Archive for category Public Relations
An e-commerce company going social
Posted by Jose Mallabo in E-Commerce, Public Relations, Work on December 23, 2010
Since moving back to Philadelphia, I’ve only eaten one cheese steak. Hard to believe. But the day is young and Geno’s is always open. I’ve been more focused on working to get my company’s social media strategy up and running. And, yes, Hillary it does take a village. Thankfully my village at GSI is full of talented people willing to take my lead on it — especially our own Web dev guy we like to call Kevin. Holla.
Ironically, guess what social platform is most used by our clients and employees? Nope. It’s not Facebook. Not Twitter. @GSICommerce we are big time LinkedIn.
Soon we’ll be able to thread our blog through our company pages and other channels.
Blogs are dead. Long live the blog.
Sudden hotness: Social + E-commerce = Social Commerce
Posted by Jose Mallabo in E-Commerce, Public Relations, Work on November 30, 2010
Amazing how hot the juncture between e-commerce and social networking has gotten. It’s simple, really. E-commerce is eating into the overall retail segment. And, marketers go where the crowds are. Right now those crowds are not on AOL or WPIX (except for this page about Victoria’s Secret). They’re on Facebook and Twitter.
I remember having some very heated dialogue over using ‘social commerce’ as a thought leadership position within the corporate PR program at eBay about 3+ years ago. I don’t recall what side of the argument I was on, but needless to say, despite the PR agency’s best efforts (you know who you are) to make it real, it took a Joe Pesci pen to the neck (Nicky in Casino) and never saw the light of day.
Until now.
Sudden hotness has arrived in that kink of a place where social and commerce are meeting.
After CyberMonday all the rumors were about Google to buy Groupon for $2.5 billion (Kara Swisher reports the offer is $5.3 billion). A colleague of mine asked if they’d call it Goopon? Heck, for that mountain of money, they can sponsor the TSA and rename it Gropeon. Today, Payvment announced a $6 million round of venture financing. In recent weeks Facebook has launched Deals to sit on top of its Places product. And, all you need to do is do a Twitter search for #CyberMonday to see how much traction commerce gets on Twitter.
So, while TechCrunch ponders if Amazon missed the boat on social commerce the reality is we all did. Or we would’ve called Nicky and his pen off back in 2007, created a Moto RAZR app for surfing the Urban Outfitters page on Facebook and retired on Black Friday 2009 on the speculation that Google was going to buy it.
Lesson of the day: A lot of the time the PR firm is right.
Update 1: Dec. 2: Groupon: In the days since Mashable posted the Google buys Groupon rumor, most of the banter has been about how sexy the deal is. Rumors about M&A are dead sexy and dramatic. But we all know that most deals don’t work. And the honeymoon usually ends quickly once the hot company gets ingested. I’m just happy someone is giving some sound analysis to this deal before it gets done. Thanks, Sucharita.
Update 2: Dec. 3: Milo.com: Having worked with eBay Classifieds Group before and while classifieds was being integrated into the eBay.com marketplace, I find this $75 million deal to buy Milo.com…fascinating. I have to figure it out in light of all the above, eBay’s constant refrain about mobile as well as it’s M&A history. More later.
-Jose Mallabo
Update: “Social Networking is a Stupid Fad”
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Public Relations, Work on November 15, 2010
Brian Womack at Bloomberg just pointed out what everyone in the Valley and technology have known for some time: Social networks are more valuable than many of the Web 1.0 companies that have come to be household names over the past decade.
Facebook valuation hits $41 billion. Say it a couple of times and let that sink in. Combined with secondary market valuations of Twitter and LinkedIn, the Big 3 social networks are worth more than $46 billion — that’s some serious coin considering all of these companies are about 10 years newer than the watch I’m wearing right now. (Note to self: buy new watch.)
Greenspan made his infamous irrational exuberance speech just after I launched a start up .com. Thanks for that.
To my post from the other day: “so what, who cares?” remains the refrain from many people around the world who stand on the sidelines and scoff at such lofty valuations and the utility of being social. Rational or irrational. Call Alan Greenspan because the exuberance is there. And when that kind of exuberance exists from the capital markets, things change. Big things. Think the Bull Market of the late 90s. The U.S. housing market from the same period. Justin Bieber right now.
Nevermind what Facebook has done in terms of surpassing eBay or Yahoo! valuation. Look at it compared to iconic brands that have been around for generations. Its worth three times more than Xerox. Forty times more than Kodak. And, if you look at Facebook purely as a medium through which to reach consumers (like a newspaper) it absolutely humbles what is the greatest institution in journalism: the Wall Street Journal — which Rupert Murdoch bought for a skim-milk price of $5.6 billion in 2007.
Maybe social networking is the alternate reality. But, what if it’s not?
- Jose Mallabo
“Social Networking is a Stupid Fad!”
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny, Public Relations, Work on November 10, 2010
I hear that sentiment a lot since leaving Silicon Valley.
It’s a refrain that reminds me of the woman on the bus in New York who scolded me with her eyes for answering my Motorola StarTAC — a decade ago. She’s probably tuning her TV with bunny ears now. I get it — not everyone will get on the bandwagon. Cable TV in the US still doesn’t have 100% penetration. But –
Note the price: $1,000 in 1996.
– at some point quantity does become quality. Breadth and depth of use changes the nature or quality of something — and in this case it’s social networking and everything it touches.
- Facebook has north of 600 million members and is easily the most important force on the Internet for marketers of every kind.
- Twitter is closing in on 200 million members who are producing 90 million Tweets per day. That figure was 27 million just a year ago.
- LinkedIn has more than 85 million members and is ever so quietly disrupting the rusty recruiting industry while simultaneously pushing into enterprise commerce.
A lot of people will never network online, let alone write a blog about it. Having worked at eBay and LinkedIn and now sitting in an e-commerce company whose clients are pushing hard into social media, it’s easy to say that this is not going anywhere. It’s becoming the way people and companies communicate with each other. If anything the term “social networking” may be passe. The breadth of adoption and use cases for it may have blown by the term two or three months ago.
It’s not just about discovering where old friends and colleagues are anymore. It’s about exchanging ideas, knowledge, working collaboratively and even transacting commerce.
That my technology loathing friends is a marketplace. Marketplaces are the basis of communities, cities and dare I say empires. Google: “Roman Empire” or “Dutch trading” to prove me right. Remember it was New Amsterdam before the English said otherwise.
The big 3 networks (sound familiar?) are quickly replacing the phone, TV and soon the mall. If you don’t think that possibility is compelling. . . go home and tear the telephone out of the wall, dump the HD-TV in the pool and move to the plains.
I’ll be here in my marketplace.
- Jose Mallabo
A work rant
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny, Public Relations, Work on August 14, 2010
Occasionally I share some thoughts with my teams and colleagues. This was an 11 item rant. Why 11? I was in a This is Spinal Tap kind of moment.
11 things in my head
- Media coverage is not a panacea. If it were, Monica Lewinsky would be president of the U.S. and BP would be company of the decade. I subscribe to the doctrine of agenda setting when it comes to media relations. The media doesn’t tell people what to think, it tells them what to think about.
- I’ve launched more than 100 products, announced more than 125 acquisitions, 50 partnerships and dozens of events across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe – two or three were memorable.
- The best PR campaigns are those that are experiential and drive activism at the grassroots or customer level. Most of these can then elevate into media coverage.
- TiVo was the worst press launch I’ve ever worked on. It was 100% focused on the technology and never considered the lifestyle play. It remains my biggest learning lesson. HP’s “e-services” launch was the second worst project I was involved with.
- One of the brands I admire most for its resurgence is Lacoste. Once a brand for preppy suburban teens that died with the advent of hip-hop and grunge culture – now transcends both demographics and two generations of consumers while maintaining its niche appeal. I own no Lacoste clothing.
- Everyone in the company does PR and will tell you how to do your job — until there is a crisis or someone asks how to measure PR. The best PR people are prepared for both.
- My favorite quote is from the late great John Wooden: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” It’s both a memorable sound bite and universally applicable for anything.
- I am frustrated by the fact that we agreed on what our number 1 priority is months ago and we’ve done a total of 2 tactics worldwide to address this in the first half of the year.
- Your biggest challenge as an in house PR person will always be staying focused. See #6 above.
- PR people train spokespeople on the fact that audiences remember very little about a message and are impacted mostly by the visuals and experience of the communication event – yet we spend most of our day-to-day time spinning on messaging.
- Occasionally I hear a PR person say something and I think, that’s bang on. This is bang on – and Nick is one of the best PR people I know.
