101 Series: What is a Boilerplate?
It may be the most important paragraph you will write about your company. You have most likely seen it, but may not known what it was called or its origin. What is it? It is your boilerplate.
In public relations, the boilerplate is the last paragraph of a press release that describes the company product, service or brand featured. This should contain facts about the company (where are you based, what do you do, private/public, services, clients, awards) as well as some compelling information, your mission, positioning (first brand to do such and such). In the digital age, it should also contain hyperlinks to your website and/or social media profiles.
Plainly, it’s the “About Us” section that is copy and pasted onto every press release, fact sheet and any additional marketing communications materials – even on your company’s LinkedIn and social media profiles.
So where did this term come from?
The term boilerplate actually dates back to the 1800s when manufacturers of steam boilers would attach a metal plate on their boilers as a sort of trademark so people would know who made the boiler and where it was made. In the early newspaper days, they had “boilerplates” or actually printing plates for each company they covered regularly, so they could easily include the company background with stories they wrote. This saved time in the printing process. The term stuck.
Here’s an example of a boilerplate for our client, Liebherr:
About Liebherr
Driven by innovation and characterized by sophisticated, elegant design, Germany-based Liebherr Corporation brings the best of Europe to the refrigeration category in North America. Visit www.liebherr-appliances.com to view Liebherr’s full product line of freestanding, built-in and fully integrated refrigeration and wine and humidor cigar storage units.
Check out the other installments of our 101 Series posts:
Inspiration from Unlikely Places: The Walking Dead
Inspiration can come out of nowhere. Without warning you can experience a flood of ideas. Other times you know exactly where your inspiration came from––you were listening to a song or reading a book, watching a movie or even reviewing plans. Inspiration can even come from something as simple as an apple falling from a tree.
One unlikely source of inspiration is The Walking Dead. No, not the TV show (though that can serve as an example as well), but the novel…the graphic novel. Let’s take a look at some of the lessons we can glean from that book, and see how they might serve to offer inspiration in business, and especially marketing.
- Adapt or die. It could be the mantra for this book, and the same could be said when it comes to marketing. The world evolves around you, and to stay competitive, you must evolve with it––learning new skills, forging new partnerships, developing new plans. In a world where everything changes so fast, the ability to make quick (and correct) decisions is key.
- Know your strengths and weaknesses. By knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are, you’ll be better equipped to deal with challenges. You’ll also know when you should seek help and surround yourself with those who can aid in your goals. By knowing everyone else’s particular strengths and weakness, it will be easier to assign tasks to the proper individuals.
- Things may not always be what they seem. Something that looks too good to be true just might be, but something that appears to have no value may have more value than you think. Always keep your eyes peeled for opportunities and obstacles. Situations change and when they do, you make need to look at your surroundings with a new perspective.
- Never give up. Always strive to move forward. If you have the best product or service, you need to let people know. If you have a great idea, make it happen. Tell your story and follow through!
The Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed This Week: Friday, July 27
The Augmented Reality Shoe Store - via DigitalBuzzBlog
London Eye To Become Twitter Sentiment Gauge During Olympics - via Media Bistro
Foursquare Introduces Promoted Updates For Mobile: “Search Ads For The Real World” - via Marketing Land
Carolina Panther Ryan Kalil Takes Out Full-Page Newspaper Ad Guaranteeing A Panthers Super Bowl Victory- via Deadspin
Fashion Retailer Integrates Instagram Onto Product Pages - via Mashable
101 Series: What Is a GIF?
What is a GIF? Surely you’ve heard the term. You might even recall hearing it years (and years) ago. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format and Wikipedia defines it as:
a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability. The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel thus allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colors. The colors are chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame.
For our purposes we are talking about an animated GIF. A GIF can also be a static image, though most people are referencing animated GIFs when they simply say “GIF.” For us, boiled down to its simplest form, a GIF is essentially an animated image.
Even though GIFs have been around for 25 years, the file format has seen a recent resurgence in popularity. This may be due to the (relatively) small file size, the rise of an increasingly visual oriented web, or the files ability to toe the line between image and video. GIFs are generally pop culture related, often focused on humor or attached to memes, and have proven to be huge drivers of web traffic. We’ve also seen the format become integrated in more traditional marketing.
Check out the previous installments of the 101 Series posts:
A Guide To Determining Advertising Budgets
As we enter the 2013 planning quarter, our most frequent client conversations are centered on the annual marketing communications budget. For most companies, what they would like to invest in marketing communications and what they can afford are two different dollar amounts. So determining the annual marketing communications budget and how to most effectively allocate that budget is a key CMO responsibility that requires market insight, proper evaluation of marketing activities and some creativity.
The brand’s goals, its current market position and specific challenges, as well as competitive activity, should all be considered so that no one method should bind a company. And because there is no single method of determining a proper marketing communications budget, the process can be an in-depth and difficult one. However, a fairly simple and commonly used method that we refer to as a first step is determining the ratio of advertising expenditures to projected sales.
This annual report, created by Schonfeld & Associates, Inc. and featured in Ad Age, is a valuable resource. We use it as a discussion guide and to help prevent our marketing wish list from getting way out of proportion.
You can download the full 2011 list with the top 200 industries HERE.
- Linda Passante, CEO, The Halo Group
