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Digital dualism and this week’s bits and bytes

Source: mediabistro.com

It’s not often that a study in a journal on ethics gets much attention outside of academia, but if your study finds that PR professionals are in fact guiding the ethical decision making in organisations, that’s a different ballgame. In fact, when properly understood and practiced PR is ethical by its very nature.

Another week, another social media meltdown. After HMV it was Applebees’ turn in the US to go up in flames in front of the eyes of the world, in real time. A long post by RL Stollat on his blog, it goes through the timeline of how it kicked off and all the mistakes that the Applebees social media team were making in excruciating detail.

Who doesn’t love to hate corporate jargon? We all do. And I’d argue we’re all guilty of it at one time or another. Econsultancy has pulled together a list of horrors where, I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I’d be able to refrain from slapping some sense into the speaker. I mean, ‘phablet’? Really? Apparently this is such a problem in PR, that digital agency Twelve Thirty Eight have created the ‘Buzz Saw App’: a web-based tool that strips out all the jargon, providing you with the total number of buzzwords used and a percentage score.

I have nothing but love for Lego. They just get this social thing. Just in case you didn’t think they were awesome enough already, to celebrate their 55th anniversary, they came up with a series of 55 minimalist posters of nursery rhymes, stories and pop culture references — all in glorious Lego! See how many you can get right – this is not just your average, boring ‘like-bait’.

It’s social media philosophy time – hooray!

Two articles by @nathanjurgenson caught my attention this week. The first is about the phenomena of digital dualism, where he argues that the scale of how people see their interactions with digital extends from one extreme – strong augmented reality, where they see as digital and reality being the same thing – to the other – strong digital dualism, where digital and reality are kept strictly separate. Confused? Read his post and take the digital dualism test (personally, I feel most comfortable at the mild augmented reality end).

The second, is a follow-up piece to the digital/reality scale and the consequence of more and more people living in total augmented reality. Instead of watching your favourite band play your favourite song, you’re filming in on your smartphone to be posted later on YouTube. Instead of enjoying the view from the peak of that mountain you’ve just climbed, you’re taking a photo to share with your followers on Instagram. Instead of having a good old chat with a friend, you’re tweeting that great one liner you just came up with. Nathan argues that like photography before it, social media changes the way we perceive the world. Have you ever asked yourself: “Holy crap, this thing I’m doing/I’ve seen/I’ve heard/I’ve read would look great on my [insert social media profile of choice]? He writes: “social media users have become always aware of the present as something we can post online that will be consumed by others”. Or, asked in the form of a question: Are we more concerned by our own social media history, that we forget to enjoy the moment?

The aptly named Creativity Online recently posted a collection of 10 projects from 2012 that expertly combine creativity with technology – while keeping the customer front of mind. The list includes some great examples from retail, my personal favourites would be Red Tomato’s Pizza Fridge Magnet button. The button is given to the only the best customers and programmed with their favourite order – all they need to do is press it and their order is delivered.

Then there’s Hellmann’s Recipe Receipt, where customers in Brazil who bought Hellmann’s mayo at a participating supermarket would get a recipe using Hellmann’s and the other items they’d bought printed on their receipt (HT @cdceniza).

In this week’s videos of the week, the new Mercedes CLK will make you want to make a pact with the devil to get it and all the sexiness that comes with it – but watch the clip before you sign away your soul. Also, my apologies for not already including this last week, but I just had to include it.

Microsoft launched this clever Internet Explorer ad for all the children of the ’90s. The snappy wristband thingies? The 56k dial up modem? The chunky yellow water-proof Walkman? And the pinnacle of awesome, the Supersoaker? I loved them all. Will the clip make me switch to Internet Explorer and turn my back on Chrome? Who knows…

And finally: the best think you’ll read this week (besides this email, of course): Simon Rich’s fantastic short story ‘Sell Out’ from the New Yorker (HT @TomParker81). So good, I immediately bought Simon’s book afterwards.

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#SocialBrands – my thoughts and slides

Today I had the great pleasure of speaking on behalf of Sainsbury’s at the Social Brand Conference in London. A packed day of brands and agencies talking about all things social media. From best practice customer service, content strategies, legal frameworks and ROI – there was just so much information to take on board and digest.

I spoke about how in today’s digital age, every crisis is now social, global and viral. I’ve embedded my slides below, but before I get to that, I wanted to put to paper some of the thoughts and inspiration from the other speakers that stayed with me.

Hats off to @Larssilberbauer from Lego for the work that his team has been doing. I’ve mentioned them on my blog before and I was very excited to hear first hand about how they go about social. What stuck with me the most was his deceptively simple approach to developing a social media strategy for Lego: If you understand people to be hard-wired to be social, then you have to understand what your customers social needs are. In the case of Lego, this is the need to build together and to show off that sense of pride you have when you’re completed your creation. Combine your business strategy with your customer’s social needs and hey presto, you have a social media strategy.

The results speak for themselves – just check out Lego’s brilliant “Brickmented Reality” campaign.

Lars then went on to talk about the simple yet entirely brilliant Lego social media driver’s licence. Put simply, a day-long course at the end of which Lego executives have to pass a theoretical and practical exam on social media. And much like any driver’s licence – if you mess up, it can be taken away from you.

A big theme of the day was that of agile social media teams (or SWATT – Special Weapons & Twitter Tactics, thank you @Jeremywaite for that bit of awesomeness) that sit somewhere between PR and Marketing and are not only plugged in to the big events and news stories of the day, but have the authority and resource to develop creative content for their brands to be a part of the bigger conversation.

With the Superbowl powercut fresh in people’s memory, no wonder then that it was Oreo’s ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ Tweet – created, approved and posted within minutes of the lights going out.

Other examples were Lego’s tribute to Neil Armstrong, Spec Saver’s cheeky ad on the back of the Eden Hazard/Ball boy incident and some more from the Superbowl:

@Jeremywaite provided the best definition of ‘Return on Investment‘ I’d ever heard at a social media conference: the actual definition of the concept, which was a very pleasant surprise.

ROI%  = ((revenue gained – investment) / investment) x 100

That definition coupled with his 1 slide social media report (Who is saying it? What are they saying? When are they saying it? Where are they saying it? and Why are they saying it?) will prepare you for any budget meeting with the CFO.

Finally on to @BruceDaisley from Twitter who showed a great clip about how the news of the recent helicopter crash in central London was shared on Twitter. The visualisation clearly shows how initial tweeters are at the centre of the story at the start, but then the power of trusted sources on Twitter during breaking news events such as Sky News and more prominently BBC Breaking News become hubs for the news (as I’m sure both Sky and the BBC will be happy to learn).

My mind is still buzzing from all the input, inspiration and ideas so I’ll leave you with my take on crisis comms.

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How brands are using Twitter’s Vine

So here’s a wee video of Momo and I running in sub-zero temperatures along the Schuylkill River trail in Philly.

Why is that (possibly) important?

I took the video with Twitter’s new 6 second video sharing platform Vine. Available on iPhone only for now, the app encourages users to record short clips made up of even shorter clips. The UI is really simple, Twitter is integrated (obviously) and it doesn’t play well with Facebook (obviously) – all you really need is an idea and/or a cute subject.

Like Momo.

Vine isn’t even 24 hours old and already we’re seeing Brands experimenting with this new short form video format via their Twitter profiles.

Nothing earth-shatteringly ingenious or clever:

  • showing off their products and services,
  • offering a behind the scenes look at their employees, or
  • providing an interview snippet to entice fans into watching the whole thing.

But they’re showing willingness to try something new and most importantly, they’re having fun with it. Interesting also, that the brands values/identity clearly shine through in those little vignettes.

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Blogging, improving breaking news at Twitter and this week’s bits and bytes

@SainsburysPR

Starting off with exciting news from the Sainsbury’s digital corporate affairs world, I am super excited to say that we have finally been granted official ‘blue tick of awesomeness’ status by Twitter for our @SainsburysPR account (thank you @simonlp). Equally exciting is the launch of the lifestyle PR team’s blog, where Kathryn and her team will be bringing you all the news from the world of fashion, home and entertainment. The first post provides a sneak peek at the Spring/Summer 2013 home & lifestyle show.

While we’re on the topic, here’s an excellent 8 point guide to blogging that not only sums it up perfectly, but also shows how it’s different from writing a press release or an article. From the importance of tweetable and descriptive headlines, writing upside down to inviting comments with questions and opinion – if you blog for work or privately, this is a must read, print, laminate and stick to the wall kind of document.

Twelve Thirty Eight have produced their annual review of PR jargon and practices that piss off journalists. Not too many surprises there I don’t think, but a good read with quite a few car-crash examples of what not to do in PR. Condensed here in The Guardian’s Greenslade Blog if you don’t want to go through the whole PDF.

Ideas of Year are looking for just that – creative ideas from the Great British PR industry – to showcase some of the best stunts, social campaigns, quick and simple media stories. At the end of the process, around 100 of the finest examples will be compiled in a coffee table book that’ll be published with PR Moment in March 2013. So if you have a campaign to enter, complete this form and submit it by January 20.

Hasbro came out with a clever PR campaign this week, asking fans of Monopoly to vote on which of the classic tokens will never pass go again. The Guardian and The Mirror have covered the story and Paddy Power made the wheelbarrow odds on to be axed, with the cat tipped to replace it. Head over to the official Monopoly Facebook page to save your favourite token!

Lego have been on a roll in regards to customer service recently and this week has been no exception: A boy lost his new Lego toys in Sainsbury’s. He wrote a letter to Lego asking them if they’d replace the toys. Lego’s response is pure customer service gold. The original Tweet has been shared thousands of times, ITV and other media outlets have picked it up, and I don’t have to tell you the importance of quick, empathetic, helpful, human customer service in a viral world.

Must watch video of the week: The totally epic, OTT, 3 minute clip for The Guardian and Observer Weekend™ featuring none other than Hugh Grant (really). Turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy (HT @TomParker81 and @tarasthompson).

Check out this excellent print campaign from Expedia using airport codes and luggage tags. Makes me want to book my next flight and check in – although LHR PHL LHR doesn’t really spell anything.

The guys at Oddbins are back and running yet another marvellous promotional campaign. After their cheeky anti-Olympics campaign in the summer, they’ve now turned their attention to four groups of people who, in 2012, did not always receive the love that they probably deserved. Throughout the four January weekends mothers, bankers & journalists, Germans (YES!) and gingers will take turns to receive 10% discount. I am getting ready for the German weekend.

We all know that the place for breaking news is Twitter. Something happens and people instantly come to Twitter to search for a keyword – often without getting much context. Looks like Twitter are looking to wrest that role of context provider from media outlets using a combination of clever algorithms and dedicated people: they are working to improve the search function with a real-time human computation engine that helps identify search queries as soon as they’re trending, sends these queries to real humans to be judged, and then incorporates the human annotations back into Twitter search results.

Still on Twitter, those crazy cats at @SolihullPolice are at it again, providing their followers with the best comedy crime fighting you could possibly squeeze into 140 characters.

No surprise given murky privacy settings, tax affairs, Instafail, and the new Poke App, but Ad Age doesn’t like Facebook very much: Think of Facebook as a self-absorbed, petulant brat, one that doesn’t understand how to play well with others — users, investors, partners, competitors. Perhaps they should send that to Mark directly – it’ll only cost them a $100. That’s one way to monetise your social network… (HT @stangreenan)

And finally: a ridiculously well done Brad Pitt Chanel N°5 commercial parody featuring Johnny Depp (again, HT @stangreenan).

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The increasing power of PR and this week’s bits and bytes

A round-up of my favourite tweets mentioning Sainsbury’s in December kicks of this week’s update. You can check out November andOctober if you missed them.

The must read article of the week comes from Management Today and their look at the increasing power and influence of PRs. There’s a perception in some quarters that PR is just about transmitting a message. It’s not. It’s first and foremost about interpreting reality, reading the Zeitgeist. […] That requires some distance from the status quo. A good PR has to be a bit of an outsider and be prepared to tell people hard truths. I could just quote the whole thing. Trust me. You need to read this.

Last week I mentioned that I was looking for the top PR stunts of 2012 – well, here are some that caught my eye:

  • The BBC put together a look back at the top memes and viral videos of 2012, and of course we were chuffed to see that Giraffe Bread made it onto the list. Interesting to see the imbalance of planned vs. reactive – clear indication that you don’t make something go viral, it just happens.
  • One of France’s leading marketing bloggers Gregory Pouy pulled together a great slideshare deck of the best digital campaigns of 2012. It’s 82 slides long and includes videos as well as a key take away for each campaign so make sure you have a cup of tea ready before you tackle this bad boy.
  • Rich Leigh over at @GoodandBadPR did a brilliant job at pulling together his top 20 PR stunts and campaigns of 2012

What’s going to happen in 2013?

  • @AndrewGirdwood  pulls together 9 observations of where digital is headed in 2013. Point 9 sums it up nicely for me: In this increasingly complex digital landscape – a landscape that is evermore intertwined with offline – people, especially the crowds, are inherently unpredictable. Good marketers will recognise and adapt.
  • Meanwhile, The HuffPo looks at predictions for retail and mobile – note the schizophrenic nature of our relationship to our smartphone. It allows loyalty programmes access to people’s pockets but at the same time gives customers the ability to ‘showroom’.
  • 7 social media trends from Luke Abbot’s excellent blog
  • Vice magazine looks at the age-old journalistic practice of using event anniversaries as story hooks. Prepare to read the 2013 headlines today.

And as ever, for every positive summary, there seems to be twice as many ‘top fails’ compilation. Adweek put together the 20 biggest brand fails of 2012 and you have to admit – from Amazon spoiling a key plot point in a book, the Bic ladypen to Nestlé using a bear that looked suspiciously like ‘paedobear’ – there are some crackers. I wouldn’t have put the AMC theatres/Oreos cookies in myself though, that was just a bit of a banter between two branded Twitter accounts. Still, this is very much a top 20 things not to do in communications.

Through sheer luck, I came across a video by Minute MBA about the top three HR mistakes companies make (no handbook, withholding criticism or praise from employees and ignoring the competition) which led me on to another of their videos about what you can learn from Valve’s Employee Handbook. If you don’t know, Valve are the people that developed probably one of the greatest and genre defining games of all time: ‘Half-Life’. They went on to develop the gaming platform Steam and another mindbendingly brilliant game ‘Portal’. In 2012, Valve’s employee handbook was leaked and caused quite a stir in the gaming and HR world. So I found myself sitting at home, on a Saturday morning, totally enthralled by a employee handbook for a company that I wasn’t working for. Not only does the handbook do a great job at outlining what their company culture is like, it is really very funny! They promote a total lack of structure to promote creativity and to empower their employees to follow and create what they believe has value. A brilliant bit of work, well worth the read and I’m sure that handbook and company ethos is a big reason why they attract some of the best game designers and engineers in the world (the handbook has a prominent place on their homepage, in high and low res pdf).

Always a relief to see when your principles of dealing with negative customer comments online is mirrored by third parties. Social Media Today provide this great 12 point checklist on how it’s done.

Do you know what the world’s most active Twitter city is? Nope. Not that one. It’s Jakarta.

And finally: feeling the January blues? Then head over to the nicest place on the Internet and get a hug: http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/

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Digital Corporate Affairs – weekly bits and bytes

Did you all have a good Christmas? Some of these victims of Christmas autocorrects didn’t (possibly NSFW).

At special request – a look at the best PR examples and campaigns from 2012 proved more difficult than I thought. Mainly because the Internet seems to like PR fails/disasters much more than PR wins. I did come across these lists from Maud Davis and My News Desk but it’d be interesting to hear from you lot what you thought were the best PR wins from 2012?

Looking ahead at what’s in store for PRs in 2013: a shift in outcomes and tactics. In a nutshell, the future will be about enhancing reputation, increasing share of mind and generating leads and website traffic through content PR and image led communication. Must read.

Inline images 1

A gift from the comedy gods this week that shows how little people understand about Facebook privacy settings. Randi Zuckerberg, ex-marketing director at Facebook and older sister of the sandaled CEO, this week posted a photo of the Zucks testing the new Poke app at Christmas. Unbeknownst to Randi, the photo was tweeted by a friend of a friend and went viral. Randi took offence, attacking the rogue tweeter for her lack of ‘human decency’. A delicious case of the pot calling the kettle black (which didn’t go down at all well on t’Interwebs) and spectacular proof that even the people who built Facebook don’t have a clue how the social network actually works.

The oxymoron that is ‘Facebook privacy’ is at the heart of this comical bit of ‘reporting’ of the Randi Zuckerberg story by The Today Show in the US. Not only don’t they have the slightest clue about what it is that happened, they seem to be proud of their total ignorance.

But that wasn’t the only story of social media incompetence from people who should know better. The Sale Sharks have sacked their social media bod who branded a section of the club’s supporters as “absolute f***wits” on her personal Facebook page. Ouch.

Moving on from this Facebook fail to some inspiring online ads – only that the best online ads in 2012 weren’t ads. “It’s the content that makes up the best native advertising, mostly on social channels; the non-ad, non-paid advertising that tells great stories, engages us and compels us to share these experiences with our networks.”

Slightly left field, but very interesting in terms of gaining insight on people’s behaviours through social media. A small start-up called Sickweather used data from Twitter and Facebook to declare an early start to this year’s U.S. flu season, six weeks before the Centers for Disease Control.

And finally, The Guardian has done a marvellous job in pulling together the viral videos of the year in a 5 minute clip. Warning: contains Gangnam Style.

Have a happy new year everyone – see you in 2013.

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PR in 140 characters

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Media Results Conference in London about how to incorporate Twitter into your digital communication plan. Below you’ll see the presentation (and as you can see, its built with Prezi, which is just much more fun that Powerpoint and also went down well with the audience on the day), but I also wanted to share a bit more of my thinking with you regarding PR in the social media space, specifically on Twitter.

Listen, measure & engage

Communicating on Twitter is based on listening and engaging. This holds true if you communicate via the phone, email, Facebook, SMS, or Twitter. You listen and you respond. Now, I use the word “engage” because it has two meanings: it means that you respond to a question, to a trend or issue that you have identified by listening. It also means that what you say on a proactive level needs to be engaging – you want it to inspire the other person to act. On Twitter, than can be a retweet, a fave or a reply. If you’re Twitter stream is full of @ responses and mentions then you know you are listening to and engaging with your audience in a way that they find interesting.

Measurement is the third important element of communicating via Twitter: Tools such as Twitalyzer, Tweetreach, Klout and Bit.ly will produce a number of different reports and key performance indicators that will help you track your own Twitter performance, how far you message has travelled, how much influence you really have – right down to how many people have actually clicked on the link you’ve just shared (the trick is to add a + to the end of bit.ly links and you’ll see what I mean).

So why should PRs be on Twitter?

Because your target audience – journalists and bloggers – are already there and using it to connect to other hacks. They ask questions about products and companies, announce they are writing an article about an issue that you might have some information on and some even prefer to be contacted exclusively through Twitter. 

Another important audience is also on Twitter: customers. They will be talking about your brand, commenting on things you have done, sharing news about your company and often times provide the first source of information in times of crisis.

And finally, the value of Twitter as a constant stream of “what’s happening in the world right now” – is a huge asset if you use Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and/or Twitter lists to keep an eye on tweeps relevant to your industry.

Twitter is a PRs best friend in times of crisis

By monitoring customer sentiment and trends on Twitter as well as a few key words combined with your brand name(s) will provide you with an effective early warning system. Once Twitter alerts you to a possible situation, you’ll be ahead of the game because you’ll know what to look for and where to look for it. Depending on the nature of the issue you can then chose to update followers through Twitter about the situation or decide to respond on a reactive basis only. Either way, you’ll have a better chance to control the flow of news.

A simple and free way to set up Twitter monitoring for keywords is to set up a Google Alert for status updates on Twitter mentioning certain keywords. You can then set up a rule in your email program of choice to highlight the alert when it comes through so that you don’t overlook it. Simple, free and instantaneous – providing you are there to check your email!

Defining PR in 140 characters in 140 characters

PR on Twitter: live and instantaneous tool to listen for brand mentions, measure customer sentiment and trends; and engage target audiences

So my question to other flacks out there: how do you use Twitter in your everyday PR work?

PR in 140 characters on Prezi

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Trying something new today: Digital Media Manager at Sainsbury’s

Today was my second day at Sainsbury’s. After 2 1/2 exciting and incredibly rewarding years at AOL it was time for a new challenge and the Digital Media Manager position at Sainsbury’s perfectly combines two of my passions: all things digital and public relations. I will be supporting the Corporate Affairs team led by Mark Rigby to help communicate the Sainsbury’s story through digital media channels such as blogs, Twitter, Foursquare and many more.

It’s still early days but here are some amazing facts about Sainsbury’s to give you an idea about why I am so excited about starting this new job:

  • 18,000,000 weekly customers
  • 150,000+ employees 
  • 30,000+ products 
  • 2,000+ suppliers 
  • 792 (and counting!) supermarkets and stores

You can learn more about Sainsbury’s in the 2009 Corporate Responsibility Report.

So from having mail I’m now going to try something new – and if my first two days is anything to go by, I’m going to love it! 

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