Posts Tagged ‘PR’

The latest batch of Lord Sugar’s wannabe protégés are at the wrong end of his acerbic putdowns in the latest series of The Apprentice. Three candidates have already got the boot from the show, and what’s interesting is that two of the candidates are under 25. When it came to the analysis of why one of the contestants was fired, she said in her interview that she didn’t want to come across as pushy due to her inexperience. However, one of Lord Sugar’s aides replied:

“One can be almost in awe of others or not wanting to be pushy, that you go so far the other way that you disappear.”

This is something I empathised with, being in my current role, at my first PR agency. Youth can be such an issue in these cases: straight out of university, in a first job, unsure. As a young person in a business environment, how can one be heard when it feels like everyone else is shouting? Well, I’ve pulled together my top three tips:

1. Do give your input – constantly

Don’t be afraid of your ideas. Very often when you start out, you think that others know so much more due to their experience. While experience is important, a fresh take on things is valued, and very often a new mind thinks about things from a different and creative perspective. Think of it like this: people who have been in the job for a while may be using a telescope when looking at new ideas, but a fresh young outlook can enable everyone to look at things through a colourful kaleidoscope!

2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help

PR is a tough job that requires bags of creativity, intelligence and ability to understand difficult concepts. In essence if you’ve made it into the industry, congratulations, you’re very clever. However you won’t know everything immediately. Many young starters have come straight from university where they were used to being academically good at everything and it can be a bit distressing to suddenly be making mistakes and not understanding certain topics. Don’t be afraid – you’re here to learn and progress and those above you are only too happy to help.

3. Do enjoy it

In some ways, this is the most important tip of all. Remember that this is hopefully the start of a long and illustrious career, and in order to do that, you need the motivation. What better incentive is there for coming in every day than knowing you enjoy the work that you do and the results that you get? Believe me, your colleagues will notice.

It takes time to get used to a new role. It’s never usually about a lack of ability that makes a young person unsure, it tends to be a lack of experience. You can make sure your voice is heard among the big players if you follow these tips.

Attempting to hijack a current news story is as old as the PR profession itself, and even though we’re in an age of social media, the skills required are still similar.

But while a well-placed story or stunt that ties into another item dominating the news agenda can earn a lot of online and offline coverage for a brand, an ill thought through newsjack – or Twitterjack, if you will - can harm your reputation faster than you can issue a retraction.

To help ensure you’re more likely be remembered for a creative campaign than a viral fail, here’s Ruder Finn’s top five rules for ensuring your Twitterjack stands a good chance of catching the internet’s attention.

1. Plan when you can

It’s far easier to plan great content when you know what’s coming up in advance, and any good PR desk will have a calendar with all major upcoming events and opportunities around these.

Twitter is no different. If you know an event’s coming up, you can at least have some ideas and images planned. It also means you’re in a better position to react quickly to any news surrounding the event.

Dulux are a good example of how a brand can leverage extra coverage from an event. Their Tweet on the evening of the BRIT Awards comparing Damien Hirst’s statue design with their colour palette was simple and clever.

2. Make it funny

140 characters are particularly effective for pithy punning and a well-crafted piece of humour that can tie your brand into a current event is always likely to gain traction on social media. What’s more, it shows your Twitter feed and company is run by people with a sense of humour.

Nando’s were particularly good at exploiting news of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, with a Tweet announcing at Manchester branches would stay open for an extra five minute - a reference to the amount of added time the club generally receive at the end of a game.

A word of warning though – unfunny or tasteless jokes won’t do you any favours. Virtual tumbleweed moves much faster than the real thing.

3. Be ready to react quickly

As with so many areas of communications, if you’re first, (and not forgetting if you’re good), you’ll probably be the brand that manages to get a fair bit of traction.

It’s why it’s important that the people responsible for your creative or social are plugged into wider events surrounding Twitter, not just your industry. It means they can react quickly to anything breaking.

Again, to take an example from Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, Golden Wonder quickly photoshopped a special bag of Fergie-flavoured crisps. It probably wasn’t the best effort on the day, but it was the first and gained those all important retweets and reach.

4. Make it visual

Two of the three examples already cited worked well because they were very visual in nature and highly shareable.

Whether it’s as simple as whipping up a quick lolcat or spending time photoshopping something a little more sophisticated, keeping it visual makes your Tweet stand out and increases the chances of virality.

It’s why US processed meat company Oscar Mayer’s Oscar-night Twitterjack worked so well. Posted after Adele scooped best song for Skyfall, their cheeky Tweet wouldn’t have made as much impact in text only – and it’s a clever comms team who can connect James Bond and bacon.

5. Avoid tragedies

Twitter really comes into its own during breaking news or times of disaster and, with so many eyeballs, it’s tempting for brands to try and muscle in on whatever happens to be dominating the news agenda that day.

However, unless it’s offering a message of condolence or is incredibly well thought through and sensitive, it’s probably best to stay away from promoting your wares on Twitter during this period.

Whether it’s Gap encouraging those affected by Hurricane Sandy to shop from the comfort of their homes, or Celeb Boutique’s attempt to tap into the Aurora shootings by promoting their Kim Kardashian Aurora dress, an insensitive Tweet can do more harm than good. What’s more, many of the tech and social blogs are likely to pick up on this, and we all know how good they are at SEO….

Recently McDonalds faced criticism for a Tweet around the Ohio kidnappings, saluting rescuer Charles Ramsey after he mentioned he was eating a McDonalds before he went to the aid of the kidnapped women.

The Tweet has divided opinion, with some viewing it as smart and others criticising the company for being insensitive, even if that wasn’t the company’s intention. Given the potential for a backlash, it’s probably best to give the bad news stories a miss.

6. And one bonus piece of advice… check your scheduled Tweets

Just as your social media team should be looking for opportunities to make the most of breaking news, they also need to be able to be aware of any risks pre-written Tweets may contain.

With many brands often choosing to schedule their Tweets throughout the day, an innocent remark can take on a very different meaning following a tragic event.

It’s obviously not the brand or PR agency’s fault – they have no way of predicting how 140 characters can go from irreverent to offensive in the space of a few minutes – but Twitter users may not be so understanding.

If bad news does break, it’s worth checking your scheduled Tweet queue and checking if there’s anything lined up that could cause problems. Ten minutes work can save you from dealing with a mini-crisis a few hours later.

The Daily Mirror apologised for a pre-scheduled Tweet that read, “Keep on running: David Luiz urges Chelsea marathon men to drag themselves over the finish line,” that was published on the day of the Boston bombings. Entirely innocent, but unfortunate timing.

Any more we’ve left off? Share your tips in the comments below.

Facebook’s new soon-to-be-rolled-out news feed was unveiled yesterday and it looked more than a little familiar. In fact, users of Google Plus might have been forgiven for thinking their network had turned blue, given the closeness in look and feel of the social network’s redesign.

Of course, Facebook weren’t mentioning the G-word, but making the design cleaner and fresher is no bad thing. Facebook’s news feed hasn’t had much love since Timelines was launched and the new redesign certainly is a lot smoother on the eye.

The redesign is also mobile-led, leading to a more coherent look and feel across all devices. Again this makes perfect sense given the rise of mobile traffic for Facebook and means that anybody who is still putting web and mobile into different silos needs to change their thinking, and quickly.

But cosmetic changes are all well and good. For brands the key question is how does this affect my Facebook page? And the answer to this is there’s good news and too-early-to-say news.

The good news: getting visual

The good news comes in the form of images and videos. These will be more prominent in the user’s news feed. If you’re posting a lot of visual content, there’s a great opportunity to make it even more engaging and really tell stories with photos. It also gives a huge boost to video content.

Facebook also acknowledge that people regularly use other social networks and apps outside of the site and have looked to incorporate them more into the news feed.

The Facebook-owned Instagram is a big winner in this (unsurprisingly), with users’ pictures pulled through into the photo feed. Facebook also used Pinterest as an example – pins shared to Facebook now look and feel more like they would on Pinterest.

This is all encouraging for brands who have strongly visual campaigns, and especially those who have a strong strategy across multiple social media channels.

The too-early-to-say news: multiple news feeds

Mashable probably summed up the changes to the newsfeed best when they described the new newsfeed as “Facebook gets simpler, more complicated.”

Facebook have attempted to declutter the feed with the new design – and early impressions are this has worked. However, in doing so, they’ve created a host of different feeds in the right-hand menu that means you can drill down a little further.

As well as the main news feed, there’s a Most Recent feed (self-explanatory) and an All Friends feed, which shows you everything your friends are sharing. There’s also a photo-specific feed, which is just made up of pictures shared by friends and pages. It also includes the afore-mentioned Instagram.

There’s also a separate music feed featuring posts about music being listened to – great if you’re a fan of sharing your Spotify activity – along with a games tab, which you can file away all your Candy Crush Saga updates.

Finally, there’s also a Following feed, which is solely for updates from Facebook pages and users you’ve subscribed to. This is the key part for brands.

Mark Zuckerberg said his aim was to “give everyone the best personalised newspaper we can”.

Theoretically, it means users can click on the Following feed and never miss an update from pages they’ve liked. Practically, it depends on users wanting to click on this feed. Is this something the average Facebook user will want to do?

There’s also options to further customise your content – which includes the option to filter your feed to see just updates from friends.

Before you start panicking that your page is being filed away in a feed that potentially won’t be clicked on, Facebook haven’t immediately indicated that posts from pages won’t appear on news feeds.

Indeed, it appears the current thinking is to allow users to set their own filters. The big question here is how many users will take up that option. Will users actively remove branded content from their feeds or will they passively continue to consume?

Adios EdgeRank?

One really interesting development about the news feed is how little the EdgeRank algorithm, which determines which updates get featured in your feed, was mentioned in this Facebook redesign.

Potentially this downgrading of EdgeRank could see updates being delivered to more fans. But it also could mean that your updates will drop off the main news feed a lot quicker as the feed gets more chronological.

The implication is here clear. Pages need to be a lot smarter about the timings of their posts. If you’re not using Facebook insights carefully and testing what times get the best reaction from your audience, you could be punting a post into the ether. It also means global pages have to think more carefully about their audience.

Secondly, it suggests the best way to get traction on the news feed is to create content that people want to share and can share quickly and easily. It will no longer be enough to post any old image – you’ll have to think harder about your content strategy (although it’s still unlikely to stop some pages posting non-relevant images just to get shares).

Ultimately, given Facebook’s current prominence of sponsored stories on mobile devices, and the smaller window for getting a fan’s attention, you’ll still have to invest in advertising if you want to reach and grow your Facebook audience, especially if you want to circumnavigate those who’ve actively deselected brand updates from their news feed.

You didn’t think the social behemoth was going to give you all this for free, did you?

With 343m active users, Google+ is a social network that’s growing both in influence and the number of influencers using it.

When it comes to PR, though, the temptation may be to just concentrate on the search and pay-per-click aspects of Google rather than developing a long-term strategy for their social network, but it would be a mistake to view G+ as unimportant compared to Facebook and Twitter.

There is now a core, engaged community on Google+, with much richer possibilities for deeper conversation and, with it, a more joined-up approach for spreading your message across the web.

If you’re yet to properly play around with Google+ or have an account but aren’t sure what to do with it, here’s Ruder Finn’s guide to everything you need to know about the network.

1. Building a brand using pages

One of the great examples of a G+ success is Cadbury. The confectioner has embraced the social network with gusto and, at the time of writing, has over 2.85m followers, which is vastly more than their 127,000 Twitter followers and over a million more Likes than their Dairy Milk Facebook page has received.

This growth didn’t happen by chance – Cadbury have used G+ to launch new products and PR campaigns and, in particular, have made strong use of the heavily visual nature of G+, regularly posting tempting pictures of chocolate.

Another advantage for any brand is it gives those manning the page – be it community managers or the PR agency – the opportunity to add all followers of a page to separate circles (to put it crudely, think of these a little bit like dividing every follower into a distribution list). This means you can target your updates to reach the most relevant people.

2. Community building

Where there’s a niche, there’s a community and nowhere is this truer than on Google+, which launched the community feature towards the end of last year. Anybody can create a community and even those with a small membership are highly engaged, regularly sharing links, ideas and more.

Cadburys have 18,730 members of their cakes and baking G+ community, while there’s a community for everything from London nightlife through to sports writing and, of course, Digital PR.

3. Keeping it local Google+ Local may not be one of the most promoted aspects of the network but it’s certainly among the most powerful. Do a search for almost any business and chances are their G+ local page will show up on the right hand side, complete with reviews – with those from people you know prioritised.

Think of it as a more souped-up version of Trip Advisor that includes almost everything that has a physical location. Then think of how powerful a tool this can be for PR – both positive and negative.

4. Hanging out

One of Google+’s most powerful and popular tools is the Hangouts feature. It allows up to 10 people to join the conversation at any one time and can be broadcast to the world via YouTube or kept within your circle.

The White House regularly conducts G+ Hangouts on major policy announcements, with both the President and the First Lady hosting their own Hangouts, while DHL and Manchester United combined for a question and answer session between fans and the players. Even the Muppets hosted a hangout with Kermit and Miss Piggy to promote The Muppets movie.

As long as you’ve got somebody comfortable speaking on camera, they’re a great opportunity to take your message direct to the community.

5. Author Rank

Seen the results in Google that return a name and face next to the author? That’ll be the Google author rank feature, which marks up content in Google using the author’s face and a link to the Google+ page.

Many leading blogs already do this and the early signs are a human face increases click through rates. In the future, this will enable journalists to build their online profile, but it also means that brands who are willing to have visible bloggers could also boost their Google profile.

6. Sign-in with Google

Google has just launched Google+ Sign In, which is their version of Facebook Connect and works in a similar manner in allowing you to use your Google Plus or YouTube account to sign into applications.

Their key selling point is that, unlike Facebook’s frictionless sharing, you decide who and when you want to share any of your app activity with. It’s still too early to see how the take-up will go with this, but The Guardian and Shazam already have the G+ sign-in buttons installed. Expect many others to join them.

7. Don’t forget mobile

Google Plus’s mobile app is a pretty slick affair that mimics most of the functionality of the network and is a little smoother to use than Facebook’s mobile app. In addition, Google+ Local has their own app, tied into Google Maps (of course) for discovering the world around you.

Make no mistake, this is a network that is geared up for mobile and fully poised to take advantage of our growing use of smartphones and tablets.

8. You can learn a lot from Google

Google’s offerings complement each other and there’s a lot of data you can pull from G+, whether it’s seeing how far a post has spread with the Ripples function, or going deeper with Google’s Webmaster Tools and Analytics. At the heart of any good PR campaign should be measurability and Google offers some excellent free tools to do just that.

9. Don’t neglect the search aspect

Of course, at the heart of Google’s is still their core business of search and Google+ plugs directly into this. Big, active pages with high engagements or individuals with a high social footprint and connected author rank across Google’s social offerings are naturally going to be viewed as authoritative by Google’s own search engine.

The same goes for content that’s widely shared and plus oned across G+. The network is geared towards developing authority based on personal tastes influence search results. Those who are prepared to invest in G+ are likely to reap the search benefits in years to come.

10. It’s all connected

The key thing to remember here is that Google and Google+ don’t exist in silos – and nor should your PR strategy for these either. Google is still a search company, and Google+ is designed to complement this.

Whether it’s through delivering more personalised results based on what you’ve +1ed on Google+, publishing a hangout direct to YouTube or just basic SEO keywords, they’re all tied into Google’s frighteningly clever operation.

It’s easy to pay lip service to Google Plus by creating a page and populating it with exactly the same material as you do your Facebook page (and we’re in no way suggesting you drop those finely-honed social strategies for other networks – they should also be joined up to a wider strategy).

But for PRs and brands who are prepared to work at the network, it gives you a greater opportunity to target and interact with influencers, create your own authoritative voices and get them to rank highly in Google, all while measuring the results with high-quality analytics tools.

Licensed for use under creative commons by Numberstumper

1. Include the words “In 100 words or less….describe your creative idea”…

2. Request responses to be contained within an excel spreadsheet…

3. Send ideas to procurement at first stage…

4. Ask for ideas to be good, fast and cheap….

5. Ensure the agency focuses on ideas, messages, themes and activity that is already in use and not working…

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?

Starbursting is essentially breaking companies up into more profitable pieces and despite not being familiar with the term until recently, it is apparently seeing a revival at present according to The Economist.

Notable mentions of rumoured or high profile starbursts include Pfizer, Motorola, Fiat and Foster’s. The Economist cites the main reasons for the revival as:

… companies seeking buyers for parts of their business are not getting good offers from other firms, or from private equity.

…the “conglomerate discount”—when stockmarkets value a diversified group at less than the sum of its parts.

…that this discount is real seems to be confirmed by the positive stockmarket reaction to the latest starbursts. From 20 days before the announcement of a spin-off to 60 days after, the combined value of the parent and spun-off children has on average outperformed the market by eight percentage points

This trend is much more common in the US and Western Europe with emerging markets seeing the opposite,….hence a popular alternative seems to be diversification.

This may be why, in some parts of the world, conglomerates are becoming even more diversified: witness Samsung Electronics, which is moving into pharmaceuticals.America’s big tech firms are also bucking the starburst trend and diversifying. Oracle, a software giant, has moved into hardware, and Hewlett-Packard, a computer-maker, is expanding further into software and services. Their big corporate customers increasingly want a one-stop shop for their information systems.

Whichever path an organisation chooses to take, one thing is for sure, excellent communications will be imperative both with investment audiences but also customers and prospects. Interesting times for PR.

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

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.

Arun Sudhaman at PR Week contacted me last week with some questions on the communications challenges around the launch of Google’s Nexus One, the company’s first smartphone. He’s written an article on this topic in this week’s issue, which includes comment from other PRs.

Arun’s interest was raised by the initially cool reaction from the analyst community. This often happens when a product launches after months – or in this case years – of speculation. With pent-up expectation in the market, however great the eventual product turns out to be, there are commentators who write about how it could have been just a little bit better. When this happens, monitoring of initial reaction is crucial. The communications programme must adapt quickly and address any misconceptions that can quickly spread and threaten product adoption.

The Google brand is now embedded in our daily lives and, for most people, means more than just search. Translating the brand into a physical product-in-your-pocket is something new and potentially risky for the company. It will have to quickly develop competency in consumer hardware communications and manage the huge global interest in its new strategy. Initial media coverage has concentrated on the handset itself. The first challenge is to communicate the benefits beyond a shiny new mobile phone and get the media to focus on the power of the underlying Android platform and associated apps.

Google still has a lot to prove. If it gets things right (and Google isn’t used to failing), it has a huge opportunity to grow a new hardware business to complement its online products. One thing is certain, the battle of the smartphone platforms has only just started.