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Social Media Digest: #BeBold Fiasco, MP’s Twape & More

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Welcome once again to the latest edition of our social media roundup. Here’s what’s making the headlines in the world of social:

Blackberry's 'The Bold Team' has caused quite stir

Blackberry's 'The Bold Team' has caused quite a stir

1. Twitterati 1, Blackberry 0: RIM (the company behind Blackberry) suffered yet another PR blunder this week after a rather embarrassing attempt at crowdsourcing user-generated publicity from Twitter, promoting the hashtag #BeBold. It all started on New Year’s Eve when RIM ran a campaign asking how folks planned to #BeBold in 2012. Based on some of their responses, RIM created four mascots in the form of cartoon superheroes, provoking global criticism and mockery from disgruntled tweeps usurping the #BeBold hashtag. As a recent convert to the church of Apple, I found @bpollard89’s tweet – ‘#BeBold, get an iPhone’ – the most amusing.

2. Pimp My Page – Twitter introduced a redesign in December, however this week the micro-blogging site announced that it would be launching enhanced profiles for brands. The initial branded pages included: American Express, Bing, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney Pixar, Heineken, McDonald’s, and a few more. With Facebook’s IPO, Twitter will be under even more pressure to become more brand-centric.

3. End of his Korea – Park Jeonggeun, a 24 year old South Korea has been detained for a re-tweet yesterday from a devout Northern Korean about the late despot Kim Jong-Il, which included a satirical edited version of a North Korean propaganda poster. A noted critic of the North Korean regime, Park told Amnesty International “My intention was to lampoon North Korea’s leaders for a joke.” Nonetheless, South Korea officials claim his retweet is a violation of the National Security Law, under the grounds of committing “acts that benefit the enemy.” Park could face upto seven years in prison for his mockery. In a strange twist of foreign policy, North and South Korea are still technically at war with each other however surely imprisoning a citizen over free expression is comparable with the ideology they claim to oppose?

4. Twaped – On the subject of inability to identify humour on Twitter, Labour MP Tom Watson has been in the news this week after his intern jokingly tweeted: ‘I should log out of my Twitter so that my intern doesn’t twit-rape me…,’ similar to the social-prank known as ‘fraping’ on Facebook. The intern shortly posted an apology, however the Twitter-blunder caused an uproar of antagonistic commentators advocating her dismissal as well as many tweeps with a sense of humour orchestrating a campaign to #savetheintern. The media-savvy MP, who lead the charge against News Corp in 2011, was quick to respond on his blog, perhaps amusingly in parts: ‘though my account wasn’t technically ‘hacked’, yes, I do understand the irony of what happened.’ Regardless of certain peoples’ sensitivity to the vulgar word, Mr Watson was wise not to dismiss the intern and respond in a timely, professional manner.

Tiffany's crowd-sourced images depicting couples in true love

5. Love is in the air – Tiffany announced it was partnering with fashion blogger couple Scott Schuman and Garance Doré for an extension of its ‘What Makes Love True’ campaign. The couple is presented as the archetypical couple for the project ‘True Love in Pictures,’ which aims to create a gallery to represent real couples in love from Paris and New York. The project was celebrated at an event at the Tiffany & Co. flagship store in New York last week and from Monday people have been able to upload their own ‘moments of romance’. Users can post their love dovey photos to Twitter, Facebook or email to friends and family.

6. Bayern Munchkins – Prominent German football club Bayern Munich upset thousands of their fans this week in a failed social stunt. The club announced it had agreed to sign a ’spectacular name.’ The news spread like wildfire and soon became a top trend on Twitter. Fans were then instructed to like the Facebook page and accept an application invite to watch a live stream of the new superstar. But when the moment came to do the big reveal, fans logged in to find Nerlinger holding a piece of paper showing the profile picture of the Facebook user watching the video, accompanied by a message reading: ‘Dear fans, you probably already noticed, that we did not sign a new player. This app is for our fans to show the importance of you for our club.’ Within minutes, thousands of angry fans vented their frustration on Twitter and Facebook at the gimmicky stunt. Considering Bayern recently missed out on the signing o Monchengladbach and Marco Reus to rivals Dortmund, this was an insult to injury for many loyal fans.

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Tags: #BeBold, RIM. Blackberry, Sean Ball, Twitter
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Consumer PR: Hints, Tips & Case Studies

Monday, December 5th, 2011

I gave a guest lecture this week to students on the BA (Hons) Public Relations degree course at Leeds Met university.

My talk was on consumer PR. Here are my slides:

Louise Woodward, Umpf, Leeds Met guest lecture

View more presentations from Umpf.

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Tags: consumer PR, Leeds Met university, PR research, PR students, PR stunts
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Too Many PR Awards Ceremonies Are Devaluing The Industry (List of PR Award Ceremonies for UK Agencies)

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

I received an email last week congratulating us on Umpf’s CIPR PRide Award wins. It was along the lines of “Congratulations on your CIPR awards, would you like to enter ours?”

There are so many sector PR award schemes that it’s hard to keep up. Personally, I think there’s too many and the market is over-saturated and this is having a negative impact on the industry.

Having so many award ceremonies, in my view, devalues the sector.

Even if you can keep up with all the possible awards – and there are at least 11 PR specific ceremonies (see List of PR Award Ceremonies For UK Agencies below), and that doesn’t include PR gongs up for grabs within other marketing awards dos, nor the verticals such as catering/food and drink, gaming, etc etc – the overall cost makes it prohibitive to enter all of them.

Agencies that consistently produce good work will do one of two things: select a couple of award ceremonies and enter many campaigns into each; or – and this is less likely – enter just one or two campaigns into many awards bashes.

The problem with the latter option is that many of the ceremonies request PR campaign submissions around the same time of year, and you’re never sure which of your campaigns stand the best chance of winning.

This year, some of Umpf’s PR campaigns that we thought would do well, didn’t; and some we didn’t think would fare so well, did. So entering more campaigns in fewer award ceremonies gives agencies better odds of winning those gongs.

Which means that PR campaigns that ought to win are not even being entered into some PR awards; therefore, the standard of the less well known – or perhaps more expensive – PR award ceremonies is not as high as the most popular ones.

So back to cost. Umpf’s average cost for a single award entry this year was £170. Enter five or six at one event and you’re looking at £1,000 outlay straight away.

And then there’s the cost of attending – we’re attending four award ceremonies this year and the ticket prices range from £150-£195 for each member of the team.

And then you have to get to the venue. Of the ones we’ve entered, three are national awards gigs so there’s travel costs away from our base in Leeds to factor in.

Add in the cost of the drinks – and you can’t really win without splashing out on Champagne and shots – plus taxis home and you’re looking at another £50-£60 per head.

So, entry fee, cost of attending and drinks works out at approximately £400 per person for each ceremony you attend. More entries, higher cost. More staff attending, higher cost again. And that’s without travel or hotels.

That said, it’s one of the nicer cost to have as an agency as it it shows that your PR campaigns are being recognised by your peers and industry experts.

List of PR Award Ceremonies For UK Agencies
1. Cannes PR Lions http://www.canneslions.com/awards/categories_rules.cfm#9-27-120
2. CIPR Excellence Awards http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/events-awards/excellence-awards
3. CIPR PRide Awards http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/events-awards/pride-awards
4. Communicate Corporate Awards http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/awards
5. Corp Comms Awards http://www.corpcommsmagazine.co.uk/awards/corpcomms
6. European Excellence Awards http://excellence-awards.eu
7. Fresh PR Awards http://www.freshdigitalawards.co.uk/pr
8. Golden Hedgehog PR Awards (yes, they’re really called that) http://www.goldenhedgehogprawards.com
9. PR Week Awards http://www.prweekawards.com
10. PRCA Awards http://www.prca.org.uk/networking_events_2011_prca_awards
11. SABRE Awards http://www.holmesreport.com/uploadedfiles/news/2012EMEASABREENTRYFORM.pdf

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Tags: Cannes PR Lions, CIPR Excellence Awards, CIPR Pride Awards, Communicate Corporate Awards, Corp Comms Awards, European Excellence Awards, Fresh PR Awards, Golden Hedgehog PR Awards, List of PR Award Ceremonies For UK Agencies, PR Week Awards, PRCA Awards, SABRE Awards
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Social Media Remembers – How Online Campaigns are Keeping the Memory Alive

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Social media has once again been at the forefront of this year’s remembrance campaign with the Royal British Legion leading a wide range of remembrance initiatives across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in a bid to appeal to the ‘Afghanistan generation’.

Fronted by Poppy, the virtual face of the Royal British Legion, the campaign has more than 10,000 Facebook and 11,000 Twitter followers and its own Legion Live portal hosting videos, blogs and images.

As well as being used as a platform to host content, the British Legion once again led the campaign for Twitter to fall silent for two minutes at 11am (#2minutesilence) this morning as a mark of respect for Remembrance Day.

Last year the British Legion saw its Remembrance Day iTunes single bring two minutes of silence to the charts. And in 2009 a mobile poppy app was launched featuring a virtual poppy which grows every day.

A number of other social media campaigns to honour veterans and communicate the First and Second World Wars have also been launched this year.

This week, The Imperial War Museum launched its Faces of the First World War campaign which today saw 100 previously unseen portraits of those who served in the First World War made public for the very first time via Flickr.

Photographs will continue to be uploaded every week day until the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in August 2014.

Elsewhere a Twitter account (@RealTimeWWII) is reporting the events of world war two as it happened, minute by minute, for the next six years. Being led by Oxford graduate, Alwyn Collinson (24), the account has more than 73,000 followers and is being translated into Russian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Finally, this year’s PR Week Digital and Social Media Award went to the RAF Benevolent Fund for a social media campaign chronicling the events of the Battle of Britain. Set up as an online newspaper featuring daily news, pictures and video footage, blogs and Twitter feeds were also created for a number of fictional characters.

The campaign amassed 2,000 Twitter followers, 16,000 Facebook fans and the 1940 Chronicle has been chosen to become part of the British Library’s digital archive of British documentary heritage.

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Tags: British Legion, Facebook, flickr, Imperial War Museum, PR, PR Week, Remembrance Day, social media, Twitter
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Chevrolet, Meerkats and Manchester – PR Campaigns We’ve Loved

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Here is a roundup of some of our favourite PR campaigns and stories from October ….

Chevrolet Sonic bungee jump – Chevrolet used a stunt last month to launch its new Sonic car to younger buyers.

People were invited to bungee a brand new car off a tower in LA by visiting a website and clicking on a button, with every click taking the car one step closer to the edge.

After nine hours and 2.5 million clicks the car took off. The launch was streamed online so people around the world could watch as it nose-dived towards a paddling pool before being bungeed back up into the air.

The campaign gave the term car launch a whole new meaning!

When I Were a Meerkat – The UK is mad on meerkats – fact. So much so that the Daily Mail devoted a whole double page spread to the launch of a new book, When I Were a Meerkat, by Andrew Davies.

A take-off of Davies’ original book, When I Were a Lad, the meerkat version super imposes pictures of meerkats on to old black and white photos in a fairly amusing manner.

Even though we originally thought it was, the book has nothing to do with Compare the Market, although there is a cursory ‘seemples’ in the intro of the article. Proof that the Compare the Market campaign is now so ingrained into day-to-day life that the media can’t reference meerkats without mentioning it.

United vs. City – two great Manchester derby stunts

Making the most of the fact that everyone in Manchester now hates Carlos Tevez, Betfair used last month’s Manchester derby to give fans of both sides the chance to bin their Tevez shirts in exchange for new ones.

Skips were placed outside Old Trafford to collect the shirts which were then shipped to Argentina to be given to local charities – everyone’s a winner!

Another cheeky stunt came from Tesco after this picture emerged – apparently the work of a ‘rogue employee’ and not the global supermarket. We have seen a few ‘pricing error’ stories from Tesco make the news in in recent weeks – smell a rat anyone?

One from the archives – Lakeside’s Living Christmas Fairy

The annual PR Week Awards took place last month and 2011’s campaign of the year went to …. Lakeside’s Living Christmas Fairy by Clarion Communications.

Simple yet highly effective, the campaign saw Chantelle Houghton placed on top of a 50ft Christmas tree as a living Christmas fairy.

A masterclass in the perfect picture story, the stunt combined newsworthy celeb, clever branding (the tree was positioned outside the store’s main entrance) and eye catching image and resulted in a whole raft of national coverage. Beats Matt Cardle turning on the Christmas lights any day!

Other notable mentions ….

There have been two notable PR hoaxes this year – the ‘Momzilla’ mother-in-law from hell email and last month’s giant slipper.

A mistake with an overlooked decimal point lead to a Chinese slipper manufacturer sending baffled Tom Boddingham a gigantic slipper. The company behind the product, Monster Slippers, blogged about the mix up and promised to send Tom a replacement in the correct size straight away. Then it transpired that the unwitting Tom, splashed across the world’s media, actually bore a startling resemblance to Monster Slippers’ website manager Joe Jennings. All of a sudden Monster Slippers were unavailable for comment.

Was it a good idea? Well, we’re still talking about it a month or so on making it a cert to go down in PR hoax history. And, many of us in the office did comment on how nice it would be to snuggle down and have a little nap in that giant slipper.

Mario Balotelli firework saga

Mario Balotelli made the news last month after allegedly setting his bathroom on fire when he and a group of friends decided to let off fireworks out of a window.

No sooner had the fire brigade left the premises had Mario been snapped up to front a Manchester firework safety campaign. Apparently the media had misreported the story and this was his way of putting things right.

Whether it was a quick thinking publicist or a clever approach from the firework safety organisation, it generated tones of national coverage, for what was a regional fire safety campaign, and gave Mario the chance to correct the negative press.

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Tags: Betfair, campaigns, Carlos Tevez, Chantelle Houghton, Chevrolet, Clarion Communications, Lakeside, Manchester, Mario Balotelli, Meerkats, Monster Slippers, PR
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Groupon: a PR fail?

Monday, October 31st, 2011

There’s been a lot of media coverage surrounding Groupon and other online discount sites recently and the majority of it has been bad. It’s amazing how a company has gone from being a global leader in local deals to what one might call a PR disaster.

I’ve sat in on brainstorms before where the idea of using Groupon for a client has been brought up, this was before all the bad publicity and at the time it was seen as a great tool to get your business in front of hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise would be none the wiser to the services you offer.

The thing with Groupon is it wasn’t very well thought out. Yes it’s a discount site and recession or not, we consumers love a good bargain. However, retailers only like to give away a bargain of the Groupon kind during tough times, making the business immediately unsustainable.

Once the recession passes, companies won’t want to use sites such as Groupon. With the site taking 50% of sales revenue the profit margin is so low, if not non-existent, that there’s no point.

There’s also the perception that going on Groupon can damage your brand. If you scour the deals, 95% of the time you won’t have heard of the salons offering ultrasonic-liposuction or the beauticians offering teeth whitening or the restaurants offering £30 of food for £7.

These small businesses will most likely be thinking that an online discount site sending out a mailer to the masses is a brilliant marketing tool for attracting hundreds of new customers who will hopefully turn into repeat customers.

What they don’t see is that as soon as you associate yourself with any type of discount scheme, to most people that says ‘we’re in trouble’, which can be extremely damaging to a business or brand.

If you’re not in trouble then why do you need to offer a heavy discount to get people through the door? And if your business is in trouble, why? Is quality of what you offer not very good?

Also, how will your usual, loyal customers feel when they see that they’re paying full price for a service that a new customer is only paying a fraction of the full price for? Its risky business managing the perception of the value of what you offer whilst also keeping your loyal customers happy and satisfied.

Small businesses need to recognise that there are a number of free tools that are already out there which could help build your brand without having to resort to mass mailer sites such as Groupon to try and get people talking about their business.

A good social media strategy can help you educate and excite the general public. You can also optimise loyal customers and brand ambassadors using tools such as Twitter, spreading the word and building your reputation far and wide.

Hopefully small businesses will wise up as discount website – related horror stories spread. It seems that as Groupon’s head of PR quit after just two months, so is everyone else.

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Tags: bradford williams, groupon, PR
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Just Shut Up – Web 3.0 and Filtering

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

One thing we can all agree on is that the web is constantly changing and evolving. Following the ‘Web 2.0′ revolution of a few years ago, which saw the web becoming increasingly about engagement and interactivity, many are asking “What’s next?” Doubtless the next few years will see Facebook and Google slog it out to see who can become top dog, but what about us mere mortals? How will the web change and how will it affect us?

Recently we were provoked by the idea that the next revolution on the web would involve filtering.

Let us explain.

If you’re like most users of Twitter, you’ll have several hundred profiles you’re following. If some of those profiles are rather prolific, you’ll find that your Twitter stream is more like a torrent, with tweets appearing faster than you’re able to read them and a growing sense of frustration that you can’t read the ones that really interest you.

Perhaps the same is also true of your Facebook profile. It could be so crammed full of ‘friends’ that your nearest and dearest are pushed to one side, overtaken by a tidal wave of Farmville requests, meaningless photos of drunken nights out and gushing comments about someone you’ve never met and their new pet tarantula.

And so we start filtering.

After all, it’s a natural process that happens every day, all around us.

We filter when we go to the supermarket and we’re faced with 250 different types of wafer-thin ham. Most of us (those on the Atkin’s diet aside) only buy one. Likewise, when it comes to buying a new home, we naturally filter what’s on offer; by location, bedrooms, garden etc.

Filtering is our way of not being overwhelmed by choice and it’s arguably one key development in the web over the coming years. The truth is, every day we’re bombarded with more information than we know what to do with. And our social media profiles are no exception. We will be forced to filter in light of the amount of information we just can’t process, nor want to deal with.

If Web 2.0 was about ‘opening up’ then Web 3.0 is most definitely about ’shutting up’. Shutting up the brands, profiles and people that simply don’t interest us and filtering the way we receive information online. Getting ‘behind the veil’ to really speak to consumers is going to become increasingly challenging for brands. Clever, creative and interactive social media campaigns will be needed.

But before you all run screaming for the hills, the good news is that Web 3.0 will be more about building brand advocacy; inspiring consumers to do a brand’s bidding on their behalf. Apple is a fantastic example of this. Yes, their advertising is spot on, but we’re really won over when our friends talk up the new iPhone4S, tell us about the latest iPad app, or wax lyrical about AppleTV.

Brand advocacy may be harder to develop, but the results and rewards make it the holy grail for marketers. We’ll leave you with a rather irritating song that just about sums up our point:

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Tags: Facebook, filter, Google, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web 3.0
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Ryanair: the slag of the cheap PR stunt

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Photo: http://info-wars.org/

I think it was American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum who said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”.

The ‘all publicity is good publicity’ mantra can be a dangerous furrow to plough. However, if you don’t mind the flack, it’s cheap brand awareness tool.

And great link bait, too.

Take Ryanair – the slag of slags when it comes to the cheap PR stunt – which last week ‘announced plans’ (the first phrase they teach you at PR Stunt College) to remove up to three loos on its planes to squeeze in more seats.

But Mr O’Leary, above right, the airline’s ringmaster and CEO, is the master at this sort of story. Have a look through most of the online coverage and, just like Ryanair passengers, low cost key messages are squeezed in all over (“The company said ticket prices would fall by about £2 from a typical £40 tickets”).

So, yes, less lavs; but it’s cheaper to fly with Ryanair.

The bigger question for me is does ‘making stuff up’ to garner column inches and backlinks count as ethical behaviour?

That’s a bigger debate. In the meantime, here’s my five favourite Ryanair PR stunts:

1. Ryanair ‘plans’ to have standing seats on its planes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8779388.stm
2. Ryanair ‘plans’ to ban luggage – passengers should “buy or hire” what they need when they arrive at their destination http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3878641.stm
3. Ryanair bans staff from charging their mobile phones to save costs http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4467877.stm
4. Ryanair ‘considers’ charging passengers for using the toilet while flying http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7914542.stm
5. Ryanair ‘proposal’ for one pilot planes (part of wider Ryanair story) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11282834

One thing you may notice about these five examples – every one on BBC.co.uk, and every one with a gold-quality backlink from BBC.co.uk to www.ryanair.com… D’oh, that Mr O’ Leary is very good.

BTW, read Louise Woodward’s blog on some really clever travel social media campaigns.

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Tags: Michael O'Leary, Phineas Taylor Barnum, PR stunt, PR stunt college, Ryanair, slag
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Google +1 – The Importance of Logged-in Search

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Google+, the ‘logged-in search engine masquerading as a social media platform’, has received mixed reviews since it was launched just a few months ago. Far from judging the platform on its ability to keep us connected to our nearest and dearest, PR professionals need to dig beneath the surface to understand how this ‘platform’ impacts on search and online PR.

With the internet war between Facebook and Google becoming increasingly hard fought, Google’s social media platform enables the company to give consumers more specific search results, because, it assumes, we will stay logged in to our Google account even when we’re not connecting on Google+.

In its desire to challenge the supremacy of Facebook (which has a logged in and ‘captive’ audience to entice advertisers to spend on the platform) Google needed to create a similar platform to offer advertisers that ‘logged-in’ and highly specified audience. The simplest way to summarise it is that it’s all about the Benjamins.

So, what’s the knock-on effect for us PR people? And what’s with this +1 button, we hear you ask?

Well, it’s all pretty straightforward, really. Google’s algorithm (whilst never seen outside of a small group of mega-wealthy Silicon Valley residents) is sure to favour its +1 button when returning search results. Of course, the inference is that we need to be logged-in in order to give a web page, posting or site a +1, but these all add up over time to create a more social approach to search.

The truth is, for those specialising in online PR and SEO, we need to generate +1s with as much fervour as we look generate online coverage as they both have a positive effect on SERPs for the brands we represent. So, next time you post something, blog about an event, get some online coverage for a client, think about how you can translate this into improved search rankings.