Archive for January, 2009
UK Digital Brands Coming to Ireland January 30th, 2009
Net imperative ran an interesting event this week in Guinness Storehouse. It was a pretty full house, wide range of understanding amongst the attendees, had a good line up and strangely enough was free. Perhaps Piaras was right about the future being free. As most of the speakers were sponsors it is probably safe to assume that they will be offering or looking to expand their services in Ireland. Normally these type events are direct sales pitches but the balance was pretty good at this one.
Some interesting insights:
Christopher Bennett, Blyk gave some great insights into the youth market being knowledge driven, collaborative, socially fragmented, multichannelling and microconsuming. These digital natives want innovation and are digitally aware, confident and looking for value. In building his story toward the Blyk offering he outlined some of the mobile stats with
- 3.3 billion mobile hand sets globally
- Twice the number of TVs
- Three times the number of PCs
- and over 78,000 sold during the time of his presentation
Mobile phone usage was also a bit different than you would expect with the most popuar use of phones of the 16-24 age group reporting
- Calls
- Text messaging (no surprises here)
- Alarm clock (not me with blipping mails)
- Finally use of it as torch
Blyk provide sim cards and free calls in return for customers agreeing to receive up to 6 messages a day. The service is invite only (similar to gmail early days) and they only target the 16-24 audience as its a traditionally hard group to reach (an hence very attractive to advertisers). The real beauty of their service is that they get very detailed information about the users which means they can generate highly relevant ads. This covers demographic detail, interest etc but also the handset details (so they can customise photos/videos etc). So much so that the average response rate is 25% with 75% achieved for highly targeted campaigns. Their firm belief is that with such a focus on the interest areas that advertising is percieved as a valuable service and not intrusive. This blended in with his discussion on the power of marketing to one.
Chris did not outline plans for Ireland but his description of market places they are interested in has an uncanny resemblance to Ireland. I imagine there will be lots of recession hit student ready to sell their personal details for free calls.
Adam Parker from RealWire discussed the changes that are taking place in the PR/media market place with a move from the paper based media to publishers such as Total Telecom, Hoovers to the growth of blogs (micro blogs, social media) and now UGC (User Generated Content). His main points being that the new media is instant, far reaching and enduring and hence can be more powerful that traditional print media.
So why would PR companies use his service or rather go online – the usual reasons
- Ability to influence search rankings
- Online conversations taking place anyway
- Controlled brand message syndication
He pointed to some online review sites, that no one in audience had heard of, with high Alexa rankings as a examples of opportunities that are being missed with a focus on traditional media.
On a positive note he reported that up to 70% of UK PR companies either do not report having a online PR service or blog or both. This would correspond to Damien Mulleys blog on same in the Irish market.
Adman finished on a final note that in addition to the expected online virtues people online are active and looking for something while off line they are passive.
Claira Jackson from Sony Music entertainment gave some good examples of how the music industry has changed as digital has grown. Companies like Sony now offer much more value add for brand wishing to engage in music as control over the charts and music distribution has slipped away. Collaborations with Intel and jamiroquai (access to JK, competitions), Xbox (Xbox live and video releases), Last Minute (access to celebrities and travel habits with 10 minute mini videos), Coke and iTunes. Their insight team also carried out research and were able to give detailed pen pictures of AC DC fan. They may not control the distribution as once before but certainly control access to musicans and official use of music by brands. This supports the arguement by Andrew Keen that the actual music sales are the minority of the financial earnings for artists.
This presentation and the insights from Chris Bennett were of particular interest for Johnny Beirne from Download Music.ie who is offering a text based music download payment and fulfilment service. Interesting company to watch and offer lots of opportunities for the PR industry who wish to leverage the independent artists in Ireland.
It will be interesting to see the follow up from the session. I have already notices additional people following me on twitter from the event and some more LinkedIn follow on invites from the presenters.
Tags: Blyk, Mobile Marketing, Music Marketing, Social Media, UK PR
Posted in Mobile Marketing, Music Marketing, Online PR, Online Tools, Public Relations, Uncategorized | Comments (1)
What you were doing yesterday might damage what you are doing today January 23rd, 2009
Trevor Holmes kindly pointed out to me that my ‘What I’m doing’ message on Linked In was out of date. My message was that I was busy pitching, which was true at the time, but looked very odd when I had not changed for over a week. It got me thinking that I have a number of these from IM, to Facebook to LinkedIn and they are something that people do notice. Normally they are very general but as rightly pointed out they are a good opportunity to promote and keep your profile fresh or can be damaging if out dated or worse if negative. Easy thing to pass over as your view of social media is different to other people.
Building on this I have spotted many messages on peoples SuperWall on Facebook where they obviously realise halfway through a conversation that its a public and not a private conversation.
Time I logged in to see how my different profiles look from someone elses computer.
Tags: LinkedIn, Online Reputation, Profiles, Social Media
Posted in LinkedIn, ORM, Online Tools, social networking | Comments (0)
PR and Bloggers Can Live Together January 22nd, 2009
Last nights PR and Blogger meet up in Edelmans offices passed off with any physical harm to any of the attendees. Billed as collision course the atmosphere was pretty friendly and more curious than frictional. Overall some interesting points:
- most bloggers post on their own time and approaching them in a insolicited fashion is akin to stopping a random punter on the street and sticking a press release in their face.
- most bloggers are open to approaches that show you undertand their blog, what you are offering is relevant, is fairly informal and covering anything from attending events, angles on stories, reviews of new stuff, interesting videos. The approach by BTs to the Young Scientist and giving free tickets was pointed out as positive.
- Bloggers are constantly in touch with each other and will frequently IM each other when they get approaches from PR companies especially if offering exclusives.
- No bloggers reported making money from their blogs and are fuel/energised by passion for the topic.
- Blogger relations takes more time and the PR industry has a struggle to convince clients to allocate resources so it does not end up being a bloggers email address getting added to a media distribution list.
- Journalists who are also bloggers view mails and to their media email account very differently to their blogger email account.
- Twitter offers great potential for monitoring (ORM), possible relevant story seeding and early heads up on industry developments.
- Bloggers like to have previews of up and coming stuff so they can debate it before it hits main stream media.
- Bloggers spend vast amounts of time in preparing their posts and take personal pride in them. Poor blogs will just not get read.
- There is a general nervousness in approaching blogger as mistakes can become highly personal and visible.
- Links to stories/press releases/photos plus personal commentary are more welcome than cut and paste press releases.
- PR community doing a poor job with clients in convincing them of the merits of PR and blogger relations in general.
- PR people should blog more so that they can understand the medium and utilise the Irish press release service.
Overall is was a positive event and these type face to face encounters help to over the suspicion and mistrust between the two groups.
Interesting to see how the next one goes which is planned for February.
Tags: blogger event, blogger relations, PR, Public Relations
Posted in Blogging, ORM, Online PR, Twitter | Comments (8)
Some likely changes to the PR industry! January 21st, 2009
I started this post as ‘the Future of PR companies’ but it was too broad and looked like an enormous post so I have distilled to some observations.
The public relations industry is posed to change enormously and at the same time set to remain the same. Let me explain. Changes in social media (and all the new skills it involves), a balancing of focus away from traditional media and all the new services mean a very welcome change in what PR companies do. Much of the adoption will come from bottom up pressure and new entrants bringing new ‘native’ and purer online skills. However the success of PR into the future is not only dependent on mastering new platforms but rather utilising and adapting the central communications and messaging skills. The innate gut feel of what is a good story, understanding the temperature of the moment, know what to say and when to say it and having ones finger on the pulse takes a long time to build up. Largely this life time skill set can be limited by constricted outlets ie just dealing with traditional media.
So how will the emergence of new media change what future PR companies look like and how they work. Some areas where i think we will see change include:
1. Collaboration
Collaboration between the industry is already growing through platforms such as Plaxo and Linked In. Rapidly formed collaborative groups formed PR groups on Facebook, Linked In, Ning show a willingness to share that I have only previously witnessed with close colleagues in the past. As people develop specialist skills this could easily evolve into PR practitioners utilising the collective skills to work on client projects. This will be slow to happen with larger agencies but more likely with smaller niche players. e.g. some looking to develop a Linked In strategy could utilised Krisna De or Social Networking could utilise Conor Lynch. From a clients perspective the experience would be project managed to appear as one.
2. Location
Physical location is already reducing in importance in PR. City Centre offices were alway the preferred location for a variety of historical reasons. This included being close to media outlets. The need for this diminished with the introduction of email. Building on the collaborative theme PR practitioners could be based anywhere in the country with good broadband connections. As the future PR practitioner will not be fully focused on national media and could be focused on social media, for example, then location is less important.
3. Skills Sets
Apart from the central communications skills from writing, developing messages etc a deeper computer literacy will be needed. Consider first how the media is likely to change to help illustrate this. Most traditional media have a website, most have blogs, some have started to incorporate PodCasting and some have Video Casting. PR should be able to deliver content in these forms which means need hardware and software skills namely audio and video recorders and the related editing software from audacity to audition to premier pro. Yes this can be outsourced but these skills are not just going to be needed for media relations. Most social media demand multimedia content from videos, pictures to podcast material. Turn around is important in having these skills. If you organise a press conference and are uploading to YouTube, blog, Facebook etc then you will need to be able to do some basic edits and get it up fast for it to be relevant. The era of corporate video costing many thousands of euro and taking months to develop has moved to shorter, faster, less higher quality (which will probably not be noticed on web platforms) but higher number of interactions. One size no longer fits all.
3. Blogger Relations
There are load of guides to blogger relations from how to guides to codes of practice. PR has received bad press to date here because people treat it the same way as bad traditional media relations. Mainly this covers the write once and send to all practice. Not good in traditional media relations but worse in blogger relations. So what is the impact. PR agencies work on a time based model. Clients buy x amount of time at set rates. The price of this service has largely remained static as PR companies got faster at syndicating press releases due to email and better word processors. Problem is that blogger relations takes time. Individual pitching, understanding the individual blog focus and the blogger themselves, commenting over time, tracking through RSS feeds, researching them through the various methods Damien Mulley mentions all takes time. To short circut this some PR companies just added blogger email addresses to their BCC lists with poor reputation results. The end result is that as blogger and journalists reach parity in terms of influence that PR may become more expensive.
There are many more examples of how the future PR will look from Online Reputation Management to influencing social network but will hold for another post.
Eoin
Tags: blogger relations, Blogging, online collaboration, Online PR, Public Relations, Social Media
Posted in Online PR, Online Tools, Public Relations, Uncategorized, social networking | Comments (2)
Recession impact on ORM January 15th, 2009
At a recent meeting someone shared a short story with me that brought up how the recession and people having a lot of time and possible greviences on their minds could create real Online Reputation Management issues.
In this instance the founder of an Irish online social networking platform was targeted as another venture he was involved with had let people go. One employee who felt very aggrieved starting posting all over the platform with details of his case. It would appear he was very prolific and targeted any posts by the person themselves.
Before the proliferation this would not have been possible. People with a annoyance would have protested outside the company, possibly tried to place a story in some media outlet, which would have been vetted to a limited degree.
This has all changed. People using the web to air greviences is nothing new but this is likely to get worse as the number of people being let go increases massively meaning you have technically literate people with plenty of time on their hand and perfect outlets to complain. As people have shared their contact lists through Facebook, Wink, Spock and LinkedIn in it has never been easier to gain access to someones network and track them.
Thomas Brunchard has blogged on the topic of ORM in the past. Decision is always a judgement call and sorting out the issue off line is best with threatened legal action being one of the worst way to response.
Of more concern is the number of people who may not be aware of the damage being done as online monitoring is not on their agenda.
Tags: Online Reputation Management, ORM, social networks
Posted in ORM, social networking | Comments (1)
Business Blogging Survey January 14th, 2009
One of the Irish Internet Association Working Groups is currently undertaking a blogging survey to gain insight into how much time companies spend blogging, why they blog and how they measure success. Blogging is still at relatively early stages in Ireland and there is still a wide gulf between active bloggers and main stream Irish business. The results of the survey will be published to coincide with a white paper that the Social Networking Working Group is producing. The paper is being produce collaboratively both face to face as not all experts are equal. The survey can be found here and all filled out entries appreciated.
Tags: Blogging, Irish Internet Association, social networking
Posted in Blogging, Research | Comments (0)