Archives for posts with tag: pr

It’s PR, but not as we know it

July 23, 10 //

There’s a good blog post from Mark Kobayashi-Hillary (a man with a great name!) over on Computer Weekly. He talks about how, with so many tech (and other trade) journalists now on Twitter, PRs should take note and get stuck in.

It’s a tactic that has become second nature to myself and my colleagues at Wildfire, but, as Mark says, the industry as a whole has often been slow on the uptake:

“This all comes back to the blog I wrote here recently about some executives trying Twitter and then discarding it because they could not find any use in just updating the world on their meeting schedule…Some PR agencies have realised this. There are many now with strong digital and social expertise, but there are so many that are just riding on an existing contract. They will ultimately die out through natural selection.”

There’s a great point here about the inability to react to change and the dangers of ‘doing nothing’. It might be ok in the short to mid term, but the ultimate endgame will be disastrous.

But, it’s another comment that Mark makes that is equally as interesting, when he suggests that tech journalists too are waking up to the benefits of social media engagement and, are beginning to cut out the PRs that are ignoring these new channels (and even some that aren’t) and going directly to their clients or spokespeople:

“This works both ways – how many trade hacks really pay attention to the sea of press releases anymore when they can talk directly to the people they are writing about?”

We’re beginning to take a very different approach – as an agency – in the role we play with some of our clients in this social savvy world. Rather than acting as the gatekeeper, we are much more the facilitator or even the supporter or guide.

This is bloody scary for some PR agencies, but its not going to change any time soon. It’s only going to get worse (or better!).

Social media: no old media mindsets need apply

July 6, 10 //

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I wrote a rather ranty blog post the other day following an opinion piece on NMA suggesting that social media wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The whole incident got me thinking about the reasons why some people, brands, agencies, marketers etc. find social media so difficult to understand and get to grips with. Afterall, it’s not rocket science and the vast majority of us use it in our personal (and often professional) lives on a daily basis.

I’m more and more convinced that the real reason for misunderstanding social media is that, more often than not, it is approached with an old media/marketing mindset.

Because that is the key challenge for brands. It’s why so many marketing industries have struggled to get to grips with social media. PR runs scared because it diminishes the role of media relations. Advertising is scared because it doesn’t let you buy your way into people’s living rooms. SEO is scared because it is reducing the power of natural search (just ask Google). Direct marketing is scared because it challenges the role of email (and offline).

These however are all worries that can be overcome. PR has a fantastic opportunity to use its traditional skill-set to engage directly with end users. Advertising doesn’t need to worry about a lack of paid-for opportunities on social networks. SEO can add social media into it’s toolbox and influence SERPs in new ways. And even DM or email can link up with social media to reenergize and increase the effectiveness of campaigns.

Social media is just another channel and whether your background is earned or paid media, there are opportunities. But the old techniques and tactics just won’t work. We all need to adapt and learn new ways of using this new channel.

Often however, to get the most out of social media, it needs to be integrated with other marketing forms. This isn’t a new approach. Very few brands do PR or advertising in isolation. Marketing departments exist to ensure that all marketing activity across all channels is unified an integrated to a certain extent (or at least they should). And social media is no different.

So, investing in social media is important and requires new skills and approaches. But, just because of this, don’t silo it, integrate it into the rest of your marketing activities to get the best returns.

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Are we still really talking about AVE?

June 28, 10 //

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Sometimes the “PR industry” really frustrates me. It annoys me when I see discussion about whether PR should get involved in digital or social media (yes, this still happens) and also about PR’s role in SEO. But, whilst all these might be vaguely tolerable, it’s utterly ridiculous that we are still having discussions about AVE.

Not only is the AVE debate still going on, but it is being debated by some of the biggest names in PR. Recently some of PR’s bigwigs met in Barcelona under the auspices of the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication to agree a set of evaluation and measurement ‘principles’. The so-called Barcelona Principles were agreed as follows:

Goal setting and measurement are important

Media measurement requires quantity and quality

AVEs are not the value of public relations

Social media can and should be measured

Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results (outputs)

Organisational results and outcomes should be measured whenever possible

Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

I’ve not really got an issue with any of these. However, they are all pretty basic and obvious. Also, ambiguous wording such as “results and outcomes should be measured whenever possible” gives PRs an easy opt-out. The principles don’t add anything to the debate and don’t push the boundaries of what forward thinking PRs and agencies already know.

The mention of AVE embodies this. Don’t get me wrong. I know there are lots of PR agencies out there that are still using AVE (I’m proud to say we are not one of them). And I know there are even more clients out there demanding it.

But AVE is a dinosaur and by still debating it and talking about it, we are merely giving it more awareness. In a digital world, AVE has absolutely no place (I personally doubt it had much place in a non-digital world either, but I wasn’t around then!). The other horrible thing about AVE is that it diminishes the role and power of PR. It reduces the power and raison d’être of PR to a mere ‘cost-effective way to do advertising’. Incredibly, by using AVE, all PRs are archiving is ‘doing-down’ their role in the marketing mix.

So whilst I can’t argue against the principle which declares that AVEs are not the value of public relations, it’s just sad that the conversation hasn’t moved on from this point yet, at least at an ‘industry body’ level.

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Newsjacking in a social media world

June 26, 10 //

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The PR industry is used to the term of newsjacking – the idea of taking something that is on the national news agenda (e.g. the budget, new legislation or even a event like the World Cup) and using it to get coverage or mentions for a brand. It’s a tried and tested tactic and can get good, short-term, results.

Newsjacking is equally effective in a social media world however and with the luxury of not being dependent on third parties (e.g. journalists), it means that brands (or anyone in fact) can be a little bit more creative.

The strategy is the same. Take an event, issue, news agenda item that is gripping the socialmediasphere, add in some creativity, seed it effectively and you have a recipe for creating the next viral hit.

It’s actually interesting that brands aren’t jumping on the social media newsjacking bandwagon more frequently. There was a good article recently on this by James Whately. When the ITV HD TV channel accidentally switched to an advert during England’s World Cup game, viewers missed a crucial goal. James suggested that this was a fantastic opportunity for Hyundai - the brand whose advert was shown – to create some buzz around the unfortunate incident. I mentioned in the comments that this was in fact similar to a viral video released by Tic Tac following a similar incident earlier last year.

Of course there is a reputation issue here too. It’s not only brands that can newsjack in a social media world. Anyone can create entertaining or thought-provoking content and sometimes this can cause a brand reputation issue. But it can also provide a potential opportunity for brand as well, with grassroots content generation.

I was lucky enough to be at Wimbledon on Thursday and witnessed the end of the marathon Isner/Mahut match out on court 18. I was therefore intrigued to see today a video of the match which has been edited to show a box of Weetabix in Isner’s bag at the end. Whether by the brand or not, it’s quick, entertaining example of digital newsjacking.

So what are the things brands (or non-brands) need to consider when newsjacking on social media:

Be quick – as with all newsjacking, time is of the essence
Be creative – as with all content designed for social media success, the more creative, the better
Seed effectively – seeding content is also important – remember that the majority of information that is shared on social networks actually originates from traditional media sources
Monitor – keep an eye on where the content is being shared, talked about and maybe even reworked
Consider a follow-up – often the problem with newsjacking campaigns is that they are short-lived. Consider ways to lengthen the effect of any activity

Danny Whatmough (@dannywhatmough) is a PR consultant at Wildfire PR. He blogs at dannywhatmough.com and the Wildfire Blog

Are IT journalists abandoning a sinking ship; is PR the lifeboat?

June 8, 10 //

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PR Week reports today that legendary IT journalist and editor of CIO magazine, Martin Veitch, is leaving journalism for the verdant pastures of PR (with Bite).

This follows on the back of some other notable moves in a similar direction recently.

So what does this mean about the state of IT journalism and, indeed, the attraction of PR (an industry which many of these movers no doubt bemoaned on a regular basis!)?

Media woes

The problems the media face have been well documented by myself and others for a long time and need no re-evaluation. And the IT sector is no different, especially when we consider the more traditional ‘print’ titles. After the demise of IT Week in 2008, Computing has recently gone fortnightly and even Computer Weekly has made redundancies (not very insightful, but I also think the continually decreasing quality of the paper used by Computer Weekly is a bad sign…!).

The changing face of PR

And whilst the future looks less and less rosy on one side of the pond, PR perhaps offers an increasingly attractive proposition. I covered an article in the Independent last week which reported the appointment of a number of key journalists by Edelman recently. As the article states:

“In generating their own video and text-based digital content on behalf of clients, [PRs/their clients] are not only taking the bread from the table of a weakened advertising sector but encroaching onto the old territory of television and press companies.”

I took a bit of a (deliberately) controversial line of argument suggesting that journalists were therefore not really needed by PRs anymore and, whilst this is certainly not entirely the case, what it perhaps shows (as I stated in the comments) is that some of those traditional skills that journalists have always had (ability to craft a story, find an angle, write great content) are increasingly being needed by PRs.

It’s therefore no surprise to see Bite and Edelman creating ‘client strategy’ and ‘chief content officer’ roles for ex-journos [and it's certainly not the first and/or last time a journalist will turn to PR]. For those of us living and breathing this ‘new PR’ already, the question will be, whether hiring journalists is the way for PR agencies to go, and/or whether there are new skills that we all need to be learning to put us in the best position to help our clients enter into this brave new world!

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Why PR just doesn’t need journalists anymore

June 3, 10 //

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There’s an rare article about PR in today’s Independent, which lifts the lid on the ‘new PR’:

PRs, who once had to go through the prism of journalism to convey their messages to a mass audience, are increasingly confident in circumventing traditional media altogether. In generating their own video and text-based digital content on behalf of clients, they are not only taking the bread from the table of a weakened advertising sector but encroaching onto the old territory of television and press companies.

Despite much of the article reading like an advert for Edelman (this line for example: “Other PR companies acknowledge the boldness of Edelman’s play”), it nicely recaps the position that PR finds itself in and the potential opportunity that many of us feel exists.

I bang on about this potential opportunity the industry has to really take control in this democratised and fragmented media world we find ourselves in. At a time when brands are quickly waking up to the fact that the ‘push’ marketing of yesterday just doesn’t cut it anymore and that creating intimate relationships directly with end users is not only possible, but is quickly becoming vital for brands.

It’s an exciting time.

PR spam – it’s tricky, it’s a losing battle but education is needed

April 8, 10 //

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If there is one issue that is almost guaranteed to raise its head every month or so, it is PR spam. I’m sure it has always been thus and I’m sure it will continue to be…

Yesterday, Business Zone editor Dan Martin blogged about a couple of PRs that pitched irrelevant information to him, failing to realise that his specialism was small businesses. At almost the same time, I saw tweets from journalists Sally Whittle and Adrian Bridgwater similarly moaning about pitches they had also recently received.

Dan mentions the Inconvenient PR Truth campaign that Real Wire launched earlier in the year. At the time, I resisted the temptation to blog about the campaign as I wasn’t really sure about my reaction to both the issue and the campaign itself.

But, I’ve been mulling it all over and think there are three key points worth making. I also think the comparison with other marketing genres is interesting and pertinent for example, email marketing – another area where spam is seen to be a big problem.

Pitching isn’t always as easy as it might seem – I’m prepared to get slated here, but pitching and targeting isn’t always as easy as it might seem. Media databases and distribution services (like Real Wire) in many ways make it seem too easy for PRs, but they also make us lazy. Factor in the pressure from colleagues and clients to get results and you have a situation where sending out press releases to a distribution list is as simple as a click of a button. This isn’t targeting. Targeting is much much harder and takes a lot of research and understanding. This isn’t an excuse, it is a recognition that this is a specialist technique that needs care and attention. It’s the same with email marketing; it’s easy to blast out an email to a distribution list, but it is much harder to segment your list based on user behaviour, it takes time. And the fact with both is that taking the care and effort will always bring better results.
Spam will always exist - many journalists rely on PR a lot (as a PR, you quickly get to know the publications and journalists that will simply copy and paste anything they are given!). That’s not to say they should just suck it up and cope with it, but there will inevitably be good and bad PRs (like there are good and bad journalists). This will never change. Similarly there will always be companies that spam using email marketing, it’s one of those things that are annoying but we just have to get on and deal with.
Education is vital - combining both these points, there is a genuine need for education in the industry, to promote best practice. We work with an email marketing company that works tirelessly with organisations like the Direct Marketing Association amongst others to promote best practice. I don’t think the same is really true in the PR industry and I’m not sure that it was an outcome of the Inconvenient Truth campaign, but perhaps should have been.

Conclusion: let’s be positive

So what is the answer? I genuinely think there is an opportunity for the industry as a whole, perhaps in combination with journalists, to share positive examples of how this process should work from a best practice standpoint. We are all quick to talk from lofty, strategic positions, but when do we ever talk about more tactical processes? Journalists too are quick to complain about bad practices, but if we don’t ever hear about good examples, how are those lower down in agencies or in-house meant to learn.

Yes, this should probably all happen internally to an extent, but it obviously isn’t happening everywhere so, as an industry, don’t we have a responsibility to share and learn together?

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#eurostarfail Social media is for good times AND bad

December 19, 09 //

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Social media is a great tool for marketers, no question about it. But what about when things go wrong and the tables are turned?

I’ve argued before that in many ways, PRs are best placed to run social media operations and there are number of reasons why I think this is the case. One of the key reasons is that experienced public relations pros are adept at responding to situations – good and bad – and communicating messages quickly and effectively to a particular audience to inform, whilst taking strides to protect the reputation of the brand or business involved.

Last night, five Eurostar trains stopped working as they entered the Channel Tunnel, leaving the trains and passengers on board trapped. Many were trapped for hours in what must have been a scary and terrifying ordeal for them as well as their families and friends.

This is a nightmare situation for a company like Eurostar. And this is not the place to look at attributing blame. But, I do want to look at how the company approached one of those mainstays of traditional public relations: crisis communications.

Across the board, Eurostar seems to have fallen down on it’s duty to its customers, by failing to adequately transmit information.

And nowhere has this been more evident that on social media and, in particular, on Twitter. Mike Butcher at Techcrunch has covered the unfolding of this story in detail. But, essentially, there were no updates on either the @Little_Break or @Eurostar_Uk Twitter accounts as the crisis unfolded. In a twist to the story, it transpires the latter account wasn’t even an official Eurostar channel – it has now been suspended – and @eurostar is used by someone in Shanghai!

The @Little_Break account wasn’t updated until 11.30 today (Saturday) – a full 16 hours after the first incident happened! WTF!? If we have learned anything about social media, it is that it works best in real-time.

What does this situation teach us about the handling of social media when things go wrong:

It doesn’t matter what you want the account to be used for – it looks as though the @Little_Break account was being used for some sort of social media marketing campaign. Which is fine. But the public don’t put brands into boxes like this. If you have a social media channel then the public will see this as your brand on Twitter. So expect them to get in touch with you as they see fit, and not necessarily in the way you would like
Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring – it doesn’t matter if it is a Friday night before Christmas, the public will still use social media and will expect companies – if they are using the channel, and increasingly even if they are not – to be listening
Social media is real-time – we all know this, so why did it take Eurostar 16 hours to update their Twitter account? There is no excuse, especially as real-time take centre stage with Google transmitting the whole story as it unfolds
Social media shouldn’t be an afterthought in crisis comms – as all good PRs know, in an emergency, you need to get clear, transparent and helpful information out to people as quickly as possible. And that means social media too
Advanced planning is crucial – when something like this happens, there isn’t time to start putting plans together, it needs to have been thought about in advance. It looks as though this didn’t happen. Having social media as part of your crisis communications action plan is vital
When things go wrong, who’s in charge – with this confusion over ‘who is best placed to use social media’ within organisations, it is no surprise that when things go wrong, social media could fall through the cracks. Is it the PR, ‘social media’, SEO, marketing or customer service team that should be in control, pushing the agenda to the fore?

Obviously this is a horrid situation for Eurostar and it is easy to sit and criticise from a distance. But the fact is that this has not been handled at all well and their reputation, their PR, has taken a serious knock.

UPDATE: It seems this is a topic that isn’t going to go away any time soon. Already there are some great posts from Dirk, Rachel, Mark and Neville on the subject. As Dirk says, expect this to be coming to a social media case study near you soon…

UPDATE: Eurostar CEO Richard Brown has released a video apology on the Little Breaks blog site – it’s a good effort and sounds pretty sincere.

UPDATE: I was very careful not to mention any agencies associated with Eurostar in the above post. At a time like this, decisions will be made at a senior level within the business. An agency will only be able to sit and advise to their best ability. If this is ignored, there isn’t much to be done. And it seems this is pretty much what happened. In a very honest post, Robin Grant from Wearesocial, a social media agency, has given a very open overview of things from their perspective. It’s worth a read as it perfectly highlights some of the organisational challenges I referred to above.

Are we still really talking about AVE?

Are IT journalists abandoning a sinking ship; is PR the lifeboat?

Why PR just doesn’t need journalists anymore

PR spam – it’s tricky, it’s a losing battle but education is needed

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