We’ve Moved to www.Racetalkblog.com

 

By Kyle

Yes, the rumors are true.  We have closed on this site and are officially moving our digital digs to www.racetalkblog.com (check out the new design). The new site is also now accessible by clicking on the RaceTalk link in the upper right corner of the Racepoint Group Website. 

We got too big and popular and decided we needed our own domain.  Plus now we can actually take control of all the reigns and take the blog in the direction we want to go.  Expect more of the same including more exclusive RaceTalk Q&A’s.  We’re also looking forward to launching some new RaceTalk created video content that we hope to start populating the blog with in the upcoming months.  

So change your bookmarks to www.racetalkblog.com and we’ll see you there.

P.S.

Our new sister blog: World 2.0 Blog, is up and running at www.rpgworld2blog.com.  Check it out and bookmark it as well.  The World 2.0 Blog will pick up on some of the stories we’ve been covering on globalization, sustainability and corporate social responsibility by taking a deep-dive on those issues.

Free Furniture With A Red Sox Sweep

By Ben

Last year Jordan’s Furniture came up with a creative marketing campaign that offered customers who buy furniture between March 7 and April 16 their money back if the Red Sox won the World Series.

This year, Jordan’s is using the same marketing campaign for customers that buy furniture between March 25 and April 27– but this time the Red Sox have to SWEEP the World Series.

WSJ Prepares For Another Makeover

By Ben

The Wall Street Journal will undergo another makeover in the next few weeks. The marketplace section of the paper will be changed to include more breaking news and shorter articles.

These changes come after current owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, bought Dow Jones & Company in December. Murdoch has been making changes to the Wall Street Journal over the past few months by incorporating more general interest news like world news and sports, in order to create a larger market for the paper.

These changes come as the newspaper owners are struggling to make a profit. The New York Times reports that last year alone, ”overall newspaper revenues dropped by about 7 percent, pushed along primarily by the secular change of readers and advertisers fleeing to the Web.

How Honest Is Too Honest? Facebook & YouTube In The News

By Ben

Almost a year ago, a new application called the ‘honesty box’ was developed for Facebook. This application allows users to post a question that people can answer anonymously – something that The New York Times says “has become another weapon in the cyberbully’s arsenal.

Some students Palo Alto High School in California have been using the honesty box for this exact purpose, and one student even received a message saying “You should kill yourself. No one likes you.”

Although one of the application’s creators, Dan Peguine, says he developed the honestly box because he was curious to see what people thought of him, it’s not shocking that the application has been abused. Still, Peguine says that the word used most in the honesty box is ‘love’.

In other news, the Chinese government blocked YouTube after protest videos about Tibet were posted on the site.

Bloggers Banned?

By Ben

Dallas Mavericks owner (and former ‘Dancing with the Stars’ participant) Mark Cuban has instituted a new policy of banning bloggers from the team’s locker room. According to an AP article, “the policy was put in place after Cuban decided to keep out a reporter for The Dallas Morning News whose primary job is writing for the newspaper’s sports blogs.”

As one can imagine, this decision has been met with complaints throughout the blogger community. TrueHoop, an ESPN blog, posted an email exchange it had with Cuban about his decision. Other bloggers have posted open letters to Cuban’ about his decision, such as this one where Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Kamenetzky says the ban is a slap in the face.

Ironically, Cuban posted a response to the outrage in his own blog, BlogMaverick.com:

“Some out there will take this as my not “liking” blogs. Ridiculous. Its the exact opposite. What I don’t like is unequal access. I’m all for bloggers getting the same access as mainstream media when possible. Our interview room is open to bloggers. We take interview requests from bloggers. I’m a fan of getting as much coverage as possible for the Mavs. What I’m not a fan of is major media companies throwing their weight around thinking they should be treated differently.”

Cuban also manages to throw in his own opinion on blogging:

“Newspaper blogging is probably the worst marketing and branding move a newspaper can make. The barriers to entry for bloggers are non existent. There are no editorial standards. There are no accuracy standards. We bloggers can and do write whatever we damn well please. Historically newspapers have set some level of standards that they strived to adhere to. By taking on the branding, standard and posting habits of the blogosphere, newspapers have worked their way down to the least common demoninator of publishing in what appears to be an effort to troll for page views.”

While many are questioning whether this new policy was put in place just to ban one specific blogger from being in the locker room, Cuban has certainly created some chaos, and a distraction from his team’s recent drop in the standings.

The Value of Boredom

By George

It’s no secret that the Boston Globe does a mediocre job of covering technology innovation in Massachusetts. The newspaper often spends more time covering California companies or the big national technology brands (like Google and Microsoft) than exploring the incredible innovations happening right in its own backyard.

The reason seems to be that the Globe doesn’t believe the technology happening here has enough consumer value. We’re constantly getting push back from Globe reporters not interested in striking firsts happening here: like the creation of the first real DNA microscope, the invention of the portable CT scanner (being used by the NFL and being featured on TV’s “ER”) or protecting our mounting amount of digital data from disaster – be it dynamic, virtual or physical.

It’s true that a lot of the emerging companies in the Bay State are business-to-business, but we think the Globe needs to spend less time covering the video gaming industry and more time on what’s happening here.

One notable exception, however, is reporter Carolyn Johnson. She has been a refreshing addition to the business pages and appears to have a real passion for writing about next-generation technologies. And the great thing about Carolyn is that she gets technology and is able to translate complicated technologies to a mainstream audience.

I was impressed with her piece in yesterday’s Idea section on – of all things – boredom. Carolyn explores the idea that boredom is necessary to spark innovation and that our modern obsession with filling every moment with micro-entertainment might not be good for us. Take this passage:

“But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods — while checking e-mail, while changing lanes on the highway — to consider whether we are giving up a good thing? We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works.”

It’s a fascinating read and an example of how Carolyn gets beyond the obvious and explores the philosophy and trends behind where we are going as a society.

It also makes you want to put down your mobile device – at least for a couple of hours every day (or until it rings).

How the Web and Social Networking Sites Have Changed News Gathering

By George

Another senseless act of gun violence erupted today – this time on the rural campus of Northern Illinois University. A graduate student is being identified as the gunman who went on a murderous rampage that left five students and the gunman dead. A total of 21 people were shot.

Our sympathies are with the victims, their families, and their friends.

The shooting has unleashed another 24/7 cycle of news coverage. The cable channels, wire services, and national newspapers have been updating the story continuously since it broke this morning. One of the remarkable aspects to this tragic story is the significant role that social media networks and the Web are having on the coverage.

The Web continues to transform the news industry – the way to cover the news, research the news, and present it to readers. For example, CNN is showing photographs of the victims from their Facebook pages. Facebook is fast becoming a news destination for reporters looking for personal information about people suddenly thrust into the spotlight. The cable station even has video of Facebook as an unseen user clicks through the individual pages of the shooting victims.

CNN has also been conducting online research into the identified suspect – finding photographs and other Web content to help fill out its profile of him. ABC News is doing the same. They posted a story today containing information culled from users of an online music community where the killer was allegedly an active participant.

CNN is among the first news outlets to set up an online forum for readers to sound off on the shootings. Hundreds of readers have already left comments behind on the tragedy. CNN has used the forum as a way to gauge national reaction to the shootings.

But it wasn’t only readers wanting to communicate using the latest technology. According to the Washington Post: “Inside the library (at Northern Illinois), more than 50 students gathered around computers. They searched for news and to send messages to friends and relatives, and also tried to use their mobile telephones.”

Steroid Testing in the Workplace?

By Ben

As Roger Clemens showed everyone on 60 Minutes, steroids are a major issue in sports, and people will probably be fighting over acquisitions and testing for at least the next decade. In a brilliant move, Southwest Airlines decided to capitalize on the hot news topic, putting out a series of great commercials about “productivity enhancers”. Maybe this poor business man can have a sit-down interview with Mike Wallace next to declare his innocence.

OLPC Raises More Than $35 Million

By George

From November 12 through December 31, One Laptop Per Child ran a charitable campaign in North America called the Give One Get One.  It was simple.  Buy two of OLPC’s XO laptops (often called the $100 laptop) for $399 U.S. dollars and you get one; while the second is shipped to a child in a developing country.

The campaign is a case study on the effectiveness of public relations in building awareness, creating consumer demand and driving action.  OLPC is a non-profit organization and couldn’t afford a fancy advertising campaign to spread the word about G1G1.  So they turned to Racepoint Group.

We have been working with OLPC for more than a year — doing pro bono communications work.  But the G1G1 campaign was different.  The public relations campaign we created for G1G1 would be augmented by a small (but very creative) advertising campaign (publications and broadcasters agreed to run these ads and short videos as public service announcements).  But we were primarily on our own in building awareness and driving traffic to the G1G1 web site where consumers would be able to purchase the amazing XO laptops.

We had already done a remarkable job in media relations for OLPC — but now we were tasked with directly impacting sales.  We had to move beyond the core technology and business writers and focus on consumer press.  The goal of G1G1 was to reach consumers — directly.  There was the added difficulty that consumers could only buy the XO in one place — a web site built by OLPC.  Consumers wouldn’t be able to go to a store to look at, touch, or play with the XO.  In fact, we wouldn’t even be able to tell them exactly when they would receive their XOs.

A difficult challenge, indeed.

But our campaign generated thousands of articles and broadcasts — from a feature in People magazine to appearances on “Good Morning, America” and FOX-TV and hundreds of blog posts.  For the month of December — OLPC was everywhere.  The results speak for themselves.  OLPC sold more than 160,000 XO laptops and raised more than $35 million dollars.

Proof that when public relations is done right — it can create a powerful impact.

Come back! The commercials are on!

By Ben

Let’s play a quick game of Jeopardy.

Answer: A Super Bowl Commercial.

Question: How can you spend $2.7 million in 30 seconds?

There are two more slots open for advertisers in the 2008 Super Bowl, and they are now going for almost $3 million a piece. When you think about it, Fox has to charge that much for each ad – it’s the only event on television where people still watch the commercials. Many people recorded shows like “The Office” and “CSI “(before the writer’s strike) and watched them while skipping the advertisements. During the football games on now, people use the commercials to run to the kitchen and grab a bag of chips. No one pays attention to them at all.

However, the Super Bowl is the one event where people actually watch the game for the commercials. More then 90 million people are expected to watch the game, but how many of them are really interested in the game. Sure, Patriots fans will be intently watching as the Pats go for 19-0, but there are millions and millions of people who are watching for the halftime show and the commercials, and are running to grab chips during the game. With this event (it’s really not just a game anymore) sure to draw viewers during the commercials, companies are using it as their yearly splurge. USA Today reported that Fox has lined up about 30 advertisers, including Kraft (for the first time in 10 years), Audi (for the first time in 20 years), and Anheuser-Busch, who purchased four minutes of ad time for $10.8 million.

Now we just have to make it through the Justin Timberlake halftime show…