Want to work in a PR agency? Here are some tips

Social activism: how to respond to an attack on your social media presences

February 29, 2012 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

This post provides five tips on how to respond to a social activist attack on your brand or company social media presences.

Protesting has changed

Organisations’ social presences, be they on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or elsewhere, are quickly becoming primary targets for activist organisations attempting to change company policy or build awareness of questionable business practices. Of course this is not to say the days of the old ‘hey-hey ho-ho’ chants, signed petitions and pickets are over, but there is a definite rise in activist activity on the internet and organisations need to be prepared to address and respond to these instances when they occur.

How best to respond to an attack by an activist organisation

Pre-attack create escalation procedures - Ensure comment traffic system and escalation procedures are in place across all social presences so that negative comments are quickly escalated to the PR and corp affairs team where additional escalation can be made quickly.

Investigate the source of the activity and engage – My mother always said treat the problem, not the symptoms. Identify the source or sources that are convincing people to come to your social presence and engage with them directly. Your engagement efforts with the activist influencers will be more effective that engaging with every single individual on the page. In my experience this engagement will be welcome and shows a willingness to address their concerns.

Don’t stick your head in the sand – Be transparent with your community on the channels they are attacking you on and make commitments to investigate their concerns and provide more information.

Be timely – an hour is a long time in the social media world. Get responses and information to your community as quickly as possible. Delayed silence will suggest you are trying to spin the situation.

Listen and respond – There is no magic number of negative comments that denotes when a company should change its policy, but any considerable number of negative comments should be taken seriously. Comments on Facebook and other social presences are like a barometer on your customers’ feelings towards your brand and products. Only a fool doesn’t listen to their customers.

Do you have any other tips you would add? Do you agree with what I have listed?

Image credit – Gaelx

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Featured, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Attack, Digital PR, Online, PR, Protect, Protesters, Protesting, Public Relations, Social activism, social media

What people think I do meme – PR edition

February 14, 2012 By Matthew Gain 3 Comments

The old interwebs has been alight the last day or so with examples of the ‘What people think I do’ meme. Knowyourmeme sums the meme as a series of visual charts depicting a range of preconceptions associated with a particular field of occupation or expertise.

At work today we had a stab at it ourselves. What do you think? Accurate?

Hat tip to @ecourtenay who created this.

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Filed Under: PR, Professional Posts, Web stuff Tagged With: fun, Meme, PR, PR edition, PR version, Public Relations, What people think I do

Stuff PR people say

January 13, 2012 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

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.

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, Digital PR, PR, Professional Posts Tagged With: Meme, PR, Public Relations, Shit PR people say, Stuff PR people say, Video, Viral

Carlsberg Bikie Stunt

September 29, 2011 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

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:

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, Digital PR, PR, Professional Posts, social media, Web stuff Tagged With: Beer, beer stunt, bikie, buzz, Carlsberg, cinema, clever, heineken, PR, PR Stunt, Public Relations, publicity, stunt, Youtube

State of the internet infographic and advice for PRs wanting to communicate complex data

September 26, 2011 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

Keeping up with the scale of the internet and its associated stats and facts is a daunting task. In an attempt to simplify some of the data OnlineSchools.org have prepared a pretty stunning infographic.

I love infographics generally, but this one is extra special special because it is interactive. Once loaded it will calculate how many new internet users there are in the world, the number of new websites being created and even how many dollars have been spent on e-commerce since the page was loaded last.

I have been banging on to colleagues and anyone else that will listen for some time now about the opportunity infographics represent for PRs. They are the ideal way to communicate complex information in a compelling and highly consumable way that is perfect for web consumption. In my opinion every survey or research media release should be accompanied by an infographic to bring the stats to life. There are additional thoughts and examples of infographics on the Edelman Digital blog.

Check out the interactive State of the Internet Infographic here, or simply marvel at its non interactive beauty below.

Hat tip to Digital Buzz Blog where I saw this first.

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Filed Under: Professional Posts, social media, Web stuff Tagged With: Advice, infograph, inforgraphic, internet, internet stats, onlineschools.org, PR, statistics, stats, Tips

Managing crisis in the digital age

August 22, 2011 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

Does the potential of a PR crisis played out in the modern social media environment keep you up at night? If so, this post and the presentation, created in conjunction with Edelman crisis management expert Grant Smith, at the bottom may provide some guidance.

Managing Crisis in the Digital Age

Last week I was invited to present on the topic of Managing crisis in the digital age at the PR and Communications’ the Future of Social Media Forum.

The event was a three day conference for people in the PR and marketing industries and included presentations from the likes of Gavin Heaton (servant of Chaos), Ian Lyons (who I had never met before), Alexandra Kentman (who I sadly missed) and fellow PR agency staffer Dan Young.

The presentation in summary:

The context:

Social media in and of itself is not the cause of crisis, it is merely a vehicle that people use to communicate about or learn of a crisis
Social media has, however, changed fundamentally the speed of response required to get on top of a crisis at the early stages and requires constant responses throughout the crisis

First things first:

Organisations need a way to identify the differentiate between an issue and a crisis. An issue is unfortunate, a crisis prevents business as usual
Crisis communication is part of the solution, but it isn’t the solution. An organisation’s (note I am not saying the PR person’s here) primary focus should be on finding the source of the crisis and fixing it

Five steps for managing crisis in the digital age:

Prepare - every organisation should have a crisis management plan that is ready to manage crisis in the digital age. This includes identifying all potential crisis scenarios and having Q&A documents with responses ready for multiple formats including Facebook and Twitter

Listen constantly - listening constantly to conversations happening around your brand online should be standard practice for any business of consequence

Prepare to respond quickly - the news cycle moves at blistering speed today. It is better to be part of the conversation clarifying you are seeking more facts than not at all

Online visibility - nobody is better placed to own the facts about a crisis than those in the middle of it. Owning the destination for facts about your crisis is crucial. Consider preparing a dark site that can be turned on in times of crisis and also set aside budget for an SEM buy to direct people into your online destination

Train staff and practise - in the modern environment potentially everyone is a spokesperson. Train a wide range of staff and practice regularly. Crises have a knack for appearing when key members of your team are away from the office

Crisis management matthewgain.com version

View more presentations from Matthew Gain

What do you think? Do you agree? Is there anything you would add to my advice?

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Filed Under: PR, Professional Posts, SEO, social media Tagged With: Advice, Crisis Management, Edelman, Facebook, matthew gain, PR, presentation, Public Relations, social media, Tips, Twitter

ABC TV Tim Minchin Opera House Broadcast Fail

March 27, 2011 By Matthew Gain 3 Comments

The post below has been brought about by what I believe was very poor broadcasting by ABC 2 during tonight’s screening of Tim Minchin’s concert at The Sydney Opera House.

Now before I start, I want to communicate that it is my rule for myself, and anyone else that asks my advice, to not to be negative online. I simply feel it rarely solves anything. However tonight I am going to break my own rule. Tonight’s management of the Tim Minchin concert by ABC TV 2, was very bad in my opinion.

The situation:

At 8.30 pm ABC 2 started broadcast of Tim Minchin’s one off performance at Sydney’s Opera House. A highly publicised event, evidence in the fact that as you can see above it was the most prominent promotion on the ABC 2 website.

Around 20 minutes into the broadcast problems started. At first I wasn’t sure if the problems were my TV, or if it was part of the show. But a quick look at Twitter suggested others were experiencing the same issues. Being an avid watcher of MediaWatch I thus assumed that the ABC was having yet again more problems with its broadcast.

At about 9.00 pm, ABC 2 screened a pre-recorded message from Tim Minchin that explained a ship passing by the Sydney Opera House, may cause issues with the broadcast. At this time ABC 2 switched to a previous Tim Minchin concert. I believe at around 9.30 pm ABC2 returned again to the start of the scheduled Sydney Opera House performance, commencing again from the start. Though I cannot be sure of this as I had turned the volume on my TV down by then and moved onto something else.

Why I think ABC2 Failed:

I understand shit happens. Having worked in PR for some time now, I have managed crisis situations for a range of brands and clients. Whilst this instance is far from a crisis, one truth about any potential issue is; the way an organisation handles the problem has a massive impact on the public perception of how big the issue is.

Based on the broadcast and especially the pre-record, tonight’s failure was not something that was unexpected by the ABC. It seems it was such a real possibility that the broadcaster thought it prudent to create a pre-recorded message from Tim Minchin explaining the issue.

The pre-record begs the question; if the likelihood of broadcast failure was so great why had did it not warn the audience? And further more, if failure was so likely, why did it take around ten minutes for the broadcaster to screen its message acknowledging the failure and next steps on the resolution?

I assume there was not a simple technical solution:

I have absolutely no background in broadcast television, but I assume the ABC explored all options to direct the outside broadcast to another aerial that would not be obstructed by the passing of a large ship by the Opera House. I also assume the ABC had no control over shipping through the harbour during the broadcast. Thus one can assume there was nothing done wrong in this respect.

What I think the ABC could have done better:

Provide a warning and set expectations?

Again, I am not a broadcaster, but I think we can assume that the ABC could have screened a warning at the start of the program stating there was the potential the broadcast of the concert could be interrupted.

A simple message at the start of the broadcast communicating something like:

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the ABC would like to warn viewers our broadcast of tonight’s Tim Minchin’s concert may be interrupted. In the occurrence of such an event the concert will be replayed in full at the soonest possible time. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience that may be caused due to technical difficulties.

Had the program not been interrupted nobody would have given it a second thought. In the instance of interruption, which did occur, people would have at least been pre-warned and expectations set.

Moved to resolve the issue more quickly:

I think we can also assume that the ABC could have moved more quickly switched to the pre-recorded message and the pre-recorded concert. If so why not? The ABC obviously knew there was the very real potential of broadcast failure. Why did it take ten minutes for the broadcaster to respond to the issue? Why weren’t ABC staff watching the broadcast ready to instigate the pre-recorded message and concert more quickly? Again a quick resolution to the problem would have resulted in less audience confusion and less negative reaction.

Conclusion:

As I stated above, an issue is all about how you handle it and in my experience people react well to negative situations when expectations are set accordingly. Had the ABC pre-warned the audience, and acted more quickly to instigate its response I suspect the public’s reaction would have been supportive. As they didn’t, the reaction I observed on Twitter was highly negative. I also suspect their switchboard was jammed with complaints.

Of course this is a very first world problem. Nobody lost an eye, but still it erks me when simple things are not put in place to solve issues.

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Filed Under: Media, PR, Professional Posts Tagged With: ABC, Australia, Australian, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcast, Broadcast. Concert, Crisis Management, Fail, Failure, Issue Management, PR, Ship, Sydney Opera House, Technical Issues, Tim Minchin

Some thoughts from a PR perspective on the Nick Riewoldt AFL scandal

December 21, 2010 By Matthew Gain 13 Comments

Wow they sure don’t make crises like they used to. In days gone by they used to say that the first you heard of a crisis was when a journalist called you up to find out more details on the reason why one of your employees was drunk when he crashed a company vehicle. Nowadays by the time a journalist has called 40,000 or so people will have seen and shared the twitpic taken by a passer-by of your drunken driver stumbling from the crash.

A true modern digital crisis is currently unfolding for AFL players St Kilda team Capt Nick Riewoldt and teammates Nick Dal Santo and Zac Dawson after a series of naked photos of the players have been posted on the previously unknown Kim Duthie’s Facebook page. As expected the story went viral, very quickly, both in social and traditional mediums.

Following the posting of the first images mainstream media coverage started appearing on 19 December and the media storm continued throughout the day of 20 December. According to Google News there are currently 878 articles on the scandal. I expect this to continue to grow rapidly in the next 48 hours. The graph below highlights the growth of the story.

Facebook has closed down Kim’s page, but it hasn’t stopped her getting her side of the story out. No sooner had her account been closed than she turned her attention to Twitter where she has furiously been posting and responding to tweets throughout the day.

Today, 21 December, the story was a top news item across the nation. She has conducted radio and broadcast interviews, but what is most interesting for me is the way Kim has used traditional media to launch her own content channels, namely Twitter (she has increased her following by 3,359, in the last 24 hours) and most recently Ustream, where she rebutted the tone of the media interviews appearing late today on the validity of the story.

According to some quick research conducted on Tweetreach tweets that mention her Twitter handle have now reached a potential audience of 101,000 people – those are mainstream reach. What you also have to keep in mind is that traditional media have never mentioned her name. So tweets referencing her Twitter handle have solely been because people have sought additional coverage on social media.

To the likely detriment of all involved, the media cycle in this instance will be determined not just by the traditional media, but also by Kim on her own platforms. I have a feeling this story has quite a bit more to run yet.

What can be learned from this from a PR point of view? Below are a few tips from me on managing crisis in the digital age:

Monitor the web constantly – the traditional media was tipped off to this story because it appears Kim approached a series of papers with the photos first. There are plenty of cases where this isn’t the case. Monitoring to identify peaks in conversation will ensure you are aware of potential crisis hopefully before it hits the mainstream media.
Pre-crisis prepare your messaging – have pre-prepared media statements that can be adapted for media, Facebook, Twitter and launch these quickly. It took St Kilda until around 2.00 pm on 20 December to get a statement up to a story that broke in the last hours of 19 December – too long in the modern hype cycle.
Consider a dark site – having a site that can quickly be turned on in times of crisis can be invaluable. During the recent Gulf of Mexico oil disaster BP dedicated their entire home page to the crisis. St Kilda could have befitted from a similar approach. Despite the media statement currently being the top news item you could argue that the media response should be the only thing the St Kilda website is focussed on communicating presently. The decision to post a story about the cheer squad during this scandal is a strange on in my mind. Less strange and just unfortunate is the fact the advertisement featuring Reiwold is still showing on the St Kilda website.
Realise that anyone can cause a storm – typically the way a journalist’s enquiries or complaint about an organisation are handled and that of the public is radically different. Until a few days ago Kim was a nobody. Today she is an individual with a series of powerful content platforms and a traditional media following her every move. Treat everybody with a certain level of respect, you never know when an individual will become the next social media megastar – remember United Breaks Guitars?
Build it before you need it – it is always tough to build a social presence for response purposes when the crisis has already hit. Also don’t abandon during the crisis. St Kilda has made only made a handful of tweets since the story has broken and have not responded to any questions or messages of support from fans on Twitter or Facebook.

What do you think of the tips above? ? On the whole I think St Kilda and the AFL have done a good job of managing this, so don’t read these as solutions for this particular crisis. More observations and tips in general. Do you have other suggestions?

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Featured, PR, Professional Posts, social media, Uncategorized Tagged With: AFL, Crisis, Football, Nic Duthie, Nick Riewoldt, PR, Scandal

Oprah coming to Australia – the facts and milestones

September 20, 2010 By Matthew Gain 3 Comments

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:

April 2010- discussions to bring Oprah and her audience to Australia started with Oprah’s production company Harpo
Around 14 August 2010 – the deal was put through to Oprah herself
17 August 2010 - Oprah confirmed the deal and advised she would like to announce on her first show of her final series
9 September 2010 – the filming of the show where Oprah announced the trip occurred
13 September 2010 – the show was broadcast and widely reported in world media
7 December 2010 - Oprah and her audience arrive in Sydney and will be split up into three groups; the groups each visiting either NSW, Victoria or Queensland
14 December 2010 – everybody will reconvene back in Sydney for filming of the first show in front of an estimated audience of 6,000 on the Opera House steps
Mid-January 2011 - The Australia episodes will go to air

The numbers:

Tourism Australia is spending $1.5 million on the extravaganza (an absolute bargain)
Tourism NSW is contributing ‘between $1 million and $2 million. Tourism Victoria is investing about $500,000, and Tourism Queensland about $400,000
Qantas is flying the 450 crew and audience free of charge
The Oprah Winfrey show is watched by about 9 million people daily in the US – mostly women over 55
The Oprah show is screened in 145 countries
A 30 second advertising spot on the US network screening Oprah comes in at around $100,000 (though this number is expected to be much higher for the final series)
Advertising equivalency is no suitable measure for measuring PR effectiveness, but if people are willing to pay $100,000 to reach Oprah’s audience during an ad break for 30 seconds, you can only imagine the value of the two episodes, each made up of 43 minutes of Australian focussed content
Like there was for the announcement, I expect global media coverage to of the event to extend the reach well beyond the Oprah audience itself

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.

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, Featured, PR, Professional Posts Tagged With: Australia, Harpo, Oprah, PR, Public Relations, Qantas, Tourism Australia

Want to work in a PR agency? Here are some tips

August 21, 2010 By Matthew Gain 9 Comments

Working in a PR Agency

View more presentations from Matthew Gain.

This week I had the honour of presenting to PR students at the University of Newcastle (my old university) on the topic of working in a PR agency. Above is the presentation I gave. It was intended to be light-hearted and was pitched assuming minimal knowledge of the agency environment. The simple reason for this is that when I was at uni I had no idea about what a PR agency did or how it all worked.

I often get asked what skills you should have to get a job in PR and how you go about getting a job at an agency. My advice typically covers the following points:

Do work experience - every junior hire we make is via work experience, I know of almost no exceptions to this. If you want to get a job in a PR agency the best route is to identify the agencies you would like to work for and approach them about work experience opportunities.
Know the media – understand the media. Watch all the television news regularly and not just the news you like. Understand the difference between ABC, Ten and SBS. Read the papers and not just the one you like best. Know the difference between the tabloids and broadsheets, understand the difference between the SMH and The Australian. Listen to the radio, think about the stories they cover. Read online voraciously. Google News is a good start. It provides a good overview of the Australian landscape but also gives an insight into international media too.
Read and comment on blogs – read PR, marketing, social media and other personal interest blogs. Understand how writing for a blog differs from a traditional media outlet. Make sure you comment and engage. The beauty of blogs is that it is about a two way conversation. Take part and enjoy the benefits. This post by the PR Warrior Trevor Young provides a good overview of some blogs to get started with. The fact I am listed in hist post is not the only reason I suggest following his advice either.
Understand how Facebook can be used to build a community – Facebook is a brilliant platform for sharing photos and staying up to date with your friends, but it can also be a platform for building a community around a particular topic, brand or passion point. Join and analyse some of the Facebook pages of your favourite brands. In fact why not try it for yourself? Set up a page for your football club, your university club or other organisation.
Have a digital footprint – I always perform a Google search when I receive a new CV. What will I see if I search for your name? Having a blog is one of the most obvious ways to grow your personal brand. Your traffic will not be high to start with, but it is not about traffic rather is more about having your thoughts and opinions there when someone searches. If having a blog is too daunting Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are easier places to start. For extra points you may want to start building an understanding of basic SEO and HTML. Check out my advice on growing your personal brand online.
Get a university degree - having a university degree is one of the things I look at. A comms degree is the obvious choice, but really I am not all that fussed what degree you have. The reason I mention a degree is because it shows you understand how to research, know how to form and present an opinion and perhaps most importantly can stick at something and get it finished without having someone looking over your shoulder. Having said that I have also worked with some amazing people that don’t have a degree.
Get involved and help a local charity - if you are a PR student odds are you already know a lot more about PR than the average punter. Why not volunteer some of your time to a local charity to assist them with their PR and social media planning. The experience you gain will likely be invaluable and will make a difference for a needy charity.
The marketing mix is converging, so understand the whole marketing mix – gone are the days of clearly defined roles between marketing functions. Media, advertising, digital and PR agencies are all increasingly offering similar services as the roles blur. The more you know about all these disciplines the better.
Finally, be creative in getting people’s attention - PR agencies receive a lot of CVs each and every day, so think about how you can stand out from the rest of the pack. Rebecca Griffith from the University of Wollongong got my attention by posting a job request on the Mumbrella job boards and this effort by an advertising hopeful in America is brilliant.