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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

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

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!

How does a news editor go about selecting which 10-12 stories he will run on the News at Ten, from a potential list of several thousand? According to Robin Elias, Managing Editor of ITV News at ITN, it’s a question of instinct. Speaking at a PR Newswire ‘Meet the Media’ event on Wednesday, Robin was interested to see if we, the audience, would select the same stories as he would from a fictional list.

We didn’t have the time to trawl through the thousands of stories that his news team does, but to illustrate the point, we were given a list of eight news items, from which we could choose four.

Here are the fictional news items we were given. Which four would you pick to run on the News at Ten, and which would be your headline story?

1. The government has announced a new £50 million prison programme

2. The Government has made a U-turn on the congestion charge in London

3. 200 people have died in a ferry accident near the Philippines

4. There has been bomb on the London Underground – two people killed

5. David and Victoria Beckham have split up

6. The FSA is recalling certain brands of skimmed milk as it has been contaminated

7. There has been another NATO attack on the Gadaffi compound

8. 2011 has been the driest year in history

So – which would you choose? Don’t be shy - post your four chosen stories and their running order as a comment below.

I will reveal Robin’s selection in due course…

Since enterprise technology became an accepted part of business infrastructure there has been a language barrier between those that use the technology and those that create and install it. So significant has been the divide that it spawned a whole new industry – IT consultancy – effectively a middleman between business and technology.

This divide is set to become even more of an issue now that Cloud has become part of the conversation. In many larger organisations there is a place for the CIO at board level, which meant the responsibility for understanding the business need and translating that into a technical requirement sat mainly with one person. Cloud however has brought a whole new set of decision-makers into the mix.

Some software providers are better placed to take advantage of these changes than others. For companies like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft there has always been a focus on lines of business because of the nature of what it sells. HR, finance, procurement and customer service systems exist to support particular lines of business so the heads of these divisions have always had a say in what is delivered. Translating technology into business benefits has therefore had to be at the heart of the message that SAP delivers.

Up until now the onus has always been on the IT people to understand better what the business needs. Now however the businesses are trying to understand better what technology can do for them. Cloud is seen as something that can not only save money but can also make the business more agile, more flexible and more dynamic. From a PR perspective this means that the approach is sometimes the reverse of what we have traditionally seen. It’s about showing real understanding of the technology and showing what it can deliver.

This change in the way technology is viewed is a huge opportunity for the company that understands it. The impact of consumerisation, Cloud and the way social media has changed the media environment so radically over the last 12 months demands a fresh approach not only to the way IT companies speak to their customers but to the influencers on those customers too – be it traditional media, bloggers, analysts or industry influencers. Businesses now actively want to know how technology can benefit them and its time for the geeks to step into the limelight and take centre stage.

Yesterday morning, myself and Han attended the most recent Gorkana Breakfast Briefing. This time round we were hearing from the London correspondents from the German financial news outlet, Handelsblatt. Though not traditionally an outlet one would immediately prioritise for client coverage, the briefing did throw up some really interesting points/thoughts about both Handelsblatt and how to approach international publications/stringers in general. I thought I would share four in particular……

1. Your company does not need to be German to get into Handelsblatt. German readers are always interested to know what other countries think of events/issues taking place in Germany. You can also make a case for your client if you can show that the German market can learn something from the company, if you know that the company has German stakeholders, or if the trend/technology will soon make its way to Germany. Think a little harder and you may well be able to find a German connection.

2. Germany has a strong heritage of family-owned companies – these types of stories will always resonate well with a German audience.

3. The Handelsblatt team prefer a pitch via phone – it allows them to practice their English and they like to speak with PRs. The impression they get is that we are too busy to phone them which is why we email. Pick up the phone.

4. Stringers are always working to a different time zone i.e. Handelsblatt has its editorial meeting at 9am CET – this means that the London team has to dial in from home at 8am GMT and will be thinking about stories prior to this. Time differences also mean that stringers often have an earlier deadline than you would expect – the Handelsblatt deadline is 4.35pm GMT. When pitching think carefully about the time constraints a correspondent is facing because of the time zone of his/her outlet’s country.

As someone relatively (under three years) new to PR, it is always good to go to as many as the informative talks on offer as possible. However I have noticed myself of late becoming increasingly frustrated by the treatment of digital in these talks. For some reason those giving the talks still seem to think that a back to basics approach is needed for us PR folk. For the record, I know that digital is important for PR, I know that it needs to be integrated into wider campaigns, I know what Facebook and Twitter are and how they work and I have seen examples of great digital PR in action. What I would like to see external organisations doing more of is offering talks on the practical side of digital - how you go about planning a digital campaign, how you SEO content, what the next big thing to watch is etc. Stop giving me a rundown of the history of social media and actually tell me how to use it. That is all I am asking for!

I know that there are still many sectors where the understanding of social media is pretty limited however I just don’t feel like PR is necessarily one of them – or am I wrong – what do you think?

You know the feeling – you walk into a room and recognise no-one. Everyone is cosied up in nice little groups of two and three, enjoying a drink with friends, reminiscing with old colleagues… you’re pretending to check your phone – panicking about whether you look like you’re panicking whilst at the same time plotting a mingling strategy.

It is undeniably daunting to walk into one of these networking dens, until you realise that these social wizards are, in fact, just like you. Over the last year or so, I have learned to take these situations for what they are – a fun opportunity to meet some new and interesting people, and enjoy a glass of wine along the way.

I think it’s also a good idea to stop focusing on these events as ‘networking’, which makes the whole thing sound much scarier and more ‘business-y’ than it is. ‘Networking’ as an idea always seems a little calculated to me – a bit predatory, as though you’re only out to speak to people who may be ‘beneficial’ to you in the future. The people you speak to may well pop up again in the future, either in a professional or social context, and it may well turn out to be a useful work relationship, but carrying this idea around with you as a hard and fast aim can take away from the event, and the conversations you may have.

There are any number of ways you can start a conversation with someone. It’s likely that you have something in common to start with since you’re at the same event. Failing that, there’s the weather, pretending you’re sidling over in search of better phone signal, or accidentally bumping into someone…

Take a few minutes before going to the event to research who else is going – there might even be someone you know! Online registration lists are quite often available, and Twitter can be a good way of finding out who else is heading to an event (though it can be a challenge to try and identify people from their tiny profile picture..) It’s always good to try and remember names, but if you get it wrong, it doesn’t matter…

You are almost convinced their name is  Steve/Sarah [delete as appropriate]. Two scenarios can then come about:

a)      That is not their name – “gosh I’m sorry, I must be confusing you with someone else. I’m Flick…”

b)      That is their name. Winner. “ We met at XX event at XX. I’m Flick”

I’m off out this evening to try and put some of this into practice. Armed with a stash of business cards and a smile – it’s Steve, isn’t it?

With all the bank holidays I have been traveling a lot. Most recently I went to Ireland with both my parents to see an elderly relative who is dying. We were sat side-by-side in the cab of their camper van with the GPS unit on the dash.

This time we decided to use the TomTom software on my iPhone as well as my Dad’s GPS unit hadn’t been updated to deal with all the changes to the Irish road system over the past few years. The first thing that I found is that my Dad preferred a female authoritative voice rather than the default male voice on my TomTom software, so I switched it over for him. I seem to remember that ARPA found found in its experiments into HCI (human computer interaction) that people tended to pay more attention to instructions from an authoritative female voice so I’m not surprised that was my Dad’s preference.

My Mum’s reaction was more interesting. She had developed a cough which seemed to stop completely when she was in animated conversation with any one, but exasperated when we were driving. She also kept asking my Dad if he was sure that he was going the right way and pointed out when the advice from the GPS unit’s advice was ambiguous. I found it laughable that my Mum was fighting for her place in the household against a small box of electronics. Which brought home to me not only the impact on consumer behaviour of interfaces, but also the social effect of those interfaces. This is cross-posted from my personal blog.