Right now, it seems that there is no shortage of “social media experts” out there. It’s so popular, I expect a new event to be added to the X Games… EXTREME TWITTERING or something like that.

Just kidding. I really do enjoy the X Games.

Anyway, regardless of if you have a social media expert on staff or not (if you don’t, just go on LinkedIn, there seem to be quite a few available these days), it’s not a bad idea to have a plan in place for your social media program.

A plan? What I’m referring to is having a basic idea of what you’re going to use your brand’s Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, etc., profile for.

There are a lot of options out there.  One option is to just spout about what’s going on with your brand.  Another option is to interact with fans/followers.  Have a conversation with your brand’s champions and challengers.  Or, you can selectively respond when the need arises, have the time or feel the situation warrants it.  That seems to be what Surfrider does.

Recently we made an announcement for project BLUE.  Because Surfrider is a beneficiary of project BLUE, they reposted the news on their Facebook site.  It turns out a fan on the Surfrider page doesn’t think the organization does enough and made a public comment about it. While some organizations just let these comments stew and go unanswered, the folks at Surfrider responded quickly and succinctly.

Nice job Surfrider.

Take a second to think about what you’re doing online, how you’re doing it and who is handling the execution. Make sure you have a program in place and people running it who can adequately respond to issues.  Honestly, I feel it’s unlikely that any organization will have enough staff to respond to, or even want to respond to, ever comment, challenge or kudo posted about them on the Internet.  However, you should make sure whoever monitoring your program is on it and has the maturity to make the right decisions, including when and how to respond.

Your social media presence is an online extension of your brand. It’s the sign people see as they pull into your parking lot. If someone sprayed graffiti on your sign, you’d try to clean it up, no?

(If someone did this on our building, we’d probably leave it

The title of this post is somewhat of a joke, it does have some merit in terms of media relations.

I’d like to think the crew @ BBPR is excellent at what we do.  But despite the team here being game-changing PR pros incredibly lucky in love with our incredibly newsworthy clients so excellent, sometimes we score great media placements just by being responsive.

Disclaimer:  I can’t actually prove that PR is more effective than advertising, but it’s in my best interest to say that it is.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Woody Allen that 80 percent of success is showing up, I’m usually shocked when I hear from reporters that someone at a particular brand hasn’t gotten back to them about a story.  In the last two months I’ve heard three times from reporters/editors at widely distributed, national publications that brands were unresponsive to media requests.

I once read an interview (wish I could find the link) where a well-respected executive in the surf industry voiced his disappointment about how a certain men’s lifestyle magazine did a piece on surf fashion, using products made by non-surf manufacturers.  He was bummed about the magazine’s feature of brands that didn’t have authentic ties to surfing.  Rightfully so, but it may not have been the editor’s fault.  It could simply be that the other brands, while not first in surf, were great about returning the editor’s call.

Note: Done correctly (not just in terms of creative execution, but media buy as well), we do think that advertising and other marketing initiatives outside of PR are extremely important and relevant.  Watch for more on that later.

Sometimes simple is best in marketing.  While flipping through the latest issue of Wend, we came across this ad by Wend, for Wend.

Wend is an outdoor lifestyle focused magazine with a decidedly eco-slant.  Mountain biking, camping, kayaking, skateboarding, snow-shredding.  It’s in there.  While this ad doesn’t say what Wend covers, it does tell you what Wend isn’t… or what it feels other magazines are.

Why do we think this is cool?  Well, so many brands seem to have a difficult time, or simply don’t, tell the story of how they differ from their competitors.  This ad is simple and gives you a little food for thought when flipping through other mags on your coffee table or the doctor’s office.

Full disclosure:  We’re pretty friendly with the people @ Wend.  They don’t always run our clients, but more often than not, they at least return our emails.  While we’re at it, we’ll also disclose that we follow Wend on Twitter.  If you’re into Tweets, check out Wend’s feed @WendMagazine

If you haven’t been following the news, you’re probably unaware that Twitter is the greatest thing for marketers since SPAM.  Good.

Twitter is an incredibly useful tool to connect with an audience of (typically) passionate followers, make friends, solicit advice and in the spirit of one of the current buzzwords of the moment, engage.

There has been more than one “how to” article on using Twitter (here’s a good one), but this Tweet to pro skater Rob Dyrdek really got us thinking:

Don’t expect everyone on Twitter, especially celebrities, to get back to you.  As Twitter grows, much like MySpace, Facebook and offline fan clubs before them, one-on-one interaction is going to decrease.  The bandwidth required to respond to each person who Tweets @ a celebrity will be immense and it’s unlikely that they’ll keep up without hiring outside support, which will take away from that personal interaction people love on Twitter.

We touched on this a little bit already, but it’s worth bringing up again.

In the world of action sports PR, at least when it comes to surf, Quiksilver does a pretty impressive job.  Sure, when you’ve got Kelly Slater on your team, the placements come easy.  But Quik’s success with media goes beyond Slater and the regular t-shirt feature in XYZ Magazine.  They’ve got a solid communications team in place, not to mention some great online initiatives that position the brand as a media source and not just makers of fine t-shirts and skate-specific denim.

One example, the recent Clay Marzo coverage in both Outside and ESPN The Magazine (as well as online coverage by both, including a video piece by The Magazine).

For those that don’t follow surfing, Clay is ridiculously good.  While he hasn’t qualified for the ASP, it hasn’t kept him from receiving endemic/surf industry coverage and props from his peers.

Clay also has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism.  It presents him with some challenges, but it also gives Quiksilver one more pitch point for the Clay Marzo story when dealing with non-endemic media.  Clay isn’t just a great surfer, he’s a great surfer with a challenge.   Is it opportunistic to highlight this challenge for media coverage?  Maybe, but the piece also draws greater attention to Asperger’s Syndrome and probably inspires/helps more than a few other kids with similar conditions and their families.  You can watch the video piece on ESPN here.

More than a few times we’ve gotten calls from potential clients looking for help with PR and asking “how much for a press release?”  We gently explain that while press releases are great PR tools, they’re not the end all.  They’re one piece of your kit, like a hammer in your toolbox.  The hammer can help you build something, but on it’s own, without wood, nails, etc., it’s not much use.  There’s a strategy to PR that goes beyond telling a magazine what hoodies are hot for Fall 2010.

The ability to go beyond the basic story is what separates a good PR strategy from an ok one.  Obvious product pitches aside, there’s almost always a back-story to leverage.  Perhaps it’s a company’s heritage in the space, or a product designer’s unique inspiration for a new piece of gear (Burton had a great piece last year comparing a binding to the Aeron chair).  The stories are out there and the media are willing to tell them if positioned the right way.

Quiksilver gets it.  Who else do you think is doing a good job?

Total disclosure:  We’ve worked with Quiksilver before on a few projects, but not recently and not on this pitch.

Honestly, there are a lot of bad PR firms and consultants out there.  They make promises they can’t back, charge per press release, bait-and-switch you with their new business team vs. those really doing the work, judge programs by metrics versus quality and otherwise lack creative thinking.

However, your PR firm may not suck after all.  But if you think they do, their biggest issue may not be in the quality of their work, but their ability to push back and manage expectations.

Recently we’ve been asked to give proposals for quite a few projects, ranging from tech to action sports.  We’re pretty stoked.  One thing we continue to hear is the disappointment these potential clients have with their current PR representation.  That could be great news for us, but there is the chance that the PR firm is not to blame.

When it comes to media relations, it’s very difficult to guarantee success in advance.  In fact, we’d say it’s impossible.  What any good PR firm should be able to guarantee you is hard work and creative thinking.  If they promise results beyond that, get ready for disappointment.  Regardless of how deep your Rolodex is, just because you “know someone” at a magazine doesn’t mean they’ll cover your client.  PR isn’t buying an ad, which you know will be inserted into X number of outlets and may or may not have any real effect on your business anyway (a rant for another time).

What many PR firms seem to lack (from what we’ve heard from these potential clients), is the ability to manage expectations.  The incumbent firm either set goals based on their own misguided view of the modern media landscape or because they drank the client’s Kool-Aid.

At BBPR we aim high.  That’s how we land clients on CNN, in HypeBeast, ESPN.com and get some great viral coverage.  What we don’t do is make promises.  Not every client makes it onto to Good Morning America or inside the pages of Outside.

If your PR firm does make promises, then they may indeed suck .  But if your firm pushes back on projected results or your own expectations, perhaps you should listen?

Wired.com just did a piece on the crapification of technology (their term), also referred to as “good enough” technology.  A big part of the article was on the rise of the Flip digital video camera, which is a pretty great product for what you pay for.  You should really check out the story, it’s linked here.  It’s ok, we’ll wait.Did you read it?  Great piece, right?

Ok, let’s move on.

At BBPR, to paraphrase our friends @ ADD Marketing, we’re cheap, but our rates aren’t.

Very often some brands seem to be considerably flustered when we start getting into the financials of doing business.  This seems to come up a lot.  More than we’d like, actually.

What a year long PR or social media campaign may cost in terms of agency fee could very well be an entry level person’s salary (and it very well may not).  We’re up front with how we bill and what services we provide.  However, what we here time and time again, from brands both in and out of action sports,  is something along the lines of “well, for that cost, I could hire a kid.”  Think about that statement.

Yes, you could hire a kid with the title “marketing assistant” to handle all of your PR.  Then subscribe to a database program and blast out press releases to media.  And you’ll probably get some results too.  Maybe hiring that kid wasn’t such a bad idea?

Any good PR firm, not just BBPR (blatant plug for us… no shocker, since this is our blog), does more than just draft up releases and blast out jpg images of your skateboard, sneaker or light bulb.  There’s a strategy and design behind PR (not just our methods, but the methods of many), that goes much deeper than what t-shirt you’re putting out for Spring 2010.

One great example of a brand that usually does a pretty competent job in the world of PR is Quiksilver (disclosure, we’ve worked with Quik multiple times, but not in the last two years).  Want one example?  Look at what they’ve done with Clay Marzo, both online and in the new issue of ESPN The Magazine (btw – very interesting that the narrative and details in the online video piece are different than the print one), as well as Outside Magazine.

Nice job Quik.  We don’t know if they used an agency to make this happen, but we do know that non-endemic PR has been and continues to be a priority for them.  Quik goes beyond the simple “here’s a product” pitch and with that devotion of resources, gets the big story.

Wondering what stories your brand may have?  Give us a shout.

We actually had this idea for another client when one of their competitors products failed on national television, but for various reasons the decision was made not to execute.  That being said, we’d like to congratulate CamelBak for going out there with what could be a risky (and rewarding), mini-campaign.

If you follow the aluminum water bottle scene, Sigg is one of, if not the leaders in the category.  They have their own products, as well as co-branded gear with the likes of Burton Snowboards.  Recently though, it was determined that Sigg has been manufacturing aluminum water bottles with trace amounts of BPA, a product that is widely regarded as to be less than healthy.  See Triple Pundit for the full story.

Earlier today, CamelBak, well known in the portable hydration sector, but maybe not as well known in the reusable metal water bottle sector, sent out this press release:

Unlike Sigg requesting that you mail them back your bottle, quick acting Sigg owners can just email a photo to CamelBak and receive one for free (open to the first 500 customers).

We’re in awe that CamelBak went this aggressive and think it’s a brilliant idea.  With minimal investment, they’re taking a jab at a major competitor and at the same time, promoting their alternative construction (stainless steel vs. aluminum) to the masses.  Have doubts?  Just cruise the blogs and Twitter.

Great job CamelBak!

Interesting piece by the NY Times on Twitter.  Turns out that teens are not driving adoption of the service… duh.

Too often we confuse teens with young adults.  Are there teens on Twitter?  Sure!  But probably not as many as 20 somethings.  Who drove early adoption of Facebook?  College kids… it’s people in college who were the only ones allowed to join the network for many, many years.

We have a client that likes to reference psycho-graphic information versus demographic information… and he’s pretty darn smart about it.  People on Twitter are sharing more than they do on Facebook… it’s easily searchable and fairly public.  A lot of teens just don’t want to share that much with the outside world.

And those that do Tweet?  Well, they’re probably pretty forward in their thinking or dare we say… influencers.  At least two of our action sports clients engage customers on Twitter for things such as interviews and live-from-the-road updates.  Do they reach as many people as they do through an ad?  Maybe not, but the people they’re reaching are taking an active role in the brand experience… something an ad may not be able to pull off.

As marketers we need to realize the importance of psycho-graphic information.  Targeting baseball fans is different than targeting Yankees fans.  Likewise, saying you want to target extreme athletes in your marketing program is going to leave you EXTREMELY disappointed by the results (pun totally intended).

There’ve been a lot of features and pieces in Transworld Business on skate hardgoods (decks, trucks and wheels, for our non-endemic friends reading the BBPR blog).  Some say it doesn’t matter, some say tech should help sell decks, increase margins and performance (well, not our performance, but we imagine other skaters collective performances).

While big brands such as Foundation, element, Almost and Powell continue to push out innovation, it never really catches on.  Why is that?

Well, could one reason be metrics?  Bill went to the skateshop today and bought some Bones Skatepark Formula Wheels in an effort to boost his training for the upcoming Office Boyz event at ASR that Malakye is putting on.

(Kidding, Bill is not entering this.  But he did buy new wheels today.)

We’ve seen a lot of brands do specific park or street wheels lately, which may or may not help.  What we’re digging though, is a piece of marketing inserted into the pack.

According to this, Bill’s new SPF formula wheels are built to last.  Or, last slightly longer than some other brands.  Awesome!  We like faster, lighter, stronger, etc.

More brands in skate hardgoods should take a lesson from Powell with their Bones Wheels, or even guys like Sole Tech with how they market 32 and their skate shoes, and make some tangible claims that the kids kids (or 30 something kids) can latch onto.