PR, the changing media landscape and social media
We had our farewell party last night at The Metropolitan Hotel. It was a great night that continued on at ours afterwards. A lot of fun, perhaps a little too much fun…
For all the images go to my Flickr page.
Coors has launched a social media campaign in an attempt to work out why those of the fairer sex generally steer clear of the amber nectar.
Gill Edwards, a self confessed beer lover, has been involved with the campaign and has posted some interesting stats about women and their perceptions to beer following a survey that was conducted with 2,000 women:
• A third of women in the UK enjoy drinking beer, but feel uncomfortable and embarrassed to order it outside of music or sporting events.
• 42% of those polled think the industry should change its advertising first and foremost if it’s to make beer more appealing to women
• It’s not a taste issue, as only a quarter (26%) said the taste should be altered.
The campaign website can be found at http://www.bittersweetpartnership.com, though it appears to be fairly light on engagement at this early stage.
My take:
It is a nice platform for engagement and if women provide their thoughts, this could garner some interesting insights and help with product development. The videos, despite their slightly spooky music, provide compelling stats, though I am not sure they will be the type of thing people will go out of their way to post on their digital real estate – especially given you have to download the videos rather than simply embedding them. But what is my opinion worth? I’m a bloke and associate beer with hot girls, sport and mates.
Archival footage has been uncovered that shows Hitler was a surfer, a gamer, into his cars, but couldn’t spell. Or is there just a new Downfall mashup?
When Oliver Hirschbiegel was making Der Untergang (Downfall) I am sure he could never have imagined that the most moving scene in his film would be mashed up in so many different ways. I really like this film, but I love the mashups. Some of my favourites below:
Hitler the surfer (warning this contains quite a bit of surf lingo):
This post was prompted by the reading of two different texts. The first a book by the media consultant and blogger Jeff Jarvis – What Would Google Do. The second an article I read on Saturday on The Guardian.
Much has been written about What Would Google Do, so I won’t dwell too much on it, other than to say that Jarvis presents a very pessimistic future for print media unless publishers embrace the internet 2.0 era.
The Guardian article, authored by Ian Jack, on the other hand, laments the passing of regional media and puts forward the opinion that without local newspapers there will be nobody to scrutinise proceedings. Thus the public will only be left with the official version (read PR media release version) of events.
Now the Guardian piece makes a compelling argument, but I believe Jack has made assumptions that limit his ability to look at the alternatives to a printed local newspaper. I believe the false assumptions he made are:
Like Jarvis, I believe the future for local news will be online and that the current practice of employing a full time team of journalists to deliver local news is no-longer economically sustainable.
As I mentioned above, Jeff Jarvis devotes a large portion of his book (and also his blog), to recommendations for newspaper companies on how they should be adapting to the new landscape. Below I have paraphrased that advice and added my own take in a few bullets:
Without a doubt, employing the advice Jarvis suggests will result in a fundamental shake up of how the local newspaper organisations operate. And undoubtedly there will be people that lose their jobs, but doing nothing will mean the end for many local news organisations, which will ultimately result in the loss of all jobs.
So will newspapers die? Yes I would expect so. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that local news will die with it. Food for thought perhaps.
I read three things today that brought about the subject for this post:
The first was this graphic, which I saw on The Cow blog whilst waiting for the train at Ladbroke Grove Station.
The graph made me laugh, but at the same time got me down as it is exactly the scenario that I have faced for the last four or so years whenever trying to pitch for budget or permission to engage in a more social manner.
The second was Forrester’s ‘Social Media Playtime is Over’ report that seemed to be the perfect addition to the chart above. The report found that more than half of the organisations surveyed will increase their spending on social media despite the downturn. However, to put this in context they are likely to be starting from a low base. According to Ad Age, who presumably had full access to the report:
Three-quarters of those surveyed who knew their budgets said they allowed for $100,000 or less for social media tools over a 12-month period. And they are not integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy. Instead, they are “experimenting” with isolated tactics and hoping that they will take the place of long-term strategy.
The third item was an email from Elizabeth. Phil Ryan The digital guy where she works, Four Communications, had done a quick survey around the office that morning.
He sent an email with the following request in it:
Do you belong to a social network (e.g. Facebook)? If so can you let me know which one you belong to and also how many friends/ contacts / fans (whatever the term used on your social network) have you got.
The clever chap then did some sums and emailed everyone later that day with the following:
Around 100 (MG – there is about 140 people at the organisation, though I can’t imagine they all responded) of you belong to one or more social networks
The average friend/contact number works out to be just under 300 friends each.
Taking a low estimate of each of your friends/contacts having around 200 friends each themselves..
That’s a potential of 6,000,000 contacts with just two degrees of separation. Puts online into context doesn’t it and gives us some ideas on how to leverage.
None of these three things were connected, but the underlying issue is unmistakable. That is that there is a group out there that get this stuff and are loudly proclaiming the importance of it. On the other side there is a group that have their heads in the sand.
Which side is your organisation?
Social media is not that hard and with the right advice you will reap the rewards, perhaps not overnight, and definitely not without hiccups, but you will be better off in the long run. So, listen to your agencies and the people internally that are recommending investment. Put an appropriate amount of budget aside and also make the appropriate resourcing investments.
Did I mention I am looking for a job? 
Me and MJW immortalised in cartoon form”, posted with vodpod
My friend Charlie sent me the Current TV cartoon embedded above this afternoon.
Whilst I found this quite funny it is a little eerie due to the likeness of the two characters to myself and good friend Matthew White. Adding to the eeriness is the fact that these characters exactly replicate our positions on Twitter – I am an enormous fan and Matthew, well there aren’t many people that are more against the micro blogging service.
Coincidence or has someone been monitoring our conversations?
Check out the pics and decide for yourself.
Matthew White:
Me:
Given I will shortly be travelling through Uzbekistan, I think this video by Lowe Sydney to promote the upcoming Socceroos vs Uzbekistan video is rather timely.
According to Julian Cole commenting on Mumbrella, this was the eight most viewed sports clip of the week on You Tube – not bad at all.
It is exactly one month until Elizabeth and I fly the London nest and start our journey east along the Silk Road.
We are madly trying to wrap our lives up here in London and also starting to plan our return to Sydney. Elizabeth has an enormous spread sheet with actions to do and we are slowly ticking them off.
There are so many more things we will miss and likewise some things we won’t, but I will save that post to closer to our departure.
For now I want to share our itinerary as it currently stands (excuse spelling mistakes and it is far from final yet). Any advice people have on the itinerary or suggestions for other places to visit would be really appreciated.
| Turkey | 21 – days |
| Istanbul | |
| Cannakale (Gallipoli & Troy) | |
| Selcuk (Ephesus) | |
| Parmukkale | |
| Fethiye/Oludeniz | |
| Faralya | |
| Olympos | |
| Antalya | |
| Goreme | |
| Istanbul – NIGHT FLIGHT | |
| Uzbekistan | 12 – days |
| Tashkent – Fly to Urgench | |
| Urgench | |
| Khiva | |
| Bukhara | |
| Sarmakand | |
| [other place] | |
| Tashkent | |
| Border- Kazakh- to Bishek | |
| Kyrgyzstan - | 12 – days |
| Bishkek | |
| Kochkor | |
| [Karkol Valley] – trekking | |
| Tash Rabat | |
| Torugart Pass | |
| China | 30 – days |
| Kashgar | |
| Turpan | |
| Duanhuang (caves) | |
| Xiahe | |
| Xian | |
| Beijing | |
| Shangdong province stop | |
| Shanghai | |
| Hangzhou | |
| Shanghai | |
| Thailand | 14 – days |
| TBC |
This week I read on Mumbrella, that Streets, an Australian arm of Unilever had made a media buy for Golden Gaytime to coincide with Sydney Mardi Gras. Brilliant I thought at first, except rather than run new creative they ran old creative from the 1980s…
I have embedded the creative below.
Umm I am a PR guy, so perhaps in no position of authority to comment, but imagine if rather than a local media buy, Unilever had instead commissioned new creative that capitalised on the camp nature of the product’s name and the timeliness of Mardi Gras.
I suspect it would have been a viral hit, and perhaps positioned Golden Gaytime as cult gay product across the globe. Perhaps ‘THE’ icecream to buy when visiting Australia.
But maybe that approach would have been too much for Unilever?
If you are interested you can see photos from Mardi Gras on this quite creative photo display by SMH
I first came across this video of the future by Microsoft visionaries on Steve Clayton’s blog, but have started to see it turn up in a few different places now.
Microsoft gets quite a bad rap a lot of the time for not being innovative. Working at the company I can understand to some degree why this perception is the case, but in my mind it is unfair. Hopefully this video will start to change those perceptions.
Of course the vast majority of the technology in the video is still at the concept stage, but a lot of it is not completely pie in the sky. The Surface Computer is available today.
Enjoy a Microsoft vision of 2019.
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