-PR Newswire's Media Coffee event was held in Kuala Lumpur,
Singapore and Hong Kong last month with the topic of: "Blurred
Lines: Finding Clarity with Your Audience in Fight for Time &
Attention".
HONG
KONG /PRNewswire/ -- In the last two weeks, PR Newswire
held a series of Media Coffee events in its key markets in
the Asia-Pacific,
namely Kuala
Lumpur (on 19 May), Singapore (on
22 May) and Hong
Kong (on 28 May). Together with our keynote
speaker Michael
Pranikoff and local guest speakers, the events looked
into the challenges that marketers encounter today in an
omni-channel world with the blurring lines of media continuing to
cause confusion for marketers to identify the right channels to
capture the audience's attention. While marketers strive to create
engaging and valuable content, it is a complete waste of time if it
is not discoverable through building distribution tactics into the
content marketing plan to drive the audience's discovery of key
messages. This is essentially the epitome of achieving
relevance and credibility with the target audience in order to gain
maximum brand visibility.
The
archived video of the events in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong are
available for viewing upon registration.
Good Storytelling today requires making your story easy for
someone else to tell
Michael
Pranikoff, who is the Global Director of Emerging Market at
PR Newswire, had repeatedly emphasised the need to make
storytelling not only interesting but also making it easy for
someone else to tell. Michael, who was the keynote speaker
for all three media coffee events, pointed out that as the media
landscape evolved and different devices are now permeating our
life, marketers and publishers must adapt to the changing consumer
in where, when and how they consume content. "We got to create
story that grabs attention and is visual in nature because it's
easier for someone to re-tell and use that story, which in turn
generate more interest and traffic by media talking about it, which
then generate better search visibility for your story," explained
Michael. Some of the interesting highlights
include:
While there has been ongoing discussion of the
convergence of earned, owned and paid media, in reality, paid media
outweighs earned and owned media in terms of how companies are
communicating their stories to their audience. The reason
being companies are not finding great success in social media.
Organic reach of content on social media continues to
drop because content published and shared by brands is basically
advertisements. Only five percent of the traffic to B2B and B2C
websites is driven by social, while 51 percent is driven by organic
search. On the other end, social media is driving more
traffic to publisher and media than search.
To create good search and rankings online, brands have
to first create good content that create conversation.
Adding multimedia to content not only adds context to
it but also drives discovery.
We have 30 seconds to get the audience's attention and
besides having a powerful headline, a good visual is critical as
people make visual decisions in only three seconds.
Create content that is easy to use so that your story
is easy for someone else to tell as in the case of IBM's Millennial
Study.
If you cannot grab the audience's attention with headlines,
you're done
Bernhard
Schutte is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for
EBM Sdn Bhd, a venture capital company. "Our group of
companies have discovered doing press release is definitely the
best way to get your story out there," said Bernhard. According to
him, the press release is one of the best ways to get your messages
across to your audience and a good press release is not only
valuable, but can also change the company's direction. Some of his
key points include:
Press releases are cheaper and much more effective
than advertising
Your release has to have news value
The headline is the most important
Good content is in great demand as the cost is
becoming expensive for the media
Customise the press release to focus on region,
culture, industry, groups and audiences.
Be what people are interested in and stop interrupting what
they are interested in
"Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes,
it's an ad," said Riccardo
Ottolenghi who is the head of advisory services at
CTRL/SHIFT. He underpinned the importance of producing
content that is of interest to your audience through examples such
as Ikea and highlighted
the fact that technology today has enabled brands to communicate in
ways that are more focused, personal and fit for the situation.
Brands can finally sell what their target audience needs, when they
need it. He also pointed out that while 79 percent of
marketers expected to face a high level of complexity over five
years' time, only 48 percent felt prepared.
Speakers
(Second from the left to Right: Riccardo Ottolenghi, Bernhard
Schutte and Michael Pranikoff) and PR Newswire local staff in Kuala
Lumpur
You are defined by the way you distribute. You are how you
distribute
"Content is King, but Distribution is Queen" was the central idea
of the presentation delivered by Alan
Soon who is the CEO and Founder of The Splice Newsroom,
and was the guest speaker for the media coffee event inSingapore.
"The future of journalism is about how you create content and
how you distribute," said Alan. He also shared a few case
studies including the New York Times' Nails
Salon and Spotify which illustrated how media, especially
the traditional media is exploring alternative distribution outside
the usual norms so as to reach a wider and more social savvy
audience.
Left to
Right: Royce Shih, VP of Sales & Marketing of PR Newswire in
Asia-Pacific, Michael Pranikoff and guest speaker of Singapore
event, Alan Soon
The marketer's job is to help journalists tell interesting
stories
Angie
Lau, an anchor at Bloomberg Television based
in Hong
Kong, was the guest speaker at the Hong
Kongevent which is also the last stop of the Media Coffee
series. A global journalist with more than 16 years'
experience, Angie highlighted that journalists and marketers are
essentially talking to the same audience although each has a
different agenda. When asked about how to get buy in from
management to create content as measurement is difficult, Angie
said "I will say to your boss, what came first? The chicken or the
egg? You can't get ROI unless you get the story out there but you
can't get the story out there unless you have ROI? This is the
universal problem and at the end of the day, this media industry is
moving so quickly it is almost impossible to have ROI." The job of
marketers if they want to engage the media is to get journalists'
attention and tell them why their stories are interesting by
observing some of the do's and don'ts:
Don't be boring and ignorant of your audience
Don't forget the 5Ws: Who, Why, When, What, Where (and
How)
Do use videos and images
Do expect to rise to the demands and challenges from
media/journalists
Left to
Right: Michael Pranikoff and guest speaker of Hong Kong event,
Angie Lau
To receive alerts of the next series of Media Coffee
event, register or follow us
on LinkedIn,Twitter@PRNAsia or Facebook.
About PR Newswire Media Coffee
The
goal of Media Coffee is to enable communications professionals to
hear from leading media organizations on how their respective
companies work, providing insight into their specialist areas,
giving advice on achieving coverage and informing them on effective
targeting of journalists within their sector and how to build a
mutually beneficial relationship.
About PR Newswire
PR
Newswire (www.prnasia.com) is the premier
global provider of news release distribution and multimedia
platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, public
relations officers and investor relations professionals to leverage
content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered
the commercial news distribution industry in 1954, PR Newswire
today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, distribute, target
and measure text and multimedia content across traditional,
digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest
multi-channel content distribution and optimization network with
comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, we enable the world's
enterprises to tell their stories to the world. PR Newswire serves
tens of thousands of clients from offices in the
Americas, Europe,
the Middle
East, Africa and
the Asia-Pacific region,
and is a UBM plc company.
Media contacts
Asia
Marketing Team
+852 2572-8228
asia.marketing@prnasia.com
Photo
- http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20150605/8521503686-a
Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20150605/8521503686-b
Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20150605/8521503686-c
Source: PR Newswire