A PR Guy's musings

Checking in to the Wolfstar HQ this morning I spotted a location I hadn’t seen before – the Farnell trade counter, which is about a kilometre away.

What made it stand out was that there was a little orange special logo. Farnell’s offer is that if you do ten check-ins at its Maybrook trade counter then you get a £25 discount on your next order. This is the first specifically B2B use of Foursquare that I’ve seen.

And it isn’t Farnell’s first foray into the social web as it also runs the excellent element14 community where customers can talk to each other and to Farnell experts about the hundreds of thousands of components and accessories that it sells.

Has anyone else got some good examples of business-to-business use of Foursquare?

One reason that I was so impressed is that Premier Farnell plc is an ex-client. In the early 90s I worked at the consultancy that handled all of the then Farnell Electronics plc’s global corporate communications. In fact I helped it to rebrand into Premier Farnell and we did lots of press interviews with electronics magazines across Europe and North America, as well as also using full page display adverts as part of our corporate communications campaign. I also did B2B public relations for a number of Premier Farnell’s subsidiaries including Farnell Components.

The other wave of nostalgia is that I did the public relations for the opening of the Maybrook distribution centre, which at the time was the largest in Europe (might still be for all I know!). From memory the official opening was done the then foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, in recognition that Farnell was one of Yorkshire’s biggest exporters.

The Some Comms Awards are a new set of awards to celebrate the best in UK social media communications and recognise the individuals, companies and organisations that are “revolutionising the use of online to communicate in cool and innovative ways”.

Unlike many awards these are free to enter, with the only cost being to attend the awards ceremony on December 9. The Some Comms Awards are being run independently by Don’t Panic, the events company that was responsible for organising the UK’s first ever public relations social media conference way back in November 2005. I was one of the speakers at that conference, as was Neville Hobson and Philip Young and we’re all judges of the Some Comms Awards which means we’ve all got a long track-record in public relations social media. Other judges include Kerry Bridge (global digital media communications manager at Dell), Alex Aitken (director of communications and strategy at Westminster City Council), Rob Skinner (head of PR at PayPal) and Phil Jones (UK sales and marketing director at Brother).

The independent awards are being supported by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA), Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and LG Communications.

The entry deadline is September 20 so you’ve got plenty of time to complete your submissions into categories that include Best Business Blog, Best Industry Blog, and Best Social Media Campaign. There are also sector specific categories covering private sector, public sector, charity/not for profit as well as team categories for in-house, small agency and large agency.

As well as being a judge of the Some Comms Awards I’m also a judge for the Public Relations Consultants Association awards.

On September 1 the UK Advertising Standards Association (ASA) announced “Landmark agreement extends ASA’s digital remit”. The announcement said that the Committee of Advertising Practice Code (CAP Code) that governs UK advertising will be extended to “apply in full to marketing communications online including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children.”

On the face of it a good thing. But as usual the devil is in the detail and this is where it gets murky, very murky. It falls down badly, largely because in typical arrogant advertising industry fashion they’ve just looked at their own little big world and assumed they are right. They aren’t.

The ASA/CAP’s understanding of different communications disciplines is blinkered at best. As a result its proposals are riddled with ambiguities based largely on ignorance of how other communications disciplines actually work. One major issue is the definitions of editorial and advertising aren’t clear and potentially infringe the freedom of speech not only of businesses and organisations, but also citizens and consumers.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations first raised the potential problems in May this year when it approached the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), which is represented on the CAP, and was assured that the PR industry would be consulted. The advertising industry failed to honour its promise and as a result has already been forced to admit that its proposals have “grey areas”.

The CIPR has already issued a statement expressing its concern and through its Social Media Panel (disclosure I am a founder member) will press for the proposals to be revised.

The rather apt cartoon is one of Hugh MacLeod’s classics.

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A line in Amelia Torode’s latest blog post got me thinking about how social media and social networks could have an important role to play in improving equality in the workplace.

Despite a raft of legislation the UK’s employment landscape is far from equal and the gap between pay and opportunities between men and women remains far too great.

There are lots of reasons why there aren’t enough women at senior levels and those that are there don’t earn as much, on average, as men. One reason is that at the moment women are disadvantaged because they have gaps in their careers because of maternity leave. I’ve long advocated that one way to improve this is not just to make paid paternity leave available to fathers, but to make it compulsory. That way you equalise the career gaps and as a massive bonus dads get to spend more time with their children.

What Amelia said that made me think was this:

“Through Twitter I feel plugged in and connected to the advertising – digital – comms community that I am a part of so although motherhood is all consuming at the moment I don’t feel cut off. This has to be a fairly new phenomena – the way that social platforms enable non-working mothers to stay in the loop professionally.”

She’s right. Through social media and social networks, both external such as Twitter and internal like Yammer, you can enjoy your family life and stay plugged into your career. Through online trade media you can stay on top of what’s happening in your industry when you’re no longer seeing the magazines that used to come round the office.

I know some people will start complaining about work/life balance and work intruding into family life. But there’s a lot of nonsense about work/life balance with most ‘experts’ putting far more emphasis on work or life, when the really important emphasis is balance. New communications tools let me enjoy more family time, not less. They are not intrusive, but liberating.

So the question is can the internet and social web help to improve the disgraceful inequality in our workplaces?

Yesterday Mashable had an absolutely ridiculous article on the ‘Future of public relations and social media’.

Some of its analysis and expert opinion was truly breathtaking in its simplicity.

News releases still aren’t dead

First up for being wrong is the assertion that the press release is dead. Please, we were there in February 2006  with Tom Foremski’s ‘Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die’ and we’ve been there every year since – and the traditional press release is still alive and kicking. Back then I pointed out that Foremski was an ex-Financial Times journalist and what sort of idiot PR person would target the FT with a press release and expect it to work on its own?

It’s all about using the best tool for the job and frequently that means both a traditional news release and a social media news release. There are thousands and thousands of journalists out there who just want a well written news release that they can edit easily to fill the pages of regional papers, weekly papers, trade magazines etc. Sending out an identical news release to hundreds of journalists has ALWAYS been a fairly useless tool for generating news stories, especially if you’re targeting big media outlets such as national newspapers and broadcast news.

Social media news releases are fantastic and we use them successfully all the time for our clients, but we also know why we’re doing it and what we’re trying to achieve. It’s not just about leaping aboard the latest bandwagon.

It’s all about brevity and YouTube video announcements

Apparently social media is all about brevity and making things shorter. I suppose that’s why we add all that extra content in a social media news release is it? If brevity means faster, then tripling the amount of content is a big fail.

The next stellar idea is to direct time-starved journalists to a YouTube video with a message from the CEO making the announcement. Wow! That’s going to save them time and get the message across quickly and accurately isn’t it? Or not. Let’s see, first they have to spend three minutes watching it then they’ve got to transcribe it to get the quote out in order to be able to write their story. Or is it just that the PR person wants to control the message and stop that pesky journalist reporting the story? Instead the journalist can just embed the video and leave the inquisitive reader to be sold the unedited company line. I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong I like the idea of CEOs and directors utilising YouTube, but let’s stop and think about why and what we want to achieve. As supplementary content for a journalist creating online content it has a value, but as a primary delivery channel it’s far less efficient than the traditional news release. It would be great content for the end audience, but not for most journalists. A live video webcast where journalists and the public can ask questions directly would have far more value.

Successful pitches have always been succinct. When I started in public relations that meant if you were faxing a news release with all the background information the journalist needed then the cover sheet would have the compelling pitch. You’d also have a 20 second verbal pitch prepared for phone calls. The only difference today is that your succinct pitch might be delivered by email or even Twitter with a link to the full news release (please never an attachment) on the web.

Crafting a good news release hasn’t changed

The idea that social media news releases need to be “more brief and focussed” is nonsense. In the old days a good news release told the whole story in the first paragraph, I think that’s as brief as you can get. The rest of the news release has always been about adding background information. Social media news releases are exactly the same – get across the news and pertinent facts as succinctly as possible, and then support it with supplementary content.

Monitoring is most important today, not in five years

Another piece of hokum is that apparently today the most important public relations tools are the broadcasting tools, but in five years time, the most important tools will be the monitoring and measurement tools. What total and utter nonsense!

Using monitoring and measurement has always been one of the most important aspects of public relations, even before the internet existed. Back then it was all about analysing print media for competitor coverage, seeing what story trends were emerging so you could create content that fitted, responding to what was being said about your industry sector etc.

We do exactly the same thing today on the internet. The main changes are that the volume of content to be monitored and measured has increased dramatically, but we also have far more effective tools for doing it.

One of the few intelligent comments came from Chuck Tanowitz who points out that you can’t just measure influence online. He uses the example of Mayor Setti Warren who has just more than 700 followers on Twitter, so he’s obviously not that influential. Except when he was elected as mayor he got a call from President Obama, so maybe he does matter.

Social media isn’t free

And finally there’s the example of the company that saved $270K in expenses by using social media. Except I’m not sure it did. What it did was fire its PR agency, apparently saving the $250K fee, and saved an additional $20K in events (travel, venue, promotions etc). Instead it brought its PR in-house and focused on social media. This anecdote might mean something if we knew how much time was then spent on this by people in-house – they do have salaries and presumably were doing something before getting this additional workload. And saving $20K in events – it’s a tiny amount and probably only relates to one or two events.

Rant over, comments welcome.

For some weekend fun enjoy your own Twitter parade (follow the link for a full screen version of the animation) via Tom Murphy.

Ged Carroll blogged about media that he pays for and then Stephen Waddington followed, so I thought I’d add to what could become a meme and list my personal essentials:

The Guardian – no matter how in to ‘online’ I am, nothing beats a physical newspaper. It’s so much more enjoyable and easier to read and browse. You can quickly scan stories that you wouldn’t normally be interested in and would otherwise never read. The Guardian’s my daily, but I also sporadically enjoy and buy the Times, Telegraph, Financial Times and Daily Mail (brilliantly produced and a brilliant insight in to how totally bonkers some people actually are!). The only serious paper I’d never buy is the Independent, which personally I find dull beyond belief.

PR Week (via CIPR membership) – PR Week goes through phases. In the early 90s it was good, it then hit the doldrums for several years, but over the last three to four years has become great and is now an essential weekly read.

Yorkshire Post – still one of the UK’s most important and influential regional papers with strong investigative reporting holding local councils, businesses and universities to account. It covers the whole of Yorkshire and the Humber.

Yorkshire Evening Post – the evening newspaper for Leeds. I’ve got to admit that because of staff cuts it’s not as good as it used to be. But it’s still essential reading and a good example of how essential it is to cherish our local newspapers.

Rothwell Record – a full colour, glossy magazine for the small town of Rothwell and its surrounding villages (including Carlton where I live). If it isn’t in the Record, it probably hasn’t happened. It has a £1.20 (I think without a copy next to me) and lots of adverts, mainly from local businesses offering essential services like plumbers, pubs, builders, carpet sales etc. It’s a tremendous community resource and gives a full page to the local neighbourhood policing team – which means local people know how important PCSOs actually are, despite the constant inaccurate reporting about them in most of the national press.

I’ve just returned from a fascinating hour and a half breakfast with Peter Mandelson to talk about his new book The Third Man. From a professional point of view it was a great blogger relations initiative by publishers Harper Collins to invite a small number of ‘progressive’ (the words of their spokesperson) bloggers to a breakfast briefing where we were given exclusive access to some of the original source material from Peter’s book. Harper Collins won’t be giving these archive papers to mainstream media until Monday when they release the second wave of papers.

What I’ve received are copies of hand-written notes from and to Peter dating from between 1987 to 1997. I have studied them all in-depth yet, but the one I found most immediately of interest to me personally was Peter’s notes to Tony Blair about his thoughts on Clause IV.

For me this was a seminal moment for the Labour Party, when it threw off the shackles of dogma and returned to the true values and philosophies of its founding fathers and mothers. Personally, it was also the first time I became active in the Party beyond a purely personal level. I believed passionately in a new Clause IV that more truthfully reflected what the Party was really about. I campaigned hard, talking to members and going to speak at branch meetings and constituencies across the region to help convince members of the need for change.

I’ve uploaded the whole document, but have highlighted three of Peter’s notes:

“In para 1 I do not like ‘solidarity, liberty and equality’ – very old fashioned mantra. I do like ‘rights and responsibilities’, even ‘duty to others’.

"In para 2 ’in the hands of the many…’ sounds better but is it what we mean? Don’t we mean all? “… rather than birth” at end sounds a bit funny.”

“Remember this Constitution – suitably poetic and Jerusalem-like – is meant to get ordinary people to understand easily what we’re about + to vote for us”

Peter Mandelson’s note to Tony Blair on the new Clause IV

I’m going to do two other posts on this. The next will be a more public relations focussed one and look at how Harper Collins did the blogger relations, which had some brilliant elements to it, but also elements that I think won’t work in terms of generating positive coverage, but might contribute to generating more overall ‘buzz’.

The second post will be an actual proper book review. But it’s a big book and I’m quite busy, so that might take a while! I’ve just finished the second chapter so far and my recommendation would definitely be – read it! Yes, there are legitimate questions to ask about if this is the right time and what damage it does to the Labour Party, but if it was going to be published then now’s as good a time as any. And the Labour Party should be looking forward. If some people have behaved as they shouldn’t in the past then they’ve got to live with the consequences of their actions, justify them or apologise for them. Then we can all move and get on with re-connecting and defeating the Tory Lib Dem coalition.

I’ll also upload the rest of the documents, although I’ll probably be beaten to it as I can’t do it at the moment as the East Coast train wifi and my T-mobile signal are both too flaky (this post should have uploaded over an hour ago!)

And as requested by Peter, here is the Amazon link (disclaimer – it’s an affiliate link so I’ll probably get tuppence if you buy it from here – please do my three-year old daughter is growing out of her clothes!)

Haven’t had time to read Lord Mandelson’s weighty tome yet, but have had a quick glance in the index to tot up how many pages each of the Labour leadership contenders get mentioned on:

Diane Abbott 0 – not a single reference to Dianne.

Ed Balls 41 – yep Ed features pretty big.

Andy Burnham 1 – Andy being brave enough to defend Gordon after Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt’s infamous letter.

David Miliband 48 – but out in front is Miliband major.

Ed Miliband 11 – while Miliband minor gets fewer mentions.

The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour