Building teams located at many locations

Research by occupational psychologists has shown that 'virtual' teams spread out across the world need to use a variety of technologies to communicate if they are to be effective.

The researchers at Pearn Kandola found numerous problems in getting dispersed teams to work effectively and estimate that if different cultures are in the team it can take 17 weeks for its effectiveness to match a team working in the same location. The team recommend that managers use a variety of communications methods to combat the problem.

This applies to consultancies with many locations, clients with consultants in many locations and any other combination. It also applies to building communities for almost any activity.

This research is important for all people with a communications management roll.

But you read all this here before.....

Campiagn for your job or be prepared to move off-shore

A lot of UK Public Relations activity will have to move off-shore if a new EU directive is passed.

The AVMS directive, due to be implemented next year, would expand current EU broadcasting regulations to all audio-visual services, including content delivered to internet and mobile phone users.

Currently being debated by the European Council and Parliament, it would aim to ensure the protection of minors and prevent other abuses. Ofcom's view is that this is a bad thing. I agree.

However, concerns have been aired that the move would extend regulations to user-generated content such as video blogs. Britain has campaigned against the move, saying new media services should not be included (More here and more here).

To make your voice heard you need to email your MEP and email the Secretary General of the CIPR. It is the eyes and ears of the UK Public Relations Industry and, hopefully its voice.

In Yer Face Doc Martens

One of the worst advertising sites I have come across was shown to me by e-consultancy. It is the silly, all flash, Doc Martens site.

Saatchi’s MD, Neil Hughston, said to Ashley Friedlein “we’re not looking to sell products right now, we’re looking to engage likeminded people. Over time we’ll look at measuring how brand perception has changed…”
Try it for yourself... engage if you can.

Its a poster. A nice poster but a poster and belongs on a wall in Slough not on the Internet.

Engage means engage mind to mind not poster to eyeball.

Google win

Phillipe Borremans has a great post about the Google News and its dust up with the Belgium Media.

I commented yesterday.

The outcome, it seems is that Google reacted quite drastically and simply "deleted" all search results that could lead to the sites of the newspapers in question.

The Belgium media is now, in effect, cut off from the mainstream online audience.

Google hit them where it hurts most. A blunt but effective weapon for publications that need to drive traffic to their sites to create value from their online presence.

In PR, we gain from online exposre of our stories and for Belgian Public Relations practitioners, this is now an issue and a new strategy is needed.

May be its is a case of creating online newspapers like this one.

Disintermediated PR

Erick Schonfeld has an excellent post about disruptive businesses.

It is my belief that there are a number of models that will disintermediate the practice of public relations. For example, I can easily see services that will sort out relevant from irrelevant media pitches presented to journalists and bloggers. In an era when it is getting quite simple to source relevant news by getting it to come to you when you need it and in a form that you want, it is relatively easy to ignore the pitches and phone calls.

This means that PR has to learn to use these techniques, understand RSS, tagging and interoperability that makes software do most of the work for you.

The key here is to realise that many businesses online have a capability to undermine established business models. I have mentioned some of these from Erick before:

1. Netvibes (The new personalized startpage)

2. EEStor (Gentlemen, stop your engines)

3. Coghead (DIY software)

4. NextMedium (Web marketplace for product placement)

5. Applied Location (Skymeter—fighting traffic with GPS)

6. Salesforce.com (The Oracle-killing, Web database)

7. BlueLithium (Google's new ad-versery)

8. Clearwire (Craig McCaw's WiMax play)

9. Zopa (Peer-to-peer banking)

10. Jajah (VoIP 2.0)

11. NanoLife Sciences (Cancer-blasting antiprotons)

Thailand coup d'état already on Wikipedia

In PR, making sure that events are covered across the media, and monitoring of the media to make sure that comment is true has to include Wikipedia.

2006 Thailand coup d'état already has a page just 2 days after the event.

There is a significant lesson here for PR practice.

First, of course, we have to monitor ALL the media.

The Arts use blogs to get wider apeal

The Stage reports:

Maybe this is pushing self-referential naval-gazing to the limit, but there’s an increasingly rich dialogue taking place away from the arts pages of the papers on the blogs, personal or media-led, instead. It’s a phemenon that Guardian blogger Maxie Szalwinska has usefully noted in her entry on the Guardian’s Culturevulture blog today.

She notes how theatre coverage in the US is undergoing what she calls “a mini-revolution”, as the blogosphere is “reaching corners the increasingly PR-driven and squeezed-for-space arts pages of the print media can’t (or won’t).” She goes on, “A bevvy of New York-based playwrights, critics, directors, academics and assorted drama fans are using blogs to have conversations about theatre culture, post reviews, challenge critical consensus, respond to breaking news and plug their productions. What binds them together, from the formidably prolific Superfluities to Playgoer, is genuine excitement about the medium.”

We may be lagging a little behind here in the UK, she says, but points out we’re catching on – and cites this blog as one that’s worth checking out (so it’s only fair to repay the compliment and say that The Guardian is leading the way amongst the national papers in getting their critics to participate, with Michael Billington posting regularly there).

The PR industry working in the Arts sector has an opportunity to be in the forefront in the UK.

Citzen Journalism on the reuters Payroll

Jay Rosen Announced that that Reuters is giving $100,000 to NewAssignment.Net.

That's the experiment I plan to launch next year with others who think there is something to the idea of open source journalism, where people collaborate peer-to-peer in the production of editorial goods.

The money from Reuters will underwrite the costs of hiring our first editor, who will start in early 2007. (I introduced the idea of New Assignment here. A summary, with blog and press reactions, is here.)

It's going to be a fun job. This is editing horizontally amid journalism gone pro-am. The idea is to draw "smart crowds" - a group of people configured to share intelligence - into collaboration at NewAssignment.Net and get stories done that way that aren't getting done now. By pooling their intelligence and dividing up the work, a network of volunteer users can find things out that the larger public needs to know. I think that's most likely to happen in collaboration with editors and reporters who are paid to meet deadines, and to set a consistent standard. Which is the "pro-am" part.

This may be an opportunity for the journalist lurking in many a PR person's persona.

Ex Shandwick Chief's new empire ups profits

Huntsworth PLC , made a pretax profit of £5.02 million in the six months to June 30 2006, jumping from just £1.31 million the prior year.

Continuing revenue grew to £70.1 million stg from £40.7 million.

Chief executive Lord Peter Chadlington said the first half has given the group a strong start and a firm foundation for the full year.

'We have been encouraged after the summer months by the marked pick up in new business activity which gives us confidence for the full year.'

In the first half, the group's Public Relations revenues grew on a like-for-like basis by 6% and Non Public Relations activities (primarily event management) declined by 18% giving an overall like-for-like growth of 3.4%.

Consultancies in the Huntsworth group include:

• Avenue HKM
• Brand Health International Ltd.
• Broadstreet
• Huntsworth Health
• Jago Pearce
• PBC Group
• VB Communications

• Citigate Belgium
• Citigate Cunningham
• Citigate Demuth
• Citigate Dewe Rogerson
• Citigate France
• Citigate Gramma
• Citigate Italy
• Citigate Sanchis
• EHPR
• Grayling
• Harrison Cowley
• Haslimann Taylor PR
• Momentum
• NBS Public Relations
• Park Avenue
• PR Force Belgium
• PR Force Netherlands
• RS Live
• SCPR London
• The Red Consultancy
• Trimedia

• Citigate Public Affairs
• Grayling Public Affairs
• Momentum
• The Global Consulting Group

Public Sector Podcasting

The UK public sector news website, 24dash.com, is celebrating its first birthday with a major celebration in Birmingham this week.

The event is being held to coincide with the National Housing Federation's annual conference and exhibition at the ICC and will be the occasion of the official launch its 'exciting Podcasting service'.

The Changing nature of Privacy

New Scientist is asking questions about living online.

It accepts, without question, that there is a life that is completely mediated by being online and it ascribes this life to most young people.

Summer 2006 finds the world enmeshed in multiple wars and genocidal campaigns. It finds the world incapable of calling a halt to environmental destruction. Yet, with all of this, people seem above all to be fascinated by novel technologies. On college campuses there is less interest in asking questions about the state of the world than in refining one's presence on Facebook or MySpace. Technology pundits may talk in glowing terms about new forms of social life, but the jury is out on whether virtual self-expression will translate into collective action.

It also gives a clue as to what kind of lifestyle is expected of theis generation.

The self that grows up with multitasking and rapid response measures success by calls made, emails answered, messages responded to. In this buzz of activity, there may be losses that we are not ready to sustain. We insist that our world is increasingly complex, yet we have created a communications culture that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think, uninterrupted. Teens growing up with always-on communication are primed to receive a quick message to which they are expected to give a rapid response. They may never know another way. Their experience raises a question for us all: are we leaving enough time to take one's time?

Much of what NS says has been known for some time and we even saw it coming a decade ago. The big thing we did not anticipate was the level of multi-tasking.

A world of TV

I noted from Always On that Jump TV has gained stock market listing.

Toronto based, Jump TV offers the out put of a considerable selection of Television stations round the world.

It is a place that is worth visiting to see some riveting examples of TV across the globe.

In our global world, this is a channel that is a must to follow the local news. For example, I was able to watch Thai TV Global TV Network the first and only satellite TV broadcasting center in Thailand operated by the Royal Thai Army. There are some very pretty Thai army soldiers on their TV programme.

Here is another demonstration of the many channels for reaching Internet audiences.

CIPR Scotland AGM

The Annual General Meeting of the Scotland Group of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations will be held on Tuesday 26 September 2006 at 6.15pm in George Suite, George Hotel, 19 -21 George Street, Edinburgh. Members of the CIPR are invited to attend and vote.

Is this time to vote for people who see Social Media (blogs, Wikis, RSS etc) as an important part of PR practice?

Issues management case study

Tom Foremski offers us a classic case study of issues management.

Don't miss the next episode.

Every one leaves an online trail - no more

Whenever any computer connects to the net it freely shares information about the address it is using. This is so any data it requests is sent back to the right place.

The Torpark browser has been created by the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation and uses its own network of net routers to anonymise the traffic people generate when they browse the web.

The browser can be put on a flash memory stick so users can turn any PC into an anonymous terminal.

The Tor network tries to stop this information being shared in two ways. First, it encrypts traffic between a computer and the Tor network of routers - this makes it much harder to spy on the traffic and pinpoint who is doing what.

Second, the Tor network regularly changes the net address that someone appears to be browsing from - again this frustrates any attempt to pin a particular browsing session on any individual.

This sort of disruption very quickly skews data used to identify who is doing what and when online.

Who will take the vidcast space. Is it the PR or Ad man

Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, writing in ClickZ offers an insight into the use of movies in advertising. My view is that this is not Advertising Industry territory at all. It is territory for the communicator. The full article is well worth reading but this abstract is germane.

a powerful new video medium is exploding on the scene. It speaks to the traditional agency's core strength: story-telling. Moreover, it's a format that's infinitely more malleable and flexible than the current unit of expression (e.g. a :30 TV spot) affords. That spells opportunity. Indeed, the current TV ad model has put most traditional agencies in an inflexible straightjacket.

The new on-demand video environment opens up a wealth of opportunities to push ad models, well beyond pre-and-post rolls. They include:

• From TV Spots to Branded Plots: Just as thousands of independent films are flowering a cross the Web, brands have the potential to bring their own direct and indirect forms of storytelling online at their own pace, and well beyond the constraints of "paid" media. Moreover, they can leverage their own consumer touchpoints (e.g. packaging) to cross promote such endeavors. The power of feedback loops to inform concept development has the potential to take this to an entirely new level.



• From Fat Middle Standardization to Long-Tail Customization: Too often, TV commercials have no choice but to maximize appeal to the largest number. This omits lots of value in the margins. A key opportunity for agencies is to craft more diverse messages to different audiences. Why, for example, can't electronics firms give iPods or mobile phones to customers pre-loaded with customized or tailored content? Why can't a brand produce multiple variations of an ad copy that speak to a range of cohorts? At P&G, we usually started with a host of excellent concepts, but typically had to boil it all down to one or two that maximized appeal.



• A New Day for Long Play: Who says brands should do their own infomercials, or that agencies are "above" such formats? Yes, there's a stigma, but that's partly because many respectable brands have stayed away from the medium, and we haven't seen much creativity in it for a long time. Fact is, long-play does work, especially if consumers engage and core benefits really get across. At P&G, we'd exhaust huge resources trying to perfect four seconds of a side-by-side demo. We knew from experience such "benefit visualization" and "reason to believe" impacted the ad's convincingness. Imagine the power of a real demo, and not necessarily with the constraints of always having to pay for the time.



• From Channels to Brannels: Beyond long-play ads, agencies have another extraordinarily unique opportunity: to transform Web sites into TV channels. We're already seeing this with a few pioneers like Nike and Budweiser. They're leveraging their brands as stand alone content channels. What's the bigger long-term idea: P&G's HomeMadeSimple porting to TV, or HomeMadeSimple becoming an on-demand advice and expertise video channel? If my baby blog can feature diaper changing videos, why can't Pampers or Huggies? Why – please, tell me why – won't electronics companies' agencies start producing more compelling "how to" videos explaining how to use products? When I'm done with my current job, I'm starting an online channel entitled "UserGuideTV.com."



• CGM as Partner in Catalyzing Change: Far from a threat, consumer-generated media may just be the best thing that ever happened to traditional agencies. Why not allow consumers to "liberate" the process? At P&G, we used interns to open up management thinking. At GM, the Fastlane blog also serves as a catalyst for far broader change and innovation within the organization. As agencies push "co-creation" campaigns, such as what we've seen with GM and Frito-Lay's Super Bowl ad competitions, there's real potential to liberate antiquated copy development processes. Consumer testimonials, properly employed, actually make branded messaging more persuasive. Agencies have always "borrowed equity" from third party influencers, from celebrity spokespersons to known authorities ("dentists recommend"), to make ad copy more compelling. Finally, CGM in particular tends to morph many disciplines in one, i.e. one-to-one relationships, influencer relations, interactivity, planning and research, and increasingly, video. That amounts to a healthy kick in the pants to move traditional agencies to a more integrated, cross-platform future.

What is social bookmarking and what has it to do with PR

Social bookmarking sites generally organise their content using tags. Social bookmarking sites are an increasingly popular way to locate, classify, rank, and share Internet resources through the practice of tagging and inferences drawn from grouping and analysis of tags

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources, which they find useful. Often, these lists are publicly accessible, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some social bookmarking systems allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

This system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders. All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource.

Additionally, as people bookmark resources that they find useful, resources that are of more use are bookmarked by more users. They are percived to be more valuable by users.

The two dominant social bookmarketing services are del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.

There is a lot more information at Read/Write Web but some key take aways are:

Current number of people using del.icio.us at 500,000
Blogmarks has a total of 514,205 posts, estimated users 5,000 which is 100 bookmarks per user.

Why is this important for PR?

Read/Write Web give some interesting insights comparing two significant brands (go2web20.net and CNN). Just look at the numbers of users to get some idea of the influence of social bookmarking:

Site	Links to go2web20.net	Estimated users based on go2web20.net	Links to cnn.com	Estimated users based on cnn.com
BlinkList	40	14,800	568	38,200
Blogmarks	5	1,800	56	3,700
del.icio.us	1,354	500,000 (baseline)	7,429	500,000 (baseline)
Diigo	21	7,750	32	2,150
Furl	53	19,600	200	13,500
Ma.gnolia	9	3,300	51	3,400
Shadows	1	370	21	1,400
Simpy	9	3,300	312	21,000
Stumble Upon		1,271,345 (public)		1,271,345 (public)

If your organisation, its values, properties, products or services get highly ranked in say del.icio.us, more people find it and people know what sort of community likes your organisation. It is a trust, reputation and referal advantage all in one.

To get some idea of how brands can become viral Have a look at this one for tesco then look at MySpace. So you can get the idea. Someone puts their bookmarks in Del.icio.us and they are adopted by other people and often by hundreds of people.

Of course, you might consider where you should be here.

Financial Public Relations must get XML to compete

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is in the final stages of a four-year technology initiative designed to speed up transactions and reduce costs by one fifth. This will lead to 24/7 trading quite soon. Trading round the clock will create added pressures on the PR industry and its suppliers such as information and (even) press clip vendors.

The LSE has already increasing the real-time transfer rate from 30 milliseconds down to just two and the only way that delivering financial information to the Market, Traders, Analysts, Shareholders and the media so they can also benefit is by using XML tagged data.

Financial data is transferred this way using a format called XBRL.

The element that includes statements, reports and backgrounders, the words, now needs to be implemented in XPRL, the PR industry standard which received a major boost with this week's announcements.

While many financial PR companies have failed to invest in interoperability (or in XPRL) they could still have a window of opportunity but time is slipping by and the opportunity out of their grasp.

Right now, of course, they cannot claim to offer comprehensive communication services because they do not have the tools to do it.

WPP and Google partnership

Advertising giant WPP is trying to get into bed with Google.

Sir Martin Sorrell WPP Group PLC chief executive said yesterday:

'We are working very closely with Google Inc but it is very difficult to work out if it is a friend or foe.'

WPP is Google's third largest customer and helps clients maximize their advertising effectiveness in Google's many functions.

About $1.5 billion of WPP's 2005 revenues of $10 billion were related to online: "About 15 percent of our business is internet, and this will be 30 percent in 10 years," he is quoted as saying.

In a Reuters article last march, Sir Martin made this compafrison between the two organisations:

"Google is at $5 billion in revenues and capitalized at $100 billion, we're at $10 billion in revenues and capitalized at $14.5 billion. They have 5,000 people, we have 72,000. They have 25 offices and we have 2,000 offices. Clearly they have a different model and are smarter than we are."

It might also be noted that at the end of August Google had $10 billion of cash sloshing about with no place to spend it.

Google has been on the mind of the WPP chief for a long time. Something is cooking.

WPP has recently taken a 10 pct stake in Spot Runner, a US online business that enables small businesses to customise their own TV ads at a much lower cost than if they used an advertising agency.

Sir Martin also made the comment yesterday that:

'TV is not dead. It is still the most effective medium for reaching the largest number of people in the shortest time at the lowest cost. There are more TV channels but stable viewing figures and fewer mass market vehicles.'

Or put another way, people are making it clear to the Marketers that they are not a 'mass audience' at all.

A real revolution would be WPP involvement in Google Video.


It will be an interesting bed.

This, of course is advertising. PR has a much bigger opportunity. It is tough for a company as big and diverse as WPP to understand the relationship value model and what that means to advertising over the next few years.

Advertising knocks Yahoo value

Yahoo's share price took another hit yesterday as it warned that slowing advertising growth will depress its third-quarter results. Shares fell by more than 11%.

There is an element of 'I told you so' in this response.

Scream marketing has had its day. Many advertising models are just old fashioned.

Now this is a big problem for a whole range of social media initiatives. They try to find way of generating income and advertising seems to be the only solution.

Well, until now, this was OK but people who use online services, just as for all other media, are simply not enthralled by having a marketing managers idea of fun thrust into their eyeballs.
As Ryan Stewart at ZDNet put it:

...the savviest web users have trained themselves to ignore the text and picture ads that they see on nearly every site they visit. Clearly these have become the staple of internet marketing, and they won't go away because they do work for some things. Advertisers can segment their campaigns more effectively, targeting sites that have users with the demographic makeup they want. Search terms will continue to show intent and provide web companies with a healthy revenue stream. But the road to a profitable web application is not paved with simply eye balls and page views.

So what are the alternative.

I think we are near a tipping point where the online community can get to products without advertisers getting in the way.

Building a community of interests (note plural) has considerable mileage.

For example, to get more people to your music site so that you can sell more tracks may mean hosting a lot of 'free' tracks that people can down load and occasionally buy a paid for track. To do this you may want to build a community of podcasters who use the music on your site to get some tracks up the ranking so that they can be included among in the 'paid for' portfolio. Here are two communities. The musician community uploading track for free play and podcasters.

Developing the range of communities is not hard but it is time consuming. It is not cheap and you do need a lot of analysis to hand.

What I need now is a semantic analysis tool to be able to identify the notions that are attractive to the audience. Then I can start building campaigns.

So Girish is building one next month.

Is podcasting the right medium?

Boreing Boring if you are going to use new media you need a strategy... I know I have said it before.

Here is a reasoned argumnet about the use of podcasting to replace lectures.

David Hearnshaw starts by saying:

Academics should consider what they wish to achieve - and that may require going back to first principles. Often the lecturer wishes to impart facts, concepts, methods and approaches to foster knowledge and critical judgement. And this frequently requires more than words.

What do you think?

Flock round new browser

Flock is a new web browser that combines integrated photo sharing with RSS support.

Bloggers are a target audience for Flock, which is based on the Mozilla Firefox, because it has been designed to keep people up to date with news, blogs and when friends appear online.

Political Blogging event in Manchester

An event exploring the way that political blogging is changing the face of the media will be held at in Manchester to coincide with the start of the Labour Party Conference. Sponsored by the Manchester Evening News and starting at 4pm on Sunday, the free discussion will be moderated by Manchester blogger and freelance journalist Kate Feld, who writes The Manchizzle.

Panelists include Norman Geras, a blogger, author and professor emeritus at Manchester University. Martin Stabe, an online reporter for The Press Gazette, (www.pressgazette.co.uk/dog), and Bill Jones blogs at Skipper (www.skipper59.blogspot.com), which covers UK politics, parliament and the press.

The PR Drumbeat - £500,000 to be invested

Over the last week, the biggest thing to hit Public Relations practice for ten years has begun. It includes a $500,000 investment. It is gaining powerful support across the world and it will affect all PR practice from now on.

It is the re-emergence of XPRL.

Imagine, just for a moment that you use an PR agency who produce documents, reports and working papers, a research company, a media list provider, an evaluation company, an events organiser and a photographer. Not an extensive list but they all produce content. They all fit into your planning and management scene.

It is content that you have to manage and integrate. As the media scene grows and you have to deal with the web, on-line news clips, blogs and even more stuff there is more content and it is becoming ever more complex.

You seek tools that allows you to integrate this content, these data.

The tools you seek, these computer programmes, have a problem. The data has to be manhandled, it has to be pasted from one tool to the next. In many cases the data is incompatible. Evaluation data cannot go into your media list. The event organiser data does not go into your calendar or project planning software. You do not have 'interoperability'. Your efforts have been foiled. Its an expensive nightmare.

But... what if.... deep inside these computer programmes there was a PR specific language that did allow these disparate data to be used in PR tools and computer programmes?

This is the big idea.

It's XPRL.

It has been developed as part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML initiative.

It is an initiative re-enervated by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web) in June this year who said "The challenges here are real. The ontologies that will furnish the semantics for the Semantic Web must be developed, managed, and endorsed by committed practice communities."

XPRL.org has responded on behalf of the PR industry world wide. It now seeks the support of the whole industry and its associated value chain.

XML has already been a powerful driver in the sciences, medicine and other areas of research and development. In management its most notable contribution has been in the area of accounting, financial reporting and on the bourses of the world.


The XPRL initiative began in 2001. With its own web site, A scope of PR document.

Ged Carrol, blogging in 2002 provided the first blog post about XPRL.

Alison Clark became chair in 2004 and there are a number of initiatives reported online.

XPRL formally launched in Italy

By 2004, the Global Alliance had accepted the significance of this development with an offer of funding.


In 2004, Fuse PR put XPRL into context in this article.

XPRL based PR tools began to appear.

Its is described by Mike Manuel like this.

What is does is offered in this example.

The 2006 initiative came alive when new media practitioners sought modern day solutions for for PR tools as in the case of the New Media release initiative. People like Brian Solis, Todd Van Hoosear, Chris Heuer , Todd Defren.

More questions and interest came into the public domain.

I commented on the reality for PR practice in August this year.

So, I wrote a paper which, updated by participants today is the latest in the saga. It identifies a $250,000 offer which, if the industry can match it, will be a tremendous boost to PR.

Toni Muzi Falconi, once again became involved.

XPRL is discussed by the New Media Release initiative in this podcast.

The Paper 'XPRL Game On' was considered at an XPRL Meeting last week (a 'minute' was posted by Chris Heuer here).

Further comments here from Anthony and Sally here.


The paper is published here.

xprl

Newspapers and agencies to announce a the latest NewsML Schema

The NewsML 1.2 XML Schema Working Group has prepared an updated
schema implementing all corrections proposed to date.

The final schema will be completed this week so that it may be distributed
along with the Autumn meeting document package.

More information is at http://www.iptc.org/pages/index.php

Would you 'choose' the adds you want to see?

Ashley Friedlein of e-consultancy discusses the news that Bebo is overhauling its advertising model in order to let its users choose what types of ads they see.

His arguments are pretty good and his answers are relevant to the Public Relations Industry.

Its pretty obvious that the advertsing model is not going to work. Just live with the idea.

There is a model that shows that attention getting is important.

That is what this post has done. I have greated the opportunity for you to go and look at the story on the e-consultancy site.

And ... know what... not an advert in sight!

The Social Media model is different.


Here are the questions that Ashley tries to answer:

Is this idea misguided? Or is this the future of advertising?

1. Do users really not mind advertising (as Justin Pearse claims)?

2. How many users will choose toilet roll ads and mortgage ads?

3. How many users will actually make the effort to tailor their ads?


4. Will users keep their profile / interests up to date?

5. Will the ads be better than search?

Time to shut down Google News in the UK

Shel Holtz alerted me to the news that a Belgian court could potentially block Google's news aggregation business.

A complaint against the internet giant was launched by Copiepresse, an organisation that manages copyright for the French and German-speaking press in Belgium.

The court has ordered Google to stop reproducing articles from French-speaking newspapers in the news section of one of its Belgian websites.

Online French-speaking newspapers in Belgium may be so awful that no one goes to them. I don't know. But if they are good enough, the web traffic to their sites via Google News must be significant.

The UK press through the Newspaper Licencing Agency, prevents copying of newspaper clippings unless you want to go through a process of licencing and paying fees for doing so.

There is a lot in common between these two ideas.

I use Google News a lot. It is how I get a lot of my news.

Yesterday 23 people went to news sites because of my posts about newspaper stories. It is not many, but there are millions of bloggers doing the same thing. The press would forego millions of hits.

Referencing web sites is why the web is successful and why so many blogs are popular.

Now, lets suppose we did not have Yahoo News or Google News services. Would I buy more newspapers. No. I would rely on other, online, sources.

However, it would reduce the on-line traffic to the press by a lot because so many of us do reference press articles online. In many cases denial of search services like Google News would make the newspaper web revenues shrink to the point where they would be meaningless.

The citations that did not go into the Google News Archive would mean that the media will, over time, also loose the 'long tail' benefit for their on-line content. A double whammy of nonsense by people who just do not understand the nature of the digital tsunami.

It would quickly kill off most newspapers and the survivors would have almost nowhere to go with their on-line plans.

Perhaps it is time to try the experiment.

Shut the service down for a day and see what happens.

Its rather like the press clips. All those opportunities newspapers used to have to put their brand in front of hundreds of people in companies that used to circulate clips has now been reduced to a handful. Who now knows what publications are relevant, interesting, part of their life? A handful at company HQ, who knew that anyway and, incidentally, no longer have time to read clippings.

Do you wonder why newspaper readership is declining.

Perhaps having a dog in the manger attitude to the brand in the name of copyright with a half life of cod 'n chips was not such a clever idea after all.

Varnish PR?

Toni has a great post about PR as the 'varnish'.
He quotes Sir Martin Sorrell's view of responsible corporate behaviour as a coat public relations varnish.

Toni says

Maybe it would be useful if the CEO’s of the many H&K’s and B-M’s which form the roster of the conglomerate’s pr firms and contribute to his personal well-being, demanded a public apology.

Hear Hear!

What does WPP really own?

The Long Tail listed for Award

I think this book is just fantastic.

Great news. The Long Tail has been shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award.

The mission is: "To identify the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics."

The Long Tail is a must read for Public Relations practitioners. It shows that in building relationships throughout the organisation's constituency has a pay back more significant than all the scream marketing in the world.

Die Marketing Die! Die! Die!

From CNN Money comes a report about the demise of scream marketing.

Ideas about achieving brand strength, that elusive alchemy of awareness and trust, have changed in the past decade. "It's no longer, What can we blast out there about ourselves?" says Michelle Roehm, associate professor of marketing at Wake Forest University. "Brand theory now asks, How can we connect with the community in a really meaningful way?"

Hooray! Some other comments:

"Today it's all about trust, community, and creating a dialogue with your customer that shares real knowledge," says Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer for Landor.

Perhaps no name on the list has attempted a deeper conversation with its customers than Dove. Its reliable but stodgy brand hit an emotional nerve-and pay dirt-with the "Campaign for real beauty," launched in September 2004.

I have more reasons posted here.

The moble audience - kids in the UK

The Mobile Life Survey, commissioned by Carphone Warehouse, quizzed 1,250 people aged 11 to 17 shows that nine out of 10 12-year-olds in the UK now have a mobile phone.

The biggest use is for Texting.

Another video channel

Microsoft is launching an online service to compete with YouTube, Google and Yahoo reports the BBC.

Soapbox starts testing on Tuesday and will launch within six months as part of current service, MSN Video.

So there will be another channel for communication. The video media list for PR professionals is getting bigger by the day.

Publicity, Propaganda or PR -the Cliveden set don't know

About a dozen propaganda and psyops specialists met at Cliveden, Berkshire, last week to discuss how America and its allies can use strategic communications more effectively in the War on Terror reports The Times.

Its a big bucks business.

The United States Government is thought to have earmarked at least $400 million (£213 million) since September 11, 2001, to enlist private companies to supply skills and ideas for an information war, covering propaganda and psychological operations (psyops).

These advisers are bringing corporate ideas to the military. Rebranding is one example.

Call a dog a different name because its mission has changed seems to be the BIG idea (wow1).

This is propaganda. In an age of social media it is simple an AK47 aimed at a delicate part of the anatomy.

Another corporate idea is the use of the chief executive as the voice of persuasion during a crisis (wow2).

The Times reports:

Nancy Snow, of the University of Southern California, who is a former propagandist for the US State Department, said: “There has been too much emphasis on having the President as persuader-in-chief and it isn’t working because he lacks credibility, especially abroad.” (wow3)

The information war experts also pointed out that private companies were motivated by the need to win short-term contracts, while military goals were long term (wow4).

This is publicity. It stems from scream marketing, a practice well known to command and control freaks.

Well what a surprise!

What I am trying to find in all this is Public Relations.

David Robertson, a Times hack thinks this is PR but what does he know? Marginally more than the headline writer is nearly obvious. The Times really does need a proper cub reporter who has, at least, some idea of the nature of relationships, how they are effected and nurtured for a common good.

The critical thing here is that there is a need for grown up public relations. This requires a clear understanding of the goals and ambitions of the governement (s) involved followed by research, planning strategy development, testing, monitoring and tactical application that is constantly monitored in the creation and flowering of relationships among many stakeholder groups all of which are interconnected.

The reason that the government cannot get a public relations person to prepare and execute a plan is that the client is awash with ego and bumbling about with sound bites delivered with 'personality'.

Lloyd-Webber would be a better option than a PR consultant. At least we would have tunes instead of the noise of a washing machine behind the spin.

Good employee relations critical - if poor - dangerous

Sacked spy Richard Tomlinson has defied the UK's secret services by posting the first chapter of his spy novel online. Says The Register.

It reports:

The ex-MI6 officer was fired in 1995 after four years in the foreign arm of British secret intelligence and spent a year in a maximum security prison for publishing a book about his time in the organisation. But he has fought back against what he claims is intimidation by his old employees with the publication of chapter one of The Golden Chain on his blog.

Imagine if this was to happen to your organisation. It is almost impossible to prevent ex-employees blowing whistles and making mayhem online.

This means that the Public Relations manager has to alert management and prepare for the eventuality as part of issues management planning.

Email is chaotic

Over a third (38%) of large organisations across the UK admit their email management system is in ‘complete chaos’, according to the findings of a survey released by AIIM, reports Retail Bulletin.

I have pulled out the key points. But waht this report says to me is that it is about time the Public Relations department got control of email and managed it properly and as a communications medium.

• The survey also found that the same number of end users admitted that their company either had no policy or they didn’t know their company’s policy when it came to email archiving.

• A third of UK organisations do not have any clear plans and procedures for dealing with compliance issues, especially concerning historical records, which poses a number of compliance related risks.

• Only 16% understand that the broader concept relates to information within enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems.

• Half of the users surveyed admitted that employees do not fully understand how to access current versions of policies and procedures or other critical corporate information.

• Over two thirds (70%) of organisations admit that content created by employees who have then left, is not actively reviewed or archived appropriately.

South Bank Show podcast

If you have a client who would be good material for the ITV1 South Bank Show you will be interested to know that from today, you’ll be able to download a special podcast version of the show, carrying extended interviews with the week’s guests.

This is important for two reasons. The people who want to see the show can do so at a time to suit themselves which mean that the extended audience will be focused and relevant and, of course the podcast will remain available for years, extending the life of the broadcast.

Of course you will also be able to use the link to the show in additional and further promotional work too.

The same benefits also apply to Nigel Godrich's show

The Radiohead producer will head up 'From The Basement', which is expected to feature appearances from the likes of The White Stripes, Thom Yorke and Beck. The first series has already been recorded.


The show will have no studio audience, and will be available as a video podcast.

So it will get the extra bonus podcasts offer Public Relations practitioners.

Radiohead Official Site

Guradian reports on the power of the blog for corporates

Andrew Clarke tells how Dell learned recently about the growing power of the blogosphere when it recalled 4.1m laptop batteries after a video that showed one of its computers bursting into flames was posted on the internet. The brief clip zig-zagged through cyberspace and went from cult viewing to national television.

"It's a new culture, a new world," says Nielsen BuzzMetrics' marketing vice-president, Max Kalehoff. "For every company there's a huge, long tail of blogs with many, many niches."

He maintains that although blogs can be a thorn in the side of carefully nurtured brands, they can also be useful in alerting executives to hazards ahead.

Space for blogging

From Neville Hobson's eagle eye:

Ms Ansari says she will write the first blog from space. She says that her ultimate goal is to bring her experience and “the ability to fly to space to more and more people and to inspire young woman and men to go into the fields related to space.”

Is it OK to ghostwrite a CEO blog?

Debbie Weil says: This is one of the questions I get asked most often. What I want to know, dear reader, is what you think?

This is a silly question.

What are the corporate aims, where is the social media strategy and how can you lever most corporate benefit.

Most CEO's have a half life of 3 years so when they go... what is best for the organisation?

I am not a great fan of CEO blogs. Imaging the relative power among a wide range of stakeholders should they have a monthly podcast, an interview on sector wide issues by John Humphrys.

Research and evaluation

Heather Hopkins is Director of Research for Hitwise UK. In this role, Heather analyses the trends affecting businesses online and works with Hitwise clients to identify opportunities and threats to online business growth. She was looking at clickstream traffic from MySpace and Bebo this morning for a reporter and noticed HMV.co.uk among the downstream sites from MySpace. In fact, the site ranked as the third highest downstream Shopping & Classifieds site from MySpace Music last week, after eBay UK and eBay.

If The PR industry was to use this information, imagine its power for PR planning, strategy development and evaluation.

Sorta makes the usual charts look a bit ... unreal?

If you don't RSS you ain't in PR

Its simple. Without RSS a practitioner cannot keep up with the news, is unable to follow important discussion and debate about thier client, is swamped by email and is really a waste of salary.

The best advice about RSS today is from Elizabeth Albrycht. Her blog is worth adding to your RSS feed as well.

Then have a play after your workout in the gym and with a glass of Château Ausone and practice.

Its just so cool.

Celeb PR opportunity

YouTube has signed a deal with media giant Warner Music to allow its material to be used legally.

It means interviews and videos by Warner's artists can be used in return for a slice of advertising revenue.
The agreement also covers the use of material in homemade videos, which form a large part of YouTube's content.
Well there is some reality creeping in. The Warner long tail could be very valuable.

For Celebrity PR... get your client into the Warner library.

There is added news from Business2Day:

YouTube is getting ready to launch a "content identification system" by the end of the year that supposedly will let copyright holders automatically find when their content is being used and either charge royalties for it or share in advertising dollars associated with that content.

Eyespot - an vidcast experiment

It works!

I have experimented with Eyespot for the first time.

Just my cellphone (on a pile of books) and the free, simple and easy software works very well.

Now I have to get the camera out, prepare better content and get the sound, lighting, mixing etc better. But for 90 minutes from start to finish, this is not hard.

Show notes, are, of course, the blog comments I made this week.



The next think to do is to send it to YouTube, Live Journal, Veoh, BlipTV etc.

There is one issue which is that it is supposed to load to this blog (Blogger Beta) automatically and that does not work yet. I had to cut and past the code.

Brand Monitoring

Mike Manuel has picked up a Forester Research report about Brand Monitoring and identifying
Nielsen Buzzmetrics
CymfonyBiz360
Umbria
Brandimensions
MotiveQuest
Factiva
on the way.

I am getting more and more uneasy about many metrics. My concern is that they can lead one down the route of market segmentation in a misleading way.

I now tend towards a view that, for many application, there is a need to identify with the content values offered by constituents within contextual frames which can be as granular as one because of their influence on the long tail asset.

For a lot of organisations their long tail asset may be greater than the annual marketing budget which would lead one to imagine how much more effective it might be for closer attention.

Levering up one blog post by a factor of three by just responding would seem to be a valuable investment.

There are not many brand monitoring capabilities that identify the long tail asset.

Mobile keeps up the pressure for effective communication

Mobile keeps cropping up in forecasts and is becomming core to PR communication. By 2012, cellular VoIP services are forecast to generate revenues of $18.6 billion in the USA and $7.3 billion in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 in the USA and $6.9 billion in Western Europe, according to a new report, Forecasting the Commercial Impact of Wireless VoIP in the USA and Western Europe, published by Analysys, the global advisers on telecoms, IT and media (http://research.analysys.com/).

European commercial broadcasters threatened

Yankee Group today announced that multi-channel services, new advertising formats and new direct business partnerships between content providers and advertisers are posing a tremendous threat to the core business of European commercial broadcasters. As a result, European free-to-air (FTA) broadcasters are facing a severe decline in advertising revenue. Yankee Group finds that to retain these budgets and margins, broadcasters must refocus their traditional business model and explore new and emerging TV distribution and merchandising options.

This means that broadcast public relations acivities need to re-think how they provide content for broadcsters.

Free video editing software

If you are thinking of learning how to edit your video for your company vidcast or blog, you may want a list of free video editing software from TV ISG.

For podcasting the most used free editing software is Audacity.

Work early for Christmas

Are you ready for Christmas?

Online performance, Internet interactivity and sales performance for the festive season is a must this year. The alternative, gardening in February, is not a lot of fun.

Online retail sales for November and December 2005 were up 20% on the previous year, outperforming the high street by a factor of eight. Way back then, this represented 6.8% of all UK retail sales.

I have already reported research that suggests British retail spending over the Internet is set to double, hitting almost 40 billion pounds, by 2010. This year there will be a surge. It would surprise few people to see an additional 25% sales increase online this year over last, the increase could be even more. This would pitch online sales at £3.75 to £4bn over November/December 2006.

This means, if you have any connection with online retailing you have to be working up your programme now. Of course your web site should already have enjoyed a comprehensive makeover. This will mean it will get its tinsel on time and in the right places.

You will check that server can cope with huge surgesn traffic and high throughput of purchases. You will have a group ready to respond to questions and issues and perhaps a method for helping people who want to ask questions or comment online.


If the PR industry gets this wrong it will never be forgiven. Think in terms of one in every three pounds spent by householders will be via the Internet (and this is not just for the young and trendy, my 89 year old Mother-in-law depends on Internet ordered meals for her lunches).

The evidence of the power of Internet retailing keeps mounting.

John Lewis reported a 25% surge in profits last week fuelled by a huge increase in internet sales. The department store group, which also owns the Waitrose supermarket chain, said it had enjoyed an 'excellent' half year.

Meanwhile, the UK Town Centre Retailing 2006 report by retail analysts Verdict Research found town centre spending fell to £122.3 billion in 2005, a 0.6 per cent drop on 2004.

Clothing retailer Next Plc posted an increase in first-half profits on Wednesday last, as a surge in its catalogue and Internet business helped offset a drop in same-store sales.

Chocolate retailer Thorntons Plc posted a 36 percent drop in full year profits on Tuesday last because of sluggish high street demand. On a positive note, demand for chocolates over the company's Internet site grew 6.4 percent over the past 12 months to 5.5 million pounds.

Shoppers spent £767 million less in town centre shops last year, turning to the internet, retail villages and supermarkets that are selling more and more non-food items like TVs and clothes.

Insurance giant Aviva, one of our biggest financial-services group, said it would cut 4,000 jobs in the UK, in part because customers were no longer shy about doing big financial transactions online.

Online, non car dealer, second hand car sales has increased share from 3% in 1998 to 7% in 2005.

Last week the Civil Aviation Authority issued a report revealing there were twice as many failures of old-style holiday companies this year than last with people booking flights and holiday accommodation direct with vendors via the Internet.

I just hope that the PR industry is ready for all this.

This is coming at us really fast.

The top ten Political Bloggers in the UK

Iain Dale is regarded as Britain 's leading political blogger in so far that his blog is the most visited blog in the country and at the beginning of the political conference season, he has written an article about political blogging for the BBC. Not bad publicity for an aspiring Tory MP.

Of course, for news of events at the conferences, the best 'news' will come fastest electronically.

The bloggers being faster because there are fewer processes in the way (editor of one) and so will be monitored closely.

Political PR and corporate affairs is now much mediated by social media and, whereas in the past the Westminster Village did not need to look outside very often (a few weeks before the next election was quite cool), the influences are coming from a wider range of campaigners that the usual FoE, Greenpeace, CBI lobby machines.

Some of those machines are even using social media to help make their point.

Political application of social media in the USA is a street ahead. For example there is not a single picture on Flickr for the LibDem Blogger of the Year awards last night. Sort of sluggish really.

But this year the political bloggers at the conferences are going to be much more powerful.

Wide area Internet is getting exciting.

This from The Guardian:

xG Technology is the company behind xMax, a transmission technology that can broadcast a phone or wireless broadband signal using much less power than conventional radio transmitters. The technology also uses unlicensed spectrum, which could make it attractive to businesses looking to set up cheap communications networks.

The significance being that it has potential to offer fast Internet access both in homes and offices and on the street making the Internet even more accessible to more people.

Is Television New Media?

Almost but adoption is some way off.

I am tempted to post about this because of Kevin Anderson's post yesterday. In it he describes what is in the pipeline and discusses opportunities for the medium.

The sentence that sticks out for me is his comment: "I watch a lot of video, just not a lot of TV."

He time shifts, he selects what he wants to see when he wants to see it. He references Tom Coates post: Social software to set-top boxes:

Imagine a buddy-list on your television that you could bring onto your screen with the merest tap of a 'friends' key on your remote control. The buddy list would be the first stage of an interface that would let you add and remove friends, and see what your friends are watching in real-time - whether they be watching live television or something stored on their PVRs.

The fact that we are at the mercy of TV type thinking by the TV industry now does not mean that this will not change. Partly this is because TV audiences are dwindling and time watching TV is shrinking.

I think there is resistance built into the system.
The TV we watch is box in the corner that is not a computer.
It seems all too easy to muck up current TV settings when trying to enhance TV options.
The hand controls are designed by Martians.
The interface is not familiar.
We do not know the options that are available because it is such a pain to find out what they are.

All this may explain why TV audiences are declining and may be why there will be change in the near future and not long term.

The announcement that Google is talking to Apple about supplying video clips for Apples's iTV device may be a move to engage the digitl bit of digital television. This lets users watch video content stored on their desktop PC or their home TVs. Google's consumer product chief, Marissa Mayer, told Newsweek that the two companies are "engaged in talks". The iTV device is a video streaming player which uses wireless technology to play video on a TV.

TV as we know it will keep rumbling on like newspapers and fax machines. But there are alternatives that will be exciting for more than few Geeks.

New Media Release case study

Dan McGinn provides a case study of the use of the New Media Release. It is interesting reading.

So last week my firm sent out a press release for the Chevy Super Bowl College Ad Challenge. We used the Social Media Press Release template developed by Todd Defren and Shift Communications. We looked at as many examples as we could find. I have to say that Chevrolet was very open about doing this and a traditional press release was sent out at the same time.

Issues management ideas

BL Ochman has offered a view of how an organisation might manage an issue using a blog.

As part of building a strategy, a PR practitioner may well examine if when and how blogs might be helpful in such circumstances.

Of recent weeks I have been thinking about how one might resolve issues of web server overload in times of crisis. One strategy may be to have a blog available on one of the services with high capacity such as Google.

This would allow for fast response with heavyweight web server capability.

Press release finds its way to magazines readers automatically

Lee Odden at Webpronews, has taken an interest in the hRelease or social media release and offered a list of hyperlinks to web and Usenet resources.

This initiative is of interest to people who issue press releases.

It is especially interesting for people who want to issue press releases via the web, forms of social media or to/through press release agencies.

As an initiative, it has the merit of cutting to cost of press release distribution because of its nature this form of publishing has built in search engine optimisation, RSS and web friendly features such as an XML base.

What practitioners will have to wait for are the software engineers - geeks in garages - to create software to allow you to fill in the boxes to get the most from the idea and some bright person to create a release distribution site. (Disclosure - One of those geeks is a friend of mine).

One thing to remember about social media releases. You get one chance. If a journalist thinks you are abusing the concept you get switched off - permanently. RSS is like that you just switch off the feed. So no more corporate boilerplate stuff from the marketing boiler behind the big desk (you know what I mean ... embargo 0900 hrs 09/08/06 Headline - The Next Revolution - First par - XXX plc. the leading global leader in raspberry blowing today announces the first revolution in pursed lips since its miraculous acquisition of red current jam(tm) ... bla bla...).

This kind of development is only the start. A press release using such technologies (to you... boxes to be filled in) is built up from lots of small elements of information called microformats.

They can be used like building blocks.

A press release may have an embedded calender, or address book, audio or video resource that could be on uTube or Fileodge. It may even link to a Writley document or map.

Using these technologies you can lever up online facilities and add them.

This 'mashup' capability offers the reader (journalist) as much or as little information needed. In addition, it can be issued in such a way that it finds its own way to the online members of your community, the readers of the publication. It goes direct to readers too.

How cool is that.


Picture: Finding My Way

Big Desks

A lot of the 'fixed mind' process, command and control, ISO 9000, Marketing, advertising, MBO stuff has to be thought through again. It is not all bad or all out of date but much of it no longer fits with what we know and what is happening in our societies and cultures.

Simple things just keep coming up and biting the old school in the butt.

What is the value of an MBA when it takes creativity out of management?

Which models work and which are ones force old thinking on new models.

When relationships are so important and relationship value is moving to the fore, we see notions of the networked society and cultural relations having significance in a cultural economy.

To meet these needs there is an ever growing list of Public Relations practices and there will be more to come. It will be down to the Relationship Manager to understand what PR can do and deploy such skills.

The Big Desks are now getting the way.

I see references to 'Marketing' and think of big desks. I see advertising and see Big Desks, I see Auditing and see Big Desks. Mostly, there is not much of worth behind such Big Desks.

The people behind these Big Desks now have to take a walk down the corridor because unless they do, they cannot optimise the value of relationships.

Make your own vidcast

If you ask most Marketing Directors about using Video on line, they get a vision of a cameraman, clapper boards, lighting, scripts, music. The whole nine yards. BDM's (Big Desk Marketers) miss the communication opportunity.

In the meantime Sixty Second View shows, for a lot of communication, you need not much more than a cellphone. Its is the kind of content you can use on a blog or wiki or as content to liven up your intranet.

Good strong points can be made, with a real voice and it is powerful stuff. The use of YouTube has shown how such content can be hosted and there are more options in Dion Hinchcliffe's site.

Of which Eyespot caught my eye. It includes a web based editing suite.

I will try it but it does look very cool and offers an easy option for providing vidcasting.