Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Rather than do a runthrough of this year’s PR disasters, I thought I’d highlight the two initiatives that impressed me during 2008 quickly.

Movember - Thinkhouse PR’s Movember campaign was the best PR camaign in Ireland this year in my opinion. The official website encapsulates what the initiative is all about:

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is an annual charity event held during November. 

At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants, known as Mo Bros, have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their Mo, raising money along the way to benefit men’s health - specifically prostate cancer. 

Movember culminates at the end of the month at official Gala Partés, Mo-Office and Mo-Town parties where Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to be the Man of Movember.

Straight forward enough, but I haven’t seen anything take off as naturally for a long time. Thinkhouse PR position themselves as an agency that specialises in youth communications. Sounds rather fluffy, but through their connections they drew the right crowd for this initiative which made charity cool and resulted in tabloid news editors walking around with handlebar moustaches and an art auction of some amazing images topped off with taches. Lots of media coverage, online buzz and much needed money raised for a good cause. Heck they even employ Chewy, the man who sports Ireland’s finest moustache

Connector - Conor Lynch managed to build a personal brand Connector this year, which developed online and evolved into a monthly meetup. Conor sums it up as follows:

connector.ie was created as a personal blog about the people & communities I connect with in Dublin. I also organise ’social networking social events’ so the Facebook, MySpace & Bebo generation can meet face to face in the real world.

Many of the people at ‘Connector Monthly Meetups’ in Dublin are self motivated web savy professionals with personal projects looking to make new business & personal connections. You can expect to meet a multi-national mix of bloggers, marketers, designers, web designers, photographers, musicians, digital filmmakers, PR people & much more.

I ended up bumping into Conor at countless events this year, got to an early Connector event and marveled at how he managed to scale it to create a regular networking event. This all sounds straight forward, but few people will appreciate how hard it actually is to draw a crowd together. Building an online community is tough, but actually getting them together in real life is another hurdle altogether. Conor literally played the connector by bringing different groups of people together after numerous meetings and hard graft. He has now developed a property to rival traditional networking associations. Seriously if I’m going to attend a number of Connector events next year, but maybe one PRII event only, it makes you wonder. Not to go off on a rant about the PRII, but Olivier Blanchard penned some interesting commentary recently about the rise in new types of business communities.

In the B2B world, doing your part to ensure that your business community is healthy, informed, well connected and engaged is probably the most important thing you can do to foster the type of environment most suitable to create net new clients.

This has traditionally been the role of Chambers of Commerce, but we are starting to see that Social Media are giving rise to new types of business communities (Or as Seth might call them, business tribes.) This isn’t to say that the Chamber of Commerce model is dead or dying - far from it - but it is important to note that the dynamics of how and why business communities come to be are changing.

How can Chambers of Commerce remain healthy and relevant in this new age? Simple: Reconnect with the communities they serve. Shed the “business club” image, let the networking become landscape rather than focus, and engage their communities in a way that will truly elevate them. This is clearly a ‘leadership through service’ type of mission as opposed to a “build it and they will come” vision. Some organizations are already there, but many still haven’t made that transition.

Remember that thing about leadership in action being an irresistible draw? This is what organizations need to tap into. Don’t worry so much about membership growth, “relevance” and networking. Just get out there and make something happen. Act as the catalyst and the connector. Leverage networks to recruit volunteers, not members, and help them connect through projects they can really sink their teeth into. The self-serving rewards will come, but only if you don’t make them your focus.

Individuals like Conor Lynch or Damien Mulley have shown that there’s a gap in the market, with people growing tired of the standard industry events and turning to alternatives which are more of a draw. Less of the sales pitches and awkward handshakes in 2008, more discussion about interesting topics and informal networking opportunities open to individuals from various backgrounds please.

We had an interesting discussion last week in the office about discount vouchers which are being emailed on a daily basis by clothing retailers. It’s gotten to the point where female consumers are so overburdened with discounts that they can’t keep track of how many vouchers they have. There are a number of worrying aspects about this:

• Consumers are now holding off because they expect that even bigger savings will appear immediately prior to Christmas or in the January sales
• Retailers are devaluing their products to the point that when we see an economic turnaround, they will have a tough time to justify charging higher prices when consumers have become paying a pittance for them

The trouble with discounting is that it undermines your brand positioning. If you were a high end brand, it devalues your currency. On the other side of the scale, if your brand was meant to be centered on value for money but you were able to drop price further, it just opens the door for a new competitor to swop in at a lower price and leave you languishing in the middle. Competing on price alone (obviously it is still a key factor) will just lead to a bloodbath. Rather than swim with the sharks in the red sea, businesses should look to a blue ocean strategy and offer consumers something different.

The Amarach Research blog points to an interesting example. A Swiss taxi firm has adopted an “all you can eat model.” Customers pay a flat fee and can avail of unlimited taxi rides. I’m dubious as to their business model’s viability, but it’s interesting none the less.

A better example is that of Pizza Hut. A few years ago when the company was coming under serious pressure to compete on price, the restaurant chain decided to focus on value instead and created their all you can eat lunchtime menu. Their strategy paid off as the company found its own blue ocean and has enjoyed pleasant sailing for some time now.

One thing I hope we witness during the recession is a switch from a focus on customer acquisition to customer retention. Louis Columbus has a great post about using the recession as a “catalyst for delivering exceptional customer experiences Earning trust from customers takes a consistent, passionate level of commitment to delivering customer experiences above expectations.” On the same blog, John Tudor picks up on the same note and points out that people are spending more at Starbucks during the recession than they were before. Tudor reasons that this is because “it is a small personal indulgence that leads to temporary but worthwhile emotional lift. The experience is positive and under our control” and rightly goes on to set out the challenge for companies, which is to help their customers “deal with these emotional needs, help them gain a sense of control and give them a relationship that supports them.“

Marketing strategy in the current economic climate shouldn’t revolve around the thought of ‘How much to I have to drop the price of my good/service for it to be acceptable to my target consumer?’ Instead we should take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror and ask why customers should place a higher value on our good/service and purchase it ahead of a rival or substitute offer.

Paul Isakson has another great post about building lasting brands. Paul’s point is that:

For a brand to stand the tests of time, it has to have roots that help it stay true over time. Why? Because lasting relationships are built on a foundation of trust. If you are constantly changing who you are and/or what you stand for, how can anyone come to trust you?

In relation to this, if you are working on a brand that has lost its way, it’s often very helpful to go back into the history of the company and find what they stood for when they first started. There are likely some great things there that can be polished up and brought to life in an appropriate way for today’s culture.

While the financial services sector may come in for a lot of criticism these days, you have to admit that most organisations applied the same short sighted thinking to their brands. Marketing by quarter was never a good idea. How can a brand build roots when it is constantly changing direction, chasing the latest trend instead of staying true to its values.

Therein lies the problem however as most organisations fundamentally don’t understand brands. Rather than build a product/service around values which customers would associate with it, most companies were happier with a Post-It approach simply labeling buzzwords to their offering with no inherent truth behind the proposition.

America is a good example of Isakson’s assertion that brands need roots. Jamie F Metzl had an interesting editorial in the Observer this weekend. Metzl points out that despite the last eight years, much of the world’s prosperity is a result of America’s post World War II leadership and promotion of free markets, entrepreneurship, and democracy. While George Bush may have tarnished the country’s repuatation, if Obama’s first steps are anything to go by we will see a return to what once made the country great. As Isakson says, “if you are working on a brand that has lost its way, it’s often very helpful to go back into the history of the company and find what they stood for when they first started.” Without those values though, an organisation may find itself lost at sea without a map.

Paul Dervan recently pondered whether advertising is enough to build a brand anymore. It’s an interesting question and one I love to answer from a PR perspective. Unlike some of my peers I believe that advertising has an important role in brand building. Simply relying on public relations cannot communicate your brand values. Such a viewpoint lacks a basic understanding of the benefits of advertising. Advertising allows an organisation to communicate its scale, repeat its key messages on an uninterrupted basis and specifically target its audience though certain media outlets.

Having said that over the past twenty years, consumers have grown wary of advertising because the majority of it lacks authenticity. As I have previously commented, the old way of doing things was selling to customers on a promise. The problem for advertisers is that consumers have bought into the promise and we’ve had enough with being disappointed with reality. Now companies are being charged with actually delivering on their promise.

Core to this is the overall experience that a consumer undergoes through a brand’s various touchpoints. As Francois Gossieaux points out:

Your brand gets defined by the UI (User Interface) of your company, the interface through which your customers and prospects interact with your company. That interface gets determined by pre-sale activities - i.e., advertising, retail layout, retail personnel attitude, telemarketing, sales people’s knowledge of the industry, etc -, as well as immediate post-sale activities - i.e., packaging, ease of use to set up the products, available help options, etc. -, and the long term post sale activities - i.e., telephone support, return policies, warranty policies, on-site support, etc. That makes up a lot of links in the chain that determines your brand in the mind of the consumers which your company controls.

Tom Himpe has an interesting presentation (which Paul has also since spotted in a followup post) highlighting the ‘evolution within marketing from message-centric (trying to flog average products & services through flashy and entertaining messages) to product-centric (trying to actually improve products & services, and make them more remarkable, interesting, beautiful or valuable)’ (Hattip to Helge Tennø.)

Quoting from Himpe’s presentation, there are a lot of lessons for brands to learn:

1. The world doesn’t need more products, it needs better products
2. There is a blur and overlap between the product and the experience, where the messaging ends and the products begins is very grey
3. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace
4. Marketing should be more than entertainment, but add actual value to the core offering, and as a result, to people’s lives
5. Digital technology is not…about making traditional advertising clickable. Instead, digital technology is changing how we access and use products & services.

From a PR perspective, there has to be a fundamental realisation that in our current role there is only so much we can do. Even with the addition to new channels to our arsenal, unless we are also able to get involved in the product/service experience then there will always be a limit to our influence. For example, like customer service we also are on the frontline for receiving feedback about how an organisation, product or service is perceived. Whether that will happen or not is another matter, what is a reality though is that PR agencies now have to work with other disciplines to deliver integrated campaigns that truly connect with an organisation’s target audience.

Within this marketing mix, advertising has an important role to play. Its influence has waned somewhat as the various brand touchpoints ultimately dictate the consumer’s perception of the brand, but in terms of brand building it can communicate values well and based on the amount of money being spent give the illusion that consumers are dealing with a large corporate organisation. Importantly, as Paul points out, in a world where there is little differentiation between competitors’ products or services in some markets, advertising can help you stand out from the crowdd.

I was discussing the US election with an American last week and pointing out John McCain’s conduct in some online videos as a means of highlighting that his campaign wasn’t representative of him as a person. I highlighted the following video clip but got an interesting rebuke. During the clip a voter says that she doesn’t trust Obama because he is an Arab, McCain takes the micro phone away from her in embarrassment and explains that Obama is a decent, family man. However, the person who I was having the conversation with pointed out how clever McCain was with his words. He doesn’t address the fundamental accusation by simply replying that Obama is a proud American. Instead the thought of Obama as an Arab is left to linger - a shameful communications ploy.

I happened to be in the TV3 studios last Thursday bringing a guest onto their new chat show Midday. Terry Prone of the Communications Clinic was another panelist on the show promoting her new book. One of the topics for discussion was the Government’s decision to rescind on its decision to introduce a cervical cancer vaccine programme for 12 year old girls next year due to the current economic climate. Interestingly, Prone highlighted that one would have assumed that the programme was currently in place given the huge backlash the Government is currently experiencing on the issue at present. Due to how the programme was announced, it is perceived to have been taken away from the public. In terms of communications strategy, the Government has to be extremely careful in how it communicates new initiatives, least it be perceived of reducing the quality of service the public can expect from it.

In the current economic climate this is an important point to note for the Government and other organisations. What we are witnessing in the wake of the global economic crisis is a breakdown in trust between the public and institutions which once formed the pillars of society. When making forward looking statements, every organisation has to be cognisant that its audiences will not simply take its word for granted and will look back after a period of time has elapsed to see whether the organisation kept its promise. In simple terms, make sure not to write cheques your ass can’t cash.

I have been pouring over statistics associated with Barack Obama’s US presidential campaign. The most comprehensive breakdown I have seen was compiled by Pete Quily. A wave of excitement has broken out across the Internet and short-sighted analysis seems to imply that Obama won the election because he had a larger and more consistent use of digital media than his rival John McCain.

First let’s start with the statistics. While Obama may have had a large online presence and used digital tools to communicate with his supporters on an ongoing basis, one has to note the importance of content. If we are simply going to talk about statistics, then surely Viagra would have won the US general election given how many spam emails people receive about it I disagree with Richard Delevan’s view that the key statistic to look at from Obama campaign is the number of voters contacted compared to the total contacted by the McCain posse. This figure can’t be looked at in isolation, you have to look at what both politicians represented. Importantly it should also be noted that if we were to break down the demographics, then it would quickly become apparent that digital tools are far more suited for Obama’s supporters than McCain’s. No matter how many times I’ve been contacted by email offering me some form of Viagra or other stimulant, I’ve never taken up the offer. The content didn’t appeal.

We’re going to see a number of politicians try to replicate Obama style campaigns over the next couple of years and fail miserably. Anyone remember any of the woeful YouTube videos from Irish politicians during the last election? A personal audience with Politician X in his kitchen doesn’t cut it. Neither does a random Bebo profile. What should be drawn from Obama’s campaign that it consisted of a integrated communications strategy and encouraged the participation of the general public, as opposed to keeping it confined to the old boys club.

Karlin Lillington had an interesting column on the subject in the Irish Times last week. My Edelman colleague Seamus Mulconry and Simon McGarr offer some good comments in the piece:

“It’s not just the technology on its own that won the election. It’s a means of communication,” says Séamus Mulconry, a consultant with Edelman Communications and former technology specialist with Accenture who also did a stint as head of policy for the Progressive Democrats.

“Politics is a heart, not a head business. Any way you can engage emotionally with people is very powerful. And the web allows you to use music, video and images, and create communities to make that emotional connection.”

New technologies such as video “allow you to break out of soundbites, too”, he says. “Since at least the Nixon campaign, political campaigns have been defined by the tight soundbite. Oratory has been dead in the electronic age, but YouTube brought it back.”

Technology and heavy use of social networking technologies also gave the Obama campaign “a victory over the vast geography of the US”, says solicitor Simon McGarr, who set up the VoteTube.org website during the last Irish general election to showcase political videos and encourage their creation.

“For Obama, the issue was to find people to come into the system and become door-knockers.”

Obama harnessed people who had not in the past joined a political campaign. He connected people, created communities and give them meaningful jobs to do.

Lillington’s summary of Mulconry and McGarr’s analysis sums up why Obama’s campaign was successful - he connected people, created communities and gave them meaningful jobs to do. Fundamental to connecting his supporters was content. That is what Obama represented. He tapped into the societal changes in America and gave those who were not represented in the political system a voice. They didn’t vote simply for Obama, they voted for what he represents - change.

If you step back and take a look at the Internet, what’ll you’ll find is that it has proved very successful for bringing communities with similar interests together. Again what binds these communities is content. Adam Cohen captures this in his book about eBay, ‘The Perfect Store‘:

Collectors are people with a passion, and they seek out other who share their passion. Before the Internet, many collectors were geographically isolated. Someone in a small town with an interest in Depression glass or southern art folk might have trouble finding like-minded people nearby. But on the Internet, thousands of collectors with the same fascination were only a few mouse clicks away

Simply adopting Obama’s tools isn’t going to replicate his success. It is akin to saying that anyone that picks up a paintbrush will be the next Leonardo Da Vinci. The truth is that they have the potential to be the next Da Vinci. However to achieve this potential in a political sense, politicians fundamentally have to find methods to get as many people involved in the political process as possible. By instilling a fascination in the political process among supporters, then the Internet becomes the logical tool to bring this audience together and to activate them.

Strip out all the statistics and the core element you’ll find running throughout the Obama campaign is passion. If you don’t make your supporters passionate then it doesn’t matter how many emails or text messages you send. will.i.am’s series of videos throughout the election campaign encapsulate the feelings Barack Obama instilled in his supporters. I’m slightly surprised at myself for saying it, but ‘It’s A New Day‘ is actually a good song, but more than that it actually represents the thoughts of millions of Americans on 4 November.

Given the week that is in it, some people might find this headline strange. In my opinion Obama is phenomenon, but not something that we will see repeated on these shores. From a local perspective there has been a heralded return to street politics after the mass protests in reaction to the government budget. While opposition parties may be rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of snatching power from the current incumbents, it should be noted that the global economic crisis and the mistakes made by Fianna Fail in office have gifted the opposition parties their leads in the opinion polls, rather than the alternative that they offer the Irish public.

I attended my first political meeting in a personal capacity last week. It brought to life why people are so disengaged with the political process. The three things that hold politics back for me are political parties as brands; the blame game; and how parties are organised.

Political parties as brands - The problem for the main parties in Ireland is that the general public find it hard to distinguish between them. Hence parties like Sinn Fein and the Greens stand out as they appear to represent something different. When one of the political representatives at the meeting was asked what makes their party stand out, he quickly responded that there are four things that make them stand out. Fiscal rectitude, blah,blah and blah….Sorry fiscal rectitude? Is that meant to mean something to the average member of the public? Political parties need to be able to explain what they stand for in plain and simple language.

The blame game - Is it just me or does political debate seem to inevitably degenerate into a slagging match. In the single meeting I attended, a quarter of the time seemed to be spent putting the boot in on other parties. This really annoys me. In the world of the soundbite, why waste your valuable time criticising others when you should be strengthening your argument.

How parties are organised - The biggest challenge for any political party is how they are organised. As a new member I felt the meeting was pretty inaccessible unless I wanted to let off steam about a given subject. Attendance at these meetings seems to constitute of four groups - the crackpots (who want to give out about how corrupt Fianna Fail are), the elderly, the do-gooders and the politicians (whose ambition probably makes them the ones to worry about.) The format of meetings is mostly to offer candidates a platform why you should vote for them and afford the crackpots some time to let off some steam. Unfortunately the people there who actually contribute, whom I was impressed by during the few minutes they received, don’t get ample time to voice their views. Furthermore there doesn’t seem to be an immediate way to offer your insights or access resources to build your knowledge about a given topic.

None of this is to say that I won’t go back. The danger for political parties is that they seem more enthused to do something on YouTube than actually address a few simple home truths. My take on YouTube and politics (ignoring the Obama phenonmenon) is young people don’t care about politics. Using Youtube to push your party is akin to selling beetroot in a cake shop. If you want to engage any particular demographic then it has to be issues based. If you don’t treat your political party as a brand and differentiate yourself from the competition, then you will only be able to benefit from government misshaps like the recent buget on a short term basis. Ultimately there are key learnings to be made from the Obama campaign in the States - the fundamental lesson is the use of the Internet as a tool to rally your supporters.

Big furore here in Ireland over the recently announced budget. Its aftermath has seen government rowbacks on cutbacks on medical cards to the old age pensioners and a 1% tax levy which would also have affected the most vulnerable in society. Government cutbacks in education have also faced massive opposition, with 12,000 people turning out to protest last Wednesday evening. It is fair to say that the education sector is in need of reform, however the impact of some of the cutbacks are draconian. Schools will now have less language support, which means students in disadvantaged areas will suffer as teachers struggle to accommodate migrant students. Teachers are scratching their heads at the lack of substitute support, which will effect Leaving Certificate geography students’ field trips or foreign language students’ oral exams.

Despite the economic climate, these education cutbacks are seriously shortsighted. There are countless studies out there highlighting the importance of education in addressing societal problems such as obesity or crime. Popular Mechanics has a really interesting interview with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter and AutoSyringe (hattip to BoingBoing and PSFK). During the interview, Kamen hits the nail on the head of the importance of education:

What do you think is the most important science and technology issue to be addressed by the next president? What’s the biggest issue he should take on?

Is it energy? Genomics? Is it bird flu? Is it the polar caps—are they really melting? Is it terrorism? You pick the crisis du jour: The answer to all these issues is going to be an educated, competent global society. This country ought to lead the world, for lots of reasons. And we ought to help the rest of the world get educated, because if they are educated, their impact on the environment is actually way less. If they are educated, they’ll have better ideas than killing each other or killing you and me.

My headline might read a little harsh but a truly well educated society (that isn’t taught in prefabs and that has computers in the classroom) is a society where as Kamen points out “all kids are part of the solution, not part of the problem. And with 50 percent of the kids in the 20 largest school districts in the country not graduating high school, they’re part of the problem. This is unsustainable. It has to change.” Just this week a report published by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland showed that “a growing body of evidence documents the link between education and health inequalities,” according to IPH chief executive Dr Jane Wilde in an article in the Irish Independent.

Underlining the importance of education in these challenging times, Sheelagh Drudy, professor of education and lifelong learning at University College Dublin, has a great op-ed in the Irish Times about how Ireland should imitate Finland’s rescue via education and R&D. However as Tom Farrell from Nokia points out in a letter published in the same paper in response to Drudy’s op-ed, we need to realise that when it comes to education (much like the medical cards) that if we want a quality service, we have to pay for it. More importantly in a post Celtic Tiger era, we need to decide what type of society we want to live in and shift our cultural values to reflect this.

The strength of regional media was underlined at a political meeting I attended last week. The politicians present lamented the fact that their regional counterparts had much more opportunity to engage their constituencies via the media. Rural TDs benefit from the fact that regional media, particularly radio, are far more powerful in their locality than the national press. For example, Highland Radio in Donegal has a better listenership than the likes of RTE and Today FM because its listeners tune in for programming that is relevant to them.

Unfortunately for Dublin’s politicians, they must get into the national press in order to get the same cutthrough. This however is a much more challenging task. While there are numerous local papers to serve the various communities across Dublin, the editorial quality varies. Publications like the Fingal Independent stand head and shoulder above some of their peers, but it does not have the same influence compared to regional publications.

I was playing around with Slattery Communications‘ Facebook widget/application a couple of weeks ago and it got me thinking. Get Creative is a brainstorming tool where users can input ideas into a database or search it for inspiration. Clicking into the database you can see that Slattery staff are mining ideas and good work that they’ve spotted.

The funny thing that ran through my mind before contributing an idea was the thought ‘If I share my ideas, am I not technically putting myself at a competitive disadvantage by sharing knowledge with the competition?’ Slap to the face as I realised what a stupid thought that was. I would credit the Internet for playing a big role in my rise through the ranks. The reason for this is amount of knowledge I had access to at my fingertips. Whether it was PR veterans like Tom Murphy or other novices entering the ranks at the time like Stephen Davies, I was able to compliment my experience on the job with insights gleaned from my peers online.

I recently picked up a copy of Manuel Castells’ series of books on the Network Society after reading about it in John Grant’s ‘After Image‘. Grant gives an overview of a key observation by Castells:

Sociologist, Manuel Castells, studies the Network Society. His three volume book on the subject charts a global shift, taking in the rise of the Internet and the fall of communism. Castells describes the overall trend as ‘Informationalism’. Which means a technology-driven change in the organization of society.

He points out that it’s not enough to say we live in a ‘knowledge age’. Knowledge has been the key driver of progress in many past societies. The Romans had roads, laws, engineering and drainage. The protestants had printed books and accountancy.

What other ‘knowledge ages’ didn’t have, according to Castells, was a new technology paradigm with three special features:
– A self-expanding processing capability (eg integrated circuits)
– A recombining ability (eg the World Wide Web)
– A distributional flexibility (eg networks and mobile phones)

These aren’t just Internet or IT properties. Castells shows that they also apply to genetic engineering, which has the same potentially explosive impact on society and economics. His point is that we have built technologies for self-reinforcing, accelerated learning.

It was stupid on my part to even think about hoarding knowledge. The whole point about innovation is about figuring out how to do things simpler and then sharing this knowledge with society as a whole in order to improve the processes we use in our every day lives. The web makes this easier, as Grant points out it is self-reinforcing, accelerated learning. Get Creative is a great tool in this respect, albeit that I think it is better suited for a site like LinkedIn.

One of Steve Rubel’s recent blog posts caught my attention. Rubel states that he believes that the future of news is the newsfeed. The newsfeed, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is similar to a scrolling news ticker listening off headlines during the course of the day. It’s a similar concept to RSS whereby the reader has the latest headlines delivered to a personalised page.

My big hangup about all these debates stating that such-and-such is the future is that these discussions simply seem to be focused on tools as opposed to content. There is an interesting discussion about the future of news brewing and we should look to learnings from the newsrooms of today to influence how we move to the future.

A number of commentators are quick to point out that a number of stories break online first. Then when you examine where the stories are emerging, new tools like Twitter or FriendFeed are being highlighted. Ignoring the fact that they are niche sites, there are two concerns that immediate spring to mind - speed and volume of news stories.

Some people seem to think that because news breaks on a certain medium first, then that medium is inherently the best news source. That is a dangerous assumption. Firstly there are editorial standards to consider. Following its coverage of the Beslan tragedy, the BBC introduced a time delay as part of the its editorial guidelines in order to underline the point that accuracy should come before speed. Secondly one has to serious consider the quality of news sources. For example, a report on CNN’s iReport that Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack played havok with Apple’s stock price despite being incorrect.

My apprehension about the shift to the Internet as the public’s primary news source is that the importance of a news story seems to be dictated by the volume and frequency of posts about the story. From a consumer journalism perspective it can be worrying because numerous studies have shown that a subset of consumers produce content for the web. Invariably this content is content that they are passionate about, which may not reflect its true value as it is not reflective of society’s interest as a whole. Seriously, just look at all the online chatter about Web 2.0, Twitter et al, which doesn’t even resonate with the general public. Yes everyone can contribute, but not everyone does.

My old boss in Drury Communications, Padraig McKeon, offered the best insight into the shifts in the communications landscape. He remarked to me one day that:

The Internet will be the medium people turn to for breaking news.
People will tune into broadcast media because it captures the emotion of a story.
Newspapers will continue to be read because they will provide analysis of the event.

I hope that he’s right about the third point, as it is the analysis of trusted sources - be they traditional media or new media - that should influence the public. The danger about collaborative news reporting is that the minority could dictate the news agenda. I recently attended the Atlantic Corridor conference on science education and promotion and arranged an interview for Lord Robert Winston on Today FM’s Last Word. Winston briefly discussed the public reaction to stem cell research with the show’s host Matt Cooper and pointed out that the public reaction was that of a small minority who were passionate in their arguments about stem cell research. However when the public as a whole was surveyed, it could be shown that their views were not representative of society as a whole.

Personally I dislike the thought of the newsfeed or RSS as the future of news, despite the fact that RSS is my primary source of news. I am more comfortable with the thought that when soceity finally shifts online that they will still consume news similar to the printed format where by the judge a story’s importance based on the media source and its presentation - i.e. lead story on the homepage with an attention grabbing picture, rather than another entry on a newsfeed.

Interesting article in the Economist about the Paperless Office. The decade old prediction gradually looks like it is coming true. The reason for this is primarily due to the wave of digital natives coming through the workforce. The article points out that Breedlove & Associates’s clients and employees are turning away from paper:

The clients tend to be young, middle-class families with toddlers; they are good with technology and already pay bills online, use e-tickets on planes, e-file their tax returns and Google recipes rather than using cookbooks. And Breedlove’s 16 employees are in their 20s, native to Facebook and instant-messaging and baffled by the need for paper. Now everybody is happier. Next year the firm expects to be completely paperless.

An interesting parallel could be made with traditional media. With Irish media outlets such as the Irish Times and the Irish Independent now free and easily accessible, it will be interesting to see whether the nation’s youth will buy the print versions when they are interested in following the news and can afford them, or if they will continue to read them free online.

In this context it is great to see papers like the Irish Times expand their online editorial offer. Over the last year, the online news team has been incorporated into the overall newsroom and news on the website has changed from breaking news format to offer text and audio analysis. I got a slight shock a couple of months ago when I spotted an article online during the course of the day relevant to one of my clients and followed up with the journalist to see if she wanted to talk to the client for when the final article appeared in the next day’s newspaper. She quickly replied that the article wasn’t going into the paper, it was for the website only. This was surprising as I wouldn’t have ordinarily expected her to contribute online. The same newspaper’s coverage of the Budget was great, offering analysis and updates by the minute on the business desk’s new blog and Twitter feed.

Much like the concept of the Paperless Office though, change doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t hear many of experts that predicted the death of print media within five years chirp up about their prediction anymore. The biggest threat to print media isn’t the declining circulations, but rather the freefall in advertising that has accompanied the credit crunch.

I spotted a very interesting statistic on PSFK - Facebook now ranks as the top photo sharing website in the world. PSFK’s analysis of why Facebook has overtaken traditional photo sharing websites is very insightful:

Perhaps it’s because people want to do more with their photos then just store and share them online…When users upload to Facebook, they’re giving their photos a context and bringing them into their social worlds. The photos, in some sense, become units of social capital. Users post photos onto Facebook not just to share them with others, but to serve as an extension of their online identities, as an element of the narrative they want to tell about themselves to their friends and network. On Facebook, the value of a photo (even a hastily posted mobile upload) is in its ability to crystallize a moment in a user’s life to be shared, recorded and filed into the annals of his/her (and their friends) social history.

This analysis underlines behaviour I have witnessed on Facebook over the past year and opens up potential opportunities for brands to engage consumers on the website. Traditionally most consumer brands’ online engagement on social networking sites is very linear. It simply consists of creating a social networking profile and adding friends, but rarely includes any ongoing engagement.

One of the more successful brands in Ireland to have use social networks to compliment its comms activity is the crisps brand Tayto. Its title character Mr Tayto was brought to life two years ago and has since appeared on Bebo and Facebook. A quick glance at both profiles shows that while both have been successfully for onnecting with consumers, the Bebo profile is quite active whereas there is not much going on on the Facebook profile.

Quick and easy way to solve this is to take pictures of Mr Tayto with members of the public when he is out and about on tour. Consumers are doing this anyway when the character is undertaking promotional activity, so why not take pictures of them and then tag them online. All of a sudden the brand can become a lot more engaging and bring some of its campaigns, such as the current programme to find Mr Tayto a Halloween costume, to life.

The lesson here is to understand how consumers are interacting on line and leveraging this by placing your brand in the thick of the action. Granted it’s easier said than done, but you have more chance of success by keeping things simple.

Another footballer biography and more controversy. This time the ball is at the feet of Didier Drogba, the Chelsea striker. His biography is being investigated by the Football Association over claims that Drogba “wished he had punched Nemanja Vidic, the Manchester United defender, in last season’s Champions League final” according to an article in the Times.

This isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last time that a sports biography opens a can of worms, but it makes one wonder who reviews these books before their release. Inevitably the book’s publishers are gracious for any controversy which can be used to fuel the publicity prior to its release. However, short term gain can lead to long term loss. Just look at Ashley Cole who was jeered during last week’s international soccer fixtures. Cole didn’t do much to help his reputation when he claimed in his biography that Arsenal’s contract offer of £55,000 per week was a “pisstake“, prior to switching to bitter rivals Chelsea. Seriously, in a world of multi million euro contracts and lucrative sponsorships, you’d swear one of his advisors would have taken a quick read of his book and recommended a few edits.

I read on PFSK that “Google has a patent pending on a technology it says will rank the most influential people on social networking sites.” According to the BusinessWeek article, which PFSK quotes:

The new technology could track not just how many friends you have on Facebook but how many friends your friends have. Well-connected chums make you particularly influential. The tracking system also would follow how frequently people post things on each other’s sites. It could even rate how successful somebody is in getting friends to read a news story or watch a video clip, according to people familiar with the patent filing.

Traditionally people talk about the value of your network being determined by the number of people in it, other wise known as Metcalfe’s Law. Metcalfe’s Law can be illustrated with the following statement:

A single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases.

I disagree somewhat with the statement, as I have said in the past I believe it is due an update. Research from HP Labs has shown that while it is easy to build a network, it is very difficult to maintain real relationships with people you are connected to. While many people may comment on how the value of financial stocks have plummeted in recent weeks, I think the currency of the term friend has taken a nosedive thanks to social networks over the past couple of years. Does anyone else distinguish between people they know in reality and virtual worlds through use of air quotes when referring to friends

If I look at my LinkedIn or Facebook accounts, while I may be connected to a large number of people, overall my networks aren’t that valuable because of the lack of interaction between the nodes in the network. In reality the value of your network should not simply be determined by how many contacts you have, but also by the level of interaction within your network.

From a marketing perspective, the most interesting aspect of the quote from the BusinessWeek article is the last sentence - it could even rate how successful somebody is in getting friends to read a news story or watch a video clip. Ultimately most marketers aspire to uncovering influencers who can shape the behaviour of their peers. I only have to flick through my iTunes account and I can point out mp3s that I have purchased based on the recommendations or YouTube videos embedded on blogs I follow. Forget the popular cheerleader and track down the quarterback whose touchdown pass leads the consumer to take action.

The inevitable problem will remain though. Once you have identified the influencers, how do you in turn influence them?

This Bud Light ad highlights the reason why I will never have a garden. Kudos for using the Airwolf theme song.

I read with interest on the BBC about a plan being considered by the British Government to use mobile phones in a bid to combat Taleban propaganda. The BBC reports that:

The programme involves using new media like mobile phones and the internet to empower ordinary Afghans to contradict the prevailing Taleban message. Non-governmental organisations would distribute mobile phones to Afghans for them to make their own video diaries. Anti-Western films already circulate on Afghanistan’s estimated 6m mobiles. These films are also distributed among the country’s half a million internet users.

For me the strategy is flawed. The idea behind the plan revolves around the premise that mobiles are increasingly used to distribute personal content. It is assumed by introducing videos that are effectively pro Western content that it will spread in a similar fashion to Taleban propaganda. This is why the plan fails.

Consumer brands often make a similar mistake by assuming once they are on social networks they will be able to engage with a youth audience. Fact is, if their content isn’t relevant, then they will simply end up overlooked.

A video which recently spread on Afghan phones was footage of bodies killed in a recent raid. A BBC correspondent notes that it was particularly damaging to the coalition from a PR perspective. Much like the newspaper industry, bad news is far more popular than good news. Search any video sharing website and the most popular content invariably has an element of controversy. Not being an expert on the Afghan conflict, I still think it’s safe to say that even if video diaries of the ordinary public was introduced, should a similar incident take place that single video will prove to be far more viral.

The coalition would be far better served winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan population. If they want to pursue a viral strategy successfully, then the coalition would be to fight fire with fire and distribute similar controversial Taleban footage. However from an ethical perspective, the coalition could not be seen to be doing this…but then again when are ethics a consideration during conflict?

Shameless plug, but Science Week is almost upon us again. This year it runs from 9 - 16 November. On behalf of my client Discover Science & Engineering, I am organising a lecture series which is free to the public. This year the lectures take place in the Science Gallery and feature a number of interesting speakers, check out the biogs below. If you are interested in attending register for places here. There are over 400 events taking place nationwide so check out the Science Week website for more details.

Another free lectures series that might be of interest is the Legends at Lunchtime series running at the National College of Ireland. Speakers include Giovanni Trapattoni and Bill Cullen

Monday 10 November 18:30 - 20:00 - Professor Aubrey Manning – ‘Learning to Live with our Planet’

Professor Aubrey William George Manning OBE FRSE FIBiol is a distinguished zoologist and broadcaster and is recognised as one of the Britain’s leading authorities on sustainability and ecology. He features frequently on BBC television and national radio and his main research and teaching interests are on animal behaviour, development and evolution. He has been involved with environmental issues since 1966 and with the Centre for Human Ecology since its inception at the University of Edinburgh in 1970. He was Professor of Natural History at the university from 1973-1997. Manning was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1973) and received an OBE in 1998.

Tuesday 11 November 18:30 - 20:00 - Gerry Johnston – ‘The Science Behind Hollywood Special Effects’

Gerry Johnston, affectionately known as ‘boom-boom Johnston’, the director of Special Effects Ireland, based in Ardmore Studios in County Wicklow. He started working in film in the 1960s, and effects he has created have featured in hundreds of film and television productions including ‘Braveheart’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Michael Collins’; he has special expertise in aerial and underwater rigging. Despite various offers to relocate to sunnier climes, Gerry is based in Ireland, and continues to work on major productions both here and around the world.

Wednesday 12 November 18:30 - 20:00 - Dr. Cynthia Breazeal – ‘The Personal Side Of Robots’

Dr. Cynthia Breazeal is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab. She is a pioneer of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction (HRI). Her research program focuses on developing personal robots that interact with humans in human-centric terms, work with humans as partners, and learn from people via tutelage. She has authored the book “Designing Sociable Robots” and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences in autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence, human robot interaction, and robot learning. She has been awarded an ONR Young Investigator Award, honored as finalist in the National Design Awards in Communication, and recognized as a prominent young innovator by the National Academy of Engineering’s Gilbreth Lecture Award.

Thursday 13 November 18:30 - 20:00 - Stephen Attenborough – ‘The Future of Space Tourism’

Stephen Attenborough is the Commercial Director for Virgin Galactic, a company wholly owned by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group which is on track to become the world’s first passenger carrying commercial spaceline. Stephen joined Virgin Galactic as the company’s first full time employee in 2004 to put in place the commercial foundations of the business. He now leads a team in London that covers sales, marketing, customer care, PR and communications. He also is responsible for workstreams that are developing and managing the astronaut experience as well as the liability, insurance and regulatory framework. Stephen joined Virgin Galactic having escaped a career in investment management in the City of London.

Friday 14 November 13:00 - 14:30 - Patrick Collison – ‘How Two Teenagers Built And Sold A Company For Millions’

Patrick was born in Limerick in 1988, and currently spends most of his life programming (with Lisp and Smalltalk). When he was 15, Patrick wrote his own programming language, which won him the Irish Young Scientist of the Year award in 2005. Later in 2005, he came second in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists. He began college at MIT in 2006, but deferred to found Auctomatic in early 2007. Ten months later, Auctomatic was acquired by Live Current Media for several million dollars. He now works in Vancouver as Director of Engineering with the new owners. In his spare time Patrick also runs marathons and is a keen long-distance cyclist.

The IPA is running a day seminar on Citizen Participation in the Wiki and Facebook Era on the 24 October. One of the initiatives being discussed at the event is the ‘Your Mental Health’ campaign which has an interesting Bebo profile, where young people can leave anonymous feedback.

Another event worth attending is the National Marketing Conference (hattip to Paul Dervan for flagging it.) Edelman Europe CEO, David Brain, is attending. The person I’d love to hear at the conference though is guest speaker John Grant. If you work in Marketing and PR, you need to own all his books.

Paul Dervan also has an interesting post as part of the Social Media Marketing Best Practice meme:

Coming from the client-side of marketing, within a large marketing team, my suggestion would be this:

’To truly get the most from social media, brands need to change the structure of their marketing team.’

Damien Mulley points out that “RTÉ is running a competition for a new Web TV series and the public decide who the winner will be. Pilots are sought and then the public votes on the best one and it becomes a web TV series.” Details on how to participate are on Damien’s post.

Also via Damien - public engagement 2.0. Eamonn Ryan, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, ran a half day forum on Next Generation Broadband, reaching out on Boards.ie to announce it. Interesting mix of regular punters and civil servants led to an interesting event if Damien’s event report is anything to go by.

Neil Patel has a list of 51 business cards which would make you look twice (hattip to Stephen Davies)

Dave Neville from First Tuesday was chatting to me about Zircol, a blogging platform similar to Ning, which allows users to build a social network around your own blog.

The Cleraun Media Conference takes place this weekend. A pdf conference brochure is available to download.

Make sure to watch Sarah Haskins’ hilarious series of videos of Target Women videos (Hattip to Una Mullally)

Seriously cool - NASA astronauts answer questions from on board the International Space Station (Via Boing Boing)

The inaugural Irish Web Awards took place at the weekend. There were some media sites among the winners including the Irish Times which won the best online publication award, Silicon Republic was awarded best technology website, and Phantom FM which was named as best radio website.

The Irish Independent reports that RTE will ask its top earners to take a pay cut as advertising revenues fall.

Across the pond, Channel 4 has axed its radio plans due to the same advertising slump.

In other news RTE won 9 PPI awards at the weekend.

Silicon Republic points out that YouTube is finally fulfilling its role as a media concierge. The site will incorporate new features which will see button added to pages which users can you to purchase content from Amazon or iTunes.

The Irish Times reports that Charlie Bird will leave his position as Chief News correspondent and move to the US to become the station’s new Washington correspondent. Fantastic time to take up the position given the elections in November and the outlook for world events in the near future.

The Irish Times business desk has started blogging.

Thanks to Jason Roe for making weekend repairs to the website after my site got hacked last week. Cannot recommend him enough so please visit his website if you’re interested in web design, development or SEO. Jason took time out of his weekend to upgrade WordPress for me and fix the affected posts.

Hat tip to Paul Antony from Webdistortion for pointing out the problem and also offering his services. Webdistortion is a young and innovative web design studio based in Northern Ireland, please also check out their website if you get a chance.

Normal service will resume tomorrow.

Couple of readers have pointed out to me that the RSS feed of this blog has been hacked so some of you are receiving spam. Apologies about this, looking into sourcing someone into updating my blog. If you’d like to offer your services please leave a comment

Interesting observation on the financial meltdown that we are currently witnessing - the much heralded wisdom of the crowds might not be all that it’s cracked up to be. Take for example the hysteria we have seen among bank customers in Ireland where at one point the trend of a return to mattress money was evident, where consumers believed that they would be safer keeping their money under their bed than in a bank.

RTE’s Joe Duffy programme was taken to task by the government recently for a show which was extremely critical of the banks. The Irish Independent reported that “Finance Minister Brian Lenihan personally rang the director general of RTE on Thursday to express his outrage at a Liveline radio programme, presented by Joe Duffy, which purported to elicit public opinion on the financial turmoil …but ended up provoking unprecedented panic and causing genuine fears that it might lead to a run on the banks. Mr Lenihan took the initiative when alerted by officials in his department that the Financial Regulator and banks across the country were being ‘inundated’ with telephone calls after the programme from customers alarmed that they were about to lose their savings.”

Interestingly, when challenged about the coverage RTE defended the show, stating in the Independent’s coverage that it “‘fulfils a legitimate function’ in allowing ‘ordinary people’ to express their views.” However the article goes on to state that “the State broadcaster is known to be deeply embarrassed by the fallout from Mr Duffy’s programme, which, sources at the station admit, virtually gave panicked callers free rein to express their lack of confidence in the banking system based on little other than their own feelings.”

That final statement from inside sources at the station makes for interesting reading. As Dale Carnegie once said, “when dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” By not including independent experts in the discussion or allowing the banks their right of reply, the discussion ended up getting swept away in a sea of hysteria. Or, as I prefer, Agent K’s analysis in Men In Black - “a person is smart, people are stupid”

Helge Tennø tagged me as part of Mitch Joels’ Challenge to write about your Social Media Marketing Best Practice.

Mine is simple - Participate. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said “The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.”

The only way to get ahead in online marketing is to understand what type of content or experience consumers are seeking out online. It’s not to say that you have to have a blog or Bebo page before you can advise someone about it, but you need to understand how to use each tool successfully.

So you’re targeting a teen audience and decide setting up a Bebo profile is the way to go. All well and good, but what is going to make the profile of interest to the target audience. Ignore the consultant repeating the advice Kevin Coster received in Field of Dreams - if you build it, they may not necessarily come.

In my opinion, PR agencies are becoming media companies. To date, we have largely been concerned with providing content to engage with a limited set of stakeholders, be it the media or Government, in order to engage the public at large. We are now moving to the point where we will create content and share it through a variety of mediums, with the Internet providing a portal direct to consumers.

The web is essentially a magazine and in order to attract the consumers you are targeting, you need to understand what they are reading and why they find it entertaining. You can only do this by consuming similar content.

A great example of a company participating online is EA. In response to YouTube user posting a video about a glitch in their new Tiger Woods video game, EA replied with a video that showed that what the user found might not be a glitch.

EA Tiger Woods video.

Couple of reasons why I like the EA effort

• If you look at the video, you’ll see that it’s a video reply to the original video. This shows that EA realise that there’s an active community on YouTube as opposed to the passive audience that TV typically draws.
• They’re obviously listening to what their customers are saying about them and cleverly leveraged the original video as a viral marketing effort

In contrast from a local perspective I see lots of competitions where brands ask consumers to upload videos, but inevitably very few entries are uploaded. The reason for this is simple, only a small percentage of consumers actively create content (and the quality varies like a spectrum of colours.) This is okay in the United States where there is a huge online audience, but it’s miniscule by comparison in Ireland. I bet there are many marketing managers out there questioning the ROI on a handful of videos.

I met with Colin from Zoo Digital last week and he was showing me the Adidas Originals site they created for Champion Sports. He really impressed me with their approach to get content for the website. The guys approached a number of Irish users on YouTube who they thought would be a good fit for the competition and asked them to submit content. It’s an approach that works and that has proved successful, because Colin and his team understand the audience.