For Immediate Release 92: Marketing failures of the UK’s Conservative Party

Labour won social media election - Guardian front page We said we’d do one episode together of the For Immediate Release podcast as a ‘limited return engagement,’ emulating The Hobson and Holtz Report that Shel and I did for ten years.

We did do that with episode 84 in April. We enjoyed it so much we decided to do another one, and so we recorded episode 92 yesterday.

In keeping with our ‘hefty but good’ slogan, Shel and I enjoyed a conversation over an hour and forty minutes that covered a big agenda:

There’s a new mobile-based social network that has been described as Twitter for audio. Neville has been using Hear Me Out for a week, and Shel has been listening to the 42-second audio clips.
Neville delved into the recent UK general election and the failures of Prime Minister Teresa May’s Conservative Party, which could be the same failures ascribed to any brand’s botched marketing, including bad polling data, shrugging off social media and influence marketing (which the competing Labour Party exploited), an unclear strategic narrative, bad sloganeering, and too much reliance on the traditional print media.
Shel penned a post for the NASDAQ Market Insites blog about two significant studies that reveal the imminent absorption of PR into marketing. In some senses, this makes sense. In others, it’s worrisome.
Neville and Shel revisited last week’s conversation about Apple’s planned podcasting transparency as listener data (e.g., how long did they listen, when did they fast-forward, etc.) will be made available with the release of iOS 11. The impact on advertiser support of podcasts, as well as how podcasters structure their shows, could be huge, but the data shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum.
Delta Air Lines is trying to build loyalty among younger business travelers by delivering experiences that have nothing to do with air travel.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will affect the way the PR industry goes about its day-to-day work sooner than you may think.

Plus Dan York’s regular tech report:

Dan York’s tech report covers the steps Google is taking to fight terrorism online, a report from the GSMA revealing 5 billion people worldwide have mobile phone connections (though not necessarily Internet access), and Dan’s search for a multilingual editor at the Internet Society.

Listen Now:

(or download MP3 file)

There’s more to come

For Immediate Release Shel and I have decided to continue these revived FIR conversations with a regular monthly episode. It will be an episode in the FIR framework rather than a resurrection of The Hobson and Holtz Report.