el finale - media journalism with Ed Pollitt
Part 3 of the PR/media mini series
Mehdeeka is for solo marketers or small teams working in the B2B, SaaS, startup, and tech spaces. Check out the previous issues on PR: part 1 and part 2. Help me grow Mehdeeka by sharing it with a friend or colleague!
Edward Pollitt is a journalist at B&T, which reports on advertising, media, and marketing. If you’re unfamiliar with them, you should definitely give them a newsletter subscription, it’s definitely one of the emails I make sure to read on the daily.
While it does focus on the big players and brands in advertising, there’s still a lot to be learned even if you’re a solo marketer or part of a small team!
I was interested to know more about covering marketing and media when you yourself are a media outlet, and get some inside knowledge from someone who’s constantly being pitched marketing stories.
Kayla: How does covering marketing differ to covering other industries?
Ed: One thing that I think really sets the media industry apart from other industries is the amount of creativity that exists. When you look at a new marketing campaign, you can really start to understand the personality of the brand and see what the company values represent. Brands are all looking for new ways to stand out from the rest of the competition and are not afraid of pushing the boundaries to get there. It’s also such a broad industry that often crosses over into other areas like tech, economics and law.
K: Seeing more marketing news than most, who do you think is doing an outstanding job at the moment? What kind of marketing would you like to see more of?
E: They’re not here in Australia, but Burger King is still one of the best in the world when it comes to marketing. They are not afraid to call out their competitors and explore new channels, which makes for really entertaining viewing. Their recent move to sponsor a lowly football team in the UK and then launch a special FIFA challenge to promote the brand through gaming was probably the best campaign I’ve seen all year. We’re starting to see some of the same cheek from Hungry Jack’s (which is owned by Burger King) here in Australia, which has been enjoyable to watch also.
K: On the flip side, what are you surprised is still happening? What are the common marketing blunders you continue to see?
E: Just take a look at the recent Ad Standards complaints list. Ads are still getting taken down for being sexist, racist, violent and offensive. It’s a fine line between effective and offensive, and brands are still sometimes getting it wrong.
K: Of all the prophesying, what do you think is a fad and what's here to stay?
E: We’ve been hearing a lot about how different emerging technologies like AR, VR and voice technology are going to revolutionise advertising. All of these technologies have already been proven to be effective and I think they will all ‘take off’ to some degree, however, I think voice is the one that is really going to change how things are done.
K: What's the dream campaign you wish would happen so you could cover it?
E: Tourism Australia have pulled off some really awesome, big budget, star-studded campaigns in recent years. We’ve already had a domestic campaign with Hamish Blake and Zoe Foster Blake [above] and ‘Matesong’ with Kylie Minogue this year which were both awesome. The fake Crocodile Dundee remake ad at the 2018 Super Bowl [below] was equally brilliant. I’m so excited to see what they come up with when international travel returns (whenever that may be).
Checkity check these out
I do love a bit of B2C product design, and so here’s a piece about Pepsi redesigning their 2L bottles.
Like I was saying last week, I really went on a bit of a sales-related reading spree and fell into a Gong.io black hole. Literally the next day they did a ‘7 laws of sales emails’ webinar. Here’s the recording.
In theme with the PR coverage lately, journalists Charis Palmer and Rachel Williamson launched a podcast called That’s Not a Story about PR and media adjacent topics in Australia. Spotify link here.
Hootsuite released their 2021 social trends report (very B2C but if you’re super into social, it’s interesting)
For those of you like myself (and like Gina) who are tragic NYT mini crossword addicts, I found out that the Atlantic not only do a free mini every day as well, they let you do the whole archive of crosswords for free. Earth shattering news, I know. Please, if you play, let me know your speed record.
And last up, if you’re looking for a job - which let’s face it, lots of marketers in 2020 are - here’s 35 questions to ask when your interviewer says “any questions?”
Next in the mini series format
I’m seriously deep in the sales asset black hole, so I’ll be focusing on what role marketing plays in sales enablement, in building relationships with sales teams, and building sales-marketing feedback loops! Until next week, that’s all from me.