Archive for March, 2011

This is cross-posted from my personal blog. I was chatting with Jed Hallam the other day and one of the things that came up was the reaction that some people have to my posts. Unlike many people in the digital space I try not to blog about social media and PR all the time. There are a number of reasons why this is the case:

• Social media and PR exist in a wider context of economic, societal and technological change; I’ve always intended that my posts did the same
• A lot of the time, people have said it better elsewhere, its more about pointing to their efforts and explaining why theirs is particularly good
• I’ve never had a laser focus in terms of my interests, it meant that revision for exams is my own personal hell; but it also means that I get inspiration for ideas from completely disparate places
• Sometimes I get home from work and talking shop about social media isn’t particularly welcome
• Because too much of the talk about social media focuses on the media rather than understanding the people pushing the buttons and does more to confuse and instill fear into the establishment than foster best practice
• Building on the previous point about a lot of the focus on social media; I find the consumer insights and behaviour changes most interesting. What happens when the technology hits culture, and why does it take different routes in different countries?

I am posting the below on behalf of Dolapo -

My name is Dolapo I am 15 years old and I have been working at Ruder Finn for the last two weeks for work experience. When I first came to Ruder Finn I had no idea what PR was about and I was very nervous. In addition, the majority of the staff at Ruder Finn just happen to be women which did not help with my confidence. One thing I did notice is that to work at Ruder Finn, you need to know your way around Microsoft Outlook - with my luck I had never come across it before - I’d heard of it but had never used it before.

Sophie, one of the people who works at the company, took very good care of me and showed me the basics of Microsoft Outlook - thankfully I got used to it pretty quickly. Everyone at Ruder Finn was extremely patient with me, correcting my regular mistakes and showing me the ropes; Sarah helped me a lot without me even having to ask so I was very grateful for that. After a couple of days I seemed to settle in and become less anxious and cautious. The Canon 2 - the mighty printing, scanning and photo copying machine with its infinite number of touch screen buttons - was my next major challenge. If it wasn’t for Charlotte I would still be hypnotised by its constant and taunting flashing. That printer really knew how to push my buttons.

One thing apart from lunch that I really looked forward to was my almost daily chat with Hugh about physics - it was my chance to relax in some truly intriguing conversation. I am really pleased that I have learned a lot about the world PR. I have in no way learned everything about it but I definitely now have a strong understanding. Being at Ruder Finn has helped me in a lot of ways – for example I could feel my typing speed had increased. Before I came here I had no idea what a blog was or how to write one but thanks to Ged, Flick and Sophie here I am writing one.

So I would just like to say thanks to all of the Ruder Finn staff for being so polite and helpful towards me.

So I was up early doors and tuned into CNN which is my usual MO when I am staying over in a hotel.

The presenter on CNN was giving people the 101 on the mobile web

And how to use a QR code

But then their production staff manage to obscure the QR code so it wouldn’t read any way.

A row erupted a few weeks ago over the use of the Facebook Connect authentication system to confirm the identities of commenters on Techcrunch. I spent a while thinking about this before putting fingers to keyboard on this. In order to think about it I wanted to reflect on the process from a number of different angles:

• Why would Techcrunch do this?
• Why Facebook Connect?
• Why are people concerned?
• What does it all mean?

Why would Techcrunch want to do this?

Techcrunch like similar media operations notably Gawker Media realise that the community interaction is a key part of their sites. Their journalists may know their beats, but chances are at least some of their readers have deeper domain knowledge or a different perspective from ‘being in the trenches’.  Gawker Media looks at its community numbers as part of the businesses performance metrics.

However the ‘health’ of these communities is not just about the number of comments, but keeping the quality high. This is something that these companies, social networks like Flickr and Quora have put a fair amount of thought into keeping that quality high. Techcrunch eventually must have decided that having people file under a real identity. The problem is that even if Techcrunch asked for a real name it may not get it. So it defaulted that authentication to a third-party service: in this case Facebook. Facebook has a really strong record of ensuring that people have put down their real name as their identity.

Why Facebook Connect?

Facebook has one of the biggest computer infrastructure set-ups in the world. The company has prided itself in the past as the biggest user of MySQL database technology and this takes a lot of technological savvy. Something that every Facebook user has to do is log-in and log-off, this identity is also used to give permissions to third-party code (for instance Facebook applications). Once Facebook grew its network to a critical mass, extending it’s authentication out to third-party sites is a natural progression of their technology.

A secondary aspect of this process is what it does for the third-party site. Using Facebook Connect absolves them from a potentially costly development or purchase of an equivalent system. Secondly if things go wrong, like they did with Gawker Media, the third-party site can blame Facebook rather than suffer a tarnished brand.

Why are people concerned?

If you look at the proto-culture that formed around the web, it came from people like Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly who had a libertarian viewpoint as exemplified by the back-to-the-land movement that was part of the hippie culture and a general distrust of ‘the man’. Because of this privacy was an important part of web culture.

There are a number of reasons why privacy is considered important:

• It allows people to share information more freely. That is the reason why journalists get background or ‘off the record’ briefings. Conversely, when real ID is in force (like South Korea) it can impact  or ‘chill’ speech on subjects such as corporate malfeasance. Interestingly business schools are scrutinising the social network profiles of potential post-graduate students, which means that the stakes for privacy are high
• Historically authoritarian regimes like the Nazis and the subsequent Soviet-orientated East German regimes looked to have an insight into every aspect of people’s lives and that was generally considered unhealthy amongst westerners
• Hackers fought a concerted battle with the US government in order so they could develop encryption for consumers. Originally this was for electronic privacy, but most people use it to secure credit card payments. Given this battle was hard-fought, geeks are loath to give up their right to privacy

A second complementary aspect to privacy is the unscrupulous commercial exploitation of consumers data. Some 10 years previously Windows Live ID (or Microsoft Passport as it was then known) was touted as a one sign-in for e-commerce sites and the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) criticised the service would have full access to and usage of customer information. Given that Facebook has already had issues over consumer privacy protection, people’s concerns over Facebook Connect are understandable.  At one time Monster.com and eBay relied on Microsoft Passport, but Microsoft cancelled it in 2004 – Facebook has already screwed over partners so often there is even a phrase of it, to get Zucked, so you have to wonder why people would rely on Facebook?

In terms of the architecture of the web, openness has been at the centre of the web ethos. Prior to the web; competition and innovation was stymied by the tight grip that Microsoft held on the computing platform. AOL tried to do this unsuccessfully with its walled garden. You can judge how successful this was by pondering how much value was destroyed with the AOL | Time-Warner merger, that AOL has been laying off people for 11 years straight and the fact that few people hear ‘You’ve got mail‘ any longer.

What does it all mean?

According to Steve Cheney Facebook Connect has a chilling effect on Techcrunch commenters, using their real name and providing a strident (not rude, but strident) opinion could be enough to kill a job interview down the line. Robert Scoble disagrees with Cheney and thinks that:

• Most people will have principle and say what they think
• Google will surface the content anyway

Google will surface content, but most people don’t have access to ways that would authenticate content beyond their name or a user name that would know to be attached to that person. Secondly, most people have more realpolitik than Scoble. And to be honest with you Scoble would have been hard to fire because of his profile, so he had a lot less to lose than your average worker, especially in this economic climate.

What I find more interesting is that Techcrunch lost a golden opportunity to get everyone to get an AOL ID which could have then been also used for their instant messenger service or on other AOL portfolio sites. There is nothing like using your own technology to be an advertisement for it.

Further reading

Steve Cheney: How Facebook is Killing Your Authenticity
Robert Scoble: The Real “Authenticity Killer” (and an aside about how bad the Yahoo brand has gotten)
ReadWriteWeb: 4chan Founder: Anonymity is Authenticity

This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

Here is a little experiment for you. Take a scroll through your Linked In contacts and see if you can count how many of them are employed (as opposed to self employed) female and with young / school age children. I have no wish to harp on about glass ceilings and the lack of flexible working practices but even knowing what I do about the PR industry I was shocked. Of my 242 contacts, less than 20 fitted this description.

When I was an account executive, nine out ten people at my level in the company were female. At senior account executive and account manager the ratio was similar. When I got to AD things started to change and by the time I got to director the pendulum had definitely swung the other way.

What is particularly sad about this is that it represents a flow of talent from the industry which, by the time you reach senior management, has turned into flood.

In years gone by most of these women would have just turned their back on PR but times are changing and some of these agencies are going to have to watch their backs. A quick Linked In count up revealed as many self employed mothers as employed. Better connectivity and networks like Linked In are also bringing these women together in virtual teams who, when coming together to hunt down new business, pose a considerable risk to more established agencies. They can deliver experience, flexibility and senior consultancy without having to worry too much about profit margins or hourly billing rates. Organisations like the PR Network, which specialise in helping senior freelancers (majority of whom are mothers) to find work are actually going out with virtual teams to pitch against agencies for new business.

So now it’s not just about brain drain. Perhaps the thought of losing business to these virtual teams will be enough to finally make agencies think about what they can do to hang on to their female talent. After all nothing quite sharpens the focus like a hit to the bottom line.

I found this two-part advert on the London Underground intriguing.

LloydsTSB is advertising the use of infographics to display accounts information as a way of differentiation from other banks.

Where this gets interesting is that it puts a management accountancy-type function directly into the bank account. This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

Here are the notes I made at the session that Mobile Monday ran on tablet devices.

A few observations:

• The irony of a heavy early-adopter crowd gathered to find out more about tablets, let very few of them had a tablet themselves. If I were a tablet manufacturer I would be doing an Oprah-style giveaway in meetings like this
• Rather than Nokia’s three platforms of Wp7, Android and iOS. It seemed to be a two-horse race in terms of the discussions platforms: Android and iOS. Dave Gibbs of BSkyB did call out BlackBerry as a promising platform and there was a real-life PlayBook demonstrated in the drinks session afterward. Microsoft needs to be mixing it up at events like this
• There was a sharp dichotomy between the developers in the audience and the panelists over the viability of HTML5 as an application/service platform. The developers liked it, the panelist felt it wasn’t fully-featured enough and felt that there was a number of consumer acceptance barriers to non-appified rich mobile web services

This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

Thanks to an early-morning TfL fail, I unfortunately missed the first ten minutes of the Gorkana breakfast briefing with Andrew Clark, Business Editor and Heather Stewart, Economics Editor at The Observer.  The parts I did catch however were extremely useful and I’ve included some of the key points below:

Links between The Guardian and The Observer:

- Apart from specific editors like Andrew and Heather, many of the journalists at Guardian Media Group are seven-day operatives specialising in key subject areas.  Their main areas of focus are breaking news throughout the week and working on Sunday news and features

- When pitching, you will need to specify which paper you think your story would be suited for

- Links from the Observer Business section to the rest of the paper – many of the stories are consumer-focused and easily accessible and so depending on the angle of the article the story can be moved into the main section of the paper

- Online: If a story is urgent the team will publish early online, however they do plan stories with a Sunday publication date in mind

Working week:

- Work from Tuesday – Saturday

- Tues/Weds – Conduct majority of briefings with PRs, finding story leads

- Thurs – Star to plan for weekend edition

- Fri – Planning for lead news and features

- Deadline: Saturday around 12:00 p.m.

- In terms of submission planning meeting for features take place Thurs/Friday, breaking news jus goes straight to the relevant journalist

What makes a good Observer story:

- Fits in with the broader news agenda

- Features with spokespeople who are willing to think outside the box (Roger Carr, CBI)

- Stories around current topical issues (e.g. Lord Davies Women in Boardrooms report)

- Political/green/CSR issues always of interest

PR-able sections:

- Punditry throughout the section – spokespeople who are willing to be controversial and have a strong opinion

- Case studies are always welcomed

- Success stories/company results  - don’t have to be a listed company, can be a company that is doing things differently etc.

- Don’t tend to run bylines/features although if you think your company/spokesperson is prolific enough then feel free to pitch!

- Observer podcasts –pitches can be sent to Paul Maynard

- Engaging with the team – like to speak to CEO level, but any credible players within the business world will be considered.  Happy to meet with PRs first to build a rapport

Specific pitching - The UK Budget:

- The team envisage that there will not be many shocks in the upcoming budget, will me more focused around key themes such as unemployment and the action the government plan to take to alleviate the situation

- Do not bombard the team with 5+ comment emails during the day.  They prefer more though-out, opinionated comment the day after the event

Thanks to Selena, I got to spend a lot of Monday at Social PR 2011. Here are some of the notes that I made from many of the sessions.

Activision

SonyEricsson

Web measurement

Negative PR panel

KD Paine on measurement

Barclaycard

The presentations from the event can be found here, Luke Brynley-Jones summary and Selena’s own blow by blow accounts. This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

Laura and I attended a great networking event last night, organised by law firm Irwin Mitchell. Entitled ‘persuasive presentations’, the event featured Daphne Clifton and her colleague Fiona Handle from Make Life Easy.  Throughout the hour-long presentation Daphne outlined her 10 ten tips for persuasive presentations so we thought (being the nice people we are) that we would share our learnings with you!

Top 10 Tips:

Prepare, prepare, prepare

Context is crucial, and Daphne emphasised the importance of ensuring you conduct research about your audience to make sure your pitch is very specific.

People buy people

When people buy into an idea or proposal, the main reason for them doing so is often down to the person presenting.  So be yourself – learn from others but make sure your pitch represents your personality

Listen
When speaking to somebody directly, make sure you engage with them. Listen to what they have to say, pay attention and ask questions to encourage people to share more with you

W.I.I.F.M (what’s in it for me?)
In new business meetings and networking events it is important to realise that everyone has a motive for being there – it’s not just for the free drinks and canapés – so make sure you identify your objectives before attending.  Try to get hold of a delegate list, highlight people you want to speak to and if you don’t know them ask the event coordinators to introduce you

Learn to K.I.S.S (keep it simple and straight forward)
Don’t baffle people with jargon or embellish the truth: be honest and be open – it will be this that gets you remembered

Whats the ONE THING (that you want out of the meeting?)
Again, another good reason to identify your objectives before the meeting but also the objectives of your counterparts – why are they there, what is on their mind, do they understand you.  Be sure to meet these requirements

Point of difference…and can you prove it?
What make you/your company stand out?  Practice your one minute elevator pitch before big meetings and events and be confident in talking about your skills

Practice makes perfect

As silly as it sounds, practice your presentation and pitch at home, either alone or in front of others and get feedback.  And be prepared for questions!

Don’t be a S.L.O.B

o Sense of humour failure – how do you respond when nervous?  Be aware of this and avoid letting your ticks come across!

o Loss of memory – nerves can wipe your memory so make sure you have notes, but again practice is key

o Odd behaviour – things such as tripping over stairs, spilling drinks etc. can happen in high-pressure situations.  Make sure you arrive to your meeting early to give yourself time to relax

o Breathing – Deep, calm breaths are crucial.  If you feel your breathing slip, stand up – not only does this give you authority, it will help you breathe more easily

Use your comfort zone wisely

Review your pitch regularly and add anything you think sells yourself and remember to make the most of your colleagues and life coach to help work on the points that you’re still sticking on

Any other useful tips people want to share?