Is Ford paying too much to be ‘liked’?

04Nov11

The battle for Facebook likes is heating up, as brands try to build their communities on the social network – before Facebook hikes up its ad rates.

Ford is one big brand that’s really warming up to Zuckerberg’s offer – but at what cost? Some of the figures reveal that advertising with Facebook offers a poor return compared to PR when it comes to adding ‘likes’.

The Wall Blog writes that Ford recently spent 5% of its $95m budget for its spokespuppet ‘Doug’ campaign on Facebook advertising. Yet this push only acquired 43,000 new thumbs ups - a relatively tiny ‘like’s spike for that kind of money.

Indeed, it works out at $110 per new ‘like’ – around £70 in UK money. That seems an awful lot to persuade someone to approve of your page – someone who might never engage with your brand on Facebook again. Thankfully, not all friends are so expensive.

Compare that to a recent PR campaign that I ran at my agency for a (to remain nameless) client, a major UK retailer. In only a few days we added around 2,500 new ‘likes’ for no more than £1 per ‘like’. Advertising around this campaign was far more modest than the Ford campaign, and actually more efficient – but still more than double the cost of the PR element.

One of the keys to the success was our grasp of storytelling, and our ability to integrate it with traditional PR, and Twitter. It was this element that ramped up the likes and delivered an audience interested in hearing more from the brand – and crucially, being more open to buying from it.

Warning - Facebook friends might cost more than a celebrity rider

Many people ask me how much they need to spend to reach a certain threshold of ‘likes’. Almost all of them would baulk at Ford’s figures. What do you think? Should Ford get better value for money? Do you think PR is an effective way to drive Facebook ‘likes’? What are the most effective ways of driving thumbs up for brand pages? What’s more important – ‘likes’ or engagement?

Filed under: advertising, campaign, consumer, economics, Facebook, PR, public relations, Social culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: campaign, facebook, likes, PR, public relations, ROI, social media

Ricky Gervais top 5 creativity tips

17Oct11

He’s known for publicly insulting the biggest names in Hollywood, for his record breaking podcasts, and for hit TV series including the Office – Ricky Gervais’ star continues to ascend. Now, amazingly, he’s here to offer his tips on creativity, social media and how to handle interviews with journalists.

In his essay in this month’s Wired, Gervais makes essential reading for PRs and, indeed, anyone involved in media relations, social media, and the wider creative market.

In it, the British funny man does an amazing u-turn on Twitter, describes his aggressive media interview technique, and offers his ideas on how to, uh, get better ideas.

I’ve extracted Gervais’ top tips on creativity for this post because, well, they’re good. Check em.

1. You’ve either got it or you don’t  

Sorry folks, but the comedy writer and performer writes that “Scientific studies of creativity have basically concluded that it can’t be taught, as it is a “facility” rather than a learned skill.”  Some will say that this makes a good case for separate creative teams in agencies, others will disagree. I’ll leave it to you to decide. However, it kind of follows that, if you believe science,  then you believe that there are people in your company who are creative and those who aren’t. Learn who’s who and capitalise on their unique ‘facilities’.

2. Be playful 

Ricky writes that “creativity is the ability to play – (and) to be able to turn that facility on and off when necessary.” If you’re not uninhibitedly playful, you’ll struggle to get in touch with your creative side. If you’re in an office environment, learn to understand why you’re creative people might not be poker face serious all the time, and why their playful nature could be one of your company’s biggest assets. Give them room – and appropriate work spaces – to be playful and create.

3. Make mistakes – and learn which ones to keep. 

There’s a quote in the essay from Scott Adams, who said said, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Unless you play around, experiment and are ready to embrace failure, you cannot be creative. In prop maker Artem’s  workshop, the company’s creative mantra is displayed on a placard: “Be ambitious fools.” Shooting for the stars whilst enjoying falls in the mud along the way is key to unlocking more ideas.  Never put a creative on the spot and expect a Eureka moment there and then – appreciate that the good ones will be generative when they need to be, as well as selective. Both parts are equally important.

4. Be childlike

Gervais quotes one of my favourite Pablo Picasso lines: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Being childlike,  feeling possessed by your fascination, as children do, embracing new concepts and being open and prepared to learn intensifies your creative expression. So give creative employees rusks and let them wear romper suits. Have Teletubbies on 24/7, yo. Maybe not – but in the grown up world of business, understand those with the ability to access and channel their inner child could make you shed loads of money. Attempting to ossify that quality into hard-nosed business could limit your company’s creative output. Learn how to manage it.

5. Stay true to your character, not your reputation

Never be worried by who other people think you are – as Gervais says,  ”Character is who you really are. Only close friends really know you and that’s all that counts in the end.” Ok, if you’re a PR company making branded stories instead of art, you’re possibly highly sensitive to reputation matters. Deal with this by separating your creatives from your brand champions and audience connectors (media relations team, social media community moderators). That way, the creators can create and the connectors can connect for instance.

Cheers Ricky. Sure you didn’t intend this for PRtists but the tips seem applicable to anyone  who creates something.

Filed under: celebrity, Creativity, PR   |  1 Comment
Tags: agency, Creativity, PR, ricky gervais, social media, Twitter, wired

Why ‘boring’ sells

30Aug11

Being interesting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – boring sells funnier.

If you’re familiar with Kevin Beresford’s crushingly dull yet brilliantly obsessive top-selling books and calendars about British roundabouts, or the AA’s ‘Britain’s Best Car Parks’ (Red, with Kevin Beresford), then you’ll probably already know that boring can sell.

Though watching paint dry hasn’t made the front cover of a national yet (fancy a challenge?), a contest for a ‘Fence of the year’ as scooped a full page in today’s Sun (see attached). And with a quote, key messages and a call to action (email address/web link) included, it’s a PR coup from heaven for the small price of a hellishly cringe-inducing headline.

No of-fence, but this is really boring

 

It doesn’t look like the PR team pitched the story as ‘boring’ though – the client quote is too sober and suggests the brand hasn’t quite embrace its inner dullard. So it’s probably just a ‘happy’ accident.

Yet, you can often design this stuff – by being knowingly pedantic. Or at least using a little self-deprecating honesty.

Writer Joe Moran has been celebrating the everyday for years – why not check his blog out for inspiration on how to find fascination in the run of the mill.

How you sell boring to a client is another matter entirely. But if you can convince your client to man-hug the mundane, you might well captivate their target audience with a dull topic in a flashy red top just like the Fence Competition brand did.

By Scot Devine

Filed under: marketing, PR, public relations, scot devine, work   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: boring, PR, PR tropes, public relations, scot devine, tabloid, the sun

8 Heroes of the London Riots

09Aug11

The Blitz had bulldog Winston Churchill, and 7/11 New York had the willful Mayor Giuliani, and London post-riots has…well who does it have?

As I changed my son’s nappy after we woke up this morning, London was bloodied, looted and smouldering. Shockingly, our Prime Minister was yet to make an appearance, our mayor was still on holiday, our police chiefs (COBRA) hadn’t met yet, and the ruined, terrified city looked naked and leaderless. My three  month old merely looked naked and innocent, but strangely as likely as anyone to lead the city’s recovery at that point.

Then something wonderful happened. Whilst the politicians wrung their hands in the shadows, no one person emerged to rally us. So we all decided to do it ourselves.

Heroes emerged from the ruins, both individuals and entire communities. And it looks like they, not David Cameron or Boris Johnson, who’ll help fix London.

Here are some of the ones who have inspired me over the last sad, scary and uncertain 24 hours. There are countless more – if you would like to suggest them, I’d love to hear about them. Hell, we could all use a little pepping up with positive stories right now.

1. The Turks – as many of us shrunk or shook last night, multiple tweets about the proud Turkish community’s stand in Dalston ignited sparks of hope in all of us. Forming a visibly imposing, physical line outside their shops, they stood firm, strong, and unshakably together. Turks 1, Rioters 0. They, along with other ethnic minority groups in the world’s most multicultural city, showed us what community can look like in the face of sickening attack.

2. The West Indian woman who confronted looters in Hackney.  If this woman had a Twitter account, she’d possibly have a following large enough and passionate enough to make the UK’s #1 Tweeter, Stephen Fry jealous. With enough moxie to make even the Iron Lady shrink back, I’m sure all of us wish we had a a tenth of her courage.

3 . Stretched beyond belief, London’s firemen and women are ‘simply doing their job.’ Of course, it’s a job for heroes, many of whom work part-time and never know when the shit will hit the fan, and it’s always worth reminding ourselves of their stunning contribution to getting London back under control.

4. Sky News’ Mark Stone – Mark Stone is a rock of a reporter. With little more protection than his balls of granite, and armed with an iPhone, he rolled, confronted, filmed and filed reports from deep inside the riot zone in Clapham Junction. Here, looters vandalised, looted and assaulted for up to two hours before police presence appeared. Strange reporting  improvisations around empty Immodium packets in Boots merely lent some emotional fragility to his otherwise brick hard determination to report the news. Elsewhere, BBC reporters were attacked (citation missing), a female Guardian journalist was set-upon (citation missing) and countless other brave journalists have suffered for trying to bring us the story as it happens. We salute you.

5. The Ledbury chefs, when they’re not serving up two star Michelin food, are dishing out the pain on criminal trespassers, according to food blogger, Naked Sushi. The foody was violently robbed of her wedding ring whilst in the middle of a special dinner last night, after looters smashed their way in to mug customers. She reports however that, after safely stowing customers in toilets and the wine cellar, they repelled the rioters by “rushing up from the kitchen with rolling pins, fry baskets, and other dangerous kitchen tools and scared off the looters.” Brave boys and girls.

6. The police – ‘Inspector Winter’ offers a first-hand, street level account of the stress and downright terror of a shocke, under-resourced and overwhelmed force attempting to quell the riots. Let’s face it, just seeing the police on the streets under these circumstances is a relief. The question is, how will they fare tonight and will they have access to water cannons, rubber bullets and other riot weapons used by their Northern Irish and European counterparts?

7. Camila Batmanghelidjh is a woman who makes sense. Her bravery extends far beyond the past few days, but her experience and advice seem somehow to be central to helping to rebuilding the city. Listen to her.

8. The people of London. What’s more beautiful than the sight of hundreds of brooms held aloft to clean up riot zones? The fact that it’s ordinary Londoners volunteering to clean up their neigbourhoods. Sometime after midnight (I think…hazy memory), someone suggested on Twitter to clean-up the mess. With the country’s leaders well and truly at sea (or just sunbathing by it), normal people just stepped up to the plate to help straighten London out. It’s awesome and shows that together we can regain control.

And what of tonight? What do we do? How do we stand up to the inevitable onslaught? How do we cope with the aftermath?

Filed under: Around London, Uncategorized   |  2 Comments
Tags: heroes, heroism, London, londonriots

What’s your shopping high score?

04Aug11

More and more clients are asking us to advise them on the hot ‘gamification’ trend that’s currently firing the imaginations of business innovators. One of the areas we’re looking at is how to promote social shopping, or the gamification of retail. We’re not the only ones thinking about it of course – as these cool ‘shopped pics show how the regular supermarket sweep could be turned into an addictive game.

By Scot Devine

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Tags: gamification, PR, retail, scot devine, shopping, social media, social shopping

7 ways social gaming brands can win the PR war

28Jul11

With Zynga’s City Ville launching in China (not to mention a looming sale or IPO for the star of the Facebook games), and Disney Playdom’s ‘Garden’s of Time’ reviving the brand’s fortunes, buzz around social gaming has never been so high.

Indeed, when I ran a 12 month search of major news sources today, I found that there are now almost double the number of social gaming stories per month (100) than this time last year (54).

So whether you’re a start-up or a major player, there has never been a better time to become a social gaming thought leader. Particularly if you want to attract investors, build corporate confidence, drive sales leads from merchants and advertisers, woo the hottest talent, and boost the number of sign-ups to convert into coveted DAUs and MAUs. So how can PR help you stand out from the growing crowd?

1. Guide the investment conversation

Investors love talking up social gaming, and with the revenues delivered by the likes of Zynga, not to mention the growth in virtual goods (currently worth $1.9bn), it makes for drool-inducing speculation.

With more users than its nearest 9 competitors combined, Zynga is the hot company. However, its dependence on Facebook worries some potential investors. And there are fears over a social gaming bubble to boot. Neither Zynga’s leadership nor the fears of a bubble bursting should inhibit upstarts and challenger brands alike from leading the conversation, however.

Shrewd players will run effective thought leadership campaigns. The multi-platform opportunity (mobile, iPad, iPhone, Android, PC etc) is an interesting topic in particular. Being opinionated & visionary on this subject alone can lead to some great interviews and savvy presentations can make you a hit on the speaker circuit can speaker circuit.

Bold, insightful and well-placed opinion articles can also wield influence, as are bloggable and tweetable insights into the workings of the industry and market trends. Infographic designers eat your hearts out.   When there’s an appetite for information in a nascent industry, PRs can help increase your share of voice in the conversation to get you noticed with investors.

2. Leverage the gamification trend with mainstream brands

Bigger trend at play – ‘gamification’ is entering every aspect of our lives (from to do lists to recycling). Brands like Volvo, for instance are tapping into gaming; so PR can help drive leads to developers from brands who are game.

3. Promote your Facebook relationship – or better still, don’t

Let’s face it, Facebook marketing is still a hot media topic – and 50% of its users log in specifically to play games. If you have an amazing presence on Zuckerberg’s site, leverage it. After all, it’s an amazing cross-marketing platform. If you don’t, there’s a massive upside: there’s an entire universe of other platforms and networks out there.

Most games acquire users virally anyway (invite a friend incentives), and success stories like World of Warcraft became its own, hugely successful social network without Facebook. And with news of Zuck’s baby’s growth slowing, not to mention a new generation of gamers growing up in other environments (e.g. Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters), the future of social networking is by no means as predictable as, say, Zynga would like.

So, there’s good reason to talk about your own platform as well as all the others (Chrome, Android, I0S),  devices including iPad and iPhone, not to mention the multitude of mobile networks and other global third party social networks (including gaming portals).

by Flickr user Kaeru

4. Forget global networks for a minute – unleash the power of local third party networks

There’s a wealth of local third party networks, e.g. Skyrock in France has over 20m users, Tuenti in Spain has 16m+, whilst StudiVZ in Germany has more than 13m users. Sure, they have lost some ground to Facebook, but they still offer a massive number of consumers to target. This is a business story that is begging to be told – and an alternative consumer audience available to engage with.

5. Clean up reputations soiled by corporate mud-slinging 

Simply type ‘social gaming litigation’ into Google and you’ll see the reputation management issues that are helping to define the industry. And you thought the intellectual property scandal at the heart of The Social Network movie was a big deal? Litigation and counter-litigation over code and concept theft is daily bread to journalists covering the social gaming industry. If ever there was a job for a savvy reputation management flack over who invented Farmville et al, it’s in social gaming.
6. Engage brands, retailers and advertisers 

20% of social gamers have spent money within a game (reference  missing) and, more interestingly, the market (virtual goods and in-game advertising) is expected to be worth $5bn by 2015. Merchants are looking to sell virtual goods, advertisers want to buy space in-game, and brands want to create virtual games – so there’s a massive opportunity to use PR to drive leads. H&M successfully sold virtual clothing, for instance, in game – so using PR to make your particular social game attractive to merchants, brands and advertisers.

7. Bring the virtual world into the real world

Users flock to social gaming thanks to advertising and viral mechanics. Game producers cross-sell their other titles in-game, and persuade players to invite their friends to gain more vital game energy as well as currency. If you have Facebook sewn up, Zynga style, then acquiring more gamers for new titles is easy and cheap. For competitors, particularly start-ups nervously building MAUs and DAUs, however, acquiring new users on Facebook can be difficult and expensive (CPA was $0.10 and is now $1). Marketing on other platforms can be even costlier. A great PR and social media campaign, however, can help.

Particularly with a strong offline execution.  Angry Birds has become a pop culture icon to create more touch points (retail) and revenue streams (merchandise, e.g. plushes). Social games aimed at younger audiences (Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters) have also done this successfully. Farmville has gone pop culture but not of its own volition – the National Trust has created a Farmville-inspired real world campaign where 10,000 ‘players’ get to run a real life farm. Farmville could have done this itself to generate amazing consumer PR for the game as well as the parent brand, to drive lapsed and new users – and attract merchants and advertisers at the same time. It’s only a matter of time before other social games want to make the leap into the real world – and PR can definitely help with that.

Filed under: consumer, Facebook, Ideas, internet, PR, public relations, scot devine, viral marketing, work   |  2 Comments
Tags: PR, reputation management, social gaming, social media, vc

Ofcom | The Communications Market Report: International

11Feb11

Must-read stuff – Ofcom’s 2010 communcations market report.

The UK and Spain lead the way on digital TV take-up (91 per cent of homes)The UK had the second highest number of homes with pay TV DVRs (such as Sky+ and V+) at the end of 2009 with 7.8 million devices, up by 40 per cent on 2008.Although the UK leads the world in the take-up of HD ready TV sets (59 per cent of households), take-up of HDTV services is lower than in other countries where more high definition channels are available.Just under a quarter of UK consumers (24 per cent) watch TV on the internet each week more than in any other country surveyed. People in the USA were the second most likely to watch TV on the internet (22 per cent) on a weekly basis.US TV viewers watched more TV than

via Ofcom | The Communications Market Report: International.

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Tags: communciations, digital, PR, scotdevine, tv

How revolting students can spruce up their skills for future PR jobs

13Dec10

Riots on the steps of Topshop, protests on the streets of London, sit-ins in lecture theatres around the country – the students are rebelling because the future smells revolting.

By Flickr user, I Don't Know, Maybe

Kids as young as 12 are worried about a jobless, debt-laden future. They’re turning their anxiety into anger and directing it at the government,  tax-dodging mobile phone giants and ‘the rich’.

Since my guest lecture at Greenwich University recently (the day after the Millbank  riot), I’ve been thinking about the skills that students will need to sell themselves upon graduation. Arguably, this is the most dynamic period in PR’s history – and we’re all learning more new than we ever thought we would; those of us that aren’t learning are toast, even if it’s the hilarious editorial coverage kind.

Don’t just take my word for it. Publicising his latest sci-fi stonker, Zero Gravity , William Gibson said in a BBC interview (aside – his publishing tour of course is an example of a traditonal PR being used to sell books): “In the 1960s the present was three or four years long…Now the present is the length of a news cycle some days.” To make PRs and PR under-grads feel twitchier still, writing about the 100 year career in Wired UK, Russell argued that climbing up the career ladder might be pointless when the ladder “is being set on fire from below, dismantled from above and no longer has anything to lean against.” Douglas Coupland (also promoting a recent book) predicts that technological disruption will continue for years to come – making for a nerve-jangling ride into the future for some (maybe all).

By Flickr user romana klee

So what changes do today’s students need to make to become more employable in the face of industry-wide disruptions? And how can universities help prepare them? What core skills will remain marketable, and what new ones will make students stand out? I’ve jotted down a few thoughts on what the industry will be looking for. If you have any comments or ideas please throw them in.

Traditional skills still crucial

Whoop! Whoop! Call da brand police

A solid understanding of business, a grasp of branding and marketing, and professional-quality writing skills will all continue to be sought-after.

Despite the decline of newspaper and print magazines sales, we will still con tinue to think and behave like journalists in many regards. So media literacy, having a keen ‘news sense’ and being highly generative – the ability to produce many relevant ideas – will still be absolutely vital. And news reports will still observe some of the basic tropes they have for years, as parodied in this funny-but-true video from Charlie Brooker’s mirthsome Screenwipe.

EMERGING SKILLS

PR Technologists

By Flickr user mansikka

“Stop communicating products & start making communication products” – Gareth Kay, Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

Nike may be known for its apparel but it’s almost better know for its content and communication products, like Nike+. Indeed, the invention is still held up as one of the smartest marketing innovations of our times. Useful and free, it communicates training data to people and helps them share it with others. In doing so builds loyalty to the brand whilst further promoting Nike by allowing training data to be shared on Facebook walls, for instance.

PRs who grasp the technological dimension – particularly in embedding tech into our everyday lives seamlessly – will be better placed to develop the comms content and products of tomorrow. Go out and make apps. Learn how to code. Have a go at making an Android app or some Facebook ‘FMBL’ coding. Befriend hackers and work on cool new things together.

Guardian app draws reader deeper into the story

On a more modest scale, you can see evidence of code as editorial content more and more. This can draw people into a story in a new way that was previously impossible. The Guardian seems to be doing this better than anyone else. For instance, its recent spending review cuts app let users interact with the story in an amazingly engaging way – by playing God (or at least George Osborne) with the budget. If that was just a plain old article, a reader might merely have read for a minute or two, or even skimmed it for a few secs.  The app, on the opther hand, draws you in and lets you interact, explore and really engage with the story. It’s sheer genius. There’s absolutely no reason why PR content can’t evolve in the same way. Bright graduate talent will grasp this and, if they can’t code, they’ll know someone who can.

The key questions you should be looking to answer include “what can you make to help people connect and share branded and editorial content?”, “how can I help people engage and interact with this content in a more meaningful way?”

Design

 

Often dismissed as trivial ‘prettifying’, the world of infographics at its best has transformed otherwise dull data stories into attention-grabbing, shareable content.

You’ll find many examples on sites like David McCandless’s corker, which show the grey and lifeless world of number-crunching colliding with the verve and finesse of art and design to create visual data journalism.

We work with data stories and content all of the time in PR. That’s why you see so many top tens and consumer opinion poll/survey stories. The area ain’t shrinking either: as more companies promote cloud computing, data are fast becoming many companies’ crown jewels. So being able to turn data into attention-seizing narrative will become a marketable skill. Making data look cool isn’t the only aspect of design that applies to PR, though.

From standout visual storytelling – your average national newspaper photo editor has more than 17,000 new photos per day to choose from on PA Newswire alone – to professional presenting  (the age of text and chart-laden Powerpoints is hopefully behind us), having multimedia visual and design skills are becoming more and more prized. Having an artistic and design-oriented mindset, as well as understanding the visual semiotics of the media will increasingly help you sell yourself to potential employers.

Gaming as campaigning

By Flickr user simononly

“Life is just a game, we’re all just the same,” sang pint-sized popstar Prince, in his song Controvery, during his purple reign of the charts in the 80s.

When he was supposedly removing ribs to auto-fellate, miners were striking, Ronald Reagan was surviving assassinations in order to get consumers addicted to debt, and women with enormous shoulderpads and men with treadmills in their offices took themselves too seriously.  The world didn’t exactly seem overly playful. Now however, in spite of our collective problems, gaming and play has found its way into the damndest of brand-est places.

There’s VW’s fantastic ‘Fun Theory’ has turned everything from throwing trash in the bin to descending stairs into a train station into playful nonsense. Or, in a more classical sense, Mini recently created a kind of alternate reality game in Stockholm to launch its new Cooper. A comnpany has even turned the mundane to do list, into a game with Epic Win.

Meanwhile, brands would kill (or will in the future, if you believe sci-fi novel, Jennifer Government) to have fans like those who take part in Star Wars cos play events. Sticking with the world of entertainment, games like Call of Duty (CoD) have given shoot-em-ups the profile of Hollywood movies, whilst Mafia Wars have drawn people into a hopeless addiction to Facebook games. Both have conditioned consumers to expect higher production values in their content (CoD), and gaming to drive social interaction (Mafia Wars).

So what the f*** does this mean for my PR education, Scot? Simply trying to make a general point about becoming game-minded, really. Develop an awareness of how to create and develop games. Work with people who make them, hell – try to make your own. Interrogate the quotidien and mundane and generate ideas around livening them up with a bit of play. And make fantasy brand PR campaigns build around play to change behaviours.

Conversationalistas

By Flicker user strollerdos

As Clay Shirky wrote in Cognitive Surplus, social media are “the connective tissue in society.” In the same book, Shirky shows how people harness social media to drive both frivolous and highly focused communities. A good, current example of the latter sees students organising their fee protests using social media. Related, a frivolous example at my nephew’s school da kids organise a 5 minute ‘lie down’ happening on Facebook.

Brands, of course, decided to dive into the ocean of social media, splashing the good marketing word around on twitter, Facebook and forums. Pepsi turned off its $10m Superbowl ads to pile money into Facebook et al. People are talking about most brands online anyway, so most brands are getting their heads wet, and are looking for people like graduates to help them stay afloat.

See, in today’s brand communication world, if we’re not joiners, we’re splitters, and PRs help brands join, continue and start conversations. So being an online conversationalista, already engaging online in forums, blogs, facebook and twitter is something we look for in candidates.

Of course, ne’er a day goes buy without a gnarly wave or an ugly rip tide plunging into reputational crisis those brands swimming in the social media sea – from legendary nightmares like Nestle’ Killer, to this week’s Vodafone #mademesmile twitter-storm, to fast food chain Chipolte’s trying to hide history by simply lying in this recent case.  So crisis management skills are a bonus.

Blogging and microblogging

Blogging was dead then it was back, now it’s dead again. Though in many ways, blogging is truly flourishing, with people earning a living out of niche blogs like food ones, and video blogging, too. On a recent business trip to Stockholm, I was at a fashion party where I learned how bloggers dominate the style scene, with old media less relevant than ever.

So running your own blog, and boosting it up the Google rankings will serve you well. It might make you a no brainer hire. I’m  not talking about blogs with posts as hopelessly infrequent and pathetically under-promoted as this one, either. Achieving page rank above 4 will put you in good stead – 5, even better. As clearly you’ll understand niches, audiences, promotion, ‘stickiness’, design, content – and being an all-round Jedi with writing, audio, video and still images.

What’s your take?

It’s a scary time for students, certainly in England and Wales, where tuition fees are set to climb to their highest ever, and graduates leaving saddled with more debt than any generation in history. So if you have any ideas on what skills you think graduates will need in the coming years to nail their dream PR job, holler.

Filed under: Around the web, Creativity, marketing, PR, public relations, Social culture, Uncategorized, viral marketing   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: blogging, college, design, education, facebook, fee protests, future, Gaming, graduate, PR, professional, public relations, social media, student, technologist, trends, Twitter, university

Skimming and sliding in Greenwich: my first lecture to PR/journalism students

16Nov10

Hazy day, the DLR seems to be skimming towards the Cutty Sark, and I’m light-headed, forgetting to breathe as I punch in the finishing touches to my presentation. Breathe. Breathe! Man, I’ve left this until the last minute.

It’s my first day back at uni – at least it is since I graduated. As it goes, I’m pretty psyched, having been invited to speak about consumer PR to some second year students in the Business School at Greenwich Uni. Why not?

So psyched, in fact, that I’ve gone totally, absolutely overkill on my presentation. Like using  a tank to kill an fly, I’ve got 70 slides for, uh, 50 minutes of presenting. And that’s after chainsawing out an entire section. I vomited slides into that deck. Now, wearing rubber gloves and a head scarf, I’m still frantically mopping it up before applying final polish.

I’ve just tried to cram way too much in. Yet there just seems to be much cool stuff to share. It’s got me like a kid with Lego, this presentation: I want to tip enough blocks to fill the floor and get everyone to play with it. Interaction, interaction, how do I get in more interaction…? Fuck it, no more time, train draws in.

At least my travel timing is good. I can saunter through the atmospheric streets of Greenwich. The Business School is in the old Naval College, a world heritage site. Can you believe it? World heritage site, every inch of it well deserved and preserved. Broad, easy vistas greet me, inviting me to amble into statuesque buildings. There’s a rich patina here, like invisible energy. I’m vibing off it, and feel welcome, not intimidated. Hope I don’t have a rude awakening when I face the audience, 100 eyes staring back at me. Will they be vital or dull,  engaged, or far away, interested or bored?

As it turns out, the students go incredibly easy on me. They laugh in some of the right places. They respond to some of my appeals to interact. They’re a nice bunch facing an uncertain future. Generously, they gave me a round of applause. First blush for a little while. They send me off with some wine and a homemade mug. Second blush. Vigorous shaking of hands. Muchos gracias, homies. I wish I had a flying shitake shroom, sounds like a sweet way to buzz home.

Despite the presentation appearing not to bomb, I didn’t manage to do what I wanted with it. That said, I think I achieved the goal of being relatively useful to the students. And that’s the priority.

Here’s what I’d like to change in future:

• Aim for 30 slides and keep a couple of games/exercises under my sleeves
• Send the AV media in advance to test (2 out of 3 videos failed, running off a slow PC), or run everything off my laptop
• Build in much more interaction – had some good ideas on original (very scruffy, barely legible) mindmaps for this, but didn’t prep them
• Allow more time to offer an insider’s view of how to get a start in the industry, and the value of specialist courses
• The cases worked really well – could afford to have fewer but expand on them (there’s just so many good pieces of work out there – unlike advertising, the worst PR work  never gets seen, having little or no way of buying its way in)
• Actually create a pres better tailored to this audience – as I’d defintely like to help students out more, seems like a nice thing to do

Anyway, here’s the Slideshare pres, unfortunately with all the agency-sensitive, interesting and risking copyright-infringement content stripped out.

And some of the original mindmaps that I’ll hopefully plunder in future.

Filed under: Around London, consumer, Education, marketing, Youth culture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: agency, consumer PR, journalism, lecture, London, PR, presentation, public relations, seminar, social media, student, study, University of Greenwich

Cycling to work, BP and why Kuato Lives

16Nov10

“Fucking hell,” I thought to myself, “why am I being such a dick?”

I’m in a forecourt of a BP station. Arguing with the manager over 20p. 20p! Christ, what’s the world coming to?

The fat air machine swallowed 20p, rattled into life, spat out some air, then farted itself to sleep.

My bicycle tyres are 20 PSi when their capacity is 80. The 7.5 mile ride from Crouch End to my office in Victoria is a struggle on flat tyres. It’s like the roads are paved with treacle. Maybe they are, some tramp and his dog’s over there licking the pavement.

So my tyres are barely over 20, the roads are still lined with treacle. And now the manager is refusing to give me my money back. Refusing! The service I paid for doesn’t work. So I’m meant to pay for nothing? I don’t understand. +1C cold is chilling my extremeties, and a mysterious freezing fog is creeping into London like a returning army of ghosts. And the manager is giving me 20p instead of 40p.

Only when I threaten to ruin him with my blog – which is, I assume, utterly impossible, and undesirable even if it was possible – does he change his mind. But I’m out the door, heading for the treacle, see him chasing after me, brandishing a 20p, and I’m shaking my head, “I wouldn’t dream of taking it off a creep like you”, and I don’t know why I’m even thinking this but I’m like, “YES! Moral Highground!” It’s pathetic.

Driving or cycling through California, this would never happen. By law, air has to be free. Nothing should stand in the way of achieving perfectly-inflated tyres, least of all money. Is this a sign of civilisation? Are Californians more evolved than us? Probably. What is it with paying for air. Air is all around us. Compressing it cost money, of course.  Why the fluctuation in prices, though? There’s a BP garage on Vauxhall Bridge Road that charges cyclists £1 for air. £1, man! The least they could do is give away free lip balm with the air so they could kiss us while they shaft us.

Reminds me of Total Recall.  In it, a deformed, Yoda-like figure called Kuato emerges from his host’s belly to find a way to give air to Mars, whose inhabitants have to lease it from an evil corporation. Where’s Kuato when we need him now?

I’m on my bike, wondering why I acted like an ass – I wasn’t rude, just felt mad that was even debating over 20p. 20p! Cycling through the treacle, however, I wonder why we can’t have free air. And wondered, what’s to stop people from lobbying for it – cyclists and motorists alike. Two groups, rarely happy road chums, united against the greed of the likes of BP.

So I thought, why not start a blog and see if you could drum up any support. Might come to nothing. Might not. In Total Recall, someone said: “The Martians love Kuato. They think he’s fuckin’ George Washington.” Maybe it’s tijme to bring Kuato back.

If I start the lobbying blog, I’ll call it Kuato Lives. And maybe feel like less of a dick about today’s air-rage.

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