Your podcast chances are good

A good PR podcast will compete quite effectively with commercial sound tracks if this BBC report of Jupiter research is right.

The Jupiter Research report reveals that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on a iPod will be from the iTunes shop. Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.


That site could easily be one run by a public relations department.

The Next CIPR Chair after the next one

Elisabeth Lewis-Jones, director of Midland’s based consultancy Liquid Public Relations, has been elected President of the Charted Institute of Public Relations for 2008 reports the CIPR magazine Profile.

The 8th woman President of the CIPR, Elisabeth will take up her presidency on 1st January 2008, the Institute’s 60th anniversary year. Before taking over the position, she will serve as President Elect to Lionel Zetter, CIPR President for 2007.

Elisabeth, who has nearly 15 years’ experience working both in-house and in consultancy, is a former CIPR Young Communicator of the Year and chair of the CIPR in the Midlands. Today she is director and co-founder of Liquid Public Relations and a director and Honorary Treasurer of the CIPR.

Office 2007 beta 1.1.1

Microsoft is releasing the latest version of Office 2007, scheduled for mass market launch early next year.

The new version of the code has been altered based on feedback from earlier betas and is free to all existing beta 2 users. The company says it has improved performance, built in better product integration, improved collaboration tools and added general 'fit and finish' changes.

Sir Martin and the Tivo poacher create a gamekeeper and top gun

I love this Guardian story. WPP Group has signed an advertising deal with digital video recorder company TiVo. TiVo allows US users skip TV commercials. Tivo then developed a product that allowed it to show adverts from its own software.

It, in effect, replaces one advert with another. Under the deal, GroupM - WPP's combined media planning and buying agency - will buy an agreed minimum amount of TiVo advertising.

I bet there will be a row over this and most of it will come from people who find scream marketing offensive and can't escape.

This is a big issue and one that the digital channel FX and others are trying to resolve. They find that people are getting very creative in time shifting to avoid watching advertisements.

What I cannot understand is that if people try to avoid watching these horrid little adverting interruptions to their lives and go to extra-ordinary lengths to do so, why keep putting them in?

Soon TV adverts will be the kiss of death to brands. Both geese and both golden eggs gone in a moment of greed.

This could be a two way street. The advertising industry's lip smacking visits to The Ivy and eye-wateringly expensive trips to Cannes means that fewer than half of financial directors believe their agencies are trustworthy, according to a survey.

The Accounting for Creativity report, conducted with 100 financial directors in the creative services industry by independent research company Loudhouse, revealed that only 42% of those surveyed thought that clients perceived their agencies to be trustworthy.

Clients think they are being ripped off, customers turned off by the adds the Advertsing industry still thinks it has a future.

Tomorrow, you have to get on line and try it out

If you have not already tried it out its time you did. YouTube is the fastest growing online brand in the UK, increasing the number of its users by nearly 500% in the first six months of 2006. It is a must for PR practice and offers a wide range of opportunities. With 3.6 million unique users in July, YouTube is used by more than one in eight Internet users in the UK.

Thank you to the Guardian for pointing it out but Put another way. This is 6% of the UK population. Its bigger than the Sun or the Mirror. Its 'readership' bigger than any newspaper. It can be on your 'press list' by Monday morning.

Websites with user-generated content dominate the top 10 hottest online brands, according to Internet research outfit Nielsen NetRatings.

YouTube beat rival social networking sites Flickr, which increased by only 131%, and Rupert Murdoch-owned MySpace, which is only up by up 98%.

Now... we are talking 6 (yes SIX) months here not year on year.

Come back in a year and do not be surprised to find that 15% of the uk total (baby Fiona, mum, dad, grandma and uncle Herbert) population all using YouTube.

Net inside the net

PR colleagues will have an excellent opportunity to develop platforms and channels for communication in thier very own private Internet.

The health service in the UK is linking everyone up using BT as the vendor.

"We have quietly created Europe's largest virtual private network that will connect every NHS site in England, enabling information to travel at great speeds between those sites," said the chief executive for BT's Global Services division Andy Green.

The network is due to be completed within 6 months. Currently 15,000 offices have been connected and he network will eventually link 18,000 hospitals and GP surgeries.

Source IT Pro.

Never before have so many Marketing People been so confused

“Never have there been so many media options available to advertisers and consumers, a trend that has both excited and frustrated brand marketers as media buying decisions have become more complicated by a market veering toward new media. But traditional media companies have responded by investing in multiple media platforms to reach this increasingly fragmented audience." said James Rutherfurd, executive vice president and managing director at VSS in an e-commerce article.

Now that old media has cottoned on the the idea that on-line is not about washing clothes and Google and others have presented statistics stuff to make decision making based on facts hard to avoid.


Add to this the growth of social media and the poor old marketing mind is in a whirl.

In PR we do have to recognise the growing range of communications platfoms and the range of channels available to us and the we have to plan.

Optimising email marketing ROI

Some people like me are pathalogically averse to email marketing (you dont know me and want to send an email - phone or get your news to find me) but most are less irritated and some are quite sangine.

This made me look more closely at the article in e-commerce about email marketing.

The article and the white paper it references are both helpful and informative.

Can I now un peg my nose

Add interactive content to Google Earth.

Google has added interactive content from the Discovery Channel and other providers to popular geospatial software Google Earth.

The overlays can be accessed by clicking a box in the software's sidebar, and support videos, photos, RSS feeds and blogs.

Is every corporate headquarters going to be added? Or can PR practitioners be much much more creative

The Discovery Channel, for example, is offering video segments about landmarks, cities and tourist attractions around the world ..

"Google Earth Featured Content is a way for Google to connect users with really compelling, high-quality information being illustrated and shared on Google Earth," said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Maps.

Create your own newspaper

I owe someone an apology. They pointed me to this and I just can't track back to who did it but its great.

Create your own morning or evening newspaper from Simply Headlines is really cool. You select where you want the news to come from and there it is in a newspaper. So your daily news could be from this blog, the BBC or the Economist or all three.
Here is a clipping service for online stuff.

It also has that half way house element about it.

People keep telling me that clients like to see paper, well here it is.

Mobile - and NewsCorp - and bigness

I have no difficulty with agreeing with News Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Chernin

“I’m dead serious when I say that mobile could be one of the greatest entertainment platforms we’ve created.”

We have known for quite some time that the "mobile world" was going to be hot. In Asia, it has been for a long time and people maintain a very personal attachment to their phones.

Using a mobile phone, consumers can now pay bills, check a bank account, download books, games, and news content, surf the Web, podcast, share photos, download ring tones and music, and more.

So far none of these wonderful applications has taken hold.

Partly this is because of the silly pricing models associated with mobile. calls cost (almost) nothing and are chared, phones cost mony and are given away. It nuts.

The bundling of services is far too complex.

The application that allows someone into your head and imagination is a different to video and text but each of these is treated in the same way.

But - Mobile is big. We need the imagination to tap its potential.

IP, copyright, secrets and who pays

Confused of Calcutta is a really good place to go if you want to be challenged. I go a lot.

The issue of Intelectual properties, patents and copyright is one that has bugged me for a while. I like owning what I own but keep finding out that when I share it, I get back more. This applies to software, comment and research and even this blog. I am more than please that these thoughts are also in the mind of a Nobel laureate.

JP Rangaswami reports on what he has just said in New Scientist.

....... There’s a fascinating article by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in the latest New Scientist. Yes, of course it’s hidden behind a paywall, what did you expect? Here’s the stub.

I quote from the article:

• Locking up products with patents is an unfair and ineffective way to reward innovation.
• There is a growing sentiment that something is wrong with the system governing intellectual property.
• Recent years have seen a strengthening of IP rights…..The changes have been promoted especially by the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries, and by some in the software industry….
• …[some] patents take what was previously in the public domain and “privatise” it — what IP lawyers called the new “enclosure movement”.
• In any system, someone has to pay for research. In the current system, those unfortunate enough to have the disease are forced to pay the price, whether they are rich or poor. And that means the very poor in the developing world are condemned to death

In the relationship value model we see convergence of values to create relationships. Secrets, patents and copyright are not there to build relationships.

Yahoo upgrades its mail service.

Mail is really key for Yahoo, and its 255 million e-mail users are one of its most valuable assets so this upgrade is important.

Yahoo mail is first or second preference for quite a lot of people and was my first on-line mail service (when Adam was a lad and eve was trying to get him into Usenet).

More information is available from Richard McManus.

Understanding virtual environments

Dan Greenfield do have a great blog and his interview with Aaron Uhrmacher, senior account executive at Text 100 is an excellent insight into Second Life.

Aaron's opening comment of:

"Our SL presence stemmed from a presentation that we made at the Arthur Page Society on the future of communications and social media. In our work, we are very involved in peer-to-peer media blogs wikis, podcasts, etc. SL allows for a more immersive form of communications. In SL, you can collaborate in three dimensions. "

Is an excellent introduction as to why people in PR should understand this form of communication.

The full interview is here.


But its in more than an interview it is a Second Life case study. It shows why an organisation might like to use these kinds of channels for communication - for commercial gain.

Social Abuse on line - a danger to kids and organisations

The BBC reports Computing Which has called on social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace to do more to police what users do.

A study of the sites by the consumer watchdog unearthed pornographic images, evidence of bullying and inappropriate adverts.

It also proved easy to pose as a child as the sites did no age or ID checks.

It is worth remebersing that the kids may be at risk but so too are corporate reputations using exactly the same deception and similar tactics.

from iPod to Zune

Microsoft has announced that its Zune digital music player will be released in the US in time for Christmas.

Unveiling more details of the player, which it hopes will rival Apple's iPod Features include: wireless connectivity (allowing nearby users to exchange songs and photos), an ability to play videos and includes a radio.

Which online videos are popular?

Scott Button, of Unruly Media in London, called his four-week-old project "the world's first comprehensive and independent online video chart." The Viral Video Chart, a hit parade tracking the most popular videos on YouTube, MySpace and Google Video is worth a look. Thanks for knowledge to BL Ochman who has more about the results - beam me up Scottie.

The point being that if you see what is popular, you may like to include similar content in your work.

Issues blogging

A WILMSLOW dad has set up a boozers’ blog. Says the Wimslow Express.

The website for fellow drinkers to exchange views about local pubs and bars is a reaction to the police pubwatch scheme - which he claims is one sided.

Harry Bingley, of Church Street, set up the discussion site ‘pubs4people.com’ for people to chat about their experiences of Wilmslow’s pubs and clubs on the web.

The 50-year-old former marketing consultant says it is a reaction to the changing nature of the town’s pubs and clubs.

He hopes his website will redress the power balance of schemes like pubwatch and encourage publicans to think more about the views of the paying punter.

He said: "I recently saw a joke cartoon in the newspaper where a man was banned from a pub for smiling after happy hour - that just about sums it up for me."

This is the kind of site that is worth watching. It is the sort of blog that could become popular and so, for some organisations being involved in conversations relevant to this blogger may be interesting and advantageous.

Brand messages down on the farm

Among some constituents there is a common affinity that it just creates content.
The magazine Farmers Weekly has a blog running where farmers can comments on how well they are getting on with this autumn's drilling (that is planing seeds for you townies).

The latest news is here.

One of the interesting things to note is the branding that goes with it. Seed types are brands and many are specific to seedsmen. In this blog they get coverage (Google Juice).

PS, the winter wheat is now sown in the field behind us here in Wiltshire. The got it in yesterday just before it rained and rained and is still raining.

My girlfriend bit my foot - celebs in the news

Spongebob has a blog. He is a celebrity Squirrel Monkey, cute and with many adventures to tell. Not least that his girlfriend bit his foot.... you could not make it up ... Unless you were Freddie Star's publicist.

Spongebob went missing from the theme park and zoo in July but was later found being played with by children in Clapham. He had been kidnapped.

What a great way to build a brand and bring visitors to see this charming celebrity. More from the BBC.