Combining car launches and social media
Last week I attended the second social media forum for PR professionals and journalists run by MIPAA – the Motor Industry Public Affairs Association – which was (as with the first) a very useful and interesting event.
Talk included social media etiquette between journalists and PR people surrounding launches, such as ‘would tweeting information from an embargoed launch be breaking an embargo?’. The consensus was that it depended on what was being written in the tweet. But if done right, it could benefit both journalist and PR.
Hash-tags were also discussed, and it was considered useful if those running the launch suggested a suitable hash-tag, that could be used by tweeting journalists.
Several attendees thought it would only be a short time before car manufacturers not only asked for mobile phone numbers and email addresses of attendees, but also for Twitter names too.
Put those three things together – a known group tweeting from a launch using a common hash-tag – and you could have the start of something interesting.
My tech skills aren’t great (and by ‘not great’, read non-existent), but surely it’s simple to put a webpage together that combines these things in one place so that they’re easy to view.
Maybe this type of thing already exists and I’ve just not found it yet.
Either way, it would take a brave manufacturer to do this, given the lack of control over what’s written on Twitter. However, seeing as the information’s already out there, wouldn’t it be better to have it all in one place that the car maker can then add their own messages and additional information to?
So, who’s going to be first?
All this is incestuous nonsense. What matters is customer and public interaction, not a love-in between journos and manufacturers and a common hashtag.
You don’t want all this manufacturer control. What happened to the days of real scoops and story-digging instead of vomiting PR shite and repeating manufacturer nonsense?
Keep it real and dirty, that’s what the public wants.
#bollocks (hahaha)
Ling
Ling, thanks for your comment. The idea isn’t to repeat manufacturer nonsense, it could easily work on an independent site. The comments would be uncensored and with a common hashtag the public could get involved too – that’s why I say it’s a brave manufacturer who did this…
As a motoring PR I certainly found this sort of information very useful. By using Twitter lists and keyword filters in tools such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck it’s very easy to watch conversations between particular journalists, guests on a specific launch, or as you suggest, a combination of both. This sort of monitoring allows a team to react to any feedback, especially perceived problems, quickly and effectively in order to improve the launch experience for the journalist.
Based on previous experience I wouldn’t recommend creating a web page for public viewing based around this activity but it certainly is a very valuable tool for any events or PR team working on an event.
@suzanne_tennant