Times to get new Interactive features

Times Online, the website of the Times and Sunday Times, is being re-designed.

Features will include:

• Further integration of print and website operations (like the Telegraph model).
• Times Online TV with footage from Sky News.
• A search engine that readers use to create tailored web pages.
• A downloadable PDF file available each day at 5pm containing business news, analysis and comment, and Comment Central blog.

Times Online has 9 million monthly unique users and is increasing its blogs and podcasts.

The rapid movement by the core print media this year is affecting how PR interfaces with its traditional communication partner.

This week has seen many major announcements.

Pay for podcasts - gercha

Two-thirds of UK internet users are not prepared to pay for podcasts, according to a wide-ranging report on the digital habits of UK consumers.

The survey, to be published by Guardian Newspapers on Monday, reveals that of the 29% of consumers who did not refuse outright to pay for podcasts, the most they were prepared to pay was £1.

Its the Sun Wot done it

After reading this Philip Young post, who wants to do press relations anyway.

Quote from ex-Sun editor:

In my day we used to put the untrue stories on page one and the truer ones through the paper, so by the time you got to page 38 there was nothing wrong with them!

It seems to me that opening a relationship direct with the public has a host of advantages not least there is some protection from media lies.

Cosmo gets digitized

The National Magazine Company, the main UK publisher owned by the Hearst Corporation, has launched the Hearst Digital Network to aggregate all its online content.

Nancy Cruickshank will become as managing director of the division whose properties include; cosmopolitan.co.uk; netdoctor.co.uk and the Handbag network.

Journalism.co.uk, who ran the story has the equivelent of a grin on its web site.

The ability to lever reach by being digital for consumer media is a must for PR now.

Local papers revamp - need video and interactive content by year end

Journalism UK finds out that Trinity Mirror is to re-launch all its regional and local newspaper websites by the end of the year to refocus on interactive elements.

The re-launch will start with the Liverpool Echo, before expanding across all its 240 other titles - some of which will be going online for the first time.

This will mean that regional PR strategies will have to change to meet the new requirements. One anticipates that this will mean that the PR industry will have to prepare to meet the new challenge.

Trinity Mirror also hopes to have as many as 60 video journalists working across its regional titles by next year.

UK on-line TV regulation on back burner

Ofcom has vowed to tread carefully when it comes to determining how internet-based TV services should be regulated.

At the same time, the issue has prompted the watchdog to take a step back and review its approach to regulation in other areas.

PR blogging stalled - one too many old dogs

Media Orchard reports from PRWeek US:

The 2006 PRWeek/Cymfony Corporate Survey reveals that communicators on the corporate side are grasping the importance of new media and measurement - but not everyone has jumped in with both feet...

A key finding this year is that while PR professionals are paying more attention to the online marketplace, the numbers of adoption do not nearly reflect the hype. One-tenth of this year's respondents had established a blog -- showing virtually no growth over the 2005 figure. And while pundits discuss the explosion of new media, it doesn't appear that number will shoot up in 2007...

Oh well... the PR industry did this over the web a decade ago. I guess that it will do it again.

The jobs will be there, the need will be there, the advantages will be there and, as Maertin Sorrell but it this week: I’m old. It’s older people’s inability to be flexible.

An unexamined assumption can be very dangerous

Glen offers this from work by Professor Osvaldo Feinstein, evaluation consultant. The main thrust of his workshop was to challenge us to consider fully the assumptions that are made in development projects - and consequently the impact on evaluation. He has created a guide to what we should consider when exploring assumptions, namely: Incentives, Capacities, Adoption, Risk, Uncertainty and Sustainability. Cleverly, it makes the acronym Icarus, whom we all know flew too close to the sun which melted the wax holding together his wings.

Too true.

Use on-line for brand awareness

Recent research shows that consumers spend as much as 164 minutes each day online compared to 148 minutes watching television. "This shift,"says Heather Hopkins, "in media consumption along with our analysis indicate that online can be an effective medium for raising brand awareness and can shift brand association. The findings support the move to bring a larger share of marketing spend online. "

A comparison of costs will show that on-line offers some real financial benefits as well.

Brand management -Spam

Erin Caldwell has a lovely story.

Naturally, as players in this online world, we’re all QUITE familiar with spam. But in this case, I’m talking about SPAM (Hormel’s food product). A story on the news caught my attention this morning: “The producer of the canned pork product Spam has lost a bid to claim the word as a trademark for unsolicited e-mails.”

Even the news anchor reporting on the story was ridiculing the food company’s recent attempt. Hmm. Not a good sign, Hormel.

In this Fortune article, this little ditty is my favorite:

“Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, ‘Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?’”

Of the Marketing domains, brand management is one that retains interest (the rest being largely about scream marketing to social groups that are vanishing faster than snow in a microwave).

Managing brands with scream marketing obviously does not work - told you so!

Its about relationships, its about relationships, its about relationships, its about relationships, its about relationships, its about relationships.....................

Top PR Consultancy Owner - too old

Sir Martin Sorrell talked to e-consultancy this week.

Here are a couple of comments that interested me:

We have to understand the implications of what’s going on, so we can advise our clients what’s the best direction. The more technologies there are, the more advice we’re asked for, and the more complex the media planning and buying decisions.

Very good point

I’m old. It’s older people’s inability to be flexible. If you see what kids can do, it’s amazing. If you’re young, you’re not as terrified by technology as people my age are. It is much more difficult for me – as I’m not a nerd - to understand the technology as it changes so rapidly.

An excuse for not taking time to understand - it is NOT rocket science , even a kid will tell him that.

The marketing anti-heros

Graham Charlton reports that BT hopes to take a lead in the battle against the scourge of spam on the internet by introducing a new system designed to filter out spam before it reaches their customer’s PCs.

BT’s Content Forensics system, devised by StreamShield Networks, will scan millions of emails every day, alerting them to the location of spam related problems on its network.

So here we have a company offering a service, and being considered heroic for it initiative, to block out advertising.


Q: Why do you use email marketing
A: I want to be an anti-hero

Mobile TV arrives in Bristol

Four major mobile phone operators yesterday launched trials for a new mobile TV service, which will take place initially in the Bristol area says Graham Charlton at e-consultancy.

The trial, which will run for the next three months, will test whether mobile operators into can use their existing infrastructure to deliver mobile TV and other multimedia services to users with compatible handsets.

This is very important to PR. It means we now need to offer TV stations mobile optimised content for the most importnat consumer demographic.

Better start working out how now.

Online sales up 60% last year

The ONS e-commerce survey, based on results from businesses with 10 or more employees, shows rapid growth both in the use of Information and Communications Technologies, and the value of trade over the internet.

The total value of internet sales by businesses reached £103.3 billion in 2005, a rise of 56% from the 2004 figure of £66.2 billion. The survey showed that businesses are making more and more use of ICT.

Read more at e-consultancy.

And also read Richard Maven who says that Europe’s high streets could eventually be devoid of banks, travel agents and mobile phone shops as consumers turn to the web for research, according to ACNielsen.

He reports the study found consumers used window-shopping less than the net when choosing their purchases, except when it came to clothing and accessories.

Financial Planning Association sets up CEO blog to communicate with members

Here is another application of Social media. This time from Trevor Cook.


FPA chief executive officer Jo-Anne Bloch has embraced the 21st century by creating a blog on the FPA website.

The aim of the online journal is to communicate regularly with members and encourage the exchange of views and ideas. It will cover government legislation and regulation, the value of advice, FPA activities and events, and industry challenges and concerns, an FPA spokesman said. Already members have said the blog is “a great innovation” and another posted a comment that read, “as planners get familiar with this 21st century media, you will see some lively debate there”.

The Australian Press Council has looked at the future of newspapers.

Traditionalists believe that the Internet is no more likely to bring down newspapers than the advent of TV half a century ago. The special attributes of newspapers, their immediacy, involvement, credibility, creativity, consistency and flexibility of use will continue to ensure their longevity.

Traditionalists are, however, being stalked by doubters, including most recently The Economist (August 2006) which is following the line that extinction of all or some of the papers in the UK is only a matter of time. It claims '…that newspapers are on the way out and that it is only a matter of time before there are closures with half the world's newspapers likely to close in the foreseeable future because 'business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart.'

It is important for us to follow what is happening.

I do not believe in the demise of newspapers. I think they will take their place as an alternative channel and that publishers will learn that news (views and opinion) can be transported through many platforms and across many channels and, with content optimised for the platform and channel, they will do really rather well.

PR in the meantime will have to help provide optimised content which will mean the death of the press release as we know it today. It is also why we need XPRL

Workers go online at work - shock horror!

In just one month, more than one in three (40 per cent) Scots will make an online purchase while at work and many more will book holidays, do their banking and send e-mails to friends and relatives says the Scotsman.

Do they also do work on computers at home (like read their emails?).

But this is an opportunity.

If they need to, want to, enjoy - harness it.

You can't stop it - well you can but then you get second rate employees such as people who don't mind being disconnected from the world.

Law reins in wild webbers

Sydney Morning Herald has a headline that applies to you!

BLOGGERS beware: thoughtless musings in cyberspace can have costly consequences.

That's one lesson that might be gleaned from a Florida jury's decision last week to order a Louisiana woman to pay $US11.3 million ($15.2 million) in compensation, after she used an internet forum to accuse another woman of being a con artist and a fraud. The damages award is believed to be the largest relating to amateur postings on the internet.

Internal PR - just the job?

Trevor Cook found this:

Recent research has surfaced that quantifies the difference employee engagement can make to the bottom line. ISR, a Chicago-based HR research and consulting firm, conducted a study of over 664,000 employees from 71 companies around the world. Most dramatic among its findings was the almost 52 percent difference in one-year performance improvement in operating income between companies with highly engaged employees as compared to those companies with low engagement scores. High engagement companies improved 19.2 percent while low engagement companies declined 32.7 percent in operating income over the study period. The data covers financial performance through 2005 (www.isrinsight.com)

Charles Leadbeater on mass creativity: We Think, the book

Think this and wonder:


Wikipedia continues to draw more traffic than much more established media brands, employing hundreds more people. Open source programmes such as Linux insistently chip away at corporate providers of proprietary software. Immersive multi user computer games, such as Second Life, which depend on high levels of user participation and creativity are booming. Craigslist a self help approach to searching for jobs and other useful stuff is eating into the ad revenues of newspapers. Youth magazines such as Smash Hit have been overwhelmed by the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo. What is going on? We-Think: the power of mass creativity is about what the rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Craigslist means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. My argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work.