is one of my favorites too!).
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SAN FRANCISCO: Watercooler recently named Shift Communications its AOR to help raise its profile in the social networking space.
Created in 2007, Watercooler is a platform for sports and TV fans that allows users to access the application from social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster, so that the content created with one post is duplicated on all the user’s sites.
Kevin Chou, CEO of Watercooler, said that more than 20 million have downloaded its application or joined its communities, but now it needs to focus on a branding plan.
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Shooting down a launch. The highest-profile website launch in a long while was last Monday’s unveiling of Cuil.com (pronounced “cool.”) The new search engine was built by former Google and AltaVista engineers, who say it searches three times as many pages as Google. But by the end of the site’s first day, many bloggers and journalists seemed to have found something to dislike, whether it was a prominent site missing from a set of search results or Cuil’s propensity to match photos of one person with Web pages related to someone else. Public relations executive Todd Defren of Boston’s Shift Communications had some advice on how things could have played out differently.
The [PR] agency should have insisted that Cuil slap “BETA” all over the site and any other outbound communication. I checked lots of different sections of the Cuil site, and never saw any hint from the company that they might not be ready for prime time. The messaging is marked by ambition and (in retrospect) arrogance. The agency should have enlisted the search community’s aid. There are plenty of search algorithm experts, [search engine optimization] experts, online marketers, etc., who might be willing to offer free advice for such an ambitious start-up. Taking on Google is a big, hairy, audacious goal: this community could have gotten excited about collaborating on something so audacious. This longer-term, inclusive approach could have cushioned the launch with some built-in compassion for the Cuil engine’s lapses.
www.pr-squared.com
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“The SEC is taking the right steps to embrace the new tools and services that reach people in addition to wire services. With the recognition of blogs as a viable form of disclosure, under certain circumstances of course, the SEC is officially recognizing Social Media and in a sense, socializing the rules associated with Reg FD.
Perhaps, the most significant change stemming from the new SEC guidance is that Web-based disclosure does not have to appear in a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the Commission’s rules explicitly require it.
This is music to my ears as it finally opens the door for the Social Media Release.
For a few years, Todd Defren
, Chris Heuer, and I have not only defended and charted the opportunity for Social Media Releases (SMRs), but also fielded emotionally-charged questions from the financial and IR communities asking about whether or not an SMR would ever meet disclosure requirements for Reg FD, and without it, what good would it ever be…”
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“Mr. Penn, who isn’t looking for a job, got the idea for the social media résumé from Todd Defren of Shift Communications who created the social media press release, a template for a Web 2.0 news release that he made available free to others in the public relations industry.”
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Todd Defren created a collection of resources and posts for public relations 101. It encompasses social-media tactics, free online services that appeal to small businesses and creating a news release for an online community.
Scott Monty
relationship director, Crayon
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Innovation is essential for the PR industry as it continues its evolution. PRWeek profiles five agency executives whose ideas could have an effect far beyond the reach of their agencies
Todd Defren
Principal, Shift Communications
“Let’s screw up intelligently,” Todd Defren dares the industry.
Defren envisions a PR industry that is willing to take risks - and perhaps make some mistakes - to get things right.
I’d like to see us experiment more,” he adds.
And the industry may not have a choice. As media grow increasingly sophisticated, Defren believes bad PR - e-mail blasts, unsolicited attachments, and uninformed press releases - will disappear.
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With access to blogs, message boards and other media tools, consumers have ushered in the age of citizen journalism. They can report, critique and disseminate news and information, becoming an important part of the conversation.
That’s the premise behind the social media press release, which includes rich media along with text that targets consumers as well as journalists.
With the goal of making press releases more Web friendly, SHIFT Communications, a Boston-based PR firm, has designed a template that reduces the traditional text of a press release to bullet points while adding videos and links.
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SHIFT Communications, one of the fastest-growing national Public Relations firms, won THE coveted Stevie Award for being named Agency of the Year in The 2007 American Business Awards last night.
Hailed as “the business world’s own Oscars” (New York Post , April 27, 2005), The American Business Awards are the only national, all-encompassing awards program honoring great performances in business.
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BOSTON: RealNetworks has consolidated its external PR capabilities by naming Shift Communications its US AOR.
Todd Defren, principal at Shift Communications, said the agency will be conducting traditional and social media programs for all of RealNetwork’s divisions including Rhapsody, RealPlayer, RealArcade, and Technology Products and Services—the company’s mobile division.
“We’re helping develop a blog outreach strategy, blogosphere monitoring, and advising them on how to best respond to comments and bloggers themselves,” Defren said. “We already help them set up the RealPlayer blog for the launch of the newest version of RealPlayer.”
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Who knows better than a marketer that the medium is the message? A midsize Boston PR agency, SHIFT Communications, has developed a press release made especially for the Internet. The impetus for this invention: Web 2.0, that second-generation wave of Net services that let people create content and exchange information online. To encourage PR folks to use these Web tools to get the attention of journalists and bloggers, SHIFT has developed a model for a “social media press release” …
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…SHIFT Communications aspired to a launch event that would be the talk of the DEMO 2006 technology conference (in February), as well as both tech-oriented and mainstream audiences… The PR team spread the company’s passion to consumers using the media who had seen Pleo’s magic up close and personal throughout the process in a deep enough way to suspend their disbelief and make them product evangelists.
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…[Todd Defren, principal of SHIFT Communications and author of the blog PR Squared] notes that approximately 3,000 press releases cross the wires each business day, overwhelming editors who often discard these notices without ever glancing at their content… Defren developed a social media news release template to modernize press releases and increase their ease of use through five principles…
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…I contacted Todd Defren - since he’s the recognized expert on SMPR templates - and he offered this powerful thought, “It’s important to understand that the Social Media News Release is not intended as a replacement for the traditional news release. It’s an evolution. The SMNR’s core function is simply to allow creators of news to leverage the Web familiarity that is now ingrained in consumer audiences. With 50+ percent of consumers now creating and sharing content online (Pew Research), it just makes sense to democratize access to corporate news and multimedia assets to anyone (reporters, bloggers, laypeople) who might be interested, and, to create a forum for community and context that - to date - has been unavailable via old-world press releases.” Amen.
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