Whoever Did the Online Marketing Strategy for ‘Twilight’ Needs a Big Fat Raise!

‘Twilight’ was god awful – but fans don’t seem to care.   The screenplay, makeup, and special effects were all kinds of cheesy.  I didn’t want to miss the pop culture moment, so I caved and went to a matinee yesterday.  The whole thing was, for lack of a better word, neutered.  It needed a little more testosterone – and more vampire stuff.  It took itself way too seriously and lacked subtlety – it was like killing a fly with a two-by-four.  Thank god for the Dad character, he added some very much needed comic relief, and I actually thought the baseball scene was pretty fun.

But based on the blogs, it sounds like (for the most part) all is forgiven. Most fans were expecting a low budget flick anyway, and they continue to go to the theaters again and again to hopefully give Summit Entertainment enough money to make the next one bigger and better (and also to stare at super-dreamy Robert Pattinson for a few more hours). However, in my opinion, the budget doesn’t excuse the poor script and hokey over the top melodrama – oy vey.   It’s possible to make a movie that is intended for one specific audience, but is watchable by all audiences. For example, once they added Chris Tucker to the Jackie Chan movies, everybody started enjoying them – not just boys obsessed with martial arts.  Here’s my advice to Summit – from what I’ve read online, the fans are being pretty easy on you (that glitter effect alone, complete with totally random sparkle sound effect, should have converted everyone into haters) – fans are pumping tons of money into this movie in hopes that they will get a return on their investment in the sequels.  In other words, you got a pass on this one because of budget, but if you fail to deliver in the next one, you’re probably going to have a mass exodus on your hands.  Hell hath no fury like a Tweener (and her Mother) scorned.

Now that my inconsequential review is out of the way – I do want to compliment whoever handled the digital/online communication strategy. I don’t know if that was handled by Summit’s marketing dept or by an external agency – and I don’t really care enough to research it – but I think it’s an impressive example of how to successfully market to youth (and, in some cases, their parents) online.  Is it weird that I’m a bigger fan of Twilight’s marketing department than the actual movie?  They covered everything -social media, blogs, widgets, Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, YouTube…the word of mouth was brilliant.  I thought the use of widgets, which counted down everything from trailer sneak peaks to Bella’s period (joking, but I wouldn’t put it past them), was clever…and ubiquitous.  The blogger outreach strategies were key – I think that’s why the bloggers are (for the most part) staying positive and focusing on the future rather than lamenting about the ho-hum piece of crap they were served.  The partnership with MTV.com also helped to target the right audience and throw tweens into a complete hormonal frenzy on a weekly basis.   They truly made it look like it was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel – seriously, bravo!!

Here’s another fun Twilight mash up from my favorite show ‘The Soup’:

Taking a little break…I’ll be back soon…

Sorry for the long break in blogging!  I actually just started my new job at Monsanto and I thought it might be a good idea to take a small hiatus from posting while I’m learning my new role.  I’m still going to be recruiting for marketing, PR, branding, and communications pros, but now I’ll be recruiting for in-house corporate positions rather than PR agency jobs.  I’m super excited to learn a new industry and so far everything is going great with my on-boarding!  I’ll be back soon to tell you more about Monsanto and specific positions that I’m recruiting for in our U.S. Commercial group, but in the meantime, feel free to shoot me an email if you have agribusiness marketing experience and you are interested in opps with Monsanto!

Don’t Hassle the Hoff – Battle of the Corporate Bands – This Friday!

The show, 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 3, will feature rock n roll from the Laclede Gas Flames, AT&T All-Stars, Enterprise Rent-A-Cars e-Rockers, Citi St. Louis The CitiBand and FH’s Pro-Bono and the Non-Billables. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., is donating use of the venue for the event.

Be sure to watch the FH video discerning between corporate rockstars or non-rockstars.  My favorite part has to be Roger’s throwback to the Hasslehoff video!!

Job Hunt 2.0: I Heart Site Colon (aka Site:)

Here’s another really useful trick that I use all the time to find information quickly without having to scroll through never-ending Google results.  If you’re looking for information on one specific site, try a trick called x-raying. For example, let’s say you want to look up the Silver Anvil winners from 2005 on the PRSA site, but you don’t want to go through pages of info to find the results.  You can “x-ray” the PRSA site by using “site:” and you can target the specific information that you’re looking for much more quickly.  So basically it’s like you’re Googling just one web site instead of the entire web.  Here’s how it works:

-Go to www.google.com

-Enter in “site:” plus the web site and simple keywords.

site:prsa.org “silver anvil” 2005

-The 2005 Silver Anvil winners are the fourth down on the list.  Click here to see the results.

Now, let’s say that you want to look up which PR firm worked on the winning campaign for Rawlings this year.  Here’s what your search would look like this time:

site:prsa.org “silver anvil” rawlings

-Your answer is right at the top of the list.  F-H worked on the winning “The Summer of Glove” campaign this year.  Click here to see the results.

You can use this little trick to find contact information on company sites – particularly media relations and investor relations – and it’s obviously very useful when a company web site doesn’t have a search field included directly on their site.

I also think it’s really fun to x-ray sites like LinkedIn, Flickr, and MySpace – I personally think the search tools on MySpace are terrible so this is a good way to work around their lackluster system.  I’m addicted to celebrity gossip (shhhh) so I also use this trick to pinpoint information about specific celebs on tmz.com and perezhilton.com.  You can use this tool in a variety of ways, but I think the value add is the amount of time you’ll save scrolling through pages of search results – site: will take you directly where you want to go!

Fleishman-Hillard Motion

Fleishman-Hillard opens digital video studio in its Pacific Northwest office, based in Portland:

To learn more about Fleishman-Hillard, check out our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/FleishmanHillard

Job Hunt 2.0: Using Custom Search Engines to Find Contacts

Isn’t it awesome to find those little shortcuts that “change your life” and make things easier? TiVo, iPod, Amazon.com, check cards, onsite dry cleaning services – the list goes on and on.  I’ve recently discovered the advantages of setting up custom Google search engines to find recruiting and networking information specific to the public relations industry.  So instead of searching the entire web – you can set up your own search engines to only pull targeted information from specific sites.  It’s like a search within a search!

I’ve set up a bunch of search engines, but I think the press release search is probably the most helpful if you’re interested in finding contact information, for networking purposes, of other professionals in the PR industry.

Here’s the link to my press release search engine: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011760826964394989967%3A6viy8h2ik1e

It’s easy to use – just put in a company name and area code (you’ll get the best results if you use the area code of the company’s headquarters).  For example, if you’re interested in finding out who takes care of media relations for Anheuser-Busch, just put in: Anheuser-Busch 314.  Click here to view results.  

Presto!  You get names, titles, direct phone numbers, and email addresses of media relations professionals in A-B’s corporate office.  You can also see which external PR agencies and marketing firms they work with too.  You can use this with any company or agency to quickly find PR networking direct contact info.  It’s so much easier than creating gargantuan Boolean search strings!

Feel free to use my PR search engine or use your iGoogle account to create your own custom search specifically geared toward your industry, location, or practice specialty. I guarantee that you’ll be hooked!