Brown & Cameron: social media buddies? Source: Telegraph.co.uk

With social media becoming an increasingly popular tool, it seemed inevitable that 2010’s general election would see parties employing some elements within campaign strategy; however the degree to which it has been embraced by each candidate could not have been anticipated, resulting in it being dubbed: “the first word-of-mouth election”.

In run up to this year’s general election, tech-savvy politicians can be seen unashamedly flexing their weight of knowledge in this latest communication tool, across the worldwide web.

Labour has pre-emptively armed party members with new-media training, ensuring a smooth execution of this newest tactic; and with daily online video podcasts from senior campaign politicians, as well as real-time Twitter feedback, it is not surprising that such rigorous preparation has been undertaken.

Alongside this, Labour has cleverly optimised traffic to its own website using Google Adwords, resulting in constituents who are searching hot debate topics – such as: the economy, education and employment – are driven here primarily, receiving Labour’s take on the subject first.

While the Conservative party, not wanting to disappoint, have released an iPhone app, where users can receive a continuous flow  of up-to-date news on campaign progress, as well as takes on legislation, public policy and party memorandums.

Modern day constituents are demanding more transparency from MPs, social media offers a platform to achieve this. If these latest campaigns are anything to go by, it would appear that politicians are beginning to recognise and appreciate social media as a credible and effective communication channel, key to winning any election.

- Lydia Cambata

NB. Umpf has no affiliation to any political party, with the above comments regarding social media, rather than the efficiencies of one party’s campaign over another.

The Umpf blog has been a bit neglected of late (setting up a new agency can be time consuming) and I’ve been meaning to write something interesting for a while. So just when I was looking for an excuse, Nike served one up.  Swoosh.

This week, their football Tweets @NikeFootball (5,000+ Followers) started using a bit.ly vanity URL http://bit.ly/writehistorylive.  As you’ll see it takes you to an app on their Facebook Fan page (almost a third of a million fans).

If you’re new to URL shorteners such as bit.ly and is.gd (and there are hundreds of services out there), they take a long URL like http://www.facebook.com/nikefootball?v=app_10442206389&ref=ts (which eats up 61 of your 140-chracter Tweet) and shortens it to something like http://bit.ly/9HQmpy (20 characters). Both direct users to exactly the same place.

So rather than use a short bit.ly link, typically http://bit.ly/ [and then a randomly allocated  set of six alphanumeric characters with letters in upper and lower case], Nike has gone for a vanity title ‘writehistorylive’ to increase social media campaign recognition.

At the time of writing they’d had more than 6,500 clicks on their bit.ly vanity URL.  But see what happens when you click http://bit.ly/Writehistorylive or http://bit.ly/WriteHistoryLive.  The URL is subtly different – you probably wouldn’t even notice if it wasn’t pointed out – but the end result is, of course, not a Nike-endorsed site.  And imagine if there was some darker skulduggery eg http://bit.ly/writehistoryLive.

We’ve been advising clients recently on shortened vanity URLs.  One of our recommendations is, if you’re going to use a shortened vanity URL – as opposed to the shortened URL you’re allocated – ensure you secure any obvious alternative spellings, and the basic variations on capital letters.

Clearly, in Nike’s case there are millions of permutations in the use of upper and lower case with a long phrase such as writehistorylive (wRiTEhistorylive, WRITEhistoryliveE, etc etc ), but at least go for the basics: ALLCAPS, CapOnEachNewWord, alllowercase, Capfirstletter.

Of course, the counter argument is that the vanity shortened URL is typically only ever a social media link, so the reader will click straight through and, hence, there’s no need to worry.  But if a phrase is central to a campaign – as I would argue writehistorylive is (why create it in the first place?) – then there’s a credible argument to say the URL could be passed on verbally.

It’s probably only a matter of time before we see an intellectual property court case sparked by a shortened vanity URL.

NB: Neither bit.ly, is.gd, Nike (clearly!) nor Adidas are clients of Umpf and all example shortened vanity URLs have been created to demonstrate a point rather than to pass off a brand or marketing campaign.

So the Wall Street Journal has said it will no longer adhere to press release embargoes.  So what?  This really shouldn’t come as any shock to PR folk; it’s nothing new.

Back in 2008 TechCrunch, one of the most popular and influential IT blogs, publicly said it would deliberately break every embargo it was given by PR agencies.  It’s an interesting read which

you can see here.

Publishing is ever more a cut-throat business as the need to be first with the big online stories becomes greater.  Being first with an online news story means you stand to gain more click-throughs – and more click-throughs means your website is more valuable to an advertiser.  Plus, being first with a story means your site ranks higher in the search engines.  Which attracts more traffic.

What’s worse for the likes of the WSJ is that as well as their contemporaries in the print news world, they’re also competing online with the likes of bloggers, gossip sites and even citizen journalists.

So when TechCrunch doesn’t stick to the embargo, they’re more likely to be first with the tech news ahead of, say, Katie Boehret (@kabster728),  a technology reporter on the Wall Street Journal.  So you can see what the WSJ is thinking.

And while you’re thinking about the plight of the news print publishers, add this into the mix: who scooped the biggest story of the year (some might say ‘decade’)?  The Sunday Times? The Wall Street Journal? The New York Times? The BBC? Sky? CNN? Fox News? The Sun? News of the World? No, Michael Jackson’s death was reported first by a four-year-old celebrity gossip site called TMZ.com.

So, back to embargoes.  Should we be worried?  Well, it’s almost 20 months since TechCrunch said it would break every embargo it was given, yet today if you’re a technology PR consultant, TechCrunch is still going to be one of the first telephone calls you make when you’ve got a good story.

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There’s a common misconception that public relations is a fairly recent innovation.  True enough, in the 20^th Century Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays popularised the discipline we recognise today as PR.

However, just like Australia and the US, they existed long before they were ‘discovered’.

Although PR cannot lay claim to be the world’s oldest profession (recognised practitioners would have been few and far between back then), PR and word-of-mouth marketing has been around longer than you might imagine.

A quick example.  There are well over one hundred castles in Ireland, but how many can you name? You’d be hard pressed to name more than a couple.  However, you’re probably familiar with the castle at Blarney, if only because of its world famous Blarney Stone.

Millions have puckered up to kiss the Blarney Stone, including Mick Jagger, Winston Churchill, Laurel and Hardy and even Homer Simpson.

The belief is if you kiss the stone you’ll receive the gift of eloquence.  Exactly when the tradition started remains unclear, though it’s thought to date back between the 16^th and 18^th Century.  What’s certain is that the tale was passed from one person to several more, who then passed on the story themselves.   Today, more than 400,000 people turn up each year to kiss the Blarney Stone and I imagine Blarney Castle does not spend much at all on publicising itself.

Think also about the Trevi Fountain in Rome.  Throw in a coin and you’re assured a return to Rome they say.  I’ve been and indeed deposited a few euros.  And when I returned home people asked if I’d thrown a coin into the fountain.  Now I’d call that a very clever word-of-mouth destination marketing campaign.

Can Umpf really call itself a creative agency?  The problem is that we’re short of something here at Umpf Towers.

Although we’ve got some really cool offices – we’re in an old rope-making factory so we’ve got the exposed brick walls, original beams and we’re located on the trendy Calls, the city centre’s self-styled digital and creative hub – we’re missing something on the interior design front.

You see, we’ve we don’t yet have a helter skelter, a caravan, or a fairground carousel.  Shucks, there’s not even a pool table, retro arcade game or skateboard hanging round.

Maybe you work for a company with something interesting in the office.  If so, tell us what it is.  And if you’ve got any suggestions for the Umpf office space, let us know and we’ll try and sort it.  Ideally it’ll be something utterly useless.  Thanks.