Quay West PR

Can you have your cake and tweet it?

2012-02-09T11:15:00.001Z

Social media has been in the headlines once again, with Twitter dominating a number of news stories, from the ‘Twitter joke trial’ to Joey Barton being investigated for contempt of court. The latest story to break is that of the BBC telling its journalists that they are not allowed to break news stories on Twitter before they tell their newsroom colleagues – following the example that has been set by its rivals at Sky News.

These latest developments focus attention on how the social networking site is being used. The ‘Twitter joke trial’, for instance, has arisen from Paul Chambers’ tongue-in-cheek tweet about blowing up an airport that was closed due to snow if it wasn’t reopened in time for him to see his girlfriend. The tweet backfired on him quite dramatically when he was charged and convicted of “causing a menace under the Communications Act 2003.”

Similarly, footballer Joey Barton, who is never shy to voice his opinion, he caused his latest furore by commenting on the forthcoming trial of John Terry. The contempt law prevents someone from publishing information about an ongoing case or investigation that could cause “a substantial risk of serious prejudice to active proceedings.” This highlights the importance of monitoring social media feeds to ensure that they remain within the boundaries of the law at all times. A misplaced tweet could have catastrophic consequences for a personality or a brand.

Twitter, as with all social media outlets such as Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest etc, if used correctly, can reap great rewards for brands. However, it is vitally important that any social media strategy is managed and implemented correctly, as if it backfires, the damage can be very hard to undo.

In a recent article on PRmoment.com, Julia Meighan, executive chairman of VMA Group, is quoted as saying: “What is essential is having seasoned communications professionals that have the foresight and understanding to implement social media for its strategic and business opportunities. Technology has changed the way we behave and so too must communicators’ responses.”

Interaction online is key, as it can help establish relationships, create leads and build brand reputations. As with any form of business communication, the tone needs to be correct, information needs to be accurate and, of course, inoffensive. Social networks are still policed in the same way as all other forms of media, so brands still need to adhere to online laws. By doing so, Twitter can see brands making the headlines for all the right reasons, as opposed to those being made by Barton, Chambers and co. Social media needs to be used for engagement – not for break-up.

Doing it online & off

2012-01-13T11:48:00.001Z

We shouldn’t be too surprised that probably 70% of the tweets that come my way are advocating the merits of social media. We’re already clear in our own minds that social media has the capability to transform a company’s approach to marketing – indeed, we can show you how we’ve done it - and that’s why almost always now social media and online marketing forms an integral part of the campaigns that we conceive and execute for clients.

And therein lies the main point. They are part of an overall campaign; rarely do we operate social media activity in total isolation of other aspects of a campaign. After all, consumers don’t operate purely online and the best campaigns will seek to address their target audiences at all possible touchpoints. In that sense, the most impactful campaigns are often those that start online and finish offline.

Ann Summers is the latest company to take a look at this. The lingerie retailer invited women to enter a competition to find the new face of its brand campaign and launched its first ever TV advertisement starring the ten finalists. The winner was chosen through an online vote on Facebook.

The winner, Lucy Moore, will now be the star of the brand’s Valentine’s Day marketing campaign and will feature in Ann Summers’ in-store campaign and on the cover of the retailer’s catalogue and digital channels.

The beauty of social media is the ability to engage with your customers in a genuinely two-way conversation. We use our social media activity to develop and manage conversations on behalf of clients with their existing customers, potential customers, potential opinion formers and suppliers that gives them a sense of stake in the brand and a feeling of access and involvement. It also gives us a further platform to move consumers offline and have them participate in clients’ other marketing activities whether those are in-store.

Much of that is about understanding how to target and attract the right people to your social media platforms and then keep them there. This involves delivering the kind of content that will engage them but also as importantly managing the relationship with them behind “the front page”. Those who merely put up a Twitter feed and slap up once anodyne Tweet once a day will never, as the ladies at Ann Summers might say, feel the earth move for them.

Personal debt proves an ongoing failure in Government communication

2011-12-12T12:25:00.000Z

If the economic outlook is gloomy for 2012, the inability or reluctance of individuals to cut their cloth according to their circumstances looks like it may be storing up even greater problems for Britons in the next 12-24 months.

Recent research paints a gloomy picture of our inability to shake off our credit dependency and live within our constricting means. Of course, many families are in genuine hardship and are struggling to make ends meet, but in the same way that government has in the past launched effective communications campaigns to effect lifestyle changes (drink driving, smoking etc), there seems to be more than ever a need to communicate more effectively and imaginatively in order change our relationship with money.

Recent research by insolvency group R3 confirmed that millions of us are likely to take out a high-interest loan in the next six months to tide us over until pay day. Despite the fact that some 60% of those surveyed were worried about their level of debt, and 45% struggled to make their money last until their next pay cheque, we are still encouraging vulnerable people to commit to small, short-term unsecured loans on potentially astronomic rates of interest.

And Christmas is only compounding the situation. Almost one in three people in the UK will go into debt over the Christmas period, according to a YouGov survey. The survey suggested that 11% of Britons will lose track of spending, with 31% going into some form of debt to fund Christmas-related costs. Of these, the report suggested, 58% will rely more heavily on their credit cards and most of the remainder will cover their costs by using overdraft facilities.

Government has a long track record of using communications disciplines – advertising, PR and other marcomms techniques – to engage with people on matters of national interest. When government placed a freeze on spending last year on advertising campaigns, it saw calls to the drug abuse helpline Frank fall by 22% while the Smokefree website saw visitor numbers drop by half. As a result the Government freed up new funds to re-energise these and other campaigns.

Given the relationship between debt, poverty and stress-related illness (which places additional pressure on the NHS), few could argue that a campaign to re-educate Britons into a healthier relationship with money would have an important and positive contribution to our lifestyle. This could be the most important wellbeing campaign this Government sanctions. We have the creative minds in the UK to develop an impactful integrated campaign to change behaviour. We know because we have seen it done before. But we need the recognition, the will and the funding to make it happen again.

Has Newcastle United scored a PR own-goal?

2011-11-14T13:23:00.000Z

Supporters of Premier League football club Newcastle United are still reeling from the announcement by the club’s owners that the club’s iconic stadium, St James’s Park, has been re-branded the ‘Sports Direct Arena’. Sports Direct is the sports retail business founded by the club’s owner Mike Ashley.

The official club stance is that the name change will ‘showcase’ the possibility of a brand partnership between the club and another organisation that would potentially acquire the stadium naming rights, whilst also becoming the club shirt sponsor for a combined quoted fee of around £10 million a year.

There is certainly an argument that in the modern game (where there is often a positive correlation between a club’s success and its financial clout) clubs should be open to any form of investment. However, it makes you wonder if the manner in which the decision has been made and announced will constitute a major PR own-goal by alienating so many supporters, perhaps the club’s biggest stakeholder group. Or maybe in contrast the passion and loyalty of the club’s supporters give the owners the belief that whatever they do their support for the club is assured.

From a PR perspective things had been running suspiciously and unusually smoothly at Newcastle United. Weeks ago, the club offered a deal to current season ticket holders, where they could nominate a fellow supporter to apply for a half-price season ticket. Around the same time, the club held an open training session – where fans could go and see their heroes in the flesh… for free.

Then there was the decision to allow fans to bid for each letter of the ‘NEWCASTLE UNITED’ signage, which had been mounted on the stadium’s East Stand for 16 years and later replaced by two sets of six-foot tall Sports Direct signs. The in-house PR team selected the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation as the beneficiary of the sale of the iconic lettering. This left supporters with the decision whether to oppose the obviously commercial branding exercise or should they embrace the fundraising exercise and support a cause that was founded by Robson, a club legend.

Brand partnerships with football clubs can and do work, though usually with the naming of a brand new stadium rather than sponsorship being retrofitted to a stadium with the history of St James’s Park. Companies such as Emirates or Etihad, which own lucrative naming rights at Arsenal and Manchester City respectively, have shown how effective such partnership can be. But against the background of a relationship as publicly fractious and laced with suspicion as the one between Newcastle’s owners and its supporters, would brands now consider any sponsorship of Newcastle United to be something of a poisoned chalice? Will they instead be concerned that such contempt be passed on to their brand by association?

One wonders too just how transparent the club is being in terms of its intentions. Would the lack of any potential sponsors mean that the club ‘will have no choice’ but to permanently name the stadium the ‘Sports Direct Arena’ for the immediate future? Surely that isn’t the intention of the billionaire owner?

After all, what kind of sports retail magnate would want their brand beamed out to hundreds of millions of football fans across the world on a weekly basis?

As former chairman Sir John Hall said in 2010:

“I was told that the man behind the deal was Mike Ashley and I sat with his representatives over 3 days thrashing out a deal. I was keen to know why they wanted the club and they were quite honest. They wanted to market their sports goods in the Far East and would use the club to help do this.”

Coverage is not just for coverage’s sake

2011-10-18T13:16:00.001+01:00

The London Evening Standard recently reported that “the economic downturn might finally have caught up with London’s public relations industry” as it explored issues such as reach, services, strategy and cost.

Most industries have felt the impact of the downturn in one way or another, which means that companies are analysing their marketing spend more closely than ever. While PR is more cost effective than advertising, many companies still do not rate it as highly as they should. One of the contributing factors to this that PR companies can be guilty of generating coverage for coverage’s sake, focusing more on producing a high volume of press cuttings and disregarding the most important thing – content.

The reason for a company hiring a PR agency is that it needs to successfully market its objectives to its target audience. They want to see a tangible return on their investment. Therefore, it is paramount for PR agencies that customer service and focus on strategic objectives and best value for clients remain their highest priority.

The role of the PR agency is to work towards the achievement of objectives, rather than just generating coverage for the sake of it.

Clients’ objectives can be achieved a number of ways – and the print media isn’t always the best method. For example, social media – including networking forums, blogs and content sharing sites – has transformed the way companies communicate with their publics. One-way marketing is a thing of the past as discerning consumers choose brands that literally speak to them and reflect their needs, and public opinion means everything. Interaction and communication are key – but this isn’t necessarily something that can be reflected in a telephone directory sized book of press cuttings, especially if the objectives include increasing web traffic and/or online orders.

Furthermore, every client is different. What works well for one will not necessarily be beneficial to another. A good agency will have a good relationship with its clients, which in turn will give them a good level of knowledge and understanding of aims and objectives. This will also enable the agency to be flexible as clients’ agendas change and evolve.

PR agencies are an extension of their clients’ marketing departments. They need to know what the client wants to achieve and demonstrate that they have helped (or are able to help) achieve these goals. It may be a cliché, but quality really is more important than quantity.

GET YOURSELF IN CRISIS MODE BEFORE THE CRISIS HITS

2011-10-12T13:09:00.000+01:00

I think the mobile phone gods were shining on me a few weeks ago when I made the bold – and derided by some – step to switch from my trusty Blackberry and go over to the dark side by opting for an iPhone. Who’s having the last laugh now, I hear myself saying , as Research In Motion tries to recover from what is looking like a catastrophic failure of the Blackberry network that has users up in arms and leaving the brand looking more than a little tarnished.

And the problem is compounded by users taking to Twitter to vent their own anger against RIM for the world to read. The Guardian reported three tweets that must have been the tip of a social media iceberg. One wrote: "BlackBerry down again. Very poor communications from them about what the problem is. £Fail." Another said: "Maybe I'd like my phone more if it wasn't a stupid BlackBerry" Whilst one even said: "It was nice of BlackBerry to honour Steve Jobs with two days of silence".

And it’s in these tweets that a lot of the damage for RIM lies. You often judge a brand not by what goes wrong, but how they deal with that situation and what steps they take to put it right. Some people call it crisis management, others call it contingency planning. Either way, planning is the important word because, whatever your size or business, you can and should pre-prepare for a crisis.

Our key tips would be:

1. Don’t panic. Think calmly and rationally, because how you interact with all of your stakeholders – customers, media, suppliers, shareholders etc – during this initial phase will set the tone for how you will handle the crisis and how perception of your brand will be impacted.

2. Get your facts straight. Be honest. Don’t lie. Do not put out information about which you cannot be certain. Having to retract information later for inaccuracy will damage your brand. Make sure everybody who needs to hear information directly and personally does so before you release information via the media.

3. If you can, use your PR team to prepare holding statements and to liaise with the media on your behalf. They will ensure that you are seen to be taking the situation seriously. Make sure your staff do not speak to the media and all calls are passed through only to those designated to handle them.

4. Work with your crisis team to determine what information to release, what statements to put out, to whom and when. Make sure you have a senior member of staff as the “face” of the situation – it makes your brand look more like it’s taking the situation seriously if the MD is perceived as taking direct control.

5. Monitor what coverage is appearing and what is being said about you online. Do not engage in bickering but if factual errors need to be corrected, make sure they are done so politely and promptly.

That’s a lot to consider if an emergency breaks today. That’s why you should consider now what your crisis PR strategy would be, how it would be implemented and to have those plans shared and available for use at a moment’s notice. This puts you on the front foot and enables you to set rather than respond to the agenda of others. We can work with you to put these plans together.

And don’t forget, just as the Blackberry crisis is an opportunity for iPhone and Android manufacturers, so a crisis for your competitors is an opportunity for you. You need to be equally prepared for that and ready to exploit those opportunities as well.

And the gold for ambush marketing goes to....

2011-09-28T11:57:00.000+01:00

The announcement that marketers face an increased risk of criminal charges if their brand appears to participate in ‘ambush marketing’ during next year’s London Olympics seems, at first glance, to be in contravention of the Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius, a Latin expression meaning "Faster, Higher, Stronger".

No reward for brands which fit those criteria and no medals, therefore, for brands that are so fleet of foot that they can capture a bit of the Olympic action without stumping up the seven figure sum required to associate their brand directly with the Games. But this decision raises two issues – the whole commercialisation of the Olympics and how one might define ambush marketing activity.

There seems little doubt that London will be the marketing games. One wonders whether Visa or McDonald’s will pick up gold for branding and which of the products related to the sponsors will benefit most from the brand association – will it be the official Olympic BMW car, the official Olympic energy provider EDF or even Westfield, the official Olympic shopping mall. One can understand entirely why LOCOG must move to protect the rights of its sponsors within the Olympic Park and through the media, given the near £2 billion in sponsorship they have leveraged from more than 40 tier 1, 2 and 3 sponsors, but should that mean stifling all what constitutes ambush marketing?

If a group of friends enters the Olympic Park wearing Pepsi-branded tee-shirts, will that encourage Coke to flex its sponsor’s muscles? How about if I demand to pay for souvenirs with a MasterCard in what is likely to be a Visa-only zone....well, that as MasterCard would say themselves, would be priceless. And how about a group of us grab some lunch from Burger King and smuggle it into the Olympic Park under the noses of staff at what is rumoured to be the largest McDonald’s restaurant in the world? Is any of this ambush marketing?

To be honest with a million extra people expected in London every day during the course of the Games, there should be ample opportunities for non-sponsoring brands to make their mark. Whether that’s through flash mob work, clever use of ambient advertising, free events for visitors to London, face to face marketing or sampling at key travel hubs, brands don’t need to wander into the Olympic Park or onto television in order to make their mark. And I suspect many are already considering it even though the rules on advertising and street trading around the Olympics and Paralympics come into effect in November, a full eight months before the Games themselves.

We have been told time and time again that London 2012 will expose to the world British talent across all spectrums, not just sport. Britain has some of the best marketing talent in the world; some of the most innovative and creative minds, and one wonders if it is really necessary to resort to legislation in order to stifle them?

9/11 – Getting the tone right

2011-09-12T10:57:00.001+01:00

When there is a major world event, the media sets the tone for our response. In this increasingly 24 hour news world, the “where were you when you heard that...” question now almost inevitably involves seeing it on television, hearing in on the radio and increasingly seeing in on-line or via social media.

We look to media in all of its formats to get the reporting right, but there can be few events as delicate to report as the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. How do you deliver coverage that conveys the magnitude of the event but in a manner which also reflects its very local and personal nature?

The coverage of the tenth anniversary was unsurprisingly wall to wall. Not only was the anniversary one of the biggest media operations in recent years, but there was an interesting if unsurprising dichotomy in the way different media covered both the run-up to the anniversary and the events of the day itself. In the space of a week, coverage seemed to run the full gamut from aggressive, political analysis through the trivial to the profound and the dignified.

The ‘trivial’ seemed the least relevant of the three, with broadcasters particularly packaging and in some cases re-packaging conspiracy theories – whether trying to prove them or disprove them - minute by minute recreations and reconstructions of events we all remember too well (which sometimes looked like just a reason to showcase their latest CGI graphics), and in two cases screening big movie adaptations “United 93” and “World Trade Center” as if the anniversary itself was a moment to grab your popcorn and cheer on Nicholas Cage.

Both print and broadcast media devoted considerable time to “what if” reporting. Talking heads were hired from almost any direction to debate the historical significance of the World Trade Center attacks on everything from cross-cultural relations, the whole background to and conduct of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, uncomfortable reactions drawn out of families and politicians to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and whether 9/11 and America’s response to it has enhanced or diminished the USA’s position in the world.

But no reporting had more impact than the stripped-back examination of 9/11 as a profoundly human event.

When the media abandoned the political analysis and focused instead on the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and sons and daughters, each with a story that they wanted to tell, not only about the loved ones they had lost but also how they had coped and rebuilt their lives, you got far more of a sense of the magnitude of the event than through any other reporting.

There were three moments that captured this best. Radio Five Live got this spot on with their interview with Elizabeth Turner, a London-based media executive whose husband Simon died in the Windows on the World Restaurant on 9/11 when she was seven months pregnant with their first child. Her dignity and sheer intelligence stood in profound contrast to the mayhem we remember.

Second was the roll call of names at Ground Zero – all 3000 read out loud for the world to remember. I was most moved by the two young boys, no more than 12 or 13 years old, who read out of the names of their fathers with obvious pride, before kissing their fingers and pointing them skyward.

And finally, as it was with the fireman interviewed at Ground Zero who spent 13 months in hospital having broken every bone in his body. He spoke about how, months later, he became aware that he had been captured on film by the photographer Bill Biggart. Biggart died as the North Tower collapsed and it took six days to recover his body and his camera. They say an image speaks a thousand words: Bill Biggart’s images remain online to remind anyone of the true impact of 9/11 in a manner more eloquent than any reporter can.

http://www.billbiggart.com/911.html

Cameron, Facebook, Blackberry and Twitter – don’t shoot the Messenger

2011-08-12T11:07:00.000+01:00

Debate rages now that the riots appear, thankfully, to be over, about the role that social media has played in inciting and co-ordinating this week’s riots. Apparently, David Cameron is in favour of turning off telephone masts at the first sign of unrest in order to prevent instant communication between rioters. But is the Government right to think this way?

Switch off the phone masts in the advent of a riot and you’ll also shut down much of the community’s ability to call for help or report criminal activity in real time.

And wasn’t it the same social media that allowed those who opposed riots and chose to take responsibility for clearing up their towns to get organised and to galvanise opinion into positive action?

Operation Cup of Tea, which harnessed massive support gave a valuable voice to those who wanted to speak for local communities across the nation, was also born out of and grew exponentially through precisely those same social media.

Might one not point a more justified finger at the reality TV shows that have done so much to foster the opinion among a minority of young people that instant fame and acquisition is the way to succeed, rather than hard work? After all, they take far longer to make their programmes and clearly edit them well in advance for sensation and shock value rather than for worthy messages.

Similarly though, without TV, we wouldn’t have had Live Aid or Comic Relief, or an outlet for whistle blowers such as the recent Panorama expose into care homes for people with learning difficulties.

When people sign up to Twitter, they agree not to be offensive or profane, but this doesn’t stop some. It’s up to each corporation or individual to ensure that their content is sound, beneficial and responsible – this still relies on self government – as does most of life. Users of social media, like the editors of traditional media, must surely take the same kind of socially responsible attitude as that urged by commentators from all sides for the rioters and would be rioters.

As with so many things, the medium isn’t inherently to blame - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

Cheryl who? The importance of knowing your target audience before embarking on a big budget PR and marketing campaign

2011-05-31T09:21:00.000+01:00

Love her or loathe her, it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped for Cheryl Cole, axed from the US version of The X-Factor due to (depending on what source you read) dialect issues and/or failing to fulfil all the roles expected of her.

What appears to be the case here is that there was some naivety at the planning stages in assuming that the US American would welcome someone almost completely anonymous to them, despite having a strong UK presence. Early indications of brand awareness of Ms. Cole were not good when most of the target audience thought promoters were actually referring to Sheryl Crowe. Perhaps Simon Cowell and his minions should have invested in a bit more market research before making their intentions public?

There are actually many similarities between the Cheryl Cole ‘saga’ and strategic marketing. It really is akin to attempting to launch a product at completely the wrong sector. It might be a cliché, but just because ice is popular with the Eskimos doesn’t mean it’s going to be embraced by the inhabitants of the Sahara.

The essence of marketing and PR is to understand your clients' needs and develop a plan that surrounds those needs. After all, the overall objective is to help them attract more customers or sales leads, or they wouldn’t be investing in marketing and PR to start with.

So, how can marketing and PR be used to attract and acquire more customers for clients? Well, the first step has to be to spend some time conducting research and creating a strategic marketing plan. Understanding their thoughts, wants and needs is essential if you want to succeed – and certainly something that the US X-Factor team seemed to overlook.

When looking to target a campaign at a specific audience, it’s vital to remember that only a proportion of them are likely to purchase your product or service. By ensuring that PR and marketing is aimed at the correct niche market - taking into account what it is that appeals to the target audience to begin with - you will be more productive and won’t have wasted any effort, time or money.

This, again, is where the US X-Factor made a mistake – by using a commodity that wasn’t well received (or even known!), they were risking losing their target market; i.e. their viewers – and therefore, their ratings! Therefore, they had to take action and the axe had to fall.

Clients can also contact the customers they know are happy with their products and services for feedback. Again, this is a form of research that can help identify successful areas and any needs for improvement. The old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may well apply... perhaps that’s something the US X-Factor production team should bear in mind next time.

Football, Twitter and super injunctions: A case study in how not to deal with a crisis

2011-05-23T09:37:00.003+01:00

You must have been living with your head in a bucket of sand recently to not know that an unknown Premiership footballer has been protected by a super injunction preventing reporting of his affair with a reality TV star.

Except, of course, he hasn’t been protected at all. Not only has he now commenced legal action against Twitter to secure details of anyone alleged to have named him online, but one Sunday newspaper in Scotland this weekend came closest of all publishing a full page picture of the player concerned alongside the story and with a tiny black strip across his eyes marked ‘censored’. If the aim was to protect his identity, each of these actions has failed spectacularly.

There are plenty of issues arising out of this story: the issue of privacy, of the right of the media to report, of using courts to protect private lives, of how you can police areas out of the jurisdiction of the courts and so on.

There is also a more fundamental issue at play here. Presumably, the Premiership footballer in question has been given the best advice money can buy. If so, he should ask for a refund.

When this story first broke and the question of its reporting was raised with him, somebody should have explained the fundamental truth: let them report it, front it up for 48 hours and the story will float away on the wind as soon as the next one blows into town. It will then be little more than a footnote.

By taking the super injunction, you begin a game of cat and mouse, not just with the media but with any curious individual who takes to Google in a determined effort to unmask him. Even then, with his identity now openly known, the story could have been left to die. But by launching legal action against Twitter, the life of the story has been extended, the individual concerned is in danger of taking an excellent reputation which would have been slightly tarnished and making himself at best a laughing stock and at worst public enemy number one for the tabloid press who will now look for every opportunity moving forward to highlight other indiscretions.

There are classic lessons here to learn for crisis management, whether you are an individual or a company. Be honest, put your facts together, agree your line and stick with it, accept that the best you can genuinely hope maybe a fair hearing in the story, and look at the way this story may pan out dependent on the routes open to you.

Any rational risk assessment of this story would have told the footballer to kill it weeks and weeks ago. But then if the risk assessment is being done by his lawyers, perhaps their earning potential from sustaining the legal action is ranking more highly than what is in the genuine best interests of the client. And it his reputation, not theirs, not the girl’s and not the media’s, that is ending in tatters.

Sleazy PR campaign loses friends for Facebook

2011-05-16T09:12:00.003+01:00

You can imagine what it might look like on their Facebook profile if they have one. "Burson-Marsteller places negative comment about Google... Facebook likes this."

There was only one piece of news that made us feeling worse about the PR industry than hearing that Burson-Marsteller, hitherto one of the great global names in reputation management, had accepted a brief from Facebook to place negative comment about Google. And that was the report that B-M's competitors were circulating information to B-M's clients and others directing them to negative comment about the agency.

There are two problems here. First, when the PR company becomes the story - as Burson-Marsteller has - it becomes very difficult for them to represent their clients with the objectivity and neutrality that is most often required. Our clients want to know that we are working as hard as possible to fight their corner, promote their products and build their brand; it’s tough to do that when you are inevitably spending time and energy fire-fighting defending your actions to the world’s media.

What is more surprising is this episode displays a surprising naivety that dealing with the media on placing negativity comment about one of the world's leading brands on behalf of another of the world’s leading brands, that nobody would ever think to expose this to the world.

If you are in the business of reputation management, it impresses nobody if you are taking fees to not build the reputation of one client, but to trash the reputation of another brand.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations reacted by saying that: "standards and ethical integrity in our profession have in fact never been higher, thanks to increasing numbers of people who work in PR seeking professional accreditation, the number of employers who invest in training and the growing body of academic research into the field.”

All of this may be true but one suspects it goes out of the window when, in the harsh commercial light of day, the agency is presented with the brief and the fees to go with it. What the agency should have done is explain how this strategy would actually work against Facebook’s best interests and presented an alternative, up-front approach to highlighting the issues in Google’s proposition that Facebook wanted to expose.

You might think this is only relevant because the brands in question are two of the biggest in the world. Not so. The principle of positive rather than negative marketing applies whatever the size of your business or the sector in which you work.

As a brand, would you rather be known as one which speaks positively and advances its case with confidence or one which obsesses on the perceived weaknesses in your competitors' make up? Should you focus on the features and benefits of your product and proposition or devote time and budget to highlighting the weaknesses of your competitors?

Providing an honest comparison between you and your competitors is completely valid. But do it openly. Have the confidence to be aggressive in your marketing without recourse to the faintly sleazy notion of resorting to negativity and innuendo to do your work. And make sure your agency represents your brand accordingly.

The Apprentice - style over substance

2011-05-10T10:18:00.001+01:00

Have you set the Sky+ for the return of Lord Sugar and the new series of The Apprentice? Will you be screaming at the screen come Thursday or having a water cooler conversation, not about which candidates you like the most, but which ones you dislike the least?

And from the earliest indications, that could prove to be a tough choice. After all, more than ever, The Apprentice is all about television and has little or nothing to do with business.

For example, who would seriously give an interview to somebody who described themselves on their application as "the champion thoroughbred" or "I'm everything. I'm all mouth. I'm a doer. I'm a leader"?

The Apprentice perpetuates three myths: that you have to be arrogant beyond belief to succeed; that extraordinary self-belief can be a substitute for talent, application and pure hard graft, and that business success is inextricably linked with how loud, obnoxious and noticeable you make yourself.

Not true. Business is about self-belief but it is also about understanding the fundamentals, doing your homework on understanding what your customers want and then structuring your proposition to meet that need. It's about putting yourself in the clients position and asking if you, in their place, would accept the strategy you are proposing. If the answer is no, then start again. Of course, you have to have an eye on your own business objectives but if you make your customer's success your priority, you won't go too far wrong.

That's why one of the lessons from this economic downturn has been to relentlessly focus on what your customers want. For us, as a marketing and PR consultancy, that is all about helping our clients achieving their commercial objectives and delivering a return on investment that demonstrates how our work can positively impact on the client's bottom line. As we say, only by helping you grow your business, can we hope to grow ours.

So, to be honest, the only apprentices we would ever consider taking are those that recognise this fundamental truth. PR and marketing is a business development tool and should be judged accordingly, and anyone who tells you otherwise has failed to grasp what a client should expect from their agency. And it doesn't matter if they're a champion thoroughbred or not. If they don't appreciate that, don't touch them with a bargepole.

A Tale of Two Houses: PR Perspectives on Bin Laden and The Royal Wedding

2011-05-03T11:10:00.000+01:00

It's been an extraordinary Bank Holiday weekend where PR staff on opposite sides of the world will afford themselves a feeling of satisfaction at a job well done. However, for their work to have lasting impact more strategic work is needed to develop and drive key messages home to core constituencies and then reinforce those successes moving forward. It's the essence of what good PR should be.....sustained and targeted.

In the UK, given the ambivalent attitude of many in the run-up to wedding of Prince William and Kate- sorry, Catherine Middleton - the Clarence House team must be oozing satisfaction that the event went so well. By keeping the focus of the weekend on the younger Royals, they conveyed a sense of modernity, fun and identity with the people for which the monarchy has not historically been well known. The weather helped, the crowds helped but in projecting the new generation as royalty for a new age, the issue of the monarchy may have been taken off the agenda for another generation. The challenge is to now reinforce this success by making it so. Clarence House needs to market the monarchy subtly and not just through the old communications channels. The time has come to take the monarchy directly to the sceptics, to challenge those who are flirting with republican ideas and build a more solid support base to ensure its values and aspirations match those of the people. The challenge exists to build a two-way relationship between the younger Royals with the people that has depth rather than rely on a one-way relationship founded on deference.

And so the message is similar in the United States where already the understandable glee at the assassination of Osama Bin Laden has been replaced with concern over the consequences of that action. The removal of Bin Laden should not be a matter for jubilation, however understandable, but an opportunity to reinforce key themes of justice, retribution and security. The administration needs to prove that a world without Bin Laden is safer rather than just telling us so. It needs to show that this bold mission becomes more than just a made-for-TV movie and a key moment in uniting a democratic world, made sceptical by the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, and that we all feel and believe it to be so.

One key message we always give to clients is that PR cannot lie for you. Whatever you are saying must demonstrably match the experience of your target audience. There’s no point claiming to have great delivery or offer fantastic customer service if that is not the market's perspective. In that instance the claims are discredited and the brand or organisation loses instant credibility. Similarly, the promise of a more secure world without Bin Laden or a more modern monarchy is hollow if either fails to match our experience or the expectations that these events have set for us.

Clarence House and The White House have much to do to turn this weekend into a model of good marketing but at least they have an opportunity worth grasping.

Can you afford to be anti-social?

2011-03-18T12:38:00.001Z

(This article originally appeared in the March 2011 issue of PHAM News)

Social media has increased exponentially over the past few years. It started with Friends Reunited, then Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Now the talk is all about Twitter and LinkedIn. If these are just a string of words you don’t understand then you’re not alone – but the list is growing, as Howard Robinson explains.

Social media undoubtedly has a huge influence, as recent world events have demonstrated. Much of the planning behind the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak as President of Egypt was orchestrated online; one Egyptian father actually named his new baby daughter ‘Facebook’ in recognition of the role it played in her being born into freedom. Perhaps it isn’t everyone’s choice of a first name, but it does show the importance of this new form of communication. So should you bother with Facebook and all those others?

A decade ago, a lot of people were still asking us, “Should we have a website?” Now even the smallest of companies has one, even though many simply give details of who they are and how to contact them. And, if that’s all you have time to do, actually, that’s fine. However, consumers rarely look through a Yellow Pages book these days. If they want an installer, the majority will still ask friends for a personal recommendation, but after that, they will now search for one online. So should you get involved with other aspects of online activity such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook?

The answer, as with most things, is that it depends on who you are and what you want to achieve. Taking Facebook first; this is a largely social website, allowing friends and relatives to exchange brief snippets of news, photographs, diary dates and jokes. At first glance it seems irrelevant to the business world, but if that were the case, you wouldn’t see so many major companies with their own Facebook pages. Actually, Facebook is a very good way to form a common interest group or an online forum. If you have apprentices or learners on training courses, Facebook can be an ideal way of communicating with them in an informal way, and of getting them to communicate with and help each other. It appeals as a medium to the young in particular, though other age groups are fast catching up.

It’s also an effective way for manufacturers to communicate special offers to their customers, to alert them to new product launches and to share good articles in publications such as PHAM News. After a long working day, when they get home, most installers probably don’t feel inclined to browse manufacturer’s websites – but they may well log on to Facebook to catch up with friends. They may also occasionally look at a manufacturer’s or merchant’s Facebook page to see what’s new. An interesting item can be used to send them to the company’s actual website to read more – and that’s why you might use it – to drive traffic to your main website. With Facebook, however, you may need to create content that is of general interest or amusement to ensure the link to your page spreads virally and assists in generating followers. Alternatively, you could consider limited pay per click Facebook advertising for a time-limited period to generate followers.

You should consider using Twitter for the same reason – but again this will depend who you are and what you have to say. Many installers will feel they just don’t have time to bother with it – but by its nature Twitter is a brief message which takes a minute or two to compose. If you want to give Twitter a try there are a few things to remember. Personal tweets are just chatter about the day, but corporate or business tweets should be used to communicate core messages on a regular basis. For the installer, this could mean sending out timely reminders that now is the time to have your boiler serviced. You could tweet about the average cost of a repair versus a service, or about the savings to be made by replacing an old boiler for a new more efficient one.

A manufacturer might wish to tweet all this in support of installers, and add product news, competitions and promotions. Manufacturers can also provide a service for the installer by alerting them to changes in the building regulations or new advice pages on their website. A tweet is a message of just 140 characters including a website address or mobile number, so it’s quick to compose and to read. It’s all about driving business your way again. With Twitter it can be much easier to find followers, using the various Twitter search engines to target people based on their location, their occupation or particular aspects of their biography. And no, it’s not stalking. Twitter is a reciprocal site; so if you follow people, roughly a third will follow you back.

LinkedIn is like Facebook for business and it’s a very good idea if you need a network of suppliers or potential clients. Who doesn’t? Once you’ve set up a profile, it takes very little time to log on occasionally, see who’s made a new contact or invited you to connect and decide if they could be useful to your business too. You can also form or join common interest groups on here too, and get the latest industry news and advice from your sector. You can publish your website address here too, driving more visitors your way. Essentially, LinkedIn is networking online, and you can spend as much or as little time on it as you want. It can also be a way of connecting with people you’ve been trying to reach in order to win business. Most people look after their own LinkedIn profile, so it can be a very good way past a ‘gatekeeper’. Remember, though, that as with face to face networking, social media should be used to build contacts and create relationships; it’s not geared for the hard sell.

There are other new social media trends on the way. One to watch at present is Quora, which is an online debating forum. One member asks a pertinent industry question, then others contribute to a discussion with informed comment and experience until a consensus is reached.

The key is to make all of this work together to drive traffic to your website, but it does sound like you might have to spend hours a day making all this work together. The good news is that there are some shortcuts to this. By using a website like Tweetdeck you can link Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other accounts together and update them all in one go.

As with most things, how you should approach social media depends on how high a profile you desire online – do you want to have a local presence or a national one? Do you want to be seen as a handy resource for a homeowner in distress or as an industry-wide authority? A local installer can probably manage social media with a regular once a day update via Tweetdeck – during the lunch hour via Tweetdeck if you have a good connection to the internet via a mobile phone.

Some companies have a more complex set of messages and brand values to communicate, a broad product range and a host of issues such as Building Regulations which may affect their business or their customers. In this case, they would be better advised to use a social media expert, to ensure that all the elements work together consistently to enhance the image of the brand. The one thing you don’t want is to undo all the good you’ve done with the rest of your marketing.

Howard Robinson is Director of Quay West Communications, which manages social media for a range of clients in the building services sector.

Corporate Twitter – should you get personal?

2011-02-14T14:24:00.000Z

Twitter provides some great opportunities to promote and to interact, but when is a corporate Twitter truly corporate? And how informal can you be without creating the wrong impression?

Part of the charm of Twitter is its informality – after all, if you only have 140 characters to play with, there’s not much room for niceties – the tweet has to be short and sweet – but it still conveys an impression about your company. As with any other part of your marketing mix, Twitter has to add to the overall impression that you are working hard to create through your website, literature, blog, advertising and every other element.

So how should you use your corporate Twitter?

First and foremost to promote your key messages. At any one time, only 10% of your followers will be looking at their Twitter feed, and your message will rapidly retreat into the history of the feed, never to be seen again. Don’t be afraid to tweet your key messages regularly; just change the wording, not the message.

Secondly, use it to direct traffic to your website – and you can be specific – tweet about a great service you provide, and publish the link to the page related to the service on that website. Make it work with your literature too – for example, if you’ve just issued a new brochure, don’t forget to include a PDF of it on the relevant website page, and then tweet about it and direct the reader to the website page.

Thirdly, use Twitter to align yourself with topical news and authoritative opinion – be judged by the company you keep. Does Government policy affect your business? Or building regulations? Is there some new research or a breaking news story that would interest or affect your customers? Tweet about it and include a link to the government website or any other source that’s relevant. Providing genuinely useful information shows you in a good light.

Finally, can you use it informally, just to chat about life in general? Yes – but only up to a point.

A corporate Twitter should never reflect any one person’s views, or life, but that of the organisation as a whole. In fact, if one person goes on holiday for a couple of weeks, it shouldn’t be possible to tell that someone else has taken over tweeting in their absence. “We’re enjoying Friday afternoon cakes to celebrate launching our new product” – that’s fine. “I just got a great bargain on a new car” – very wrong. If the whole team are going for a meal, it’s fine to tweet about it. If, however, you are having friends over the weekend and need a good recipe for crème brulee, keep it for your personal Twitter. Similarly, if one of the team is appearing in the press, then tweet as much as possible – before, during and after – then use Twitter to direct people to a recording or news release on your website after the event. If Bob in packing has just completed 50 years with the company, then tweet congratulations to him from all the team; but if your Gran is celebrating her eightieth birthday, that’s family business – tweet it on your own Twitter account, not the company’s.

Take a look at your language – if you’re using “I” and “me” then that content probably ought to be in a personal Twitter, “if you find you’re consistently saying “we” and “us”, you’re on the right track. If in any doubt, it’s probably best to maintain two separate Twitter accounts, one personal, one corporate. Then tweet away – but don’t forget who you’re promoting!

What happens when the cuts start to bite?

2010-10-05T14:46:00.000+01:00

On October 20th, the Government will announce the results of its long awaited Comprehensive Spending Review and with it will detail where the expected budget cuts will hit the hardest. It is a balancing act for the Government, which needs to reduce the deficit without allowing the country to sink into a collective depression, which could have profound economic implications.

However, the implications of increasing unemployment and a contraction in the economy could be profound, though it is now an accepted precept that businesses, as far as possible, should continue to market themselves through a downturn. Whilst over-cautious may be scared away from proactive marketing, there will be opportunities for those with courage and which approach it with a degree of common sense.

So what changes, if any, should you make to your marketing strategy should we begin to experience a long and uncomfortable Winter?

Whilst some companies may cut back and focus on channels with which they have more experience and are more comfortable, the more savvy companies will look at another downturn as an opportunity to make their marketing spend work harder by building more integrated, more connected activity.

If things do begin to get tougher, here’s what we recommend:

1. Focusing marketing messages on the customer rather than the brand and demonstrate how the brand inherently understands what the customer is going through.
2. Incentives can be useful as a way of recognising customer loyalty and bringing the brand to the forefront of the customer’s mind.
3. Get your social media presence sorted out, targeted, your content updated and ensure it is all linked together. Monitor activity effectively so that you genuinely experience and take advantage of closed loop marketing.
4. Focus your activity on targeting your prospective customer base effectively. Hone and narrow down your activity as much as possible.
5. Measure your activity and whatever you do drive traffic to your web site and monitor who is coming and where from.
6. Be clear about your product or service. Be explicit about why customers should buy your product or service at all, and then, why from you.
7. If everyone is feeling a bit down, make sure your marketing activity makes your customer base feel good or better about themselves. It will pay off in the end.

In the public interest or interesting the public?

2010-08-27T11:03:00.000+01:00

News has broken that a second England footballer has been granted an injunction banning media reporting of allegations about his private life. The court ruling comes a week after another England international took out a similar injunction to prevent the media from publishing claims about his private life.

This, no doubt, won’t stop the speculation and is unlikely to prevent the identities of the two footballers becoming public within a matter of days. In this respect, the injunction is pointless and will give the impression of those players appearing desperate to use their wealth to hide their indiscretions, rather than facing up to them and dealing with the inevitable consequences.

This latest incident follows very public allegations of indiscretions by the Tottenham and England striker Peter Crouch, which has extended from the red-tops and the mid-market newspapers into the celebrity press given the high profile of his fiancée, Abbie Clancey.

Some observations from a PR perspective:

Faced with a crisis situation of this nature, it is essential to come out with an explanation and genuine statement of contrition as quickly as possible. By facing up to it early, it is possible to try and take hold of the agenda and not leave a vacuum. But ensure first that there are no remaining skeletons in the closet and that you are able to genuinely draw a line under the story.

This appears not to have happened with the Crouch situation where, from the outside, it appears that the drawbridge was pulled up, the curtains closed and no attempt to influence or take the initiative in the story was made. The consequence was a vacuum that the media was only too happy to fill with other allegations and stories about the player. A statement or a public apology this late in the day would now seem opportunistic and too little too late.

Moreover, an immediate public act of contrition could have been coupled with a counter-accusation against the media. Assuming that no criminal offence has been committed, Crouch and the other two footballers would be well within their rights to question whether the publication of their stories was truly in the public interest or whether it just interested the public on our celebrity-obsessed society.

Be human, accept responsibility, temper your response with a question as to whether this is genuinely responsible, investigative journalism. These issues are a matter for partners, for families and for the players themselves. We remain to be convinced that they are really an issue for a national newspaper. The threat to publish may be more effective in getting the player to face up to his wrongdoing than publication itself.

Footballers, after all, are not politicians who use their family background as part of a quest to secure our trust and vote. Yes, they are role models, but they are not public figures in the same manner. They commit indiscretions because they can and because they think they can get away with it. Media interest will not change that and we shouldn’t fuel their sense of self-importance by demanding our media expose it.

Be selective with your social media

2010-08-27T10:36:00.000+01:00

Following on from our recent blog about not being afraid of introducing social media into your marketing mix, comes our advice on which social media to use. There is, after all, the temptation to blast your message and brand across all the prominent social networks but, dependent on the nature of your business and the customer base you are trying to reach, this could be at best a waste of time and effort and at worst counter-productive towards your brand.

If you are a business organisation trying to reach other businesses, you need to focus on business-oriented social media, the two most prominent of which are Twitter and Linked In.

Twitter is largely a reciprocal social network – you follow other people and largely they will follow to choose you. You build your followers over a period of time by tweeting information that if of interest and relevance to your followers (which is not the same as information purely about your company or your proposition). Check if Twitter is right for you by seeing if any competitors are active and how many followers they have. But the name of the game is not “get as many followers as you can”, it’s get the right people to follow you. This means using search engines like Twellow and Tweepsearch to refine your search for followers by geographical location, job title or business sector.

Linked In, in contrast, requires you to have some kind of connection with people before you add them to your network. The network frowns upon trying to add individuals cold to your network, so regard linked in in the same way as you would with offline networking. However, if you are looking to target individuals from particular companies with a proposition, you can send carefully targeted and personalised messages through Linked In. Generally, you have a higher chance of your message being opened and responded to than you would with a cold email.

With the both, the bottom line is be active. You can’t just post your profile and expect things to happen. You need to network online, join Linked In groups, post Tweets and where possible include links to your web site that encourage readers to click on your link through to your web site to find out more information.

And so to Facebook. If you are looking for a consumer audience, particularly a younger consumer audience, then consider Facebook. Grow your followers organically by inviting your friends and incentivising them to invite their friends etc. To do this, you may need to offer competition prizes or create humorous virals that encourage recipients to spread your message. Remember, it’s not a place to hard sell – it’s a place to engage. And consider use of limited pay per click Facebook advertising to support your presence, at least for a limited start up period.

Above all, be patient. Use of social media to build your online presence should be part of your marketing mix, but it will not deliver a mass of leads or new customers in a short period of time. Observe the protocols of the network you’re on and think of it as a shop window where you can get your brand into the consciousness of your contacts so that when they are ready to buy, yours is one of the brands that comes most readily to mind.

Double dip? Mind your language...

2010-08-13T17:29:00.000+01:00

The depression of the World Cup is over and already, in true Brit style, we seem to be on the lookout for the next thing to bring down our collective mood. This time it’s the dreaded ‘double dip’, a term that until a few months ago simply meant putting your chips into ketchup one time too many.

Now house prices are said to be falling, the Bank of England has said the recovery looks ‘choppy’ and anticipated job losses in the public sector as a result of government cuts suggest a long, hard winter. Some ‘authoritative voices’ buoyed and, given support from some sections of the media, seem to suggest - almost with glee - that the UK is heading out of putative recovery and back into recession.

We’re not economists and would certainly not make predictions about whether a double dip is possible, likely or even inevitable. However, like you, we inherit the real world of business every day. We take the temperature not only of our own sector but also the sectors in which our clients operate and we are aware of the challenges that businesses of all sizes are facing.

What we do know is that companies, markets and recoveries all rely on confidence. Nothing ebbs that confidence away faster than prophecies of imminent doom. So here’s an appeal: can we ban the term ‘double dip’ and stop talking ourselves into a second recession? If it’s going to happen, there’s little if anything we can do to stop it, so let’s just deal with it if and when the situation arises.

Until then, join us in maintaining relentless but realistic positivity. Focus on what can be achieved, where business can be secured and be confident, as we are, in the quality and value of the service your business provides. If you can do that, double dip or no double dip, you won’t go too far wrong. And who knows, you may just feel better about things as a result.

Developing a social media strategy - the first steps

2010-07-16T10:51:00.001+01:00

Many SMEs remain nervous of trying to exploit the potential that social media can offer because of the mystique that some feel surrounds how to deploy online strategies.

So many companies feel that they could transform their businesses if only they could leverage the seemingly infinite power of the Internet, yet an equally high number are put off by the perceived complexity that surrounds how best to raise their profile through social media.

The reality, of course, is somewhere in between. Social media is not a panacea for all business evils and neither is it, with a few exceptions, a short cut to rapid business success. However, what it does provide is the opportunity to engage with and form relationships with a larger number of potential customers or clients, more cost effectively, than may be possible with conventional marketing methods. But in the same way that forming relationships offline takes time, takes work and cannot be based on constant hard selling, the same rules apply online.

Companies, whether product or service based, should view social media sites as primarily another place in which to network and form relationships; a place to exchange views on best practice, to canvass ideas, to engage in conversation.

Linked In can be a powerful space for businesses but you need to try as far as possible to grow your connections organically. Get yourself into the discipline of trying to connect on Linked In each time you make a connection off line. Then review your new connection’s connections and see if there any people there you could usefully connect with. Join groups relevant to your business and contribute to them – comment on postings made by others and post yourself, but always keep it impartial and always keep it relevant. Remember it’s not necessarily about how many connections you make, but how relevant the connections are.

Twitter has become the darling of the media, particularly for following celebrities, and is predicted to grow almost exponentially over the next few years. But it has a serious role to play too. Twitter is a reciprocal medium so the more people you follow, by and large, a proportion will follow you back. You can target individuals according to relevant key words in their profiles e.g. teacher, marketer etc or by their geographical location by running a search on Twitter directories like Twellow or Tweepsearch.

Promote your Twitter feed on your web site, link it to your Linked In profile and your blog if you have one and promote it also in your email sign-off and all offline collateral. Tweet regularly, at least once a day if you can or give your staff a rota of Twitter duty. The trick is to get into the discipline of doing it and always try to Tweet a view or a link to something you would find interesting and useful. If somebody re-tweets one of your postings, try to thank them.

Once you have established a Twitter following, you can use your links and the direct message facility to promote special offers or items of interest that then drives traffic from your Twitter feed to your web site. But make your social media strategy an integrated part of your overall marketing plan. It will be far more effective if you do.

If you are engaging in media relations activity be sure to make the most of any coverage your business secures by posting the link to the coverage (either at its original source or to the coverage on your web site) on your relevant Twitter and Linked In profiles.

But there is a world beyond Twitter and Linked In and increasingly social media is becoming ever more niche, with networking groups and forums appearing for every hobby, interest or business sector. Hunt these down too and participate in the same way as above. Monitor other people’s posts because often people will ask for guidance or a recommendation that could be a business opportunity for you.

Once you have established connections and relationships online, then you can try and move them off line by having more detailed email communication and, possibly, meeting up to discuss business opportunities. Above all, be brave and don’t be scared. If you regard online in the same way you would walking into a room of potentially interesting people you’ve never met before, you won’t go far wrong.

When PR simply can’t paper over the cracks

2010-06-04T09:57:00.001+01:00

In what has been a news-heavy month – Whitehaven, new Government, Israeli attack on Gaza flotilla – one of the most major news stories appears to have taken a slightly back seat in the UK.

BP may finally have placed a top-up cap on the leaking oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico but it continues to face potential criminal and environmental investigations. It remains a focus of anger for the people of the region and a focus of attack for President Obama, keen to shore up his own position and not to be seen reacting slowly in the way his predecessor did to Hurricane Katrina.

However, BP, for its part, is mounting a PR offensive to redress the balance. The company is using all of the social media at its disposal – Twitter, Facebook and even SMS updates for those interested – to provide a continual flow of information about the company’s efforts to plug the gap.

It’s hard to criticise BP for its comms approach, but it does provide a salutary lesson for anyone embarking on a PR programme that may encounter bumps along the road. BP are right to make the effort to put their case, to convince interested parties and stakeholders that the company is taking the crisis seriously and is working around the clock to bring it to a satisfactory and speed conclusion.

However, until that happens and BP makes right the wrong and, more importantly, is seen and accepted as making serious and genuine attempts to right the wrong, its comms campaign may continue to be viewed as an exercise in papering over the cracks and seeking to spin the company’s position.

The lesson here for companies of all sizes – not just BP’s – is that PR can communicate effectively, but what it cannot do is give the impression of a situation, a circumstance or even a service that doesn’t match the real experience of the people with whom you are communicating.

Bad comments on social media can spread like a disease

2010-05-18T11:52:00.001+01:00

It’s impossible, it would seem, to get through a working day without being tweeted, poked on Facebook or connected with on Linked In. And, on one level, this explosion in social media and user-generated content affords companies a reach and an opportunity that ten years ago – five years ago, even – would have seemed impossible to comprehend.

But, for every up side, there’s a downside too and caution should be the order of the day.

In a survey conducted last year by the American Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics around a quarter of employers surveyed had disciplined an employee for improper activities on social networking sites. Yet only 10 percent of companies had specific polices to deal with social networking sites.

Twitter users create 50 million tweets each day, and Facebook has more than 400 million users worldwide – more than 20 million in the UK. Social media has the capacity to reach millions of people in a matter of minutes or as one commentator put it, to spread opinion and information like an infectious disease.

So proceed with care. There is a real risk of somebody – perhaps a disgruntled employee - using social media to attack a brand, which can then, by its very nature, rapidly gain momentum. Sometimes the comment isn’t malicious but perceived as being humorous and harmless because it’s been made on a social media site.

But when an adverse comment about a brand is made there is a likelihood of magnification. One adverse comment can fuel another and then another and, once the comments snowball, stopping them can become difficult, if not impossible.

There was an instance last year at Domino's Pizza when a prank video became a YouTube sensation. Two Dominos employees uploaded a video where one employee put cheese up his nose while making a sandwich at work. The other employee narrated. The video spread virally forcing the company into full crisis management mode. It was forced to defend its food preparation standards whilst the employees were summarily dismissed.

Social media can make false information difficult to dispel. If heard, read or seen enough times, people who read the incorrect statements often start to believe.

But neither should social media be ignored. In short, companies must embrace the positives that social media can offer, whilst protecting themselves by having clear policies in place preventing staff from, as far as possible, abusing the brand online. Alternatively, if you have staff who could be champions of the company, it can be a very positive and empowering thing to have them promote the brand in a controlled manner through social media.

The bottom line for your staff should be the old adage - if there is anything you, as a company, don't want to see in your leading trade magazine or national newspaper, then make sure your staff know the consequences of writing it in a tweet or on Facebook – remind them not to post anything they wouldn’t be happy sending you in an email. After all, with social media, comments can become public and stay public very quickly forever.

Should sponsorship move in mysterious ways?

2010-05-04T09:12:00.005+01:00

Sponsorship undoubtedly has its place in the marketing mix, allowing brands to raise their profile and associate themselves with a range of projects and worthy causes from school football teams to world championships, from literary prizes to music festivals. But just how far should you go to create a stir?

The launch this week of the world’s first sponsored church confession box certainly gives pause for thought. £10,000 was enough to secure a plaque on the side of the box and a mention in one of Father Michael Griffin’s sermons in the Catholic church of Our Lady and St Ethelreda, Newmarket, for its sponsors, Irish bookmakers Paddy Power. Although the box was unveiled by Frankie Dettori, who was married and had all five of his children baptised in the church, there is no mention of it at all in the previous three weeks’ parish newsletters or on the church’s website. Is the church a little ashamed of this venture?

At first sight, many would find this a fairly tasteless move, since the church has often condemned gambling as a sin and, surely, a sermon shouldn’t be for sale to the highest bidder. But is there more to it that that?

From Paddy Power’s point of view this could be seen as supporting the community, and the Dublin-based betting giant certainly isn’t afraid of controversy or the faintly bizarre, having last year sponsored Ireland’s largest ever skinny dip. Although it’s hard to guess exactly what the sponsorship might have funded – certainly not logoed swimwear – the event raised €55,000 for Action Breast Cancer. Paddy Power also attempted last year to buy the holy tree stump of Rathkeale, and on failing, opened a book on where in Ireland the next sighting of the Blessed Virgin might take place. Clearly, it doesn’t shy away from offending the more devout in their faith.

Our Lady and St Ethelreda, for its part, seems to have an affinity with racing already - it held its own race night recently, and was offering a pair of Frankie Dettori’s breeches as an auction lot for a fundraising night, until it postponed the event for lack of donations last week. Of course the church will decide for itself whether this was a worthwhile venture, and it may be that it’s never tried again, or that this is just the first of many. Perhaps other would be sponsors might include Cadbury’s Wispa or James Patterson’s 8th Confession. Failing that perhaps Blue Nun could sponsor the communion wine, or the priesthood could be dressed by Vivienne Westwood.

So does sponsorship have to reflect well on both parties, or simply reflect a little of the glow of publicity? Does it always need to raise prestige as well as profile, or is it equally acceptable to confirm what we always thought of the brand, as long as it does make us think?

One man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity

2010-04-21T16:31:00.000+01:00

As the volcanic ash cloud brought flights across Europe to a standstill for almost a week, the airlines' pr teams were in full-on crisis management mode, trying to protect brand reputation and keep customers waiting to board flights apprised of the hour-by-hour changing situation.

With global airlines thought to have lost about £1.1bn of revenue as a result of the disruptions caused by the ash cloud and some 1.2 million passengers a day affected, it is unlikely that many companies will experience a crisis on this scale. However, a crisis left unmanaged can still severely – even irreparably – damage a company’s brand reputation and alienate existing and prospective customers.

All businesses should have crisis management plans in place to ensure smooth continuation of business and effective communication with customers and stakeholders in the event of an emergency.

However, a crisis for the airlines should also have been an opportunity for the ferry and train operators to promote their alternative methods of travel. It was their moment to capitalise on the discomfort of the airlines and make a grab to gain and retain passengers from the airlines once the crisis was over. The fact that most appear to have failed to do so lies in their not recognising a crisis for a competitor being an opportunity for themselves and not having adequate plans in place to exploit it.

If such a situation was replicated in your industry with your competitors, how ready would you be to defend your ground or exploit their discomfort? Crisis planning is an intrinsic part of both defensive and offensive marketing and companies should ensure they have taken their business through the planning process.

Key to the whole situation is to stay calm, think rationally, offer clear and honest information and deploy as envisaged the plans you have developed carefully.

Quay West is well placed to advise on and develop crisis and contingency management plans for all businesses. Our guide to crisis management “Don’t Panic” is available by emailing us at talktous@quay-west.co.uk

Is it time to come out from behind the sofa?

2010-04-21T15:27:00.000+01:00

Although weak and still fragile, most commentators now agree that growth is slowly returning to the UK economy. After two years of battoning down the hatches and adopting survival-only strategies, many companies are trying to get to grips with how to make the transition from consolidation marketing to a more proactive, confident approach.

In short, how can you position your business for economic recovery – even though you may still be suffering pain – and as important, when do you press the button to come back out from behind the sofa?

The first point to make is it is not an all or nothing situation. Most businesses will have developed a recession mindset that they will – and should – carry forward with them: caution, value, RoI and targeted spend. However, exploiting the recovery also means aggressive marketing to create stand-out as confidence returns. Timidity in the recovery will do you no favours either.

So, now’s the time to start your recovery planning with an audit of your marketing and communications activity.

Have you established your marketing objectives for the first six, twelve and 24 months of the recovery?

Have you assessed what steps you need to take now to best position you to achieve them?

What are the key messages you want to convey about your business?

Will business in your sector be done differently now to before – are you leveraging social media as effectively as you could be?

Does your collateral properly reflect your business now or does it reflect how your business was three years ago?

You will have prepared for recession; identifying cost savings and strategies to make your business lean and competitive to ensure its survival You must similarly plan to benefit from returning confidence. Audit now to develop intelligent and targeted marketing strategies and watch your business grow again as it climbs out of recession.