The Atomic Blog

I sit in a lot of client meetings where the question is: how do clients really reach C-level executives? Do senior executives really read their trade publications? Do they have time to follow bloggers? Do they follow news outside their own category in real time? Do they watch videos? Do they care at all about Twitter?

We measure a lot of things, so we know from experience that the answer is, “it depends.” It depends on who the specific executive is, how old they are, how tech savvy they are, where they are, who they know, etc. But the “real time attentiveness” or media preferences of any given senior executive may not be the most relevant things to ponder, because online search is the great equalizer - across time, across space, across info sources, across lots of things.

This is why we added specialized search expertise to our model in 2001: when an executive decides to search a topic, a category, a company name or a person, an entire portfolio of content is immediately presented to them; trade articles, blog posts, white papers, feature coverage in “top-tier” media outlets, video clips, etc. At that moment, everything a client has or hasn’t done to engage its community and tell the various aspects of its story across a credible content network either builds the brand and supports the action desired from the searcher, or it doesn’t. So companies are smart to build a network of content across various sources that add their own credibility to the value of the brand; print, broadcast, video, blogs, Twitter, etc. And they’re smart to optimize carefully to make sure it all comes together at that one moment when a busy senior executive decides to type something into a search bar.

Don’t take our word for it. In June, 2009 Forbes, in association with Google released a study of the information gathering habits of C-level executives, supporting this premise and adding a lot more detail. OK, so the findings support both companies’ missions - but still, they fit with our own experience, and it’s a good read.

Forbes | Insight, June 2009: The Rise of the Digital C-Suite: How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information can be downloaded free here:

http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html

With gas prices climbing and consumer discretionary income declining, millions of Americans turned to online coupon sites in May for better deals on their retail purchases. The Coupon category posted a particularly strong month, surging 19 percent to 34.7 million visitors to lead as the top-gaining category in May. Coupons Inc., which includes Coupons.com, captured the #1 position with more than 15 million visitors, a gain of 85 percent from the previous month. Eversave.com ranked second with 3.8 million visitors, followed by RetailMeNot.com with 3.5 million visitors.

For full ComScore Media Metrix report: http://tinyurl.com/mo9qg5

Heard this piece on NPR’s On the Media Sunday:http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/03/13/02

It cited a Pew study (http://people-press.org/report/497/many-would-shrug-if-local-newspaper-closed) that found that few would miss their local newspapers if they closed. Specifically, it found that fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.” Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available . Not unexpectedly, those who get local news regularly from newspapers are much more likely than those who read less often to see the potential shutdown of a local paper as a significant loss. More than half of regular newspaper readers (56%) say that if the local newspaper they read most often no longer published - either in print or online - it would hurt the civic life of the community a lot; an almost identical percentage (55%) says they would personally miss reading the paper a lot if it were no longer available.

Interestingly, in the audio transcript from On the Media, NPR asked if the people answering the survey, a significant number of whom were chararacterized as young, were made to understand that when the print version closed, the online version would also to be closed and the Pew spokesperson answered, that no, that was not made clear.

This is an interesting heatmap of the interconnectedness of Web news. The Techmeme Leaderboard (www.techmeme.com/lb) lists the sources most frequently posted to Techmeme. The particular version shown here corresponds to the 30-day period ending March 16, 2009. Sources are ranked by Presence, the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period. “Discussion” links are not taken into consideration here — only full headlines are counted. For more information, email [email protected].

Excerpt from client email: another reminder that even as the blogosphere and social media continue to increase in their importance, the “traditional media”, while embattled as a business model, are still capable of delivering significant site traffic.

Hi Ticker PR Team -

As a follow-up item from our call the other day, the site visitation numbers and transactions have come in for those days that cover Barbara’s appearance on the Early Show. Much like what we saw last November, there is a clear, substantial lift in daily transactions on our site for that Saturday. There’s also a halo effect on Sunday and Monday as well. Our new data reporting is still being tuned up right now, so I can’t give you an exact number to quantify the impact on transaction volume, but it’s "some number of thousands" (number edited to maintain confidentiality). And that’s just the direct measure of the impact! It’s a really great example of a strong combination of exposure and messaging.

And if you’re interested, we’ve posted the clip of Barbara’s appearance on the CBS Early Show for download/viewing.

Definition: “Transaction” is a click-through to the supplier’s website. An increase of this magnitude is a huge percentage jump.

Thanks again for all your work on this.

Atomic was asked to judge the PRWeek Awards this year for the third year running - this year in Tech Campaign of the Year, and Best Use of Broadcast. Co-founder Andy Getsey did the honors for us, and was seated at a table moderated by PRWeek’s West Coast Bureau Chief.

Aarti Shah, with other Tech and Broadcast judges including Elizabeth Hillman, SVP-communications, Discovery Channel and The Science Channel, Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100, Eleanor Petigrow - director of new business development at Chandler Chicco, and Bruce Berger, Professor and Chairman, University of Alabama and the Plank Center. It was a good year of entries, with a lot of smart, brand level thinking, growing use of social media and video and intelligent leverage of budget dollars. Winners will be announced at The PRWeek Awards 2009 gala dinner on March 5, 2009 in New York at Tavern on the Green.

Atomic’s co-founder and CEO, Andy Getsey has been invited to judge the 2009 PR Week Awards again for the third year running.

To enter the awards, click here. Deadline is October 10.

The awards chair this year is Mark Addicks, CMO and SVP at General Mills (Bio) .

Here’s how the awards judging works. There is a preliminary round of judging that judges do on their own first, then the final judging will take place in early December at a super secret location in NYC. Judging day is typically an all day affair but some groups finish faster. Blind balloting is used, so even the judges don’t know who the actual winners will be until the formal dinner and awards ceremony, to be held Thursday, March 5, 2009, at Tavern on the Green in New York City.

Last year’s winners and a video are here.