Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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

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.

So how long have you been in the industry? I’ve been at Ruder Finn for just over a year and I’ll be honest, I thought I’d got to grips with most parts of my role… until recently, when I attended a creative writing training session with our MD. The session showed me just how important experience is in this industry and that no matter how much you think you know you’ve still got a hell of a lot to learn.

So it got me to thinking – what about everyone else? Surely they must have felt that overwhelming panic when telephoning a journalist, or experienced the utter dread when you’ve sent a client email with a whopper of a spelling mistake? Or am I the only one who, at the start of what is hopefully a long career in PR, still sometimes feels completely clueless??

To answer my question, I spoke to my colleagues and crowdsourced some opinion using my recently-acquired Twitter skills and posed the question, “What one piece of information or advice do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your PR career?”

Thanks to all of the below for their contributions and suggestions and for reassuring me that I’m not alone. If you like what you read, make sure to follow them on Twitter:

“Don’t sweat the small stuff. When things go wrong, it isn’t really a disaster, it just seems like one at the time.”
Alison Denham, Director of HR & Operations, Ruder Finn

“Respect those who have been in the space longer than you but also trust your instincts/ideas. Don’t be frightened to speak up.”
Kate Boyle, Kate Boyle PR

“Don’t believe other people when they tell you something can’t be done.”
Hugh McKinney, Head of Public Affairs, Ruder Finn

“I would have found it useful to know difference between agency v in-house environment and how to know which you’d be more suited to.”
Nadia Shanaz, Freelance

“You should never underestimate the value of attention to detail. It doesn’t matter how good a piece of work is in terms of strategy or content – if it is littered with typos and grammatical mistakes it is that the client remembers.”
Emma Sinden, Director Corporate & Technology Division, Ruder Finn

“Don’t moan, understand you’ll need to graft, start at the bottom and get on with it!”
Laura Smith, Borkowski

“I wish I’d known how similar agency life can be to customer service. The strain of client needs and team demands makes me thankful my retail shop jobs during high school taught me how to put on a smile, mind my manners, and meet the needs of others no matter how ridiculous.”
Alison Morris, The CHT Group

“Being honest is better than faking it when it comes to important info. S’ok to say, I don’t know-but will look into it.”
Jessica Brookes, Blackberry

“In PR you just have to learn how to grow thick skin and get on with it.”
Sharon Chan, Consolidated PR

“The best source of advice and most wise mentor you’ll ever have is gut instinct.”
Richard George, LinkedIn

“That one day you’ll enjoy pitches, and wish you could have all the slides (instead of praying you only get the easy ones).”
Jon Silk, Waggener Edstrom

“Be nice to people, as you never know when you’ll cross their path again.”
Andy Crisp, Grayling

“Read everything, knowledge of the news from tabloids to broadsheets & also the industry is invaluable.”
Siobhan McNeill, University of Hertfordshire.

“Remember that journalists are just like real people.”
Patrick Smith, Joshua PR

“Keep a record of everything, especially anything sent to the press. Word for word.”
Ray Allger, ACCA UK

N.B. If you’re looking for advice on how to get on in the PR World Chris Lee, Founder of Run Marketing, has written a really interesting blog post offering advice to graduates looking to get their break in PR – give it a read for some really helpful tips. I also find PRmoment a useful site for insight into the current issues facing the industry and great profile pieces with some of the key influencers in PR. Check them out and see what you think.

The Giga Om blog credits the phrase to the New York Times’ David Carr as a way of describing the relationship between Wikileaks and the mainstream media partners involved in disclosing the Afghanistan war logs.

…the source of information is also a publisher, but also works together with traditional media to make secret data public for society’s benefit.

Cross-posted from my personal blog.

Information wants to be free has been the rallying cry of the greatest thinkers from the online world. It actually comes from a keynote speech that Stewart Brand gave in 1994. The free has been interpreted as ‘free as in beer’ but it can also be ‘free as in speech’. With that in mind I decided to have a look at the media I pay for. I was looking for ten media titles and ended up with 11, but that includes publications that I only buy very occasionally. There were three broad reasons that I bought media.

• Information that I can’t get anywhere else (easily). With the exception of the Telegraph’s MPs expenses scandal or the Washington Post’s Top Secret America projects most newspapers sell a commoditised product. Their sources are similar: global television news networks or wire services such as the Press Association, Agence Presse France and Reuters have filled in the gaps as newspapers cut back on having their own on-the-ground people
• Aesthetic pleasure - some publications are beautifully laid out and printed on nice paper or on a well designed website. There is a real tactile pleasure to reading a nice book or magazine
• Part of a ritual - having the media has become part of my behaviour, this is trickier to create because it is personal in a lot of contexts

I have split the media into two sections, first media that I consume on a regular basis as I subscribe to them, then the titles that I consume on a irregular basis, much of this is down to context - where I am usually, or where I am traveling to:

• Wired (US edition) magazine - Wired used to be at the forefront of typographic design when it launched with neon and metallic inks and text that spiraled on the page. Now it is a bit more prosaic-looking generally. What it still is, however, is a good zeitgeist measure of technology and innovation moving forward. Reading the print edition of the magazine with a white chocolate mocca on a weekend morning in Roastars is a monthly indulgence
• South China Morning Post (SCMP online) - Despite the best efforts of the international business press such as the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The Economist; they are still woefully poor at covering the Asia Pacific region. Part of this I think as to do with an old order editorial mindset. This isn’t likely to change soon so I pay my annual subscription to get access to the SCMP online
• STRATFOR - produce current affairs insight for the likes of mining or oil companies and military contractors. It is staffed by a mix of bright young things and ex-spooks. Subscribing to their service is like having your own think tank in your back pocket and makes The Economist look like a dessicated version of a Time Out guide
• PR Week (UK) - I don’t pay for this directly, but instead it comes as part of my CIPR membership. Whilst it is often given short shrift within the industry, it is the closest thing we have to a publication of record. It is said that when Lord Chatsworth was thinking about how to deal with the forthcoming recession, he sent in a recession to comb the PR Week archives looking for answers in terms of what action agencies had previously taken during downturns and who had been the most successful. That may be all conjecture, but it proves the value of the publication if its true
• Monocle - an entertaining read that covers current issues as well as The Economist, Monocle has a definite opinion and tone-of-voice. I also like that they don’t print on cheap paper and keep the design standard of the magazine strong
• Econsultancy - for the cost effective market and tools reports. The compendium of internet statistics come in handy for client presentations. Subscriptions to the likes of Emarketer or Forrester aren’t affordable to an individual

The irregulars

• The Irish Times - Ireland being a neutral Euro-centric country has more of an open worldview than portrayed by the UK media, combine this with gaelic games sports results and you have the prefect short haul flight paper for me to read
• The New York Times - I have a particular soft spot for the weekend edition. The paper has a particular charm in the way it rigidly sticks to its outmoded print design. Alongside breakfasts (which is the height of American cuisine), The New York Times print edition is something I enjoy leafing through when I stop over in the US
• MILK magazine - Hong Kong’s MILK is a source of constant amazement to me. Not only is it a good resource for shopping tips in both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, but I am also stunned by some of the blatant commercial things they pull off like the issue celebrating the fact that McDonalds restaurants are open around the clock. I get friends to bring me a copy when they are coming from Hong Kong and I like to pick it up at the newsstand when I am there
• Financial Times - I occasionally like to leaf through the weekend edition of the Financial Times and find the product pr0n in How to Spend It quite fascinating because it is so ridiculous. How to Spend It should only be enjoyed in print as the online edition has the most appalling user experience and a technology | gadget section that tries to pretend that Apple doesn’t exist
• DJ mag - I have been picking the occasional copy of DJ magazine up since it when it was called Jocks. Alongside Update its still a great resource for finding out about records that should be on my shopping list

This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

Today sees the disappearance of The Times and The Sunday Times behind the dreaded paywall. An introductory offer of £1 per week for the first 30 days, and £2 per week after that is the only way you’ll get to see what both news sites have to offer. But how likely are we to fork out for content, and will we really miss anything if we don’t?

The staff at The Times seem very confident – at a recent PR Newswire Meet the Media event Tom Whitwell, Assistant Editor of The Times with responsibility for online, saw no reason why the paywall would turn people away from the site. Tom suggested that peoples’ attitudes towards paying for content have changed drastically in recent years; people no longer have qualms about paying £9.99 for The Times iPad app or spending a cheeky 59p on the latest version of Angry Birds for their iPhone. What will attract paying readers to the site, according to Tom, is its wealth of specialised content and the feeling of being part of a closer relationship between the reader and writer. I particularly liked his comparison of paying for content to watching live music – would you rather see your favourite band for free at Wembley, or pay a small price to see them in a smaller, intimate venue?

But not everyone agrees with Tom. The Guardian recently published the result of two surveys into reader attitudes towards print and digital media, The first, from Ipsos, saw a meagre 11% of online adults stating they would choose to access their news digitally and only 3% saying they would opt for a monthly online subscription. An overwhelming 77% said they had no interest whatsoever in paying for news content online. The second survey, compiled by YouGov, had similar results with 83% of respondents saying they would refuse to pay for online content.

Quite contrasting views I’m sure you’ll agree, and as The Times is the first non-specialist UK newspaper to head behind the paywall, we have no real comparison to show who is right. I feel that there will need to be something pretty spectacular on the site to encourage me to pay – what about you?

We all have some things in our media consumption that are the informational equivalent of the perfect bacon sandwich (in my case: thick-cut processed white bread, smoked bacon grilled until it will shatter like glass and Chef brown sauce.) Here’s mine:

• Vice magazine Dos and Don’ts - Dos and Don’ts is kind of like sitting in a pavement cafe and doing people watching with a couple of good friends with a caustic sense of humour. A combination of snappy copywriting, great street style-book pictures versus Walcreature shots make this must-click viewing
• Ransack Your Dignity - when Popbitch, Holy Moly and People of Walmart don’t give me a a sufficient dose of schadenfreude Ransack Your Dignity usually hits the spot. An online pictorial scrap book of Broken Britain, the misadventures of the unfortunate people featured never fails to cheer me up
• RCRD LBL - back in the day when I used to DJ on a regular basis in Liverpool promotion agencies used to send me records, in return I would fax back my opinion and a list of tracks in my current playlist (which I would also submit to Mixmag | DMC). I got some great records out of it, but the one that sticks in my mind is the worst record I ever received; Italian techno remixes of Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie by Walter Cremonini put out by MCA through DMC to DJs. I wasn’t that tactful in my return sheet and the amount of vinyl I got from them moving forward diminished considerably. Overall, it was a good deal, I got to meet some handy people, do a bit of A&R work for an Italian record label and produce an unreleased track in an afternoon with a producer then on the roster of Loaded Records. RCRD LBL doesn’t give you much scope for real world adventures but does give you new music for free similar to a promo agency but without the filling out forms etc, so you can to can enjoy the lucky dip experience of new music
• JNKsystem - A Japanese-authored photo blog which happens to blog about street style, I particularly like the bit of randomness in the curation of the blog. Its not as focused as Swaggerdap or Format, but that’s part of its charm
• Rhett & Link’s video blog - Rhett and Link are a creative duo who put together some great comedy and do some interesting advertising creative work as well. They are also responsible for I love local commercials - I managed to discover the credit mack daddy through their site

What’s your media indulgences?

This was cross-posted from my personal blog.

If you live in London, you may have seen yesterday’s Evening Standard front page headline Gordon’s ark.

In the time of an election, rarely does a Prime Minister have the opportunity to appear truly Prime Ministerial, however in this very unique case, an opportunity has been served on a plate to Gordon Brown.

Copyright Evening Standard

The Evening Standard hasn’t been Brown’s greatest fan over the years, but this headline  and this story as a whole adds a whole new chaotic dimension to this election campaign. What is particularly novel about this crisis, is that no lives are actually at risk, it is all about inconvenience, granted it is incredibly inconvenient and could be significantly damaging to the airline industry. I would suspect however that many airlines will be given significant payouts through the EU to ensure they stay afloat.

Every party would love to be able to make political gains because of this crisis, but at the same time they all have to be exceptionally careful not to appear to be doing so. If the Conservatives or the Lib-Dems attack Labour for not helping the stranded, than they can be accused of playing political games, likewise, Labour can’t appear to be too chest thumping about sending in the Navy to save British lives, especially when none are really at risk.

Only time will tell about how this plays out and whether the volcano keeps spluttering away, but this is definitely one of the issues that is making this one of the most exciting elections I’ve witnessed.

Cross posted with my personal blog.

Such excitement in this morning’s scanning meeting as the team pored over the papers trying to spot the April Fools stories. This year seemed to yield more stories than ever before with several clever advertisers getting in on the act as well.

Granted, in some papers it wasn’t so easy to spot which were the April Fools stories and which just fell under the normal brand of ridiculous reporting, with some of our colleagues even convinced that certain papers did not have any irregular features in them…slightly embarrassing not to spot that the Circle Line is probably not going to be home to another Hadron Collider. What?! It was early!

Anyway we thought we would do a roundup of everything we found - have we missed anything!?

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown - The Guardian

Experts find way to stop us ageing - Daily Express

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown - Guardian

If we are to believe The Daily Mirror and the Daily Express, our Majesty has fallen on tough times, and has taken to Flying with EasyJet…be honest - you did have to look twice!

Meanwhile, The Sun wondered how many people might be tempted by a lick of paper, the Daily Mail wowed us with stories of the AA’s new breakdown service.

In France it’s much simpler. Just pin a picture of a fish on someone’s back…. Poisson d’Avril!

For a full list of today’s Fleet St Foolery, click here.

A foreign client asked us recently:

 “We have been hearing so much about the UK General Election recently, could you clarify what is going on.”

 Oh dear, we all groaned:

 “The Conservatives were bound to win” he continues “and then their poll lead shrinks and then they are looking good again and then it’s definitely a Labour victory. Now we hear Hung Parliament. Each day there is a new story: What is going on?”

This is probably the most challenging question public affairs execs face at the moment. I dread it because everyone has a different opinion based on a poll they have read, which assures them of a certain scenario.

 This is being fuelled by newspapers and political blogs publishing a huge volume of headline opinion poll figures, which seem to directly contradict each other.

 But I actually do not agree that the picture is so cloudy. I actually think that the emerging polls are, in many ways, relatively consistent, but there are factors that are clouding the picture.

So at the risk of developing an eggy face below I explain what I think will happen at the General Election and what is clouding the picture:

 1. The ignored indicators - When you dig below the surface of tabloid headlines to less interesting polling numbers, a consistent picture of the General Election emerges:

 a. The Labour Party has lost a great deal of the voters who voted for them in 2005; the Conservative Party have retained most of their supporters

b. National polls have shown that since 2006 the percentage of people who want a change of Government has stayed broadly the same - 70%

c. Polls and indicators from key marginal seats, which if won would ensure a good election result for the Conservative Party do not tally with the fluctuations recorded at national level. From my experiences the situation is far more consistent and is positive for David Cameron.

 So why do we ignore these numbers:

 2. The Role of Newspapers - Each national newspaper realises that in Election season new polling figures create a great headline. The Sunday Times carried the story of the Conservative lead shrinking to 2 points and immediately had a hook that ensured their newspaper was picked up by inquisitive voters. Yet, these headline poll numbers are taken out of context. We rarely read the scale of the survey; the immediate context or the questions that people are asked. We just see the headline figure and absorb it into our consciousness, thinking it is definitive when it is not. Unless you realise the situation the poll was created in how can you tell what it means?

Weighing these factors up I believe that the Conservative Party are on to win the General Election with a majority. I do believe that the hype of the election campaign means people are fluctuating in their opinion of the national parties and their leaders when asked in national polls.

But I think that this ignores the fact that on Election Day people will be forced to choose who they want to represent them in their constituency and the signs suggest that they will vote for a change. Whether they will vote for the reformed Conservative Party is an important issue, but I think in order to facilitate a change of Government floating voters will be prepared to vote for the Conservative Party. I think people do want to get rid of Gordon Brown and want a new Government.

I could be proved wrong, but I agree with a politician who told me recently that: “when the British people decide they want a change, they normally make sure it happens”. This is what the polls suggest and this is my prediction.