How to Inspire Conversation that Captures the Audience's Attention

HONG KONG, June 5, 2015 /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 Kong event 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

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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

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