Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

At 218 years old, The Observer is the world’s longest-running Sunday newspaper. But if reports are to be believed it might not make it to 219, as Guardian Media Group (GMG) looks at ways to cut costs after losing nearly £90 million in the year to March 29.

From a personal and professional perspective this would be terrible news. Personally I think the music, sport and food monthlies are among the best magazines in the UK and with my PR hat on, The Observer has led the way when it comes to looking at the environment and green technology, areas where tech and corporate PR has been very focused of late.

The end of print media has long been discussed for years but this would surely be a landmark day for those that predict it’s demise? Is there any long-term hope for newspapers? I’ve always believed print would pull through but I am getting less certain by the day…

I used to have a client whose brief to the PR agency I worked with was to get him coverage in the Financial Times that he could show to his buddies in the club house of the golf club. What a difference a decade makes, the internet has given us a lateral view on influence.

Looking at publications is not only about being able to reach potential business influencers: the C-suite (CEO, CTO, CFO, CMO - board directors in UK parlance) coveted by business-to-business marketers, it is also about being able to be discovered online by these C-suite individuals via search and having your brand mentioned in discussions that these people overhear online: WOM (word-of-mouth).

Which is where Technorati’s Attention Index comes in. The index does not measure whose publication does the best or most incisive journalism and analysis, but the journalism that is most talked about. YouTube comes in at number one, not surprisingly, probably because people like pictures of skateboarding dogs and kids in their back yard pulling Jackass-style pranks on each other. However it also emphasises the power of talking directly to consumers like JetBlue and Dominos Pizza have done recently.

However, it is not all about trashy novelties as stories, quality media like The New York Times, Reuters, The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post all come immediately after the video sharing site. In comparison the Financial Times comes well below in 25th position and The Economist even lower in 38th position.

The Financial Times and The Economist were also found to be the biggest losers in terms of rank on the index and the amount of attention that they have received from bloggers over the past month or so.

I am not saying don’t bother pitching the Financial Times with stories, or that I would really put Lionel Barber on hold; but that influence and attractiveness of coverage in online publications may not be directly compariable to its offline analogue. I am waiting for the day when I get a PR brief that asks me to get coverage of a client on the Guardian Online so they can share it with their fellow guild members in World of Warcraft. This is also published at my personal blog renaissance chambara.

What is it about national print coverage that gets in-house PROs so excited?

Ruder Finn recently launched its Future of Communications report, based on a survey of 100 in-house Public Relations Officers (PROs) and 20 in-depth interviews with PROs.

The research, which looked at in-house PRO attitudes to digital communications, threw up a number of interesting angles including the inconsistent costing of digital services which Ruder Finn UK MD Nick Leonard discusses here.

But for me the most interesting was the fact that nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of PROs said that given the choice between getting their story placed in a national newspaper or the online version of the same publication, they would choose print. Even the supposedly more tech-savvy technology PROs still preferred the print to online coverage.

There is nothing wrong with being more comfortable with what you know, but a fear of the unknown shouldn’t blind PROs to the more obvious benefits of the digital world. Online press coverage is permanent, more likely to be read by someone you really want to read it and contributes to your search rankings; a newspaper is here today and gone tomorrow.  I know national print coverage has that wow factor, but in terms of tangible impact on a clients’ business is it really worth more?

What do you think – do you work in-house? What is it about national print coverage that really gets you excited? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

According to the recent Future of Communications survey Ruder Finn conducted, the answer is yes… though eventually and incredibly cautiously.

The ‘cautiously’ part is hardly surprising - in the regulatory environment that surrounds healthcare communications, especially prescription products, caution prevails.  Facilitating greater dialogue around prescription medicines raises a whole host of issues from the interpretation of promotion versus non-promotion through to complications around adverse risk reporting.  This cautious attitude is further amplified by the nature of the regulations surrounding digital communications. Although some regulatory bodies, like the ABPI in the UK, have taken steps to try and set down rules governing digital media, they are still peppered with ‘grey areas’.  Where some industries have already taken the plunge and are happily doing backstroke, the healthcare sector has only just rolled up a trouser leg and dipped a toe in the water.

It is important of course to exercise caution, but the ‘eventually’ bit of my answer is also important.  Not only must healthcare companies start to embrace digital communications in order to stay relevant, but if this does not happen, it will miss out on a consistently growing audience and medium with which to reach them.

Market research tells us that patients, carers and healthcare professionals use the internet more and more for health information.  In fact at a nurse advisory board I recently attended, the majority of the room stated that they often go online during consultations with patients to look up queries.  They of course had some favoured, trusted sources, but they were Googled nonetheless.  I also think of myself and my family - I’ll often consult the internet prior to consulting a GP and older members of my family have carried out extensive research on their conditions to find out more about their treatment options.

Information is out there, whether pharma companies want it to be or not, and people are accessing it.

The healthcare industry is full of intelligent and sophisticated marketeers who recognise this ‘evolution’ is taking place and want to be part of it. Our own experience tells us that some pharma companies are doing great work monitoring social media and reacting to issues. But the key word is ‘reacting’. It is the proactive work that is difficult and the bottom line is nobody wants to be first to run a big digital campaign.  But proactivity doesn’t have to mean taking risks. Healthcare will eventually fully embrace the digital age but it won’t be done in great leaps but small incremental steps.  Only by doing these small steps will regulatory departments, who are key to this change ever occuring, come on board.

So what do we mean by small steps? It’s doing a few simple things well.  Maybe that is sponsored links on google to ensure responsible web sites appear at the top of searchs when people look for counterfeit products. How about non-branded educational videos on Youtube, more of these are starting to appear now. Holding online advisory boards on secure networks, which are far more cost effective and allow flexibility for the participants. We could go on.

The way patients and healthcare professionals search for information and interact with each other has changed.  Therefore it stands to reason that how healthcare companies communicate with these audiences also has to change. This will happen and, to a certain extent, is already happening but it will take time and it will take a lot of small steps.

Well, it has happened, the first big UK political name has been brought down by British bloggers. I won’t go into a detailed discussion on the events because if you are reading this post, you will likely know the story (here is a good synopsis here in the Telegraph).  But to quickly recap, Damian McBride, a senior figure within Downing Street, albeit behind the scenes, has been brought down by the power of blogging and it looks like another senior Labour character, Derek Draper, is also losing in the battle of the bloggers between his blog, Labour List and Paul Staines, who runs the conservative blog, Guido Fawkes.

The point I want to make here, instead of getting into the history of “Emailgate”, is that both Labour and the Tories are seemingly struggling to understand how to campaign online and their efforts seem all very ad hoc with no real direction. Draper himself admitted only in February that he didn’t know the difference between “my RSS from my elbow” and from my standpoint, there has very little positive interaction with the voting public so far. While Guido Fawkes, as the name suggests, is just trying to bring down the Labour Government, although his aim is to replace it with a Conservative one and doesn’t have the anarchic goals of his namesake.

Its obvious Labour has set up their web presence to try and get some kind of Obamaesque traction on the blogosphere and from voters, after all, I may be cynical, but it is an awfully big coincidence that Draper and Co. devised Labour List in November, around the time of Obama’s victory. And as I have mentioned in a previous blog, the Conservative’s seem to be behind in this regard.

However, Labour List, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, another high-profile Conservative blogger, seem to just snipe and battle each other from across the political spectrum. While this is interesting from the point of view of a political junkie like myself, Becky McMichael, a colleague and fellow blogger, put it perfectly - they are just preaching to the converted.

There is no real engagement, no real message, no grass roots campaigning, no real harnessing of support from people who don’t already support either party.

There is a new post on Labour List by Mark Hansen titled “Labour is gaining fast online: Don’t let Guido wreck it“, where the author states “Just ten days ago a ragbag group of Labour bloggers and campaigners was gathered (organised by Derek Draper) to offer ideas as to how to build the resources on Labourlist and make it more useful to Party members at constituency level. How to build this Labour-minded community.”

Mr Hansen has summed up Labour’s and the other party’s problem quite succinctly without knowing it - they are trying to engage with Party members and registered supporters. These people won’t win you an election, it is the swinging voters who get you elected, any student of electoral politics will tell you that.  They must deliver their message outward, not just inward.

Peter Mandelson wrote in his first blog on Labour List about new media and the fact that “we have to recognise that the days of command and control are over. Instead we need to learn to embrace and engage.” I guess they are still learning.

Cross posted with my personal blog.

Although this piece covers POM-to-P drug switches (taking a prescription only medicine, POM, and making it available through Pharmacy, P) the principles discussed apply to any form of product launch, so please read on even if you’re not involved in a POM-to-P switch.

You may have read in the media about the launch of an over-the-counter (OTC) weight loss pill called Alli. Previously only available on prescription the European Commission announced at the start of the year that it could be made available through pharmacy. I have a lot of experience in POM-to-P switches and have followed Alli‘s progress with great interest. Alli will soon be available from a pharmacy near you so I thought I’d take this chance to review the coverage it has received to date.

What has been fascinating, and ultimately what prompted me to write this blog, is how the media, and then the public, have reacted to this announcement. This is a classic demonstration of no matter how hard you work to get a responsible, non-sensationalist message out to the public about a product, when you finally make an announcement what actually gets printed can be very different.

Exhibit A – The Daily Mail, 6^th Jan, runs the following headline “Diet pill helps woman drop a dress size”. ‘Drop a dress size’, could this be any further from what a diet pill for the clinically obese is designed for? It makes it sound like it’s a quick fix to get you from a size 12 to a 10 for your holidays. I’ve checked the GSK release about this announcement and it largely contains responsible messages like “lose weight gradually and steadily” and “in conjunction with a reduced calorie, lower-fat diet”. It never mentions or even alludes to the ‘drop a dress size’ opportunity at any point. When the story eventually appeared online 2 weeks later the headline was thankfully changed to a more appropriate “£1-a-day anti-obesity pill is going on sale without prescription”.

Exhibit B – That week a colleague of a friend of mine sprints into her office and proclaims, with some excitement, that there is a new pill that is going to help her lose weight. To provide you with some background my friend works in a highly respected profession and her colleague is someone I would put in the “successful, intelligent, rational human being” category. Furthermore, despite having two children she is at most a size 10 and if she wanted to lose weight it would be for purely personal rather than medical reasons. Now if someone like this can reach such a conclusion then where is the hope for others? Now I’m not saying it was the Daily Mail’s fault but coverage like theirs surely contributed to such a conclusion being drawn.

Exhibit C – The Daily Mail (yes again), 26^th Jan, runs the following headline “Revealed: The true cost of the £1 diet pill hailed as a weight-loss wonder drug”. Hang on, 2 weeks ago you were the ones “hailing” it as such. This article was about the ‘terrible side effects’ this treatment has. Well, it is true it does have nasty side effects but these are well publicised, so why didn’t they mention them 2 weeks ago when they were ‘dropping a dress size’. Whereas the first article focused very heavily on the positives, this article solely covered the negatives, again not what you’d describe as balanced coverage.

The worst part of this is that it is the media that are always quick to criticise Pharma for inappropriately marketing its products but it should really take a long hard look at itself before it starts wagging its finger.

So what’s the answer? How can we navigate our way through this minefield and gain balanced coverage for POM-to-P drug launches (or any product launch for that matter).

Well the truth is there is no simple answer. It’s always going to be hard to gain balanced coverage, especially in areas such as weight-lose where people are desperate to believe that there are quick fixes.

What you can do though is stick to the following:

• Plan for milestones – Understand when the media touch points are (in the case of POM-to-P switches it is during consultation, when the licence is agreed and when the product is launched) and prepare for them.
• Stakeholder management – Ensure you have undertaken a wide ranging, solid stakeholder management campaign. Knowing who will say what and when is half the battle to predicting media coverage.
• Due-diligence – Anticipate the sensationalist angles the media can take and pre-empt them i.e. this pill is not about dropping a dress size it is aimed at…
• Stay close to the media – Know what they are writing / broadcasting and when. If you don’t feel it accurately reflects your story, react quickly.

I attended an industry awards dinner last week and, as is customary with these events, much alcohol was consumed and much debate was had.  I’m writing this because one of these debates struck me as more interesting than most.  Can Brand PR really deliver?

The question was posed by the head of marketing for a global company with a long list of well known brands, so he’s well placed to make such an assertion.  His exact comment (obviously filtered through the hazy fog one tends to have following such an event) was this; “if it is a choice between spending 100K on Brand PR or buying a 100Ks worth of additional media, I would take the media spend every time.”

His point I thought was incredibly valid.  Here’s an in-house marketing person who is judged on sales and sales alone and who must ask himself always; “is this money well spent and will it deliver increased brand awareness and therefore increased sales?”

This got me thinking.  Is there truly a place for Brand PR in these current gloomy economic times?  Can we all put our hand on our hearts and say Brand PR has delivered time and time again?  I thought not. The bottom line is Brand PR is difficult.  Trying to get your brand intrinsically linked to a story is no mean feat.  Why? Because Editors don’t want your brand there and certainly not if it is saying anything positive.  They can smell a PR story a mile off and want your brand forcibly removed from it.

Can Brand PR, and I’m being specific here, no one is questioning whether other types of PR e.g. crisis, financial PR etc work, but specifically can Brand PR, show value against other, more guaranteed, forms of marketing.

The answer is categorically, Yes…sort of.

The classic PR answer, I know.  But I say ‘sort of’ for a reason. It can work but provided it is undertaken in the right way and, more importantly, for the right reasons.

So the first of these is the right way.  I see two fundamentals to Brand PR:

1)    Through the line campaign themes - If you don’t have one consistent theme that is running through every aspect of your campaign it is hard to get good Brand PR.

2)    The brand must be integral to the story - If you have 1), it makes 2) much easier.

If you have a consistent marketing theme running through your campaign and a creative angle that intrinsically links your brand to that theme, and therefore the core of the story, you can get great Brand PR.  Most importantly you can get Brand awareness above and beyond that which a straightforward advert could achieve.

Two great examples of this.  The first is the recent ‘Take a Benylin day‘ campaign.  A campaign that was clearly helped by a complaint from the Federation of Small Businesses which rocketed it on to the 10 o’clock news.  Either way it can’t be denied that it was based on a solid and creative idea that ran through the line.  It also boasted a link up with the British Chambers of Commerce which helped provide credibility for the campaign when the criticisms started flying.

Another example is the comparethemarket.com campaign ‘compare the meerkat‘.  No one would deny these are clever adverts but this theme is carried all the way through the communications.  The meerkat even posts on Twitter and has a Facebook site!  This raises a further important point.   With the diversity of communication mediums at a PR practitioners disposal there is so much that can be achieved with a good creative theme.  A creative theme, I hasten to add, that doesn’t have to be driven by advertising but can start from any one of the marketing disciplines.

So if the first consideration is the ‘right way’ the second is the ‘right reason’. The big question to ask, and this is my final point, is why are you doing this?  That should really drive whether you undertake Brand PR or not.  If it is to get a simple brand message to a hard to reach audience, then a bit more media spend might be the answer.  However, if it is to educate consumers / professionals about a broader issue relating to your brand, demonstrate 3^rd party endorsement or create a brand experience over and above that which can be achieved in a simple advert, then Brand PR should definitely form part of your marketing mix.

So can Brand PR deliver?  Yes it can.

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.  This was the reaction of my University friends when I told them that I was venturing into the glamorous world of PR.  As I had already done a period of work experience with a PR firm I knew that this was not the case, however I was more than happy to play along with the stereotype.  And with a certain level of smugness I tell them that I am a Junior Account Executive.  This is because executives stroll round in pin striped suits, slam doors and shout, “Come on, we need the Japanese report done by six o’clock.”  It is amazing how deceptive a job title can be.

It comes as quite a shock when you first realise how ignorant you actually are to the industry you have been appointed to work in.   Not since my first day at primary school when I managed to get myself locked in the toilets have I been so out of my depth.  But, there is light at the end of that long and murky tunnel.  My head has finally stopped spinning and some of these abbreviations that fly around the office actually make sense.  All going to plan, I will be an Account Executive before I know it.  So when people in the pub ask what I do I can sound just as obnoxious as I tell them that I am an Account Executive.  That is unless they work in PR and actually know what that means.

As a 26 year old woman it’s hard not to feel moved by Jade Goody’s battle with cervical cancer. Not only is Jade having to face leaving her children and partner, but also her own mortality. At an age where Jade should be going out with friends and buying shoes, she is writing her will, settling her affairs and preparing her funeral.

However, Jade’s legacy may extend beyond Big Brother, bad boyfriends and racial slurs. Women across the nation have followed Jade’s story and booked the smear test they’d been putting off for months.  The Daily Mail reported that the number of women having smear tests has gone up by more than 20 per cent as a result of the publicity around her story highlighting the significant role she is playing in increasing awareness of cervical cancer.

Today Sun Woman launched Jade’s Legacy - a campaign with her backing - to raise cervical cancer awareness and to get the screening age in England lowered from 25 back down to 20. Through exploiting the media to ultimately raise money for her children, Jade has caused a ripple of consciousness that may in turn save the lives of hundreds of women across the county.

The Jade Effect doesn’t stop with cervical screening. The subject of palliative care is finally receiving the media attention it deserves with an article in the Sun today dispelling the myths commonly associated with the treatment of terminally ill people.

Although there is no longer hope for Jade, her lifelong courtship with the media has finally paid off.