A good client of Zakazukha’s, Little Green Genie (LGG), recently told the world about their amazing new software that helps offset the emissions created by the world’s billion-plus computers.

The LGG is a program that calculates how much energy is being used by a computer, and then uses this information to buy a proportionate amount of carbon credits to offset this use. Simple but potentially having a dramatic effect on the environment as the manufacture and energy used to run computers creates just as big a carbon footprint as the global airline industry (and we all use a computer).

So apart from working with LGG to craft a newsworthy media release, we also pushed the word out in three ways; a good old fashioned launch with the Hon Kate Jones MP, Queensland Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability (as a newsworthy event), the distribution of the media release to a number of publications and blogs worldwide (as a newsworthy story), and the use of a high profile musician’s Twitter, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, who has one million plus followers.

What ensued was really interesting.

Three media outlets turned up to the event. The Courier Mail posted the story on their website that day. Brisbane Business News is writing an article to appear in this months edition, and the Brisbane Times wrote an article which was published on their website the next day then syndicated to most Fairfax publications around the country including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Not a bad result.

The media release was sent to a number of the most read publications and blogs worldwide on the premise that it was a decent news story and that international distribution was a bit of a numbers game. So far dozens of publications and blogs have picked it up including USA Today, PC Magazine and La Repubblica (nice to see the story translated into Italian), with many syndicated through blog postings.

The upshot is this media relations campaign has resulted in approximately 1,500 hits on the LGG website, with almost 20 percent signing up to the program.

Chris Cornell tweeted the message to his 1,109,881 followers (thanks Chris) which has resulted in approximately 3,000 hits on the LGG website but zero sign ups.

Now we understand there’s only so much you can say in a tweet, but we would have thought a better response than nothing from Twitter, especially as it resulted in twice the amount of hits than the traditional media relations campaign. Maybe its a rock and roll thing?

Now don’t get us wrong – Zakazukha has no doubt that social media marketing and tools such as Twitter are here to stay and will increasingly play an integral part of any PR campaign – but the exercise says a lot about the power of good information more in-depth than 140 characters.

From what we read on various blogs and in well-heeled marketing publications, social media marketing (SMM) is all about networks and using them to influence. 

It’s so ‘now’ that business has taken to the phenomenon with gusto as its latest marketing tool. We’ve even overheard some business types admit they don’t know what it is, but they know they need to have it!

But as far as we can see, everything old is new again. So after much digging through our old text books, soul searching and a few glasses of single malt scotch whiskey, we think we’ve finally understood what this whole SMM thing is all about. It’s a PR strategy!

Now before SMM aficionados take umbrage at this statement, please let us explain.

Firstly lets take a look at the grand daddy of public relations, Eddie Bernays. Now Eddie (apart from having the thumping dinner party conversation starter that he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud) was a pioneer in the area of influence way back in the 1920’s. He said if you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. Sound familiar?

Eddie pioneered the use of crowd psychology and the psychoanalytical ideas of Uncle Sigmund to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious, and went on to convince the public it was OK for women to smoke, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast, and to even facilitate the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Guatemala on behalf of the multinational United Fruit Company. Nice work Eddie.

So using the power of peers or groups to influence purchasing or decision making is nothing new. Its just been turbo charged.

Secondly an integral part of SMM for the business world is the ability to have a conversation with their customers.

Again, nothing new. As an example a client of ours has built his very successful business on word of mouth. Only problem is its taken a long time (15 years to be exact), but his customer retention rate is around 98 percent because he has a great product and he’s taken the time to build relationships with his customers by speaking with them one-by-one. He’s soon to embark on a SMM campaign.

PR academics will also fall over their tweed jackets to tell you all about Grunig and Hunt’s four models of PR, one of the most common theories in the field: press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetric and two-way symmetric. Its the two-way symmetric, or engaging in a dialogue with a view to changing practices, that most of our learned friend hold high as the perfect PR model.

Trouble is, that until now, the ability for businesses to actively and cost-effectively engage with their customers in such a manner has been out of their reach. Enter SMM.

So again, the idea’s been around in PR circles for a while, its just the technology that’s finally caught up.

And a last word on the subject (because we can), SMM is not free as many think it is. Just as it takes time and resources for you to canvas new clients, engage with them, and maintain relationships, it takes the same when engaging in a SMM campaign. Its just a whole lot quicker and bigger.

Now where’s that little black address book of ours?

Rummaging through a pile of old newspaper clippings the other day we came across the predictions by a number of major financial institutions about their forecast of where the Australian dollar would be at certain points in the future.

The article was published in the Courier Mail on 27 December 2008 (amidst the height of the global financial crisis) asking nine financial institutions, including three of our largest banks, where they thought the dollar would be on 30 June and 31 December 2009.

Now remember things weren’t too rosy in the world of finance at that stage (probably an understatement), so it’s not surprising that they all got the 30 June prediction wrong (in fact between as much as 34.4c and 13.4c wrong), but reviewing the article got us thinking about using predictions to generate publicity opportunities.

A number of financial, business and social commentators have made quiet a nice living out of ‘predicting’ the future of certain markets, and the property industry is one that immediately springs to mind.

Real estate commentators are all now saying the market has turned and are tipping price growth in the housing market. This may be true, but don’t forget we’re also coming off the back of a general property slump and heading into the traditional ’spring’ sales period. So unless we experience a cataclysmic event like a meteor hitting the earth or Michael Jackson rising from the dead, chances are they’ll be on the money and will take full advantage of bragging rights.

But what happens when they get it wrong, like the banks in the aforementioned example? We’ll not a lot really. No one comes back and asks for an explanation or holds them to account. The Courier Mail hasn’t done a follow up, and after all it was only a prediction.

So, is it safe to do this sort of thing as a legitimate PR opportunity? We think so, but only if your predictions are based on realistic information and you have a genuine reason for doing so. It also helps if it becomes a part of your ongoing PR strategy, which over time will position your business as thought leader in your particular space.

If the likes of Michael Matusik and Bill Morris can do it for the property market, why not for your industry?