PR, the changing media landscape and social media
Building on the ‘Stuff/Shit XX say meme’, Hunter PR in the US has created Stuff PR people say…
There are new examples of this meme growing by the minute. The one that kicked it off (at least I think):
Shit Girls say:
Hat tip – Mumbrella for alerting me to this.
Check out the clever video below produced by Carlsberg featuring a cinema full of rough and scary looking bikies.
This type of stunt is not necessarily new, Heineken did something fairly similar not that long ago, which you can see at the bottom of this post.
Though just because it isn’t new doesn’t mean it isn’t successful or effective. For the fraction of the cost it would have taken to create an advertisement, not to mention the spend required to buy media, this clever stunt has generated in excess of 2.7 million views. It only went up a week ago, so this number will likely grow albeit at a slower pace! This number also doesn’t include the additional buzz traditional media and the blogosphere would have created. Check out a small snapshot of the additional buzz on Google.
Regardless of the fact that in retrospect coming up with an idea like this seems simple, I can guarantee it isn’t. Good work Carlsberg – a good fun and effective stunt.
Henieken’s similar stunt, which must be noted has only 900K views:
New business presentations, whether you agree with them or not, are very much a reality for just about every advertising, PR and media agency.
I reckon over the course of my career I have been involved in maybe 60 or more new business pitches and that numbers increases every single week.
Thankfully I have not won every pitch I have been involved in. I say thankfully because I have learnt something valuable from every single loss. So much so in fact that now I am in the fortunate position that I am winning more pitches than I lose.
In preparation for addressing a group of Newcastle University students this week, I developed a presentation focussing on what makes a good new business pitch. You can check it out below, but in case you don’t have the time to read it all below are my top tips.
The most important point:
I have learnt this stuff because I have been privileged enough to work with some of the best in the business when it comes to winning new business. These people include:
I also learnt a tonne reading this book - Stop Bitching and Start Pitching by Marty Kellard and Ian Elliot.
If you have additional suggestions for winning new business, or you disagree with any of my comments I would love to receive your feedback in the comment box.
Heineken’s Facebook Page has hit the 1 million member mark. In celebration of this milestone, the company sent out a team of Heineken Huggers onto the streets of Amsterdam. According to the YouTube video they hope to get to everybody eventually. I have just hit ‘Like’ on the page. 
This is a great example of online driving, real world experiences, which in turn feed back into online buzz.
Nicely done Heineken.
I saw the video below on Lee Hopkin’s blog by Box HIll TAFE today and couldn’t resist sharing it here.
I love how videos like this can break down a bunch of stats into something entertaining. I am so not talented in this area. if I attempted to make something similar it would likely look like a series of moving PPT slides. If you can do this, and are looking for a start in agency land get in touch. I may some work for you.
GM has created the video above to thank the people of America for rescuing them from going into receivership.
The advertisement aired over Thanksgiving on American TV – nice timing – and coincided with GM being floated again on the NYSE.
I really like the humble and appreciative sentiment of this video. I also like the fact that the video appears to have been created with a relatively low budget. The last thing you want is some flashy and expensive piece of content celebrating the fact the company is not broke anymore.
What do you reckon? Do you like it?
Yesterday Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7. I don’t normally blog about tech news, but being an ex employee of Microsoft, I tend to watch news around that company a little bit more closely.
Media reaction to the new device appears a little mixed. Wired love it, whilst others like TechCrunch have written it off. Personally I am not sure which way it will go. Microsoft has been playing in the phone space for a long time now and not really made a massive impact or created a strong consumer demand, but you can never right off the Redmond based organisation.
The ads unveiled at the press conference by Crispin Porter + Bokogusky though are very clever. I have embedded the two launch executions below, which you should check out. They do a nice job of promoting the phone by downplaying the role our phones should play in our life. Beautifully shot in what appears to be the US and Europe, it will be interesting to see how they impact demand for the device. Shame there is not any Asia shots though.
UPDATE – Massive coup by the UK PR team (my old colleagues James Tutt and Hazel Thompson were involved I suspect) for securing official endorsement from the legendary Stephen Fry for the phone. It doesn’t get much bigger than that! Kudos.
What do you reckon? Do you like?
Full disclosure, Microsoft is a client of Edelman, but not in Australia. Full disclosure again, BlackBerry is a client of Edelman Australia.
Oprah’s announcement last week that she is bringing 300 of her audience to Australia is in my opinion the best marketing Tourism Australia has done since Paul Hogan’s throw another shrimp on the barbie ads of the mid 80s.
The announcement by Oprah generated global media attention last week and will no doubt generate a lot more when the lady herself arrives in Australia.
The Fairfax press over the weekend wrote an insightful article outlining the events leading up to the announcement and some of the numbers involved. I have summarised the facts below:
Milestones:
The numbers:
Included in the article I mention above was this paragraph:
According to Janice Peck, author of The Age of Oprah, advance notice that a book is to get the Oprah seal of approval is enough to persuade most publishers in the United States to increase their print run by 500,000 copies.
Congratulations Tourism Australia, PR success doesn’t come much greater.
As I mentioned in my previous post, myself and the team at Edelman have been monitoring the use of Twitter by Australian politicians and their staffers at – Election.TweetLevel.com.au. On the whole it has been rather uneventful. The majority of the politicians are simply ignoring the platform and social media more broadly for that matter.
But all of this took a turn this week, when Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, started engaging. The initial impetus was the offer of a charity donation in exchange for a @reply by Karalee Evans and another staffer at digital agency Amnesia Razorfish. Check out the full story here.
Following this initial engagement, JG has been replying regularly to Tweets she is receiving, including a message to yours truly.
In response to this message:
Julia Gillard sent this response:
Obviously, social media will not be the only thing that wins or loses this election, but it will have an impact. So Julia engaging in my mind is a very good thing. Jim Macnamara commenting on this in a SBS News story tonight summed it up best:
No one thing will cause people to vote, not newspapers, not TV debates, not social media, but does social media have a role? Yes.
I couldn’t agree more with Jim. Social media does have a role to play. If most politicians continue to ignore it they are missing a trick. Follow this link to view the SBS story, which in addition to Jim, includes an interview with myself and Karalee Evans.
What do you think? Do you care if our politicians are engaging on Twitter? Do you think their time would be better spent on Facebook? Or should simply stick to traditional media?
Election 2010 offers politicians the opportunity to embrace an ever-maturing portfolio of social media platforms to engage with Australian voters, but sadly most are simply using social media platforms to push out their messages in a one way direction.
Myself and the digital team at Edelman Australia have been working on some research in the lead up to the election that aims to measure the Twitter activity of Australia’s politicians and staffers and provide a rank on who is the most influential. Check it out at the dedicated site we have set up – election.tweetlevel.com.au
Methodology
To track Twitter’s influence on the election, we have input all the politicians we could find into Edelman’s TweetLevel tool, which measures the influence of individuals on Twitter based on a number of factors including re-tweets, followers, frequency of tweets, references etc. We have included a detailed overview of how the tool calculates the scores on the site.
The results
Currently the top ten most influential political Tweets are:
| Rank | Account | Influence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | TurnbullMalcolm | 67.9 |
| 2 | KRuddMP | 66.6 |
| 3 | SenatorBobBrown | 61.7 |
| 4 | piawaugh | 61 |
| 5 | JuliaGillard | 60.7 |
| 6 | GreensMPs | 60.2 |
| 7 | LiberalAus | 58.3 |
| 8 | Paul4Greenway | 58.2 |
| 9 | Greens | 55.7 |
| 10 | KateEllisMP | 55.1 |
The findings at the moment show that the Greens are using the platform most effectively with a large section of Greens MPs and candidates using the tool effectively to communicate and engage with potential voters.
The top two positions on the table are controlled by former party leaders Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd. Malcolm is effectively using the platform to engage with his followers and tweets regularly. Kevin Rudd on the other hand has secured his position largely due to the huge following he has (close to 1 million followers), and updates his account sparingly and engages in virtually no two way dialogue via @replies.
Both PM contenders Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott feature highly on the influence score, but this is due in main part to the high number of followers and the high number of re-tweets they are generating. Disappointingly, both candidates are only using their Twitter channels to push content as opposed to using it to engage with Australian voters. Both engagement scores are woefully low.
Will the battle for votes be won by Twitter? Not this time it seems, but Twitter’s influence on the conversation and its use as a political organising tool cannot be underestimated.
We will be updating the Election.TweetLevel.com.au site on a regular basis over the course of the election campaign, so check in regularly if you want to stay up to date.
Another site that is tracking politicians’ use of social media during the election is The Social Election, which has been set up by digital agency Amnesia social media guru Karalee Evans. It is well worth checking out as well.
Any feedback you have on the research we are undertaking would be very much appreciated. If you would like to discuss it with me don’t hesitate to get in contact with me via the contact form on this site or via Twitter – @matthewgain
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