marketing

Corporate Journalism

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Is that phrase an oxymoron? Maybe the two words should be mutually exclusive?

How about the terms “business journalism” or “editorial business”? Perhaps “editorial marketing” might be more accurate?

This post is about how businesses can benefit from having editorial content and even outright journalism on their web sites. This is not to be confused with public relations or marketing. The benefits of quality and timely editorial content can equal and even surpass that of a company’s public relations or marketing efforts.

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Picture Yourself

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If you’re a business person, especially in a smaller company, then you should be aware of the value of the business portrait. Larger companies, for better or worse (and it’s mostly worse), tend to photograph only their C-level people.

Here’s a link to a UK marketing expert’s blog, with a post about the importance of a business portrait to your branding:

A few years ago, I hired a professional photographer to take my picture. It didn’t cost much (£200, I think) but I think it was the best marketing investment I have made.

‘Nuff said?

Six months ago, I got a call from a medium-sized, business management consulting company in Toronto. They wanted portraits of their top executives, mostly for use on their web site. I quoted about $2,000 for business portraits and they never called back. To this day, the “About Us” page on that company’s six-year-old web site is still empty except for a list of executive names. I guess they couldn’t find a cheap-enough photographer.

Point is, it’s penny-wise but pound-foolish to treat a rather important marketing tool as a cheap commodity. A good, and even unique, portrait is an important marketing investment. This is one of those things that are worth more than what they cost.

A business portrait can be a simple and quick head-and-shoulders headshot. It can also be two hours of photography resulting in a variety of images with various poses, locations and lighting styles, depending on you and your business. Talk to your photographer about the possibilities.

 

Square peg for a round hole

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If you live in Toronto, you may have noticed that the city, or at least its politicians, suffer from extreme New York City envy. Toronto copies New York’s tourism campaigns and slogans, follows all NYC trends, and constantly compares itself to the Big Apple.

Back in 2002, Toronto unveiled its newest slab of concrete called “The Yonge-Dundas Square”, which was modeled after New York’s Time Square.

From the “ydsquare” web site: “A unique aspect of the Square is that it is not operated like other Civic Squares … City Council decided to … operate Yonge-Dundas Square as a business venture.”

And this is where the point to this post begins:

The Yonge-Dundas Square has become a magnet for public relations and some other media events.

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Say Cheese

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So who doesn’t love having their picture taken?

Getting your “official” portrait taken usually starts when you’re one day old, courtesy of the hospital photographer.

This is followed by thirteen years of annual school pictures. Although some grade schools now have “picture day” three times per year.

If you played sports or were involved in any other organized activity when you were young then you had probably many more official pictures.

When you add graduation and prom pictures, driver’s licence photos, passport pictures and maybe even a few police mug shots :-) then you’ve had a lot of official portraits made. And many of those probably had fake, forced smiles.
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