I say that in PR you always get the short straw. Being the liaison between journalists (who can be a tad tough to deal with sometimes) and a client who may not always understand how important it is that you get the correct pricing, stockist and hi-res image in 30mins for a deadline is tough.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard “PR is incompetent”. The reality is that you do your best, working on behalf of a number of people’s interests, and always having to put on a happy face.
You can’t exactly say
“sorry, my client thinks you’re Tier Three press and hates your reviews“
likewise to the client
“The journalist didn’t even want to include your cr*ppy product in their feature.”
Despite the amount of un-niceness there is working in public relations, the role implys you can actually relate to the public. Which is why this story about a PR rep telling a blogger that images of them wearning the designer’s clothes were bad publicity had me astounded.
Is it so hard to be nice? It doesn’t matter if you’re a blogger, write for Vogue or just someone posting pics to your Facebook profile. Surely this is not an example of bad practice in blogger relations it’s an example of just bad relating.
Unfortunately when it comes to bloggers there is still an ingrained attitude of agression from PRs. Could we all be a little nicer to eachother?
Sharing is caring
Something I like about working in this industry is that PR & Marketing agencies, who traditionally are a tad competitive and protective about IP, suddenly get great at sharing knowledge when it comes to social media.
The concept Wikinomics explains the business benefits of mass collaboration and if you’re one of the agencies still not open to the idea of sharing anything at all, then read it. Here’s a round-up of some of my favourite resources on the web. In the spirit of sharing what’s your favourites?
- Nixon McInnes eBooks: Currently 7 chapters in their series “A marketers guide to Social Media”
- iCrossing eBooks: 2006’s “What is Social Media” is still relevant for newbies and they recently added “Brands in Networks”
- Fallon Brainfood: Planners from the award winning agency have a monthly lunch and the fruits of their thinking have been shared; from live tweeting, to video and slidecasts
- SEO Chicks’ “How to lists”: Not just Search tips
- PNeo introduction to Online PR: Every single post full of “how to” and “what is” explanatory goodness
- Immediate Future Social Media Glossary: Even if you know your “above the fold” to your “XML“ you might still want to point colleagues and clients here to brush up
- e-consultancy: Not an agency but my ultimate go-to destination for useful information
- TED: Again, not an agency, but worth mentioning. The inspiring talks covering technology, entertainment and design are of interest for anyone in business or education
I’d also like to include a couple of my clients who have created some useful resources themselves.
FRUKT, the music and branding experts, recently began a series of talks called the ‘FRUKT Sessions’. The slidecasts from their 2nd event are here and I’d love to hear your feedback.
Don’t forget Attentio’s free blog topic trend tool, Trendpedia, and they now have a series of whitepapers about social media and industry specific trends.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Last week I attended the inaugural FRUKT Sessions. I promised to drop a few notes down so here goes.
Dan Southern: Xtreme Insight
Dan kicked off with some interesting vox pops showing that if you ask people what they get for free they can’t recall exactly. Of course we’re accessing a huge range of free services & content everyday (particularly on the internet) but this has become so normal, especially for the young folk, we’re seeing ’Generation Free’
Dominic Hodge: FRUKT
Dominic listed some of the trends which have been driving the culture of free in music:
Filed under: Uncategorized
Get ready to sign-up to every new web thing going
This perfectly observed post from Jon Silk gives tips to journalists looking to make it in PR and, as I couldn’t leave a comment for some reason, I felt inspired to do a quick list of my own on making it from PR to the social media side of murky online marketing and stuff.
Filed under: Events, Reputation management, User generated content | Tags: community management, libel, Tempero, UGC, Wiggin
Dom's quite excited about the view from Wiggin's office
I’m at Wiggin LLP’s offices with my client, Tempero, for their jointly hosted ‘User Generated Content Forum’. The event discusses the legal and practical implications of allowing UGC on your web property.
Wiggin are media law experts and opening the session, then Tempero [Founder Dominic Sparkes] will take over and tell attendees how community moderation can help brands protect their image and meet their legal obligations.
Some good brand names here: M&S, Grazia, Hiscox to name a few.
First up is Wiggin [I didn't catch the name of the speaker, apologies!]
How do you manage liability?
Filed under: Advertising, Events, Uncategorized | Tags: Intellitracker, Interwoven, Omniture, Wunderloop
I went to yesterday’s Supplier Showcase event from e-consultancy on Behavioural Targeting.
I’ve just pulled out a few nuggets of interest to share here and downloads of their complete presentation will go up on the e-consultancy site soon.
Filed under: Blogging, Random Thoughts, Social mediatools, Uncategorized | Tags: Blogging, social media engagement, Twitter
When i lived in Italy I visited the Benedictine monastery in Subiaco. It’s built around a cave where St Benedict supposedly lived in solitude for three years fed by a shepherd or monk (I’ve heard both versions) who lowered a basket of food down at intervals. The cave is surprisingly peacefully and, depending on your temperament, kind of appealing.
My positive response to the environment demonstrated that people feel different degrees of being intro- or extroverted and it’s something that crops up in questions when I run social media training sessions: who are ‘these people’ ie bloggers, tweeters, social networkers et al and why do *they* feel so comfortable broadcasting their lives?
I’m not sure I know the answer. At a basic level, once you and your friends start using something like Facebook it becomes more standardised and natural, you find yourself adding more personal updates, posting photos etc.
But honestly I still feel a bit like a social media “observer” using tools like this blog and Twitter to engage with my community from professional more than personal desires. As a pretty private person being publicly online makes me feel exposed and I contemplate deleting my accounts to run away to my Benedict’s cave. (Although I wonder if after 30 mins there I’d discover a compulsion to tweet “sitting in cave waiting for @Romanus to stop by with the food basket”).
Filed under: Events, Trends, Uncategorized | Tags: Blackberry, Philips, Saatchi, women and technology
The Blackberry Women and Technology Awards were last night and I wondered how I totally missed this tech event. I didn’t even spot a random Tweet about it this morning.
A quick scan of the official site revealed, disappointingly, that perhaps this wasn’t the techiest event of the year. The nominees and winners hadn’t even been posted 18 hours after the event began (an age in online news terms).
This got me thinking about the benefits of this type of brand association with an event. It’s not a bad idea at all. If you caught the Saatchi & Saatchi ‘Lady Geek’ research last year you’ll have seen there’s a huge missed opportunity to market technology to women (around £600m worth).
So I did a rudimentary Trendpedia search to see who might be “owning conversations” around women and technology. First off I scanned through a quick Google search to see if there were any stand out brands in this space. There weren’t so I just used:
- Blackberry: A product like the Pearl was squarely aimed at women. I also wondered how an event like this was giving them ownership of ”women and technology” conversations
- Philips: Last year I was lucky enough to work on their Aurea campaign which, via fashion partnerships with the likes of Lanvin and media spend in Vogue, should’ve brought them into the female tech consumer conversation
- Saatchi & Saatchi: With their research I wondered if the brand had gained a presence in these types of discussions. I also thought it would provide a realistic contrast against the other two brands.
The search terms I used were [brand] AND women AND technology.
The results:
