Making a Natural Connection with the Social Media

Last month, Estée Lauder launched a clever promotion in New York City and other key markets. The beauty leader offered visitors to its retail counters free “social media makeovers,” including product samples and a professionally shot and retouched photo that they could use on their blogs.

The program has a two-fold strategy, according to spokesperson Tara Eisenberg: helping to contemporize the 63-year-old brand for younger women, while acknowledging the fact that the older women who are have traditionally been Estée Lauder’s target consumer are rapidly embracing the social media.

“The gift that the brand hopes will keep on giving is that the [bloggers’] profile photos include the Estee Lauder logo in the background, which, assuming they aren't Photoshopped into oblivion, could give the brand lasting presence on Facebook beyond its own 27,000-member plus fan page,” reports Jack Neff in Ad Age. Public relations, of course, is also being used to spread the word about the campaign in the mainstream media.

“State of Play”

I just saw an interesting, suspenseful movie for grown-ups. (It doesn’t involve comics, superpowers, or computer-generated special effects.)

“State of Play” is a thoughtful thriller that pairs a scruffy reporter from the mainstream media (Russell Crowe) and a hip young blogger (Rachel McAdams) working for the same newspaper, the “Washington Globe.” Together, they ferret out the nefarious secrets behind the apparent suicide of a young congressman’s researcher/girlfriend. The congressman (Ben Affleck) is heading a committee investigating the doings of an enormous, sinister private military contractor.

What’s great about the movie: its affectionate and detailed depiction of the great tradition of investigative journalism and its acknowledgment that, in many case, the same impulses drive serious bloggers. What disturbed me? The hilarious — and awful — character of Dominic Foy (Jason Bateman), the epitome of a sleazy public relations consultant. (I seem to recall that, at one point in the movie, Foy bellows something along the lines of, “I don’t know anything. I’m in PR!”)

Notwithstanding the oily PR guy, if you’re looking for an intelligent, adult movie, you might want to consider "State of Play." I like its position that the social media aren’t intrinsically better or worse than the mainstream media. As Salon.com critic Stephanie Zacharek writes, “While ‘State of Play’ is, in some ways, an elegy for the printed newspaper, it's really more of a rallying cry for newspapers to rethink and retool everything, fast. The new house has to be built and ready before the old one crashes to the ground.”