Archive for November, 2008

Atlantic Records has announced that for the first time, revenues from downloads have outstripped earning from physical sales.

This is not surprising in itself - the wind has been blowing this way for a while now - but I can’t help but find it just a little depressing.  I am a big downloader myself but also have shelves and shelves of vinyl and CDs and you still can’t beat the thrill of holding something physical in your hand.

This is especially true (for me anyway) at Christmas. As a music-lover, CDs and records have featured prominently in my stockings over the years and getting bought tracks over the internet doesn’t seem quite right. I’d be interested in seeing if the ratio of downloads to CDs sold decreases in December. There is room for both formats of course but I’m not ready to give up physical presents for technology just yet.

PR remains one of the most popular graduate career choices in the UK and here at Ruder Finn, for every graduate we hire, there are another 40 who are disappointed. Despite this intense competition, gone are the days when graduates were willing to tolerate a few lean years to gain experience. It seems that increasingly graduates want it all and they want it now.

When things get tough in business, graduate recruitment appears to be an easy target for cost cutting and this is a situation that is causing a few sleepless nights among the class of 2009. In reality, this is a short-sighted approach.  Graduate recruitment is not about filling immediate vacancies and meeting immediate needs, it is a longer-term investment in the business and the industry in general, ensuring a steady supply of SAEs and AMs a few years down the line.

What is a blog?  According to blogger.com it is “a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.”

So what is the point of a blog on a company website?  Does it represent the views of the company and demonstrate that we are all company people, or is it more about showing that we are a group of individuals and as a company we welcome diversity and celebrate difference?  My money is on the latter as there really isn’t a Ruder Finn type; we are a diverse group with a wide range of interests.  What unites us is working here.  So this blog represents the musings and ponderings of a mixed group of enthusiastic, creative people.  It is, if you like, a window on our worlds, the public practise of something previously kept private.

Having read the usual horror stories about inability to control the messages on a corporate blog, I can see how it can be a bit of a nightmare from an HR perspective.  To a certain extent, HR is about controlling circumstances and situations.  Blogging is something fluid which defies control; it isn’t done according to a timetable or rota, it’s there for whoever wants it, whenever the mood takes them.  All of which begs the question, “Is there any control here and if so, who exercises it?”  The reality is that this blog is built on trust rather than control and trust is an essential part of doing business. Although some companies struggle with it, we trust our staff to do and say the right thing and we rely on their self control to avoid it careering out of control.

For us, blogging is about external communications, about telling the word that we’re here, but at its heart is internal communications, making sure that the people showing their faces at the window know what our company stands for.

John Sergeant and dance partner

There are two stories that have dominated the UK media today. My colleague Nick has addressed one of them in the post below and I am going to turn my attention to far less weightier issues - John Sergeant pulling out of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing competition.

A few months ago he was a respected but straight-laced political correspondent, famous mostly for being the reporter shoved out of the way by Maggie Thatcher’s goons when she announced her resignation. Fast forward a few months and he is approaching national treasure status thanks to his comically bad dancing, chubby-faced charm, way with a quip and position as the nation’s favourite underdog.

The manner of his departure was exquisite too; it was dignified and timed with a perfection he couldn’t quite manage on the dance-floor, as he realised that his continued presence on the show was starting to grate. He has left with reputation not just intact but hugely enhanced and it’s an exit strategy that people from many other walks of life would be wise to follow.

Good on you John!  And good luck to Christine Bleakley, my personal strictly favourite on the show.

At the time of writing there were around 1,000 articles about this on Google News and Bruce Forsyth had just been on the Six O’Clock news to talk about John’s decision. If this story is worthy of the media frenzy it has generated is another matter entirely, but it has to be said that the whole thing has been an absolute PR triumph for John Sergeant.

Sometimes a story comes along which truly polarises opinion. Today’s leak of the BNP member list is one of those.

It was only a short time before it was displayed on sites, referenced on blogs, and the Google maps mashup/heat maps showed you if there was somebody on the list living in your area/street/house (no links here for reasons which will become apparent).

Cue stories of prank calls, abuse in the street, offensive emails etc. How long before we have physical attacks on people and property? Or even misguided vendettas like the famous paedophile/paediatrician case.

Now I hate what this party stands for, and I can’t understand why people would want to join it. But they have their reasons, which come from a different experience to mine, and I support their right to make that choice. The type of lynch-mob mentality which some of our media stir up is far from helpful and brings out the worst in our supposedly tolerant society.

This may make me a Guardian-reading liberal apologist to some, but sometimes we have to respect people’s views even if those views do not conform to what we deem respectful. Personally I think this is one such occasion.

Feel free to disagree. That’s kind of the point.

I posted a while ago about social media tool, Twitter, and its role in disrupting the media process.  Charles Arthur rightly pointed out:

Except… this is only accurate about “disrupting the flow of the news process” where “news” means “news about technology stuff”.

We in technology PR and media are living in a bubble to a certain extent and mainstream media in other industries are yet to use the tool widely. Rory Cellan-Jones, tech correspondent at the BBC posted this morning about his recent experience using Twitter:

When I said in a “Tweet” last week that I was looking into addiction to online games I immediately got useful replies, including one which sent me to a psychiatrist at the Tavistock who became the key figure in my story. Then, minutes after I did the story on Today, I got more Twitter messages attacking me for being unfair to gamers. I was then able to point them at a blog post I’d written with more detail and that became a forum for a vigorous debate about the pros and cons of online games.

Yes it is a technology topic but it is slightly more mainstream in reach and provides a great case study of how journalists are using Twitter these days.

Yesterday at the Future of Mobile event in London, Guardian writer and lover of Twitter, Jemima Kiss said Twitter is one of the most important tools of her job.

I hope PR folks are listening and taking note…

Courtesy of Paul Walsh via Twinkle

The FT launched its new homepage last week. Easy to use and a fresh and clean new look - worth checking out.

PR Week has kicked off a couple of new activities aimed at the UK’s digital PR folks today - Peter Hay, digital editor, upped his Twitter activity picking up a host of new followers and the mag launched a facebook group for UK PR folks.

There has been a Twitter feed set up from PR Week UK for a while (hat tip Chris Reed at Fishburn Hedges) but the personal tweets should be a great addition to this.

Up to now, other than conferences on the topic and a small column in the tech sector highlighting industry bloggers, the magazine hasn’t had a very large UK digital focus or presence.

We’re looking forward to hearing about future plans in this area though.

There has been a great fear, generally fuelled by the media, that the monetary policy being pursued at present in recapitalising financial institutions is the only mechanism that the Government can call on to help to mitigate the effects of the current financial crisis.

There are certainly many more strategies open to the Government and if we had learnt anything by the 1980s from the strict prices and incomes policies of the 1960s, it is that national strategy must achieve the right balance between monetary and fiscal policy to allow Governments to regain control of the economy.

How successful the present Government will be when it attempts to do so remains to be seen and depends largely on the detail of the strategy it adopts. The present government has seconded the main weapons of monetary policy to the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and the present financial crisis is being seen as its first real test, the outcome of which will determine if that part of the Government strategy has been a success.

Although increasing national debt is no longer the political suicide note it once was, as long as it remains sustainable, the borrowing requirement for the UK in the short to medium term is considered by many to be too high and the real question is how does the Government ultimately pay for this?

The political uncertainty surrounding the financial direction for the country was clearly demonstrated this week when all three major political parties advocated tax cuts, while at the same time the Government also raised the possibilities of tax rises.

Taxes were due to rise next year anyway - the 10p tax fiasco bail out, the increased borrowing for the take over of the banks, the unpopular increases in the vehicle excise duty being three of the contributory factors.

So, where do the Prime Minister and the Chancellor go from here? According to the other UK party leaders, he cuts taxes but without increased productivity, this may lead to the vicious cycle of even more borrowing which will incur yet more debt.

There are no easy solutions to this - recessions do not simply disappear of their own accord - positive political action allied to sound fiscal and monetary strategy and discipline are needed to minimise the human impact.

Thomas Jefferson stated that “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies” perhaps we are just beginning to realise the price of maintaining those liberties.

Everyone knows how Barack Obama and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, have been able to harness Web 2.0 to create a digital grassroots campaign which has been significantly responsible to wining the White House. My question is, will this digital revolution ever be harnessed by the UK political machine?

The US Government has, to a certain extent, already jumped on the twitter bandwagon and it’s only likely to increase come January 20^th under the Obama Presidency. But, what about the UK? Number 10 has recently rebuilt its website to make it far more social media friendly, including twitter, flickr and youtube applications, as well as a whole host of bookmarking sites, which means someone can see the potential of social media outreach. But, at the same time it is all fairly basic. It seems to be a “we should give this a try”, rather than being a part of an overall strategy.

As far as I can tell, the only twittering going on comes from the Prime Minister’s office, along with David Cameron, Nick Clegg, a few other MPs and their respective parties, Hazel Blears and the Department of Communities and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but not much more. DFID has recently set-up a blogging site written by on-the-ground staff in the UK and abroad and the Our NHS, Our Future site has a blog written by Lord Darzi, although it hasn’t been updated since July and David Miliband actively blogs of the FCO website along with other FCO staff.

Other Government departments also have online tools aimed at online engagement, but again, it all feels ad hoc. For instance, the DFID blog is on a completely different hosting address to the normal DFID site, so if you didn’t know it was there, you’d struggle to find it.

Is the Government harnessing digital and social media as well as it can?

The question can be asked of private blogs focusing on politics. There are thousands of blogs from journalists, pundits, firms all like this one, which discuss the whole gambit of Government; policies, polls, reform, rumours and the list goes on. But, what about sites like the Drudge Report, which is famous enough to have been mentioned on the West Wing number of times and has had an undeniable effect on US Political Communications. It has also been around so long, the Observer recently listed it as being “on the way out.” The UK blogger sites just aren’t quite the same. This is possibly why they aren’t seen as an issue to political communication aficionados.

The UK simply doesn’t do it as well as the USA, yet what Westminster has to realise is, one blogging site, with one story, with one influential reader, could change everything and the UK political world could have to completely change its style of communications with it. After all, it was Drudge who broke the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal.