12: All about selling to CIOs

This week. the talk is about the IT buying process and mis-perceptions thereof. Paul’s been spending a lot of time with CIOs recently and has some observations to share about how they look at vendors. David actually spent some time working in large IT organizations. Both agree on a few things: CIOs look for trusted partnerships more than products; they rely on their peers and staff for advice on what to buy; and the best route to the CIO’s office is up from the lower levels in the organization. In other words: stop focusing your pitch solely on CIOs because that’s a lousy way to actually reach them!

In Cheers and Jeers, David applauds Google’s acquisition of Feedburner while Paul puts in a good word for Facebook as the young people’s social media site that most deserves marketers’ attention.

Listen to the podcast (right click to download): 14:09

The end of reporting as we know it

My friend Steve Boriss, a journalism professor over at Washington University and owner of this blog, always has something to say on the future of news gathering, newspapers and reporting. This is his latest post:

For virtually every news story, there have been sources willing to provide information for free (e.g. newsmakers, whistleblowers, witnesses, think tanks, litigants), and many sources even willing to pay to have their story told (e.g. think of the not-insignificant size of the Public Relations industry).

In fact, the stories that most journalists believe represent the best of their profession, like Watergate and Enron, were almost entirely whistleblower-driven.

Unfortunately for journalists, the Internet is revealing that there is little reason for news outlets to spend money on reporters if all they do is seek what news sources are already willing to give them, rewrite what news sources are already willing to write, and distribute what news sources are already able to distribute.

Viral Hall of Fame call for entries

MarketingSherpa is encouraging agencies and companies using viral marketing and advertising to submit campaigns to its third annual Viral Hall of Fame by April 10 at http://s-zpgni-6932.sgizmo.com Entries are free. The judges, all MarketingSherpa researchers and reporters, are seeking the best viral campaigns — including business-to-business marketing, entertainment marketing and consumer packed goods (CPG) advertising — to spotlight in its public Viral Hall of Fame. This third annual Viral Hall of Fame will be publicly available — including creative samples, campaign strategy and agency/vendor hotlinks — to the research firm’s 237,000 weekly readers and site visitors for the next year. Past Hall of Fame winners have ranged from AT&T to Beer.com and CareerBuilder. Last year’s winners, creative samples and viral ad results data are available at www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3225 Contact: Tad Clarke: tadc@marketingsherpa.com

Beginning podcast

In this inaugural episode of Tech PR War Stories, Paul Gillin and David Strom talk about observations from the recent New Communications Forum in Las Vegas. David is amazed to hear that some PR people are still asking how to create relationships with journalists. They should know that by now, he thinks. Paul complements conference keynoter David Weinberger on his inspiring speech about how users taking that back control of the message.

Paul says PR people should look beyond just influencing the media and start thinking about how they can become content producers themselves. David points to the redesign of the USAToday.com web site as an example of how mainstream media is changing as a result of social media influence.

In our weekly look at the best and worst of PR, Paul compliments one company for taking an especially proactive approach to CEO accessibility while David remembers the vendor who returned his call a whole week(!) after he had filed the story.

Download the podcast here.