Dot Comms

After finishing secondary school I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners for about six weeks in Liverpool. It wasn’t something that I planned to do for any length of time and it was particularly financially rewarding. So why did I end up lugging an aluminum industrial grade vacuum cleaner cleaning system around Liverpool for the best part of a month during the summer?

This was before work experience became mandatory as part of secondary school education and I was in the classic trap of not being able to get a job because I didn’t have the relevant experience.

So what did it teach me?

• People didn’t buy the machine, they bought you. A lot of the people weren’t that impressed with the system at first when you take it out of the packaging and the demonstration showed that it did what you expected. The customers primarily bought into you as a person and the goods was just an artifact in many instances. This is the reason by careful forging of a brands community online is so important
• People trust other people like them. Once you had cracked one house on a street, it was much easier to sell to other people on the road. It was like you had been ‘pre-vetted’. Reputation by trust and association drives sales
• People want to be the same as people like them. Despite our quest for individuality, we like to have at least the same level of lifestyle as our peers. Keeping up with the Jones’s did a lot of the selling for me. It’s also part of the reason why Facebook will have at least some success with its social advertising platform

Our colleagues over at RFI Studios in New York have put together a useful little tutorial on the latest social network to be stirring up (p)interest.

So I nicked shared it.

I hope it is useful.

Amid all the discussion over the past few days about search and social referral traffic, I also spotted an interesting piece from Econsultancy showing the site’s growing role as a referral source (client Experian hat tip here) for retailers.

Monetate has also put together an infographic pulling together the latest stats on Pinterest’s journey to become a “social commerce game changer” (see below).

I am playing around with it myself at the moment and from a PR/brand perspective it seems to be more about creating interest through the mindset of a brand persona and then curating content that supports that persona, rather than engaging around product or comms content. But like all social networks, it needs to be brought back into context - what are you trying to achieve, who’s your audience and what do they want?

Get an account and start exploring.

Over the past week or so we’ve seen a lot of change at Ruder Finn. We moved office across Covent Garden from New Oxford Street; to the corner of Bedford Street and the Strand. To match our new real-world presence we worked with our colleagues at RFI Studios in New York to revamp our online presence.

From

To

If you would like to see our offices, we have an exceptionally talented table football team looking for challenges. For more details contact Hugh.

In no particular order of importance, ten things that would make your PR agency panic:

1. Having the campaign objectives changed after most of the activity has been completed. Whilst PR as an industry is steeped in ambiguity because of its focus around language, a campaign needs a clear vision of what success means in terms of objectives. Moving the goal posts will understandably induce agency panic, if it doesn’t you probably don’t have an agency that understands strategy
2. Payment-by-results - a number of reasons for this; it encourages PR to be much more tactical. Often the measures are not mapped to what the communications objectives are. It provides the insecurity of not being able to predict cash-flow like you would have in a retainer with an implied restricted upside as clients use it to try to restrict fees - so presents a no-win situation for the PR team
3. Reverse auction - the economic theory of reverse auctions are sound, but like economics what is good in theory often falls apart in practice. It assumes that PR as a service is a commodity: teams are the same, agencies are just as efficient as each other and all campaigns are uniform in terms of resource allocation - it is likely to find the PR agency that is most desperate for cash-flow rather than the right agency
4. A meeting with procurement - buying PR isn’t like purchasing stationery, most procurement professionals realise this, but this doesn’t stop many PR agencies getting palpitations
5. Senior executive suddenly available for press tour tomorrow - an old favourite of American tech-sector companies who find out at the last minute that they have senior executives flying into the UK at the last moment and want to impress head office
6. Our CEO wants to do a blog / twitter feed - because when this is brought up there isn’t a lot of thought about how this fits into the client company’s social media strategy (if they have one in the first place). One also has to wonder if all the profile building is about encouraging headhunters to line up their next career move
7. Meeting is at the ‘wrong’ office - I once sat petrified whilst my agency MD at the time drove at illegal speeds through Birmingham city centre to get to a meeting on time in the client’s second office out by Coventry Airport. Apparently she hadn’t read the diary invite that the client had sent, on realising the mistake blood pressure levels were raised and the accelerator pedal was depressed
8. Telling the client about key account person changes - agency life is all about change, but that doesn’t mean that it gets any easier when you have to tell the client that one of their key contacts is moving on. As much as we like to pretend that its about the agency brand, we sell people by the hour and great people can both win-and-lose accounts for an agency
9. Realising that you’ve left the annual plan on public transport - I once read a rivals client plan after they left it on the seat of a train. It was reassuringly staid in its thinking and scope; so I promptly deposited it in the nearest waste paper basket. I can only imagine the panic that ensued at the agency once they realised that it could have fallen into the wrong hands
10. They read about a company crisis in the media before they’ve heard about it from their client - think Bernie Madoff

Stumbled across this Ad Age infographic showing media consumption by generation,

type of media and by time of day today via @robbrown on Twitter. Missed it first time around - is broad in approach but useful topline trends data.

Created by: MBA Online

Senior account manager/ Account director – Corporate & Technology
Fantastic opportunity for an ambitious, tech savvy SAM/AD who wants to make their mark and take a leadership role in a rapidly growing Corporate & Technology practice. The last six months has seen huge growth with four new clients coming on board and more expected to kick off in the New Year. Great balance between big global campaigns (working with our offices in the US and Asia-Pacific) and UK/European clients.

We are looking for someone who is both strategic and hands on. Who understands that clients are at the heart of our business and prides themselves on the fact their clients love them. Someone who isn’t scared to get out there and shout about the great work they do, but can be a strong team leader and an inspiration for junior team members.

Think you have all that? Get in touch.

Account executive/ Senior account executive
Fancy something a bit more challenging? Interested in an opportunity to play a key role in a rapidly growing practice? We are looking for a tech savvy account executive to join our Corporate & Technology practice. We are looking for someone who understands that media is at the heart of PR and wields their journalist contacts book with pride. Self-starting, ambitious, fun loving and organised – we want the lot. The team here at Ruder Finn is one of the best and we are happy to admit we are looking for more of the same!

Does that sound like you? If so, get in touch.

About Ruder Finn Corporate & Technology
The Corporate & Technology division has a broad range of clients from major blue chip enterprise technology providers through to science and engineering, digital and entertainment and professional services. The team works closely with our Digital division on a number of campaigns and both divisions have seen huge growth over the last year.

Ruder Finn in one of the world’s biggest independent agencies and you will have the opportunity to work on some fantastic brands on big, global campaigns. You would be joining at an exciting time – we move into some fantastic new offices in the New Year, have a new website soon to be launched and have great momentum going into 2012.

Competitive salary, great benefits, fabulous team…

I am posting the below on behalf of Laviai:

My name is Laviai Nielsen, a 15 year old student at Connaught School for Girls, and for the past two weeks I have been at Ruder Finn as part of my work experience. When I’m older, I hope to become an English teacher, as I really like literature and I always have my head in a good book - which perhaps makes you wonder, what exactly am I doing working at a PR office? Initially, I really wanted to work in the city and gain experience of working in a city office. I definitely didn’t want to work at a school if that is what I’ll be doing when I finish my education, so I certainly wanted to experience something else. With each option I had, I researched a bit about that company.

When I researched Ruder Finn, I was immediately intrigued. The company has done so many amazing things – and I wanted to find out why. The website had stated that they were a PR office, and I hadn’t a clue what that meant, so why did Ruder Finn still interest me? The news section of the website had so many remarkable news posts, which probably filled me in just a little bit, and so after reading those I knew I wanted to work here…and here I am!

On my first day, I was extremely nervous. I expected people to be incredibly busy, not notice me and as a result, I would have nothing to do. But from the moment I arrived that wasn’t the case. On my arrival I was kindly welcomed by Claire, who offered me a warm cup of tea, which I really needed after one of my first times travelling on the tube, at morning rush hour, all by myself! In the office, to begin with, I felt a bit awkward, but I quickly became comfortable at my desk and that’s probably because the whole environment is pretty casual and the people here are so nice. One of the nicest people here is Natalie, who looked after me and explained everything to me and so made me feel the most welcome. Not forgetting Alison who is also very kind, Sophie who thoughtfully offered to help me whenever I needed it and Laura, who gave me tips on writing this blog. There have been lots of other people in the office who have been especially friendly, have talked to and educated me, and most of these people would offer me cups of tea and coffee when they were on their way to getting one themselves which I believe is very considerate of them.

The highlights of working here at Ruder Finn are, firstly, researching things for the company mainly services and facilities for their new office. One of the main and probably the best things I’ve done here is creating surveys. . I had most of the control over them, which meant I got to structure them and design them all by myself. I also analysed the results and I enjoyed putting them into pie charts on Microsoft Excel.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience here at Ruder Finn, and I have learnt many things, like more advanced IT skills and communication skills which I have built up on from school, and most importantly, what public relations really means. It has been awfully valuable working here, and the option of working in public relations is undeniably on the table!

I have been following the Olympus | Michael Woodford Tobashi scheme controversy with interest. I was curious to see where the debate was coming from and how vigorous it actually was. So using Sysomos MAP I had a look at the geography of the comments.

It seemed to be most heavily focused on California. The next obvious question that sprang to mind is should we start thinking about reputation management in a more regional way rather than thinking about the usual suspects in the media?

The Mashable story is probably something that is the media equivalent of the Silicon Valley start-up legend: one-or-two young guys in a garage come up with a technology that changes the world:

• Hewlett-Packard
• Apple
• Yahoo!
• Google

Mashable was founded in 2005 by 19 year-old Peter Cashmore at home in Aberdeen Scotland and over the period of six years has managed to grow to a global media property with headquarters in New York. Part of the reason why Mashable does so well is that it writes must-click headlines and creates great shareable content.

But in this economy, it’s important to remember that time is money, and we thought we’d recommend some other sites that you should read in place of Mashable to get high-quality focused must-read content on your RSS feed reader. (If you don’t have an RSS reader already in place I can recommend both Bloglines and Fastladder.)

• PSFK – a carefully curated, but wide-ranging trends blog that covers both the online and offline worlds
• Techmeme – think Google News on steroids for the technology sector, Techmeme does a great job at surfacing must-read content
• Mediagazer – is the media industry-focused sister site of Techmeme
• Out-law.com – get great media law-related news and analysis by Pinsent Mason
• BGR – founded by Jonathan Geller, Boy Genius Report provides an insightful focused news feed on all things wireless
• Monocolumn – if there is one blog that you read to keep up with intelligent dinner party chat then this daily blog post by the editorial team at Monocle is a great option
• Business Insider chart of the day – bookmark these posts and sprinkle them liberally in presentations to sound at the top of your game
• AllthingsD – backed by the Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher’s team have their finger on the pulse of the internet industry with some hard interviewing of senior executives and great analysis
• All Facebook – whilst I am by no means a fan of The Great Satan of Social*; All Facebook is the most comprehensive resource to keep up with news and developments on the social network
• Hitwise Intelligence UK – ok so they are client of ours and we are probably biased, but James and the Hitwise team put together some great actionable content that really taps into the online zeitgeist

*This my personal opinion, it doesn’t reflect the opinion of Ruder Finn, in particular Becky McMichael.

Firstly a disclosure: I have been a Flickr member since 2004, I used to work on European PR for Flickr during my time at Yahoo!. Anyway, how that I’ve got that out of the way I can crack on with the post.

What is Flickr?

Flickr describes itself thus:

Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world - has two main goals:

1. We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
Maybe they want to keep a blog of moments captured on their cameraphone, or maybe they want to show off their best pictures or video to the whole world in a bid for web celebrity. Or maybe they want to securely and privately share photos of their kids with their family across the country. Flickr makes all these things possible and more!

To do this, we want to get photos and video into and out of the system in as many ways as we can: from the web, from mobile devices, from the users’ home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their content. And we want to be able to push them out in as many ways as possible: on the Flickr website, in RSS feeds, by email, by posting to outside blogs or ways we haven’t thought of yet. What else are we going to use those smart refrigerators for?
2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
Once you make the switch to digital, it is all too easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer number of photos you take or videos you shoot with that itchy trigger finger. Albums, the principal way people go about organizing things today, are great — until you get to 20 or 30 or 50 of them. They worked in the days of getting rolls of film developed, but the “album” metaphor is in desperate need of a Florida condo and full retirement.

Part of the solution is to make the process of organizing photos or videos collaborative. In Flickr, you can give your friends, family, and other contacts permission to organize your stuff - not just to add comments, but also notes and tags. People like to ooh and ahh, laugh and cry, make wisecracks when sharing photos and videos. Why not give them the ability to do this when they look at them over the internet? And as all this info accretes as metadata, you can find things so much easier later on, since all this info is also searchable.

In terms of numbers:

• 51 million registered users
• 80 million unique users per month
• 3 million plus geo-tagged photographs
• By 2008, Flickr contained some 2.4 billion photographs

But that’s not as big as Facebook, why should I care about Flickr?

The community

Not all unique users are created equal and flickr manages to attract creative types in far greater numbers than ‘me and my mates after 16 pints’ pictures that tend to appear on Facebook. The Flickr community has dune a good job in self-policing against conduct not in keeping with the ethos of the site. These creative types have also advocated the use of flickr by commercial and non-commercial organisations, you can find The Whitehouse, 10 Downing Street and the Smithsonian Institute. So you have a community known for high quality images, this means that this is a trusted source for image search by Google and Bing - making it ideal for search engine optimisation by putting back-links in picture metadata.

It’s creative user base has also attracted bloggers (I use Flickr myself for image hosting on my personal blog). So it is an ideal way of sharing pictures as a kind of online press room for photography.

The technology

The core thinking behind Flickr was to make it open and extendable, so the company has been very good at providing ways of sharing and using images via an API. There is an eco-system of applications out there that do all manner of photo-related things including pulling these pictures into Facebook if you want.

Flickr also embraced location-aware services way before Twitter and Foursquare were conceived by their creators. The geo-tagged information on photographs in Flickr allows Google to use these pictures on their mapping service - providing a PR opportunity for retailers, hotels, spas and restaurants.

Flickr makes it easy to search its photo archive, so brands can use it as a sort of desk social anthropology by getting some idea from the images how their products or services are perceived and used. For example here is a search that I did on the Flickr brand itself.

The creative commons

Flickr has championed the use of creative commons licences, which help facilitate the distribution of content but allowing the author to get credit, options include restricting use to non-commercial uses and controlling the degree of alterations that may occur to the works. This has made it ideal for bloggers looking for suitable images and presenters looking for interesting visual cues.

International usage

If you are doing international campaign Flickr has greater potential reach than Facebook simply because it isn’t blocked in China. The service is available in a range of languages from German to Vietnamese, making it an ideal platform for use in global campaigns.

If you’d like to know more about how you could take advantage of Flickr for your business as part of a wider digital strategy, drop us a line and let’s do coffee.